Posts by Gavin Annand

The Doom series has long been a cultural phenomenon, one that has transcended the world of gaming and garnered recognition in wider entertainment culture. The series revolutionized game design, and set a technical benchmark for game engines. It also made celebrities of the devs behind it – John Carmack, John Romero, American McGee – but…

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m a fan of collecting old big box PC games. Not only that, but I love playing classic games, and I am a huge supporter of the abandonware community, who through their tireless efforts have managed to preserve our digital history long after the ruthless games industry has forgotten them in…

Welcome, my dear readers, to the second iteration of The Finest Bytes! For those of you joining us for your first culinary quest, I am Brock Stroganoff Esquire, and I bid you prepare your palate for a most palatial pilgrimage. And to those of you returning from our first outing, I commend you for demonstrating…

It was one of the biggest announcements from the spectacle that is E3 and its preceding weeks: seemingly out of nowhere, Baldur’s Gate III was announced by Belgian RPG game developer, Larian Studios. The internet literally exploded at this news – after all, Wizards of the Coast hadn’t chosen some AAA powerhouse to develop the…

The console is, justifiably so, the home of the 2D platformer, largely thanks to its native control scheme, the gamepad. It’s no surprise that the genre has always flourished on consoles, particularly in the early to mid-1990s. But with the total dominance of Sonic and Mario, it’s easy to forget the huge influence that the…

Many years ago, in roughly 2003-04, as I lugged a heavy 17” CRT monitor and cream-colored PC case into the back of a friend’s Toyota, I didn’t realize that this would be the last LAN party I would attend for 15 years. Internet cafes were becoming more common and affordable, and without any of the…

A long time ago (in a galaxy far… no, I won’t do it), Star Wars games were regarded as some of the finest games you could find, across multiple genres. Under the guidance of LucasArts, with occasional input from respected developers like BioWare, Totally Games, Pandemic Studios, and Raven Software, Star Wars games have provided…

As Shamus young argues quite convincingly, 1997 through to the year 2000 was an absolutely phenomenal time in PC gaming. PC games were truly beginning to earn mainstream acceptance beyond the few blockbusters of earlier years (such as DOOM and Myst) and were gaining some traction against the more popular and approachable console market. PC…

As we all know, the games industry is largely beholden to trends; Battle Royale is the most obvious recent example, but there are many more examples throughout gaming history. Trends aren’t always a bad thing, particularly when it comes to games. What begins as a good idea and becomes a trend can end up becoming…

Over Christmas, I went to my parents’ place and finally sorted through all my boxes of crap that have spent years gathering dust in their garage. One of those boxes was filled with dozens of old PC games. Holding Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight (LucasArts, 1997) in my hands transported me back to Christmas 1997,…