Sonic Adventure

Tsk. Bugs, eh. In games. Nothing worse. They're not meant to be there. But sometimes they are and that's where they stay until Mr Developer stops fiddling with his massive beard and decides to do something about it. And he always does something about it because he knows otherwise gamers will just refuse to play his broken piece of programming ever again. Because unlike developers, gamers actually have standards. Although that's not actually true. Because sometimes we'll happily play a game - even love a game - that has more bugs than an 80s rap jam.

Like what games exactly? Like these games exactly. The Top 7... horrendously buggy games we loved anyway.

Once a videogame hero has more than one or two adventures under his or her belt, it simply isn’t enough to just have an archenemy anymore. To keep things interesting, they need a foil, a rival, or some other angry opposite number obsessed with matching wits with them. Sometimes, those characters stick around long enough to make themselves an indelible part of the series, even going so far as to make friends with the protagonist – although more often than not, their friendships tend to be shaky at best, and even those involved might never fully admit to them. Relationships like that tend to make for gaming’s most enduring and interesting rivalries, and what follows are some of the most notable...

Videogame technology is evolving. Where animation for the Apple II’s Prince of Persia was achieved by the developer sticking a sheet of tracing paper over videos of his little brother performing acrobatics, we now have motion capture, destructible environments and specular reflection (whatever that means). Nevertheless, all the technological innovation in the world can’t save those games lacking that special something – good game design. Want a few examples? Read on...

Ten years ago today, the Dreamcast stormed onto US shelves in one of the most explosive console launches of all time… and then suffered a premature death less than two years later. Now, however, the internets are buzzing with retrospectives, histories, love letters and lamentations as every major game site lines up to pay its respects to gaming’s most brilliant failed system.

Our eyeballs have been sullied by hateful Western game ads for too long now. Our retinas simply can’t stand anymore of this…

Want us to buy your titles giant corporations? Show us middle-aged businessman fighting for survival in the wilderness, wronged women attacking men with bouquets or a couple in gold body paint hugging on public transport. It sounds like madness, but it’s clearly a sound business strategy.

This is really weird, so brace yourself. Many years ago, while toiling away in the Toys "R" Us salt mines, I was in charge of the electronics department. This included the glut of cheapo PC software the company carries, from seven-year-old games that will never sell to brand new, hardware-crunching titles that no one shopping in that store could ever install. The amount of unsold software was so choking that some