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The Legend of Zelda was an explicitly Christian game—until Nintendo of America desecrated it Link, a devout Christian warrior? Believe it.
Before The Legend of Zelda became known for its somewhat complicated lore and disconnected story lines, the popular Nintendo series had real-world religious influences with Link originally written as a devout Christian warrior. I wouldn’t blame you if you missed the references to Christianity in the first three Zelda games because the hints were always subtle (especially for children) and it was never explicitly stated by characters in-game. One of the biggest in-game hints of religious imagery was found in the Japanese version of The Legend of Zelda. If you played the English version of the game, you’re probably familiar with the Book of Magic, which had a cross on…
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WATCH: mom rages on livestreaming son having a smelly gamer moment Gamers sometimes need to poop where they sit instead of wasting time going to the bathroom, but this mom won't tolerate gamer moments.
The incredible career of writer and game designer Flint Dille He’s worked on everything from Transformers to Diablo to Pokemon GO, and can tell you all about Vin Diesel’s D&D character.
The games that dare to sail the dark seas The humbling grandeur of the ocean: a place eternally unknowable, and indifferent to the fortunes of the seafarers it both sustains and destroys.
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Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.
I’ve been delighted with Nintendo Switch, not just because Breath of the Wild is probably now my favorite game ever, but because the Joy-Cons really make the hardware feel special. Even more so if you were fortunate to get hold of the neon red and blue version. It may be because no other controller has ever had so much versatility, either for a single player or for the instant sideways turn into two stand-alone controllers. It shakes up a lot of other controller preconceptions, too, and in doing so made me think about all the controllers I have used. How over time that knowledge of where to move your thumb is accumulated,…
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A video history of video game boobs We’ve come a long way to get to the virtual sweater puppies of today, so enjoy this video history of video game boobs.
The making of Grand Theft Auto 1-3’s music An interview with Colin Anderson, Grant Middleton, Stuart Ross, Raymond Usher, and Pal Mackie—the original composers of GTA 1-3.
25 years later, how Super Metroid came to define a genre It drastically reimagined how people would think about action games, and still shows up on “best game of all time” lists to this day.
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‘Adventure Mario’: the making of The Legend of Zelda We’re going back to the mid-80s to look at the creation of one of gaming's longest-running and most-loved series.
The Legend of Zelda is one of those games, of course, that is so garlanded it’s sometimes hard to see clearly – pioneering in many respects, an instant classic, and the instigator of one of gaming’s longest-running and most-loved series. So to get some idea of what the game actually was, we’re going to go right back to the mid-80s and look at the original development. It was the morning of February 1, 1985, and Nintendo needed a hit. Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, and Toshihiko Nakago were working on the first Mario game for the Famicom, and Super Mario Bros. would be finished and released by September of that year.…
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Why Zelda dungeons are so great Let's dig into how the dungeons work so well with Mark Brown's great crash-course.
How Fable Legends took down Lionhead An in-depth look at the development of a legendary British studio's final, unreleased game.
Arming the citizens of GTA V leads to absolute chaos Modders have patched in the 'Crazy Peds' cheat from San Andreas.
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15 completely awesome old school video game commercials Blast to the past.
Since the dawn of video games there have been video game commercials. These ads were singed to the outside of our tender little brains and put a rage in our bellies that caused a relentless verbal assault on our parents. We wanted these games. These commercials are as classic as the video games they are advertising. Let’s go back to a simpler time. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out Before his giant face tattoo and his hunger for human ear meat, Mike Tyson was one of the best boxers to ever walk the earth. This prompted Nintendo to give this insane bastard a direct window right into the minds of the youth.…
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69 things you need to do in GTA before you die So you think you’re done with Liberty City? Think again.
Legendary Commodore 64 Daffy Duck game finally found, playable for first time It’s a 228KB download, which was huge for the time.
10 biggest influences on video game history Marquee moments that have helped gaming get to where it is today, and laid the groundwork for what we'll hear about in the future.
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Nintendo cracks down on political Super Smash Bros Ultimate stages, including LGBT and mockery of 9/11 “We want people to smile and have fun when they play our games.”
Nintendo has started issuing bans to players for promoting transgender activism in their hit fighting game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The game’s most recent update added the ability for players to design their own custom stages to do battle in, and the feature was immediately seized upon by the denizens of Tumblr and the ResetEra forums who used it as a medium to promote transgenderism by designing stages resembling the transgender flag, usually accompanied by the words “TRANS RIGHTS.” Players who submitted and shared these levels were handed 9-hour suspensions. Similar bans were issued to players who posted designs featuring sexualized imagery, the Nazi flag, and caricatures of the World…
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10 ways to instantly end your streaming career To end—or ignite??—your streaming career, you need to get naked, say naughty words, lie, and cheat.
5 most garbage Ghostbusters tie-in products (of garbage) And yes, you’re a misogynist if you don’t like the tie ins.
Top 10 licensed songs in gaming There are times when the use of a licensed piece of music is so perfect that it elevates the gaming experience to a new level.
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Pitching Starfox ideas to Mr Miyamoto sounds pretty scary Arwing and a prayer.
At Gamescom 2018 we caught up with Laurent Malville, the creative director of Ubisoft’s upcoming space-em-up Starlink. The most eye-catching element of this title, outside of the toys it can integrate with, is the inclusion of the OG Starfox, Nintendo’s Fox McCloud. This is another product of Ubisoft and Nintendo’s increasingly buddy-buddy relationship. The two companies have always had good relations but in recent times this has resulted in more concrete partnerships, such as Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle. If you’re wondering how the Starfox-Starlink idea got off the ground, the story has a few surprises. “So last September 2017 we had the incredible privilege to be invited to Kyoto to…
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You can now play XCOM in an Excel spreadsheet It’s called EXLCOM, and all you need to run it is a copy of Excel. What a time to be alive.
10 biggest influences on video game history Marquee moments that have helped gaming get to where it is today, and laid the groundwork for what we'll hear about in the future.
15 completely awesome old school video game commercials Blast to the past.
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Sony makes the worst exclusives, according to science We downloaded over 350,000 reviews from 18,000 different games so we can rank Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.
Unlike eBook readers, CD players, MP3 players and BluRay drives, video games consoles are in the unique position of not featuring standardized hardware. Where any cassette player would play any cassette, video games need to be tailored to the unique rendering hardware of their machines, which incentivizes hardware manufacturers to create their own first party exclusives. You buy an Xbox One over a PlayStation 4 if you want to play Gears of War more than God of War, which makes first party exclusives a vital deciding factor between similar gaming hardware. So… we’ve got a lot of data about this. But because video game fans can be silly, we’re going…
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5 plot twists that would have made great games even better When done right, a twist can be truly spectacular. Here's what they should have done...
They really did that?! Little known games from big developers Before Naughty Dog made Uncharted, it made the wacky comedy game Keef the Thief.
The 24-year feud that has dogged Star Citizen The story of two men, several ambitious space games, and an ongoing feud that has rocked a community of over a million fans.
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Mario and Sonic: a tale of two mascots Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania reflect the histories of their star characters almost too well.
This article contains minor gameplay spoilers for Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania. Back in the early 1990s, two mascots bestrode the gaming world like platforming colossi. For a few years there in the 90s, before guns and car theft started to dominate public perception, these two basically symbolized the gaming industry. Nintendo’s Mario, the mustachioed patriarch who established the foundations on which all other platformers were built. Sega’s Sonic, the spiky challenger who promised to do what Nintendon’t. Spin dash ahead to the present day, where the gaming landscape is dominated by sports games and online shooters, and Mario and Sonic aren’t quite as central as they used to…
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“Taiwan #1!” AngryPug hilariously trolls Chinese H1Z1 cheater "Japan number two, China number four!"
Woo-Hoo! The making of Stranglehold "There were definitely moments that made you feel like you're in a John Woo movie."
The spooky, gory, and gorgeous worlds of DOOM Sometimes, it pays to shoot pictures instead of demons.
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How Breath of the Wild plays with our nostalgia Nintendo's masterpiece re-invents the Zelda series, and part of that is growing up alongside its players.
Ocarina of Time is a game embalmed by layers upon layers of impenetrable nostalgia. It’s a hallowed relic of our collective youth, enshrined in the temples of our memory. Do not take its name in vain. Touch only with a conservationist’s glove, lest its magic disperse. That status isn’t surprising: indeed, it’s almost what it was designed for. Unlike earlier Zelda games, Ocarina of Time is fundamentally about nostalgia, childhood and growing up. Link is a boy living among the forest children of the Kokiri, but he is an outsider; unlike them, he will grow old. He is compelled to leave his snug childhood shelter and venture into a large,…
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Forking hell: a decade of Devolver Digital "There was and is no ‘exit strategy' for us, nor for the vast majority of the developers we work with."
Video game journalism is killing itself Game journalists are killing themselves through political peacocking and attacking consumers.
Inside the troubled development of Star Citizen After five years, more than $124 million in fan funding and nothing close to a finished game, Star Citizen has become a lightning-rod for controversy. What’s really been going on?
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15 underrated N64 games the world forgot about Celebrating the weirder side of the N64.
The N64 recently celebrated its 20th birthday in North America. We had to wait until March 1997 before it came out in Europe (remember the days when we’d have to wait actual years for games?), but that’s 20 years since the last of the cartridge home consoles first appeared on western shores; 20 years since platformers exploded into the 3D realm with Super Mario 64; 20 years since we played the latest games with virtually no loading times; 20 years since we first prodded at that curious ‘analog stick’ thing in the middle of that dinosaur-claw controller, like apes at the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But enough of…
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Mint condition Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge breaks all records—sells for $156k Super Mario Bros is once again the most expensive video game ever sold. It's-a more money than sense!
It’s true: 4 scientific ways video games make you better at sex 1.2 billion people regularly play video games. The earth is also rapidly becoming overpopulated. Coincidence? Maybe not.
Nintendo needs to wake up and realize it’s a video game company The biggest problem Nintendo has is understanding that the internet exists, and there are many useful things on it that could help it out.
