Game Reviews
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Import Tuner Challenge
With the Xbox 360’s 20th anniversary barreling towards at an unstoppable pace, I thought it’d be fun to get ahead of the inevitable nostalgia wave and look at one of the interesting smaller releases from the early 360 era: Genki’s Import Tuner Challenge. One of the…
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Yakuza Fury: Fighting Your Own Misconception
I came across Yakuza Fury as many other people presumably have, via Reddit posts with titles like ‘Why does this game exist?‘ or Youtube videos with titles like ‘Dollar Store Kiryu‘. On the surface there’s no denying that this looks like a cheap knock-off of…
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Review Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Could Sega’s legendary Gangster series really work as a TV adaption? So, after being teased for about four years, the TV series based on Sega’s Like a Dragon/Yakuza series has finally been unleashed onto what seems to be a mostly indifferent public. Coming hot on…
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Deus Ex: Invisible War
I like Gog.com. Not only does it have a massive library of old games available in DRM-free packages which will play nicely with modern machines (even, generally, those running Linux); but their sales often remind me about games I haven’t played in years – generally…
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Ghostwire Tokyo
Hello folks, here’s ya boi FatNicK coming at you with…err…reviews of games that have been out for a while and have already been widely covered elsewhere. So what’s the verdict on this one? It’s quite good ‘innit! I could write a whole review focusing on…
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Ooky Spooky: Muppets Haunted House Adventure
Its Halloween! The time when our attention inevitably turns to oOky sPOoky titles. For this Halloween, let’s look at one that lays a little bit outside the usual. With an FGPA Core, a truckload of podcast coverage and the sudden discovery of the immense breadth…
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Gig Review: Sonic Symphony
Yesterday I was lucky enough to score tickets for the opening show of the Sonic Symphony tour, with the first leg being held at the Barbican Centre in London. I had a ticket for me and a ticket for potentially the harshest critic of all:…
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An Arcade Paradise?
Available: Pretty much everywhere (Xbox, Playstation, PC, Switch – Xbox version reviewed here) Price: Bout a tenner (Switch version slightly more expensive than the rest) Erm hello. It’s been a while hasn’t it? Sorry for my absence on a personal level this has been a…
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FatNicK Reviews Stuff: The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers – John Szczepaniak
Having spent five years (half a decade!) of my life on these books, I can honestly say they were a waste of time and a failure. They should have never been written, and whatever value a few academics and a tiny number of readers claim,…
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FatNicK Reviews Stuff: The Evercade
So, having been lucky enough to receive one of these as a father’s day gift 2020, here’s my review of Blaze’s little retro-themed box of tricks. Sorry it’s taken so long – I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the thing. I still don’t,…
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Streets of Rage 4: a Less Enthusiastic Review
It’s no secret that I wasn’t particularly fond of Sonic Mania. Having replayed it more recently, I still stand by my view. Sonic Mania was a game which had a complete mastery of the character at the mechanical level, but didn’t seem to understand why…
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Carjacking down Memory Lane: Returning to The Getaway’s Digital London in 2019
This article was originally posted over at https://www.gametripper.co.uk. Why not head over there and see what lovely articles they have ready for you to read right now? (well, after you’ve read this one obviously) When is a game not a game? The usual response to…
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FatNicK Reviews Stuff: Antstream Retrogaming Streaming Service
Whether its the sheer mortal terror of a thousand red bodies angrily devouring flesh and bone or the more mundane worry of having endless ravenous insectoids trample your picnic; the thought of streaming ants has – historically – not been a pleasant one. That’s all…
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Dreamcast SD Adaptors: Are They any Good?
The cold embrace of death, eh? It comes for us all eventually, but for some – in this case CD-based games consoles – it comes quicker than most. While older cartridge-based machines will keep going until either their capacitors go pop or the universe falls…
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Fatnick reviews Stuff: Retro Quiz Cards & Paladone Sega Bluetooth pad!
With January merrily barreling along, perhaps now is a good time to review a couple of interesting retro-themed bits that fell into my grubby mits at the end of last year. Professor Puzzle Retro Quiz Cards Recieved over Christmas as a charming stocking filler from…
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Retro Review: Chase HQ (Zx Spectrum)
On reflection, it’s probably a minor miracle that the world ever persuaded us that £40 to £50 cartridge games were the way to go. Back in the early 90s, you could probably count yourself lucky if Father Christmas slyly dropped one or two video games…
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In Pursuit of Power Drift
Does any game own its genre as effectively as Mario Kart? Sure, the more po-faced among the racing brigade might draw influence from other (more realistic) avenues, but if you’re looking towards making a light-hearted kart racer, it’s impossible to avoid the touch of Nintendo’s…
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Retro Review: Stellar Assault/Shadow Squadron
One of the little-known facts about the 32x (although, thanks to it’s colossal commercial failure, most facts about the 32x are little-known) is that its a pretty good console for space combat games. Seriously – they make up about 10% of the entire library.…
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Gilbert: Escape From Drill
Average things can be difficult to review. When presented with a positive specimin there are praises that can be sung, with a negative specimin there are sins that can be punished . . . but what can we say about something average? There…
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OOky Spooky Halloween Fun: Devilish
There are so many predictable choices for games to play over Halloween, aren’t there? Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, Clock Tower. . . hang on, I appear to just be listing random “survival horror” titles here, but you get my point. Let’s…