You finally beat the first Ninja Gaiden. You watched the ending, you earned the bragging rights, and you figured Ryu Hayabusa’s story was over. Then
You find it on the shelf in early 1994, tucked between the SNES titles that are starting to take over the end caps. Same blue
By December 1992, you knew exactly what you were getting into. Dr. Wily was behind it. Eight stages waited in whatever order you wanted to
Bally Midway built an arcade game in 1986 with almost no rules. Lead designer Brian Colin wanted players free to just wreck things, with no
Picture a Data East arcade cabinet, 1988. Two ninjas just kidnapped the President of the United States, and the game asks you one question before
Somewhere between the Zelda cartridges and the Ninja Gaiden copies in a lot of old NES collections sits a black cartridge with a silver knight
Somewhere in a box of old Nintendo Power issues, a kid’s crayon drawing of a robot with drill hands is sitting in a landfill of
You remember the bike. The handlebars in the arcade cabinet actually turned. You leaned left, you leaned right, and somehow that made throwing a rolled-up
Two players, two screens, and a pile of capsules raining down between them — that was Dr. Mario’s basic pitch in the fall of 1990,
You rent Adventure Island from the video store on a Friday, blow through the first stage in under a minute, and die on the second