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Finish Him! The innovative violence that fueled Mortal Kombat’s success A journey from its start as a failed experiment to re-birth as a predestined success built by the vision and innovation of its Midway Games developers.
We are now almost 30 years out from the 1992 release of Mortal Kombat, perhaps the most famous franchise in the vast genre that is fighting games. The iconic video game series offers endless lessons to developers who would like to take the same path. Get the best computer science help to free some of your time as you focus on developing personal projects. False starts Mortal Kombat started as an experiment that never saw the light of day in the way it was envisioned – a video game adaption of military science-fiction action film Universal Soldier (1992) featuring Jean Claude Van Damme. As Midway Games developers John Tobias and…
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The psychology behind your backlog of unplayed games As games become ever cheaper and ever longer, we must necessarily accrue ever bigger piles of unplayed titles. Feel bad about it? Psychology can explain.
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."
Mario and Sonic: a tale of two mascots Super Mario Odyssey and Sonic Mania reflect the histories of their star characters almost too well.
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Gaming’s most persistent myths and urban legends, debunked From blowing in cartridges to Lara Croft nude cheats and the secret Windows95 devil program. I’m sure you believe in at least one of these falsehoods.
Rumors and videogames have gone hand in hand for years now. From school yard bragging about your uncle who works for Nintendo, to the almost constant leaks that seem to plague new releases. We’re all suckers for a lie or myth, and even with a healthy dose of skepticism, I’m sure you believe in one at least of these falsehoods. The Myth: Blowing in Game Cartridges Makes Them Work The Truth: We all know this one. Blowing into game cartridges was meant to clear the dust off the pins, and allow you to continue playing. In reality it was the removal of the cartridge from the console that helped. Blowing…
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Video game romance: a lost cause? You can't force love, especially not when it comes to western games.
The rise and fall of video gaming’s most vocal enemy Over the course of 10 years, lawyer Jack Thompson aggressively pursued video games in the courtroom. This is a history of his career.
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.
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These photographs make video game worlds look real The Continuous City is a book that looks at virtual environments through a different lens.
The above image is not an old photo of a street. It’s Grand Theft Auto V. You may well remember Gareth Damian-Martin’s stunning shots of Metroid Prime, originally taken for his digital zine Heterotopias. Beautiful video game screenshots are ten-a-penny, but Damian-Martin’s work is something quite different – not least in the fact they’re taken using an analogue camera – in looking to capture not just a specific image of a game, but the nature of that place. To catch some of that ambiguity around the edges that, in the memory, hazes over beloved places and almost makes them seem like they exist. Following the production of three issues of…
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The 11 most ridiculous Pokémon ever captured Not every pocket monster is a classic. Once you’ve run through the good ideas, you have to start looking a little deeper for inspiration.
Legendary Commodore 64 Daffy Duck game finally found, playable for first time It’s a 228KB download, which was huge for the time.
The untold story of PlayStation Home, Sony’s most successful disaster Plagued by problems from the start, PlayStation Home never officially made it out of beta before it was shut down. But it was also very profitable. This is its story.
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The ultimate history of fighting games Fighting games have always been around. The first one on this list landed in arcades in 1976!
The Street Fighter games are arguably the best-known fighting titles ever released (only Mortal Kombat comes close), and the series has sold a staggering 37 million copies. Fighting games, though, have been around since the very beginning of the medium. The first one we hit on this list landed in arcades in 1976 – a full 40 years ago! Lace up your gloves, charge up your ki, and let’s write the book on the history of fighting games. I tried to play, either on original machines or through emulation, every single game that could be considered a “fighting game” in the history of video games. I’m going to try and talk…
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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.
Catacombs: the inside story of Square Enix’ canceled shooter It’s always a great shame when a game is cancelled, but much more so when a genuine original is lost.
Video game research shows you’re past your peak already at 25 Scientists have been using video games to study reaction speeds as people age and have discovered that it all starts to fall apart at 24.
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The weirdest fighting games of all time Most fighting games have some degree of strangeness to them, but there are those who are downright bizarre.
The fighting game genre is one of the biggest in the industry, but even the most die-hard fan will admit that it can often times be somewhat… odd. Serious fighting games like Street Fighter feature characters that can launch projectiles from their hands, emit electricity, or stretch their limbs to unnatural lengths. The Virtua Fighter series, which is praised for its realism, also has its fair share of goofy characters. Most fighting games have some degree of strangeness to them, but there are those who are downright bizarre. We’ve rounded up some of the most outlandish, eccentric, and unconventional fighting games to ever be released. We’ve only picked games that…
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The wonderful wobbly world of experimental gaming hardware "Your first communication you have with the game is the hardware, so we think that it’s important to have the right touch."
Why you pay what you pay for video games We can often feel short-changed when it comes to buying video games, especially in the UK. So what exactly determines what you pay?
Former jewel thief reviews GTA 5’s jewelry heists A former jewel thief has taken Grand Theft Auto 5’s heists to task, and explains how he would have done it instead.
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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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Woo-Hoo! The making of Stranglehold "There were definitely moments that made you feel like you're in a John Woo movie."
Finish Him! The innovative violence that fueled Mortal Kombat’s success A journey from its start as a failed experiment to re-birth as a predestined success built by the vision and innovation of its Midway Games developers.
80 years before X-COM, H.G. Wells designed ‘Little Wars’ H.G. Wells' contributions to modern pop culture can hardly be overestimated, and even video games haven't escaped it.
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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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69 things you need to do in GTA before you die So you think you’re done with Liberty City? Think again.
The Legend of Zelda was an explicitly Christian game—until Nintendo of America desecrated it Link, a devout Christian warrior? Believe it.
10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.
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The making of Virtual Springfield: a journey through the Simpsons at its peak Remember when The Simpsons was good and VR was futuristic?
Here’s a pitch for you: an interactive experience in which players are free to explore Springfield, the bustling hometown of The Simpsons, in virtual reality. In spite of the series’ steady decline over the past 15 years or so, I’d wager that more than a few of you would be queuing up to buy such a game were it launched tomorrow. Just imagine, then, how tantalizing a prospect this would have been back in the series’ mid-90s peak – with classic episodes such as Homer Badman, Who Shot Mr. Burns?, and The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show still fresh in the memory. This was effectively what Fox Interactive served…
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The weirdest fighting games of all time Most fighting games have some degree of strangeness to them, but there are those who are downright bizarre.
The ultimate history of fighting games Fighting games have always been around. The first one on this list landed in arcades in 1976!
‘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.
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The Mission: the most bizarre soccer game ever made "Once you have acquired the ball it is used as your main weapon against the Ninjas."
Of all the ways a British child could have their Christmas ruined in the late ’90s — sherry-fueled arguments after dinner, a sibling raging because they didn’t get what they wanted, a burned turkey — there is a special place in yuletide hell reserved for crappy soccer games bought by well-meaning family members. For the contemporary gamer, soccer more or less means the slugfest between FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer. But before this heavyweight title card came to dominate, back in the era of the original PlayStation, the soccer games jostling for position more closely resembled a royal rumble. And much like in the WWE’s yearly 30-man brawl, the majority…
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10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.
The best (worst) Watch Dogs multiplayer trolls Watch Dogs online has been designed to drive you nuts and here's a compilation of some amazing moments.
Why do Polygon reviewers suck so much at video games? We knew their reviews suffer from political bias, but basic game-playing competence is also a big issue at Polygon.
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Swearing at the screen: a history of rudeness in text adventures Much effort went into providing responses to inputs quite removed from an adventurer's staple activities of bashing heads and examining stuff.
“Don’t be ridiculous” the invisible narrator snapped, dismissing some long-forgotten typed request, and several decades later I still remember it. It was the first computer game I’d ever played, an early 80s text adventure titled Madness and the Minotaur on my swanky new Dragon 32, and my uncle had joined dad and I to marvel at the shiny new toy and help us with the intricacies of English prose. He had to explain what it meant to be ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous? Even at a tender age I could sense some grand unfairness at work, even more so after the line started dumbly repeating itself, our textual flailings going unrecognized…
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Ventrilo Harassment: Arnold ruins a clan meeting Mission objective: Infiltrate and harass.
Eight things that just don’t make sense in the Pokemon universe Twenty years of backtracking and flip flopping until there are more contradictions than a M. Night Shyamalan movie about time travel.
Satoru Iwata’s noble Nintendo legacy Even if you thought his decisions were misguided or wrongheaded, they still came from a place of love for video games.
