We were watching the Beijing Olympics at the weekend and got to nattering about how there's hardly any excitement around event-based sporting games anymore. Predictably the conversation took a rose-tinted turn towards the nostalgic and we all traded happy tales of masochistic joystick waggling and multi-load cassettes. No doubt other gamers with a memory for the shit old days will do the same. Here's five games that we reckon will fondle the memories of most old-schoolers at some point during the Olympics ...

Today marks the start of the 2008 Olympic games. And in order to spur on our Olympic heroes, while at the same time trying to fool our brains into thinking that we’re actually doing some exercise, we’ve tried and tested eight different ways of playing Beijing 2008. Some of which will be familiar, others definitely won’t be. But are any of them better than the good old jumper trick? ...

At the end of every year we get a new year – one that is numerically superior to its predecessor and brimming with new stuff to buy. But how do you know what to buy if all the shiny “best of” awards are given at the end of the year? You could spend your precious 365.24 days reading game reviews, but what are they compared to shiny metallic awards? ...

In choosing games for this list, we kept an eye on games most likely to succeed at the market. We also tried to keep in mind potential critical reception based on developer track record, previous franchise performance, and how the titles have been presented in the media thus far. Naturally we also picked the titles we are most excited to play at the show, but in short, these are the games to keep an eye on, because these are the games that ...

Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Uncharted 2 made 2009 a year of epic sequels. Too bad none of the studios in this feature will be releasing any sequels, ever… at least not in their original forms. 2009, like 2008, was a rough economic year, and lead to the demise of multiple influential and promising developers. ...

If you paid any attention to Comic-Con 2009 (and based on our experience there, about a billion of you did), you no doubt heard about Capcom’s amazingly generous giveaway: a remix soundtrack to Marvel vs Capcom 2, with music provided by 10 proven hip hop artists such as DJ Qbert, Talib Kweli and Raekwon. Oh, and it’s an actual, playable record ...

They actually got paid for that crap, you know ...