We are constantly deluged with gaming information. If it's not trailers or sizzle reels, it's magazine profiles, social media pics and adverts. We live in very fortunate times in that we have all this content to make an informed purchasing decision. Sure, the various Not E3 streams and trailer drops have been exhausting but think of the alternative; nothing, nada, nowt to look at and make decisions on.
Back in the day, before all this media existed, gamers had to rely on a few magazines off the WHSmith's shelf. In the British microcomputer boom of the 80s though hundreds of games were released and all were not covered in magazines, so you had to rely on either word of mouth, cover art or tiny screenshots at the back of the cassette.
As I was tidying my garage this week, I was organising my Amstrad CPC 464 game cassettes and waves of nostalgia washed over me. I had kept a select few games after getting rid of the rest in a great cull that must have happened at some point but which I now can't seem to recall. There were some bonafide classics in there including Rainbow Islands, Bubble Bobble, Chase HQ and some Dizzy titles. However, there were a few duffers too... Capcom's Sidearms anyone?
So, whenever people complain about the oversaturation of videogame materials, be it trailers, creator interviews, crowd funding campaigns or videogame articles creating buzz, I think back to Sidearms.
LINK: Japan- My Journey to the East
LINK- The Last Guardian- Video Games As Art
LINK- The Mysterious Cities of Gold Retro Soundtrack Review
LINK- Twin Peaks Retrospective
LINK- The Transportive Nature of Objects (And the Power of Mini Consoles)
LINK- My One True Gaming Constant in Life- Nintendo
LINK- On, and On and Conston (Or, ‘How We Learned to Talk About the Legacy of Colonialism in GB’)