You know what’s funny? I spent forty years thinking racing games were just cars going around in circles, maybe because the only exposure I had was watching other people play them for five minutes here and there. Then I discovered retro gaming in my forties and started working backwards through all these classics everyone kept talking about. San Francisco Rush on the N64 wasn’t even on my radar initially – my daughter had mentioned it…
So last weekend my daughter brings her boyfriend over to meet me properly, right? Nice kid, works IT for some company downtown. Anyway, he sees my game room and we get to talking about retro stuff, and he mentions he’s been playing GoldenEye online with his college buddies. I’m thinking he’s talking about that Xbox remake or something, but no – turns out he’s actually running the original N64 version through emulation with full netplay…
I came to Burnout 3 expecting a competent arcade racer. What I found was a complete philosophy shift about what racing games could be. Coming from construction, I understand something about breaking things down and rebuilding better. Burnout 3 took racing game conventions and completely rebuilt them around destruction as a core mechanic. Instead of avoiding crashes, you embrace them. You ram opponents. You create massive pile-ups. The wreckage becomes the point. This is design…
I came to retro gaming as an adult without childhood nostalgia, which means I approach it practically. Coming from construction, I understand something about building things efficiently and understanding where to spend money and where to save it. Retro gaming doesn’t have to be expensive. The collector market has inflated prices for complete games with original packaging, but playing retro games affordably is absolutely possible if you’re willing to make different choices than collectors. The…
You know what’s funny about coming to retro gaming late? I missed all the “you had to be there” moments that define most people’s gaming memories. Like, I never experienced the cultural earthquake of certain games hitting at exactly the right time. But sometimes I stumble across something that makes me wish I’d been paying attention back then, and the Beavis and Butt-Head game for Genesis is definitely one of those titles. Found this one…
I came to Spyro the Dragon expecting a charming but simple 3D platformer. What I found was a game that understands that elegance beats complexity every single time. Coming from construction, I appreciate something about how the best solutions are often the simplest ones that do exactly what they’re supposed to do without overcomplicating things. Spyro is tiny, he breathes fire, he charges with his horns, he can fly short distances. That’s the entire mechanical…
I came to Resident Evil completely fresh with no childhood attachment, expecting a dated survival horror game. What I found was a masterclass in how constraint-driven design creates genre-defining experiences. Coming from construction, I understand something about how limitations force elegance. Resident Evil’s tank controls, fixed camera angles, and limited resources aren’t compromises – they’re design choices that create the entire horror experience. You’re trapped in a mansion overrun with bioweapon experiments. You don’t have…
Coming to Pokemon Stadium at age 40 was like walking into a conversation everyone else had been having for twenty years. I’d missed the whole Pokemon craze when it first hit – was too busy working construction, raising my daughter, generally being an adult when all this pocket monster business was capturing kids’ imaginations. But diving into retro gaming meant I couldn’t ignore one of the most significant gaming phenomena of the late 90s, so…
I’m not particularly interested in horror games – they’ve never been my thing. But I came to Resident Evil: Code Veronica completely fresh, expecting survival horror that was technically impressive but mechanically awkward. What I found was a genuinely well-designed game that proved survival horror could work on Dreamcast hardware just as well as PlayStation. Coming from construction, I understand something about how systems need to work within constraints. Code Veronica works within Dreamcast limitations…
I came to Jet Grind Radio completely fresh – no nostalgia, no childhood memories, just a middle-aged construction foreman sitting down to a game about graffiti tagging in a colorful city. I expected charming but dated. What I got was a game that proved visual innovation could carry an entire experience if the artist understood what they were doing. Coming from construction, I understand something about design – the difference between solving a problem and…