My mum used to say television was the devil's picture box, but even she couldn't resist the absolute chaos of Blankety Blank. Saturday teatime meant Terry Wogan winking at celebrities who'd clearly had a liquid lunch, and those felt-tip pens that squeaked against the answer boards like fingernails…

Sometimes you don't realize a game has ruined you for everything else until years later, when you're fumbling through another run-and-gun shooter wondering why it feels like chewing cardboard. That happened to me recently when I fired up some modern indie thing that promised "classic arcade action." Twenty…

Last Sunday I was digging through a box of N64 cartridges in the loft—you know how it is, searching for one specific game and somehow ending up with dust in your hair and a sudden urge to replay everything you'd forgotten you owned. Anyway, buried beneath copies of…

The worst part about Donkey Kong 64 isn't the backtracking or the bloated collect-a-thon madness that every reviewer mentions. No, the worst part is how it absolutely ruined my summer of '99 because I couldn't put the bloody thing down.I'd just gotten the Expansion Pak—that chunky red brick…