Brian Lesyk, Author at Old School Gamer Magazine

Super Metroid – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:07:13 +0000

As one-half of the aforementioned moniker, the Metroid and Castlevania franchises served as the bedrock upon which all other non-linear, multi-scrolling 2D platformer video games were built. When you play other Metroidvania titles like Guacamelee! (DrinkBox Studios, 2013) or Axiom Verge (Thomas Happ Games, 2016), you’ll notice the obvious nods to Super Metroid.

Super Metroid finds our hero bounty hunter, Samus Aran, once again on the hunt to recover a potentially threatening biological sample that was safely quarantined until just recently when space pirates abducted it from a space…

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Street Fighter II – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Sun, 17 May 2026 12:10:46 +0000

A proper sequel to their first 1v1 arcade fighting game. Video game designer Yoshiki Okamoto once revealed, “The basic idea at Capcom was to revive Street Fighter (Capcom, 1987), a good game concept, to make it a better-playing arcade game.” And, WOW, did they ever strike gold! Street Fighter II:

The World Warrior (Capcom, 1991) exploded onto the arcade scene with a nearly unmatched ferocity. Capcom took the formula from the first game and dialed the volume up to eleven! Everything was metic…..

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Tetris – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:36:05 +0000

This could have safely guessed that Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov, 1988) would appear in our list of The 50 Most Influential Video Games Ever. There’s a simple reason for this… Tetris is the single greatest video game ever created… No caveats. No clarifications. No exceptions. No qualifiers. Tetris is objectively the finest video game ever made….

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The Angry Video Game Nerd – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:08:10 +0000

In the interest of complete transparency, it must be expressly understood that my adoration for The Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) knows no bounds. THE @!#?@! MAKING OF THE ANGRY VIDEO GAME NERD 8-BIT How i learned to @!#?@! love the nerd Created by YouTuber and video game aficionado James Rolfe, the AVGN name is most commonly associated with a long-running series of videos wherein the titular character (“the Nerd”) lambastes subpar retro video games in expletive filled diatribes and aneurysm-inducing rants. Fueled by his palpable disdain for games that “suck ass” and a steady river of Rolling Rock beer, the Nerd pulls no punches in his ongoing quest to eviscerate the games of yesteryear that stole money from our pockets and gifted us nothing but agony in return…

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Commodore – Retcoming a brand – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 20:16:06 +0000

Right now, you’re wondering what retcoming is. Being as the term was first coined only moments ago by yours truly, I’ll be happy to explain. It’s a made up word, of course, because as Thor so deftly proclaimed in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, Peri Fractic (Christian Simpson) by Brian Lesyk

Yes, good readers, Commodore\ is coming back! In a buyout effort spearheaded by YouTube sensation and new Commodore CEO, Peri Fractic (Christian Simpson), the legacy brand has found its way into a fresh set of hands along with an ambitious vision for the future. “All words are made up.” Retcoming is the present tense verb form of retcom, which in turn is derived from the more familiar term, retcon. Short for “retroactive continuity”, retcon is a term used to describe the act of consciously altering an\ established story or historical account after said story to alter things for a preferred…

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Putting the “You” in Utopia – by By Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 11:01:35 +0000

In the late ‘70s, Mattel Electronics’ Intellivision machine was carving out a respectable space among the dense pack of lesser-powered gaming consoles and the deluge of Pong clones that were rapidly flooding the marketplace. Distinguishing itself from the horde, the Intellivision represented a multitude of “firsts” for the industry: It was the first console to feature a 16-bit processor. It was the first console to feature digitized voice audio. It was the first video game console to introduce an online service. Its controllers were the first to incorporate a multi-directional thumb pad interface. It was also the first gaming console to have a game pausing option. The list goes on!

The Intellivision is also credited for having two games in its library that represented the originators of their respective genres.

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Hacking the PSP – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 12:52:29 +0000

Psst! Hey, you! Yeah, you. Over here. I see you like PSPs. Wanna learn a secret? That thing can do so much more than you probably know, but, like, don’t tell Sony I told you this, okay? Let’s keep this between us, alright? This info ain’t exactly street legal, ya know. But first, a little backstory… How a Lunch Break Led to a Jailbreak I bought my first Sony PlayStation Portable handheld back when it originally debuted in 2005. While I enjoyed it quite a bit in the years that followed, I eventually stowed it away in the depths of my gaming collection. After all, games and memory cards were relatively expensive at the time, so my PSP game library remained somewhat small. Fast-forward a few years. I was walking the assembly line at a truck manufacturing….

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Modern Retro Gaming – By Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 09:11:04 +0000

I remember reading a quote once by famed French novelist and literary critic Marcel Proust: “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” In that vein, our zeal for the experiences of yesteryear as gamers often unintentionally overrides how we actually experienced them originally. More often than not, we look back upon our personal gaming histories through rosetinted glasses. For example, when reminiscing about what it was like to play Contra (Konami, 1988) on the NES all those years ago, it’s unlikely that our first thoughts are of futilely blowing air into the cartridge in an attempt to get it to work. Our minds don’t default to memories of screen flicker, frame rate drops, or slowdown. No, of course not. We remember the fun! We think back to the camaraderie…

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Love at First Fight – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 12:03:26 +0000

Back in the 80’s and 90’s, it wasn’t uncommon for nearly every grocery store in North America to have an arcade machine or two in its foyer. With just a handful of quarters, it served as an ideal place where preoccupied parents could temporarily stow their kids while they’d browse the food aisles. Over the years, most of us have come to learn how leaving a young child unattended at the front entrance of a store was a bad idea for a myriad of obvious reasons. In any case, I distinctly remember stumbling across a particularly interesting arcade game in such an environment during a cross country family vacation trip back in 1991. That game was Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER Before we delve into Street Fighter II, we need to take a moment to revisit the game’s precursor: 1987’s Street Fighter. By ‘87, Capcom had already established themselves as a serious arcade manufacturer. Preceded by hit games like vertically scrolling shooters Vulgus (1984) ….

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PlayStation 2 Launch – by Brian Lesyk

Brian Lesyk — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 11:58:21 +0000

The March ’99 announcement of the upcoming PlayStation 2 console instantly triggered a mental countdown timer for me. I knew I had to keep my finger on the proverbial pulse to ensure I could reserve one at my local EB Games store. I asked the store’s team to keep me abreast of when the PlayStation 2 pre-order SKU popped-up in their system and, sure enough, they came through for me. On the same day I received notice that they were accepting pre-orders, I raced over the store and plopped down my twenty dollars (that was the minimum at the time) to secure my reservation. As I did so, I was told I was the very first person at their location to officially make a reservation. In subsequent weeks, the store would initiate several hundred more reservations, which led me to worry just a tad. When I voiced my concerns about my pre-order being fulfilled on launch day, they reassured me that the reservations were to be filled on a first come, first served basis. Surely, I had nothing to worry about, being as I was lucky enough to be their #1 slot in the pre-order hierarchy… right? RIGHT?!?

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