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the art of the game demo (or how to spend six minutes in Grand Theft Auto)

There are those pivotal moments in one's gaming habit that come around every once in a while. Critical junctures or vital forks in the road where things could have been very different had the other choice been taken at the time. Usually you don't see them for what they are in the moment, they are very much things you only recognize retrospectively. Such is the case for the subject of today's post where I am going to ramble on at length on the subject of what might be my favourite game demo of all time. This would be the time-limited taster of everything the original Grand Theft Auto had to offer. Yes the first one that most GTA players at this point probably haven't played, an historical artifact developed by DMA Design out of Dundee and published by BMG Interactive back in 1997.
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you got game (music) #4

If any three words could sum up my gaming habits in the late nineties, those three words would probably be ' Command and Conquer ' or even ' Command & Conquer ' if we're going to be pedantic about it. Top down real time strategy games that I was well into back then. The gameplay was solid, the tone (at least in the early games) had the vague feel of the real world about it and most importantly for the subject of today's post, it had a stonking great soundtrack that still holds up all these years later. 
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gaming archaeology

There is an art to playing old games, a   mindset even. A requisite state of mind thats required in order to play through its history. It's often said that you can't judge the past by the standards of the present and this is true to a point. Beyond that point the present can very much creep into your judgements and I think this is fine too as long as you are honest about it. The present moment can indeed cast a harsh light on the past, revered classics may not hold up even if you can still see what made them tick way back when. Such thoughts have come to mind recently as I found myself playing through the original 1987 release of Maniac Mansion .
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the games played last year awards 2024

The glitz, the glamour and the games! Yes it's the 2024 edition of  The Games Played Last Year Awards! The GPLYA's as I will continue to call them even though it  doesn't commit itself to the memory at all. It's that special time of year (the start of it) where I come together with myself (phrasing) to pick out the highlights and otherwise of the past twelve months of my gaming habit. Here I single out the very most notable of my gaming experiences of 2023. I've brought back most of the awards from last year's ceremony with a minimum of tweaks plus a few newbies to go around. Which games will win these prestigious and not at all fictional awards? What did I enjoy? What did I not enjoy? What is the point of it all? Stamp your ticket, take your seat and read on to find out...
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completionism 2023 - part 3

So we arrive at the third and final part of my 2023 in gaming. Another classic year for my gaming habit, an even more classic year for compiling lists of games played that year. Indeed as I've come to the end of this year and reflect upon my gaming in general I feel like I am in some way on top of it for the first time in ages. Oh I'm sure there are still games from the last decade I've been meaning to get around to for ages but they are definitely becoming a rarer sight in my various game libraries. Heck I even played a game on the fabled 'Day 1' I hear so much about this past autumn, imagine that? So hip, so cutting edge, any further ahead of the curve and this may become the first blog to travel in time. So what about those games eh?
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completionism 2023 - part 2

Wasting no time and taking no prisoners let's dive into the second part of my 2023 in gaming. The dizzying highs, the subterranean lows, the odd bit in the middle. Truly I am a man of many seasons but only so many games. We got platformers, we got RPG's, we got beat em ups, we have whatever Hypnospace Outlaw was exactly? Indeed we have it all, let's crack on...
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completionism 2023 - part 1

It is that time once again! As the clock ticks down to years end, triggering a wave of reflections and retrospectives not entirely dissimilar to the one you're reading now. My free time is a precious thing and as such I've tried to be a little discerning in choosing what games to play this year. Nonetheless my game time eventually expanded to over 50+ games in 2023. Some of the below are large games, some are small, in fact I daresay most of them fit the latter more than the former. I have cleared a whole bunch of stuff that has been on my radar for years now so in that sense I feel it was time well spent. What did I play and what did I think of it? Read on...
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