Alex Kidman is an award-winning Australian journalist with more than 20 years games and tech writing experience under his belt. Critics have accused him of being a heartless and relentless word-writing machine, but this is clearly false. Alex will deal with those critics once he's finished his latest software upgrade.
I am a firm believer that as many video games, be they popular, good, bad, and loathed, should be preserved as possible. All these retro collections that have been released by publishers to cash in on their classic properties (and undermine the value of emulation and the second-hand market) have been both good for the publisher’s business model, and the…
Welcome to Digitally Downloaded’s weekly catch-up news feature, the catch-up coffee. Here, I bring you the best news you may have missed from last week. Grab the biggest mug you’ve got, fill it with your favourite brew, and catch up with us (and our favourite news anchor, Dee Dee)!…
Nintendo’s timing with its no-pressure comfort food games has been fortuitous. Animal…
For people who enjoyed the vibes of Monster Hunter, but found the…
The Amiga was home to a whole host of exceptional games in its time, but not all of them earned the right to be called true classics, even if they were innovative for their time. Advancements not only in visuals but also gameplay design have left some old school retro…
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The movie tie-in game is something of a dying art, but in many ways you would have to rule it death by way of suicide. The very model for movie games ensured that they would die out. This was never terribly surprising; classically speaking, lots of money got spent getting…
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Bubble Bobble is one of the greatest games ever made, and it’s also my go-to game when I’ve been asked about my favourite game of all time. Taito’s certainly done some interesting things with the Bubble Bobble IP over the years, and while a lot of the spinoff games have…
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Ball x Pit is excellent. Can I end this review now? No? The editor guy, Matt, is telling me to do my job before I can go back to playing, so I guess not (yeah, I’m a total dictator like that – ed.) Dammit. Very well then. Conceptually, Ball x…
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There are few things that I enjoy more than a good retro games collection. Sure, emulation exists and it’s not going anywhere any time soon, but as someone who creates for a living, I do like the idea of supporting other creators by actually buying their creations. In the retro…
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Amongst the pantheon of games, if you ask DigitallyDownloaded.net editor, Matt, which is the greatest, he’ll often reply that it’s Toaplan’s 1990 platformer Snow Bros, inspired (cough) by titles such as Taito’s sublime Bubble Bobble. Yeah, I sit with a different capture-and-break-enemies platformer as the greatest game of all time,…
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The games we play when we’re young absolutely do shape our appreciation of gaming when we’re older. If you had asked me when I was about 14 what the best game in the world was, the answer would have been easy. Bubble Bobble, and obviously that’s still scientifically true, but…
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The recent passion for retro remakes has seen a whole host of titles updated and refreshed, though with mixed results – I’m still stinging from the disappointment of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends and maintain that Snow Bros Wonderland isn’t much of an upgrade over the original, really, even though clearly…
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Snow Bros. Wonderland is an all-new game in the classic arcade series that we never thought we’d see after the orginial publisher, Toaplan, closed up shop many years ago. And yet here it is. DDNet regular, Alex, and I, have a bit of a difference of opinion about the merits…
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Crayon Shin Chan has been around since 1990, and I’ve been aware of his existence for nearly that long. However, being honest, I’ve largely steered clear of his adventures, mostly because the pitch here is for a younger audience that will appreciate his mix of youthful naivety mixed with a…
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