Sega Genesis Collection

I woke up this morning feeling excited. Christmas morning excited. I'm sorry to break it to you if you're younger, but when you're 29 years old, that kind of excitement doesn't happen very often (even on Christmas morning, sadly). But today does feel special. It was 20 years ago today that the original Sonic the Hedgehog was released. So it seems fitting that we should celebrate that iconic game with the first of our new regular Appreciation Section features, which listeners of the TalkRadar UK Podcast might recognise.

Hello there and welcome to a brand-spanking new episode of your favourite gaming podcast with the words 'talk', 'radar' and 'UK' in the title.

This week Matt, Justin, Dave H and Meiks are your hosts, talking rather swearily about stuff and blowing up balloons with their mouths (video below).

So what can you expect from the fearsome foursome?

- Is this news? Basically, we weren't convinced the news section was, in fact, news, so we're changing it. Big stories that probably shouldn't have been, discussed with words.
- Appreciation section!: Meiks delves into the recesses of his mind and emerges with a dinosaur game
- Question of the Week!: In which we read out your answers to the question... What's your weirdest ever dream about video games?
- More! More! More!

Listen now...

Islands are the biggest 'get-out-of-jail-free' cards in videogame design. Firstly, they allow developers to create a defined perimeter without having to explain away invisible walls with forcefields or malaria. It also gives them license to plausibly fill said island with anything from dinosaurs to trifle. It's an island – it can be anything it needs to be.

It was playing Treasure Island Dizzy recently that became the basis for this list. The excitement of an uncharted island to explore may not have changed over the years, but its execution certainly has. Where we used to play on islands of treasure or rainbows, we now face convicts, pimps and ninjas. Both kinds have their merits, but which is best? Let's find out...

Sunsets, love, war, babies, baby war… There’s just no telling when and where exactly musical inspiration will strike. Well, with the exception of this here article. Using GamesRadar’s collective knowledge of games and music, we managed to scrape together numerous instances of game soundtracks that were, let’s just says, all too familiar for an expose decades in the making.

Continuing our Sonic season, we count down the ten best Sonic moments of all time, complete with the best Sonic video montage you'll ever see

We've killed billions of bad guys since taking up videogames. But we did actually feel bad about some of them, honest. Here they are.