Back in November 2020, Skunkape — a company comprised of Telltales Games' co-founder Dan Connors and various former Telltale talent — announced it had acquired the rights to remaster the Sam & Max games for modern platforms, starting with a remastered version of Sam & Max: Save The World.

Released just one month later, in December of the same year, this remaster of Sam & Max: Save the World boasted better lighting, camera placement, and editing, as well as newly recorded music, an enhanced frame rate, and faster loading times, making it the definitive way to play the game for fans both new & old.

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When Electronic Arts was formed back in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, it offered a bold vision for the games industry.

True to its name, the company referred to developers as artists and, using the slogan "We see farther," it took out lavish advertisements which put game developers front and centre. Its debut ad of this type is notable for being the first game promotion to feature the people behind the games rather than the games themselves, and featured industry legends such as Bill Budge, Danielle Bunten Berry and Mike Abbot.

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The Famicom / NES platformer Gimmick! fits the definition of a video game cult classic to a tee.

Originally released in Japan in 1992, at a time when the Super Famicom was already available, the game pushed the boundaries of what many thought the original Famicom was capable of, featuring physics that were uncommon for the platform, in addition to incredibly detailed graphics (achieved using advanced tileset algorithms), and enhanced sound (that took advantage of Sunsoft's 5B audio chip). But, despite that, it never ended up getting a North American or UK release, with the title only ever receiving a limited release for the NES under the name Mr. Gimmick in Scandinavia in 1993 (with a slightly altered soundtrack to make up for the cartridge being manufactured without the additional chip).

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Formed in 2022 as a joint venture between North American publisher Limited Run Games and Japanese localisation company 8-4, Ltd, Superdeluxe Games is a name that will likely be more familiar with gamers in the Land of the Rising Sun than in the West.

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Video games and music have intersected multiple times over the years. Pac-Man got his own song in the charts when the industry was in its early period, and Sonic, Mario and Tetris have all had musical "hits" created about them. In the '90s, games like WipEout began using real-world artists to fill out their soundtracks, giving video games a much-needed dose of cultural cool.

The advertisement for the competition

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The Dreamcast is now 25 years old – it launched in Japan at the end of 1998, and recently celebrated a quarter-century since its North American release. The first home console to come with internet connectivity out of the box, Sega's final domestic gaming system will have given many players their first taste of online multiplayer – but, as you'd expect, the infrastructure which supported all of that is long gone.

You might, therefore, assume that the online side of Dreamcast's appeal is null and void in 2024, but you'd be wrong – and, as is so often the case, it's the efforts of hard-working fans which have enabled the console to go online once more.

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AYANEO's Remake line of products boasts an array of gaming systems in various form factors, but it also includes a cute little power bank shaped like a Super NES / Super Famicom. The Chinese firm has even copied the console's iconic font, but it goes without saying that this isn't an official collaboration with Nintendo, but rather a cheeky tribute which uses nostalgia to encourage a purchase.

This 12000mAh bank measures 98 × 81 × 24.4 mm and weighs 238 grams. It showcases a function switch, action button and 32 × 128-pixel monochrome OLED display, as well as two USB-C ports, both of which are capable of outputting 45W of power (only the left-side one can be used to charge the bank itself, however).

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When Grand Theft Auto III was originally released in 2001 across North America and Europe, it became an instant success, essentially changing the game industry in those territories overnight.

So it's no surprise, then, that Rockstar Games wanted to see the title come to other parts of the world too, with both Take-Two and its newly-famous subsidiary specifically setting their sights on the Japanese market as their next area of conquest.

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There are few video game series that have managed to achieve the same level of success than the Grand Theft Auto games.

Originally developed by a small team at the Dundee-based studio DMA Design in the mid-90s, the open-world crime series has since gone on to become a billion-dollar enterprise requiring multiple studios across the globe to work against the clock to ensure its latest entry is bigger, better, and more breathtaking than the one that came before it. Because of this, we're always fascinated to look back at some of the plans for the series that never quite saw the light of day and imagine the roads not taken on its path to superstardom: from playable cities and modes that were announced but never realized to ports of the game that graced the pages of magazines only to disappear from the release calendar without any explanation as to what had happened.

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The Screenwave Media-owned Retroware has recently been establishing itself as a digital publisher specializing in "neo-retro" games - titles that borrow ideas from the past to create new experiences with all the benefits and modern conveniences you'd expect from a contemporary release.

Last year, for example, it was behind the successful release of the excellent Shatterhand & Power Blade-inspired action game Prison City across PC and consoles, and in the future, it also intends to publish various other promising "neo-retro"-themed projects like the Contra-Esque run and gunner Iron Meat, the licensed beat 'em up Toxic Crusaders, and the Castlevania homage/parody The Transylvania Adventure of Simon Quest.

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Takaya Imamura is a figure who is probably best known to video game fans for his work on classic Nintendo games.

During his epic 32-year run at the legendary Kyoto-based video game company, he was involved with designing iconic characters for games like Star Fox, F-Zero, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and later went on to direct a small number of popular 3DS titles like Steel Diver, Steel Diver: Sub Wars, and Tank Troopers. But, in 2022, he announced that he was making the difficult decision to leave the company that gave him his start to go independent, and eventually began working on a sci-fi ADV named Omega 6: The Triangle Stars for Nintendo Switch and PC.

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This month brought the surprise announcement that a new remake of the underwater shmup X-Out is on the way this Winter for Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PS5, and PC. This aims to give players a brand new way to experience the classic title, which originally debuted on the Commodore 64 back in 1989 and also later appeared on the Commodore Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Atari ST.

Kritzelkratz 3000, the German studio behind the recent console and PC ports of Rainbow Cotton, is responsible for developing the project, which is entitled X-Out Resurfaced, while ININ Games is attached to publish. Ziggurat Interactive, meanwhile, also has its hands in the project, being the current owner of the rights to the Rainbow Arts original and one of the instigators behind its revival.

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If you were to ask someone to name the best 3D platformers for the Nintendo 64, most people will inevitably default to listing Super Mario 64 or Rare's many collectathons from the era. But there's another classic game that we feel is often overlooked when it comes to the systems' best titles and that we think deserves to be mentioned alongside these other titans of the platforming genre, one that captured our own imagination when we were a kid: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon.

Part of Konami's long-running and infrequently localized Ganbare Goemon series, it saw players take control of a blue-haired, pipe-wielding hero named Goemon (who is loosely based on the 16th-century noble thief Ishikawa Goemon) and his group of friends (Ebisumaru, Yae, and Sasuke), as they do battle against the Peach Mountain Shoguns — a gang of stage performers intent on turning Japan into a Western-style theatre.

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When it comes to the history of RPGs, few games can claim to have been as inspirational in establishing the conventions of the genre as Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

Originally released for the Apple II in 1981, the game was one of the first examples of a Dungeons & Dragons style role-playing game created for home computers and later went on to inspire the likes of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Demon Souls. Primarily developed by the legendary developers Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead under the company Sir-Tech, it was eventually ported to countless other platforms (including MS-DOS, NES, SNES, PlayStation Sega Saturn, alongside many others), with many of these versions being exclusive to Japan due to the game's phenomenal popularity in the region.

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Paris is sweltering in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic games. The city is swarming with military personnel armed with heavy artillery, and the streets, hot enough to fry and egg on, are barricaded with metal fencing that makes pedestrian navigation exceptionally challenging. Our pilgrimage for the perfect Parisian retro game hangout, somewhere to drown out the bustle of increasingly dense tourism, has been trying.

Google has recommended venues we have travelled to thus far - from arcades to arcades - have all been derelict on arrival. With daylight starting to flicker and our collected Uber bill inching somewhere toward the approximate cost of the London to Paris flight, we set our sights on one final destination: the Extra Life Café.

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The trilogy of books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder used this painting by fantasy artist James C Christensen for its three paperback covers, which gives a fantastic impression of the world within. Why don't they make cover art like this anymore?

Released in 1984 for Commodore 64, IBM, and Apple II, Below The Root is an expansive, free-roaming, open-world platforming adventure featuring a LucasArts-style command list, progression mechanics reminiscent of Metroid et al, plus light RPG overtones – yet it predates Maniac Mansion, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Metroid.

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Cloud gaming isn't a new concept – it's been a thing now for well over a decade – but it's becoming a more viable part of the conversation, and one of the companies that is making waves in the world of vintage streaming is Antsream, which is currently available on Xbox, iOS and PC and offers access to over 1300 games covering decades of history.

Available for a yearly subscription, Anstream features titles from some of the biggest names in the business, as well as regular competitions which encourage members to take part in various challenges. Formats covered include SNES, Mega Drive, Neo Geo, Amiga, PS1 and even arcade hardware – making Antstream's library of old-school classics one of the most robust available.

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The Dreamcast was Sega's final roll of the dice in the hardware arena and is rightly held in very high esteem by millions of players worldwide. Many fans still have their consoles hooked up today, and there's a range of aftermarket upgrades – such as more efficient power supplies, better VMU memory cards and even razor-sharp HDMI mods – which elevate Dreamcast to new levels.

For me personally, though, one of the main things I wanted to fix with my console was its horribly yellowed shell.

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It's almost impossible to talk about Metal Gear Solid 3 today without somehow mentioning the game's iconic theme: "Snake Eater".

The James Bond-esque track features music and lyrics by the Japanese composer Norihiko Hibino as well as vocals from the American funk and soul singer Cynthia Harrell and has become something of a fan favourite over the years. It notably appears over the opening credits of the game, as images of Cold War headlines and the jungle setting flash across the screen, and also turns up later on, during a now-famous scene, in which the player is treated to a slightly altered arrangement while the game's protagonist Naked Snake (the future Big Boss) slowly ascends a long ladder to the top of the Krasnogorje mountains.

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When it comes to the world of video game music, few composers have as impressive a body of work as Hitoshi Sakimoto, which is ironic as he never initially set out to be a musician in the first place.

A self-proclaimed "science and technology geek", Sakimoto got his start as a programmer and composer as a teenager on Revolter — a vertical shoot 'em up for the PC8801SR created by a small group of video game makers — where he contributed to the music and wrote the sound driver "Terpischorean" (which was later used in countless other Japanese games). At the time, despite contributing music to Revolter, he was mostly content on being a video game programmer, but backed by the encouragement of both his friends and colleagues, he later made the jump to pursuing composition professionally and has contributed to countless soundtracks over the years, with his most notable work arguably being his frequent collaborations with director Yasumi Matsuno (Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy XII).

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