My first Tetris experience happened in the back seat of my parents’ Oldsmobile during a cross-country road trip in the summer of 1990. My brother Dave and I had been bickering for roughly eight hours straight about everything from seat territory to whose turn it was with the Walkman when my dad pulled into a rest stop, walked into the gift shop, and emerged with a Game Boy and a single game cartridge. “You two…
My game shelf has a split personality. On one side sits my carefully organized video game collection—chronologically arranged by console,…
I’ve destroyed my share of controllers over the years. There was the Super Nintendo controller that met its end against…
I can still feel the burning in my shoulders from lugging that massive beige CRT monitor up the narrow staircase…
I still remember the first cheat code I ever learned. It wasn’t even from a magazine or the internet—those weren’t…
You know what I miss about the pre-internet gaming era? The mystery. The whispered secrets. The absolutely bonkers rumors that…
You know you’ve reached a certain point in your adult life when you catch yourself thinking, “I once spent four…
Halloween, 1989. While other teenagers were out causing trouble or attending parties, I was hunched in the blue glow of…
I first encountered Guitar Hero at a Best Buy in 2006. I was there to pick up a replacement power…
I still have them all in a plastic storage bin in my basement—every single video game manual I’ve managed to…
