While I wait in the lobby of one of the largest game studios in the world, I watch someone go through to the inner sanctum. The shiny barrier, with transparent doors that whir apart at the wave of a card-pass, looks familiar — I think I’ve seen the […]
Sheldon Cohen is in his element. It’s half an hour after the last bell at St. Joseph’s Elementary School in Montreal has sent the kids home to eat Pizza Pops in front of the tube. But two dozen of them are sticking around, cramming the school’s slipshod art […]
I’m fairly suspicious of nostalgia, and I hate how advertisers leverage our emotions to sell us the same products twice. So while I’m happy that people are rediscovering videogames from their youth, and that the games and their blocky aesthetic are mushrooming up all over the culture, I […]
Marty McKee: Yeah, I know you’ve done a lot of different genres, but I’ve always wondered why that [giant animals] was so interesting to you. Bert I. Gordon: [Pause] I don’t know. [Laugh] Bert Gordon (AKA Mr. BIG, director of The Food of the Gods) doesn’t know why, […]
N (MetaNet Software, 2004) is a perfect pop song of a videogame, an addictive platformer in which you use three keys to direct your ninja towards the gold and away from the robots. Its two-dimensional and mostly two-colour simplicity lure you into its cunning level designs and give […]
The following Q&A first appeared, in condensed form, in my column The Panelist for Toronto’s Eye Weekly. Here’s a special, extended version of the conversation. Collecting every Peanuts strip Charles Schulz ever drew, The Complete Peanuts will take a whopping 25 volumes and more than 12 years to […]
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The Cultural Gutter 