A couple of months ago a fellow called Egoitz Campo reached out to tell me he was trying to organise a Sega Master system tournament in the Basque Country, and ask whether I would be interested in recieving a report of the event. Naturally I Read More …
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 Read More …
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 Read More …
Recently, it’s come to my attention that several people aren’t particularly happy with my article about the NES and the Master System in the UK market, finding the evidence supporting the argument to be lacking. Placed in such a position, there’s only really one reasonable Read More …
On social media, old pictures from London’s Sega World are an easy way to harvest some quick engagement. Post the image, chuck in your ‘remember that time when Sega ran a theme park?’ caption then sit back and wait for the likes numbers to rise. Read More …
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, Read More …
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, Read More …
Well, 2021 was another slightly strange year wasn’t it? I know i’ve been a bit quieter than usual on the creative front so here’s some things that have been keeping me entertained over the last 12 months instead: The Force is With Respawn One of Read More …
Recently we looked at the Sega Saturn and whether it was killed too prematurely by Sega. Though these days the Saturn’s renewed popularity means we regularly ask what could have made the console a success, there’s one question that should probably ask first: Could the Read More …
So we’ve looked at the state of pi Emulation and we’ve also seen how you can run Sega Model 3 games on your Pi, so here’s a quick tutorial on how to run Sega Saturn games on your Pi4. It’s worth remembering that from a Read More …
JULY UPDATE: All of the per-game optimisations are built into the supermodel.ini file, so you just need to setup and Play. If the previous reasons we’ve looked at for getting a Raspberry Pi weren’t enough, you can now also add Sega Model 3 arcade games Read More …
2023 Update: The recent (and highly dramatic) leak of documents and emails surrounding Sega of America’s 1997FY marketing plan adds some important context to the question of how much the Saturn cost Sega. One particularly juicy little nugget is this snapshot of Sega of America’s Read More …
What is a Master System? If you’re reading this in English and you owned a Sega Master System you probably didn’t own the most complete version of the Sega Master System. This isn’t idle snobbery: the Machine that was released outside Japan was notably different Read More …
With everything that’s happened last year, it’s been easy to miss some of the more interesting tid-bits – like the universe gifting us updates to three classic 8/16-bit brawlers in the space of 18 months: River City Girls, Streets of Rage 4 and Battle Toads. Read More …
Well as a remarkably rubbish year comes to an end it seems suitable to look back at what gaming highlights I can haul out of the wreck. Will these all be new games? No! These won’t even necessarily be things I haven’t played before – Read More …
It just so happened that a few weeks ago I had to move my original Zx Spectrum collection out of storage. Faced with a huge plastic crate filled to the brim with cassettes, it suddenly struck me how ridiculous it was that we had some Read More …
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 Read More …
The first rule of 32-bit Audio Fight Club is that you don’t talk about 32-bit Audio Fight Club. Actually, that’s not quite true: the first rule of 32-bit Audio Fight Club is that…well…you probably wouldn’t even think to talk about 32-bit Audio Fight Club. Or Read More …
In gaming there are the origin stories we all know – like the origins of Mario and Sonic the hedgehog – but there are many more characters who remain relatively obscure – like the stars of most microcomputer budget games or Japanese cassette titles. More Read More …
Uh oh, Christmas is inevitably a time for misty-eyed nostalgia isn’t it? Oh well – at least its the perfect time to look back 18 years to the festivities of 2001, back to the first time I played Headhunter on the Sega Dreamcast. The back-half Read More …