Sitting in the spare room last night, surrounded by a frankly embarrassing collection of retro gaming kit, I found myself staring at the Sega Genesis Flashback sitting on the shelf. You know that feeling when you spot something familiar but slightly…off? Like seeing your childhood friend wearing a…

You know what I miss about being thirteen? The absolute certainty that a thirty-second TV advert could change your entire worldview. I'm talking about those Sega commercials from the early '90s—the ones that didn't just sell you games, they sold you an entire identity wrapped in attitude and…

The smell of orange squash and the sound of a CRT warming up—that's what Saturday afternoons meant to me in the 90s. But there was something else competing for my attention between cartoon blocks and trying to convince mum to let me stay up past eight. Nickelodeon had…

Christmas morning, 1998. I'm unwrapping what looks suspiciously like a console-shaped box when my dad mutters something about "not understanding why they made the controller look like a spaceship crashed into a telephone." Inside was my first N64, bundled with a golden cartridge that would absolutely ruin my…