90 MCV 15/10/10 OFF THE RECORD
YOU’VE BEEN TANGOED Grainger Games brought out the monster trucks, little people, models and area manager James Gee in Liverpool to open its 40th store. The retailer will open five more Orange shops before 2011 to match the tanned faces below.
WWW.MCVUK.COM
The brands, people and technology that have dominated decades. This week, televisions…
EIGHTIES, NINETIES, NOUGHTIES
CLASSIC TELEVISIONS Ever played an ‘80s ‘classic’ and been forced to
vomit quietly in the corner after having your treasured childhood memories royally shat upon? You’re not alone. How on earth did we put up with having our eyes raped by these visions of horror on a daily basis? Because, dear friends, of the magic optical illusion of the 14-inch portable CRT telly. While our parents and siblings hogged the only decent goggle box in the house, the average teenage gamer had to put up with a cheapo piece of crap in the spare room. But the upside of this was that hideously garish, blocky 8-bit gaming actually looked half decent, thanks to the slightly soft-focus image quality, scan lines and the fact that it was a smaller screen. Good times.
BIG-SCREEN It was just as well that by the time we started
shelling out for those gloriously chunky 24-inch Sony Trinitrons, gaming technology had improved to an insane degree. Vibrant games like the original Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Worldand Donkey Kong Countrycame alive on these absurdly large screens. Once the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 emerged there was simply no point suffering them on a dinky portable any more. With those ‘flatter, squarer tubes’ smoothing out the curves, games like Resident Evil, Mario 64and GoldenEyewere utterly glorious. If you’re getting all nostalgic reading this, just do not – for the love of God – think about playing any of these games on modern flat screens. Unless you enjoy the sight of projectile vomit arcing across your lounge.
FLAT-SCREEN The mere idea that one day we would have flat-panel
televisions of our own once seemed like the stuff of wistful science fiction. But, by the mid-point of the decade, the impossible dream started to become a reality. Memorably, Microsoft ushered in what it called ‘the HD era’ of the 360 by giving away 26-inch Samsung LCDs to the audience at GDC, and suddenly we started to see games being played on screens of previously unimaginable dimensions. 42-inches, 50- inches, 63-inches. Sod it – 103-inches! Suddenly, gamers were experiencing full field-of-vision immersion, barely aware of the world around them as they lost themselves to the splendour of their adventures. Of course, for some, even that wasn’t enough. Time for 3D…
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92