Picture me, Christmas morning 1997, staring down at this bizarre three-pronged controller like it was some alien artifact. My cousin Jamie was already fiddling with it, holding it completely wrong—gripping it like a traditional pad with both hands on the outer prongs. I watched him struggle through the…

You know that feeling when you open a dusty cardboard box in your parents' loft and suddenly you're fifteen again? That's exactly what happened when I found my old Mega Drive last month, still wrapped in that horrible bubble wrap mum insisted would "keep the dust off." There…

The rumble controller sits heavy in my hands, that familiar weight of the N64's three-pronged monster with its Pak hanging off the back like some kind of cybernetic tumor. I'm sixteen again, squinting through the crosshairs of my Arwing, and somewhere in the distance Fox McCloud is barking…

Right, so picture this: I'm sat in the dentist's waiting room in 2005, and there's this kid next to me absolutely absorbed in what looks like a Game Boy that someone's fed too many vitamins. Turns out it's the new Nintendo DSi, and this little tyke is playing…