For me, paintings and other images are a visual cue to a longer narrative. They’re a kick to the imagination, not an end unto themselves. When I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other week, I couldn’t help but see other stories in the paintings. In fact, I saw videogames everywhere I looked.
Some of these paintings directly influenced game developers. Others are just uncanny coincidence. (more…)
On January 1, 1984, defenders of freedom worldwide breathed a collective sigh of relief when the morning sun dawned on a world mercifully devoid of Thought Police, Ministries of Love and Two Minutes Hates. Didn’t that sunrise mean we had avoided the grim prophecies in George Orwell’s 1984, that his prophetic novel was proven wrong?
But 1984 was not the year to relax our vigil against the Communist threat. Even 29 years later, in 2013, when the Soviet Union is a memory and Russia allied with the West – even now, the Soviet threat is not without weapons. No, I’m not talking about the atomic bomb – I’m not even talking about Hollywood. No, Communism’s deadliest weapon is a computer program, a seemingly innocuous little game. What it lacks in explosive yield or razzle-dazzle it makes up for in soul-sucking, time-wasting, all-pervasive brain death.
I am, of course, referring to Tetris. (more…)
Here at Unwinnable, we’re always trying to bring you unique and fresh games writing. But we also know that we’re not the only ones out there with the same goals in mind, and we love hearing about approaches we’d never have even considered. That’s why we’re all about Sneaky Bastards, an Australia-based website devoted to all things stealth that wants to change the way we read and write about games. (more…)
Today’s kids probably won’t remember whether they first played Angry Birds on their parents’ smartphones in the grocery line or Halo on their older cousins’ XBox, but I’m just old enough to remember a time before the ubiquity of gaming consoles and just young enough to have never played on a Nintendo 64 without feeling all retro about it. I remember my first videogame. And I remember when my love of gaming first started. Funny thing is, there were a few years between the two. (more…)
