Metroid revealed Samus was a woman at the end, not as the game's focus, but just as a fact. The Last of Us did the same with Ellie in the Left Behind DLC. Both got it right.

Are you thinking about buying a Pokémon Crystal cartridge, or do you want to check if yours is real? 

The TurboGrafx-16 was an underdog in the console wars. Still, its collection of arcade-quality shooters makes it my second-favorite system ever, behind the NES.

We got in a box of uber rare SNES games -- Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, Zelda. Something felt off right away.

Enemy leveling systems can make or break an RPG. Oblivion proved what happens when you get it wrong. Final Fantasy XII's T. rex shows what getting it right looks like.

Nintendo's Virtual Boy experiment lasted less than a year. After playing Mario Tennis, I saw flashing red lines everywhere in my house for hours.

Explore why retro games were so hard compared to modern titles, uncovering the design choices, difficulty curves, and timeless challenges that still captivate players today.

From King's Quest to Baldur's Gate 3, the RPGs I keep coming back to share one thing: they make your choices feel like they actually matter. That's harder to pull off than it sounds.

Video games weren't always meant to be finished. You didn't "complete" Pong; you played a match and moved on. But somewhere between the arcade era and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's 90-hour average playthrough, the purpose shifted: games became something to finish. So how did we get here, and is longer actually better?