Retro XP

B.O.B. is an oddity in Gray Matter’s catalog, for a couple of reasons.

Battle Pinball.

It’s the summer of 1990, and the Sega Genesis has already been out for nearly a year in North America.

Namco’s Pole Position, released to arcades in 1982, was a massive hit.

The Aleste series of shooters wasn’t actually named such in North America, not until near the very end of its time in the shoot ‘em up space.

The western conception of early Japanese role-playing games is skewed somewhat by two things: what RPGs were released internationally and when, as well as the comparative dominance of Final Fantasy over the rest of those games.

There is a whole lot of misinformation out there regarding Donkey Kong 3.

Toaplan invented the bomb.

It’s incredible how quickly the video game industry used to change, in terms of priorities and design.

On-rails shooting galleries were not new with Sega’s The House of the Dead, not by a long shot.

This column is a guest author feature, written by a friend of the site whose work I am thrilled to host at Retro XP.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 isn’t quite a visual novel, and isn’t a pure point-and-click adventure, either.

It’s kind of incredible how quickly Capcom became a significant piece of the arcade scene.

This column is a guest author feature, written by a friend of the site whose work I am thrilled to host at Retro XP.

If you ask Tomohiro Nishikado, the first-ever original Japanese video game was 1973’s Soccer.

This column is a guest author feature, written by a friend of the site whose work I am thrilled to host at Retro XP.

Pioneering game designer Will Wright was able to take the time to figure out what SimCity was in the first place because of Nintendo.

Compile is one of the great shooting game developers, and a not-insignificant part of that legacy comes from their work in the 8-bit space.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice.

This column is a guest author feature, written by a friend of the site whose work I am thrilled to host at Retro XP.