‘Creatures’ Was the Grown-Up Virtual Pet
I mostly wasn’t allowed pets when I was a kid. My sister and I wanted a puppy or cat, but our parents always said no. We thought this was our mother was allergic, but that turned out to simply be a front for the true reason she didn’t want an animal in the house —…
The Alone Sword is a Lost Ode to a Lost Game
This piece originally appeared at Fanbyte in March 2022. There’s something about the early Zelda games that captured the imagination of anyone who encountered them as a kid. More than many other games of the 80s and early 90s, they presented a wide world full of possibility and adventure — so it’s no surprise that many of…
The Nice-ification of the Hobby Shop
In the last few months of 2022, I started playing Magic: The Gathering again for the first time in about a decade. I got into it with Arena, the fully-digital version of the game, but then began going to weekly drafts at a local game store in Brooklyn. I haven’t spent much time in game or hobby stores…
Star Control III is a Beautiful Trainwreck
Star Control II, often called one of the greatest computer games of all time, recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. For those who aren’t familiar, the game sees you take on the role of a starship captain tasked with uniting a number of alien races against a genocidal species of giant centipedes called the Kohr-Ah. You…
A Conversation With Zophar of Zophar’s Domain
I spoke to Zophar earlier this year for the Forgotten Worlds episode on emulation in the early 2000s, but not much of the conversation made in it into the video. Here is the full interview, which paints a detailed picture of the development of Zophar’s Domain in the late 1990s. merritt: How did you get…
Give Up on Your Dream of Making It in Games Media
So, you love video games and you want to write about them professionally, and maybe you’re looking at the shuttering of so many projects over the last couple of months and wondering about how to break into the industry given all the turmoil. My advice to you is this: give up. I don’t mean that…
Microsoft’s Hover! and the Multimedia Craze of the 90s
In the mid-90s, “multimedia” was the word when it came to personal computers. The concept of a home machine that could play music and video via compact disc was still relatively novel, and hardware companies routinely bundled software with their products designed to show off these capabilities. One such piece of software, developed by Microsoft…
Breath of Fire II and the Afterlife of Digital Ghosts
A version of this piece originally appeared at ZEAL in 2017. It is the mid-90s and you are at the video store on a Friday night, the air swirling with the smells of buttered popcorn and plastic VHS cases. CRT screens suspended from the ceiling play one of the latest releases, the list of titles enumerated…
The Shrouded Origins of “The Helicopter Game”
If you’re of a certain age, there’s a good chance you’ve played the Flash helicopter game. You know the one — you’re piloting a helicopter down a tunnel, avoiding obstacles and seeing how far you can go. It’s extremely straightforward, using only one button. You hold the mouse to ascend, and release it to let…
Lessons from Running My First Game of Vampire: The Masquerade
I only ever played Vampire: The Masquerade once growing up. It was disastrous — I mean, we were in junior high, and none of us were emotionally mature enough to handle the game. We were used to playing games like Rifts, more straightforward titles about powerful heroes going on daring adventures. I’m not even sure how we got…