by Old School Gamer | May 7, 2026 | 1980s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
Before RPGs, 1986,to strong narrative. Sir-Tech’s Wizardry from 1981 dumped players into a massive 10-floor dungeon with little more than a sentence of congratulatory text for beating the game. The first Ultima came out the same year and switched players from a...
by Old School Gamer | May 5, 2026 | 1980s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
I remember playing a ton of Gauntlet and gathering friends at the Fun Factory arcade in Valley West Mall. This game couldn’t really be played competitively against one another, since you all shared the mission of surviving long enough to make it through the level....
by Jeremy Parish | May 3, 2026 | 1980s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
it’s almost certainly not with any sort of affection. A slow, primitive-looking grind of a game with repetitive music and confusing action, Hydlide came across as nothing so much as a terrible clone of The Legend of Zelda when it hit the NES in the spring of 1989....
by Jarrod Kailef | Apr 27, 2026 | 1980s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
if you spent your entire lifetime doing so. From amazing modern masterpieces to the most primitive, barely playable first-generation games, it’s hard to determine what’s worth your time and what isn’t. But for old-school gamers like us, one of the best ways to...
by Brett Weiss | Apr 26, 2026 | 1990s, 2020s, Magazine Preview
It didn’t just revolutionize a franchise – it reshaped the entire video game industry, much like Super Mario Bros. had done more than a decade earlier. Just as the 1985 NES classic defined the blueprint for side-scrolling platformers, Super Mario 64 established...