#play-history

#play-history

The player ambles through an eerily underpopulated subway station, which gradually comes to resemble a metro-themed infinity loop—a maddeningly repetitive circle of mid-transit hell.

The rise of the games industry in the 1980s and 90s coincided with the explosion of the home-video business, and the two crossed paths in lots of interesting ways.

"Today I'm announcing I will no longer be making Gaming Historian videos. There's nothing dramatic behind it, I promise."

Nintendo was founded in 1889, the same year the Eiffel Tower opened in Paris, starting as a manufacturer of Japanese playing cards.

Physical media sales, DVDs especially, are experiencing a new burst of popularity. After a decade of freefall, enthusiasm among Gen Z halved a 20 percent sales decline in 2024 to just 9 percent in 2025. Stores have noticed. The Times' Karla Gachet spoke with staff at cultural hubs like Cinefile and Vidiots to discover why 2026 is already shaping up to be their biggest year, with the latter renting a surprising 1,000 DVDs a week.

The console wars died down not because any side won, but because it became irrelevant. Major games, seeking to make their gigantic budgets back, went platform agnostic. Where once companies had splurged on making consumers identify with specific console platforms, suddenly where you play games had become a much less defining factor.

Returning to old games isn't always easy. Depending on how old the game is, you might run into various problems, including unusual controls or compatibility issues. Another common point of friction you might encounter is an older game running poorly. This can make it a slog to replay some of the modern classics, even if they're just a decade or so old. So I'm happy to see Ubisoft going back and updating performance in games like Far Cry Primal and Assassin's Creed Unity.

For the past 28 years, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has recognized those who have made a significant contribution to the video game industry, from those creating iconic characters and games that have become cultural cornerstones, to those who have inspired others to create games or provided opportunities for the next generation or developers without the necessary resources to shine in a competitive working environment.

Spending more than 10 hours a week playing video games may begin to affect young people's eating habits, sleep quality, and body weight, according to new research led by Curtin University and published in Nutrition. The study surveyed 317 students from five universities across Australia. Participants had a median age of 20 years, placing the focus squarely on young adults during a key stage of habit formation.

For decades, competitive multiplayer games have existed, and the concept of a game that can't be "finished" has been around for about as long as games themselves. But when I talk about the games that undermine the very concept of a backlog, I'm not talking about online-only PVP titles like Arc Raiders or Team Fortress 2. I'm instead talking about the growing list of live-service games, many of which can be played solo, that have campaigns with "endings" but also keep growing,

But what has a lot of people online talking is the new map, Meltdown. This map, set inside a nuclear power plant facility, was extremely popular in the original Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 back in 2012 on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, where I spent many hours playing it. So naturally, I was excited for its return in BLOPS7. But, well, this ain't exactly the same Meltdown from 14 years ago.

30 years ago chronicled a generational conflict between an old-timey pull-string doll and a fancy new one with buttons. The two toys learned to get along. This week a trailer for showing both toys enacting a against tablets. While I agree on the potential detriments of excessive screen-time, it is telling how the creators and intended audience now identify less with the kid playing with toys and more with the adult who just spent all of dinner hearing about ' butlerian jihad looksmaxxing.'