Retro

Still a 90’s kid at heart? Wish it was still 1985? Rather play Frogger than Assassin’s Creed? GameSpew’s Retro section is for you!

Here we celebrate everything yesteryear: the best games of days gone by, re-releases of the classics, and pretty much anything to do with the golden age of video games.

  • The Best PS1 Games From Our Childhood

    ByClaire

    There were so many great, genre-defining games on PlayStation 1 that have helped shape games into what they are today. With that, then, here are 10 of the best games on PS1 from our childhoods.

  • How Have Japanese Arcades Survived?

    ByDuncan Robertson

    I was recently lucky enough to visit Tokyo for the first time. As someone who’s been playing video games their entire life, and plans to one day make a living writing and talking about them, this was really a pilgrimage to the promised land. As much as I had heard about and researched what an…

  • 20 Years With My First RPG: A Final Fantasy VII Retrospective

    ByTristan Jurkovich

    This month marks Final Fantasy VII‘s 20th anniversary. Feel old yet? Originally debuting in Japan on 31st January 1997 for PlayStation 1, it later followed in the West, with a September release in North America and November in Europe. Whether or not you believe that VII is the best in the franchise, there’s no denying that the fan base behind…

  • A Brief History on Double Dragon’s Confusing 30-Year Legacy

    ByTristan Jurkovich

    Double Dragon is one of the forefathers of the beat’em up genre. While it started in arcades, most gamers are probably more familiar with the NES port. No matter what version you’ve played, most of them blend together. For 30 years there’s actually not a lot to go through, but that said, it’s also kind of…

  • Games That Changed Our Lives #35: Simcopter

    BySaul Muscat

    Though loads of kids at my school were into video games, nobody except my friend Adam and I had ever heard of Simcopter. In the playground we both laughed and joked about what we’d been up to in its world; the missions we’d run, the criminals we’d caught and the bizarre-looking, purple-haired girl I’d found licking a lollipop,…

  • Happy 24th Birthday, Streets of Rage 2!

    ByRichard Seagrave

    It makes you feel old, doesn’t it, knowing that a game that you played in your youth is now 24 years old? In the case of SEGA’s Streets of Rage 2, it feels like I was only just playing it yesterday. Though, to be honest, it’s that timeless a classic that I could have been….

  • Jak and Daxter: Naughty Dog’s First Foray into Dramatic Storytelling

    ByTristan Jurkovich

    At PSX this past weekend, three out of four of Naughty Dog’s biggest properties were showcased. The company is making a standalone expansion to Uncharted 4, entitled The Lost Legacy, plus they teased their next big title: The Last of Us Part II. Finally, their former treasure trove, Crash Bandicoot, is getting a remaster for PS4….

  • Games That Changed Our Lives #34: TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

    ByAaron Potter

    The games of today simply don’t feature enough time travel. There, I said it. Maybe it’s a theme just that little bit too retro for modern game devs to pull off correctly in this here 21st century, but it’s a damn shame when games like the all-round fantastic TimeSplitters series did it so well. And while I’m…

  • Shining Light on Nintendo’s Forgotten RPG Series Golden Sun

    ByTristan Jurkovich

    Despite Nintendo’s long list of properties and genre explorations, they have very few RPGs under their belt. One of them, Golden Sun, hasn’t been given its due, and for its 15th Anniversary so I think it’s high time to deep dive into this somewhat obscure gem in the pantheon of great RPGs. The first Golden…

  • Looking Back Over 25 Years of the Mana Series: The RPG Tree of Life

    ByTristan Jurkovich

    This month marks the 25th Anniversary of the Mana series, which began on weird terms. The first game launched for the Game Boy in the U.S. sometime in November 1991 as Final Fantasy Adventure. In Japan it was released as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden on 28 June 1991. Seiken Densetsu roughly translates into “Legend…

  • Games That Changed Our Lives #33: Final Fantasy IX

    ByBrandon Langrock

    I recall that, for one of my early birthdays, I told my mother that I wanted to rent the original PlayStation console from the local video game rental store. The fact that video game rental stores still existed should put this story’s timeline into perspective for you. She agreed, and so I found myself on…

  • Games That Changed Our Live #32: Heretic II

    ByJoseph Sale

    In 1998 Raven Software released what would be a genre-defining, revolutionary title, one that virtually no one has heard of nowadays except hardcore fanatics and “classic” PC gamers. Heretic II was one of the first games to combine 3D with a third person viewpoint, allowing developers to explore radical new gameplay mechanics such as gymnastics,…

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