“Giving nightmares like Wes Craves”

Today is the tenth anniversary of Ys VIII, a game I loved so much it inspired me to start my blog back in 2020… Happy birthday Ys VIII, you literally changed my life! gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2020/09/13/y...

New blog post time! This week's game is Nyorols, a mysterious MSX maze game from 1983 that approaches the genre in an unusual way. Instead of pure evasion, you rely on a combination of summoning clones and kicking your enemies, both of which have positive and negative consequences: #blog #gaming

Make a Wish - 1st Place Winner in the Revision 2025 Old Skool Graphics Compo. An Amiga ECS/OCS 16 colour palette put to fantastic use. 💜

Reminder that Curious Video Game Machines is just £14 at the moment, the cheapest it's ever been! Plus there are loads of other great gaming books for not much money in the Pen & Sword summer sale :) www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Curious-Vide...

Old post! How to make any sequel better… Add a dog! gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2025/09/28/s...

Odysseus spent 20 years at sea before returning to his wife and son, but if I take 3 hours of Sunday to see his film I am, apparently, “a bit selfish”

Yesss. Been waiting 30 years for this…

Can’t believe my four year old did this perfectly first time!

I'm guessing Shawn Layden has never played on a Switch

New blog post time! This week's game is On the Tiles, a C64 game about a cat in a dark and dangerous city. Its unique structure and nice graphics do it some favors, but one very persistent enemy and some randomness drag things down No relation to Franky, Joe and Dirk: On the Tiles! #blog #gaming

Just casually posting this as a sign to the universe that these would be a good NSO add-on to fill the month between first-party Switch games www.nintendolife.com/features/nin...

Been reading about the Doomsday Clock and think I have objective proof for why so many of us feel the 90s was the best decade and that this one is the worst... "The farthest time from midnight was 17 minutes in 1991, and the closest is 85 seconds in 2026" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsda...

This is a belter! If you're planning to get an AES+ then you NEED Xeno Crisis... gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2021/10/17/x...

After selling out (again!), a new print run of my beat 'em up history book, Go Straight is launching on August 19th via @bitmapbooks.com It covers over 200 games, spanning 40 years. Check out the full game list, and preorder to secure your copy here: www.bitmapbooks.com/products/go-...

Reminder that I maintain a schedule of upcoming UK/EIRE kaiju screenings. Lots coming up soon in Derby, Newcastle, Glasgow, and more, as well as the UK premieres of GMK and GODZILLA 2000 (the former on 35mm) in London! 📽️ Check out the schedule here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Movie night

New blog! Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is so advanced for an 8-bit adventure that playing it now feels more like a demake of a modern game than it does something "retro". gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2026/07/12/m...

New blog! Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is so advanced for an 8-bit adventure that playing it now feels more like a demake of a modern game than it does something "retro". gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2026/07/12/m...

Tomorrow…

Tomorrow…

The reason 360 games can’t be retro is because PS5 games are just 360 games with nicer graphics.

I’m still using my 14 year old MacBook on a daily basis and one of the reasons is: it has a disc drive!

Today's featured post: 📖 Quick hit: Bujingai (PS2 / Red Entertainment / 2003) by Standard Issue Computing https://standardissuecomputing.blog/2026/06/28/quick-hit-bujingai-ps2-red-entertainment-2003/

Launching a new website about video games today. Meet @respec.net. A sibling to @rpgsite.net, a spiritual successor to VG247, & a brother from another mother to other 100% independent UK media brands like @videogameschronicle.com and @trueachievements.com. www.respec.net/feature/87-w...

Videogames are happening

Aliens: The Video Games is available to review in digital form, starting now. If you've a blog, a site, a magazine, a podcast, a newsletter, whatever, and want to cover this book, please let me know. (I can make zero guarantees re physical book provision as the publisher handles those.)

Watched this film as a kid and it was literally the first time I’d heard the word “Nazi”. Good job it instructionally told me what to think about them and what to do to them! The Blues Brothers rock.

The first teaser for Stephen Chow’s KUNG FU SOCCER has arrived.

Old post! The MSX version of Snatcher is far from the definitive edition of Hideo Kojima’s cyberpunk adventure, but it still has plenty of 8-bit charm… gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2021/03/14/s...

Was thrilled to see Chamber in X-Men 97 this week. Not sure what surprises me more: seeing him crop up on the show, or learning that this is the first time this 32 year old character has appeared on-screen at all!

If these worked on Amiga, I would hunt them all down

This week’s new arrivals…

I've felt for a while that the biggest blow from the move to digital is the ability to truly own what you buy and the right to re-sell it. The ideal compromise is if digital stores enable their users to re-sell their content, with a % going to all parties. I predict Valve will crack that first...

Yay! My little blog was added to @warppoint.games!

The new Rhythm Heaven is out on Friday! It has somehow been TEN years since the last one. My daughter and I played the demo today. It’s new to her, familiar to me, and we both had a blast. She struggled with the timing and giggled when she got it right. Joyous.

Remember the internet before Google, before algorithmic feeds, before monolithic social media corralled us onto the same handful of apps? When small, *personal websites* and webrings linking them together reigned supreme? Time to bring it back.

Old post… It is the summer and there is time for Boktai! gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2026/04/26/b...

This week’s arrivals…

Did Stan Lee turn up swiftly in Marvel's short-lived 1983 Blip game magazine? You bet he did, in Issue #2, with Spider-Man, to play Spider-Man on the Atari 2600: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/a75803d8-b27c-49a4-84d1-5429efce7d65

FML I’m older than Peppy

There’s an AM2 Macross game?!

I bloody love Quake! Happy birthday! gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2021/10/03/q...

One new arrival this week… It’s very good! Reminiscent of so many of my favourite action RPGs… Zelda, Ys, Mana… with bags of its own personality too.

Old post! A Day In The Life is a not-at-all-faithful adaptation of the life of Sir Clive Sinclair, told in a surreal style befitting of the quirky British computer he created… gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2021/09/26/a...

This is an awesome opportunity to work on a cool site with some of the best people in the business…

This site uses "AI-collaborators" to regurgitate articles and steal images without permission.

🫡 Out Tomorrow! #NintendoSwitch #ScramKitty

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