Gaming History You Should Know – Sony’s Metreon December 8, 2024

Welcome back to another Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight the great work of independent channels that are dedicated to chronicling the history of gaming. Brick and mortar retailers, once the lifeblood of the gaming space, are fading fast in the era of online shopping and same day delivery. But when I was growing up, the act of going shopping was an event in and of itself, and nothing beats being able to tangibly hold something you’re interested in purchasing and taking it home with you.

Did you know Sony actually owned and operated retail spaces in the United States? No joke, I remember visiting a Sony store at JFK Airport in the mid-90s to pick up a badly needed pack of batteries! However, that was not their only retail establishment! This was more than just a store, this was a high-tech retail establishment on the cutting edge, it was called Sony’s Metreon!

Today, we want to highlight the work of the YouTube Channel Wrestling with Gaming. They did a fantastic look at this venue! Let’s take a look inside!

Incredible venues like this closing or me not being fortunate enough to live anywhere remotely near me is one of the biggest reasons I’ve become so grateful for Virtual Reality’s advancements over the last year.

Gaming History You Should Know – History of Splatterhouse December 1, 2024

It’s Sunday, and that means it’s time for a new Gaming History You Should Know! Ready for a blast from the past? We’re taking once again about Splatterhouse!

That’s right, the controversial arcade classic that went on to become a controversial console remake is back in the spotlight this week. YouTuber Trent Achy produced an incredible retrospective on the Splatterhouse franchise this week and was nice enough to grant us permission to feature his video here today. It includes new behind the scenes information on the making of the game, and a pretty in-depth look at each of the 2010 game’s levels. In short, a great retrospective. Check it out below:

Personally I liked the 2010 game and would be happy to see it (and any of the other games from the franchise) ported to current platforms. Special thanks to Trent for letting me feature his video on the site, I hope you all enjoyed it!

Gaming History You Should Know – What Happens When Normal People Try VR Films For the First Time May 12, 2024

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! Normally we’d focus our Sunday on featuring some great independently produced content on gaming history, but given it’s a special day, we decided to highlight this great video was recently released on gaming’s present, Virtual Reality!

Since becoming a VR Enthusiast, there have been few channels out there more useful to follow than BMFVR. His insight into recent tech releases, games, and hardware news has been a great asset for someone interested in learning quickly about the medium.

Recently, BMFVR posted a video where he demoed the Meta Quest 3 for a bunch of regular people with no VR experience. The results have to be seen to be believed. To someone who hasn’t decided to get a VR headset, let me remind you regardless of what platform you use, this is all possible in VR RIGHT NOW.

As someone who hasn’t stopped using the IMAX and Apple TV applications on their Vision Pro since getting the device, I can totally understand this is just the beginning of what is possible, the future is EVEN MORE exciting.

Gaming History You Should Know – The History of The Oregon Trail May 5, 2024

Like most of my generation, my elementary school offered a computer lab full of Apple II and Mac computers. This would give me my first exposure to edutainment games like Super Solvers Outnumbered and Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego. However, the school offered one more edutainment title only a few of us may remember, and it was called The Oregon Trail.

Named after the famous historical migration, The Oregon Trail was an early life simulator which put the player in control of a group of settlers eager to cross the untamed United States in search of a better life on the West Coast. The game was a lot different than others of the time, but the functions were easy enough to follow that my peers and I were able to pick up and play. We may have died…a lot, but we left irrecoverable landmarks of our progress for future players to find in the form of our player-scripted trail side tombstones.

How did such a strange game get made? Why do we remember it so many years later? In what may very well be the final episode of The Gaming Historian, they highlighted the history of this groundbreaking game. Take a look!

Did you make it to the end of the trail? Post a comment below with your memories.

The Oregon Trail is out on multiple platforms.

Gaming History You Should Know – History of The Five Nights at Freddy’s (Unbuilt) Theme Park Ride October 30, 2023

Since the first game was released, Five Nights at Freddy’s has bloomed from an PC cult classic to a well-known phenomenon. Millions of people have played its games, read its books, and purchased its toys. The next logical step for a franchise this popular is to go to Hollywood. This past weekend, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was released to theaters (and Peacock) and became one of its production studio’s highest grossing new films. We were actually able to watch the film on Friday, and our group, ranging from die-hard long time fans, to a merely curious attendee all found it quite enjoyable.

With Hollywood success for the franchise all but assured, the next logical step would be produce a Five Nights at Freddy’s theme park attraction. Sadly, as of the time this is being published no theme parks have announced they’re planning to build a ride based on Five Nights at Freddy’s. However, if you did some digging around you would be surprised to learn that the franchise’s theme park rights are currently owned by one of the biggest ride developers in the world, Sally Corporation!

Sally is known for making some great theme park rides across the world, including the Justice League: Battle for Metropolis ride at Six Flags we reviewed a few years ago. Sally actually has an official Five Nights ride fully designed, and has shopped their ride concept around to theme parks all over the world. However, it doesn’t appear that anyone has taken them up on the order just yet.

YouTube Channel AwesomeGamerDude did a fantastic video about the history of Sallys plans for the attraction, and we wanted to share his video with all of you. We understand this is a day late, but we still wanted to share this great video about it with all of you, enjoy.

Gaming History You Should Know – NEO-GEO Land September 4, 2023

Okay, I know its not a Sunday, but the US is currently celebrating a three-day holiday weekend, so for a lot of people in my home country it might as well be a Sunday. Here at GameXcess.net, we miss the classic arcade. The lights, the sounds, and the cyberpunk aesthetic was a great way to kill time on a boring day. Arcades featured games that either could not be played at home or feature the best looking versions of the games that COULD be played at home. Today, we’re going to be talking about a chain of arcades you may not be familiar with.

Did you know that SEGA was not the only company to open a chain of successful arcades in their home nation of Japan? Many of you fans of the King of Fighters franchise will remember an in-game location called NEO-GEO Land. It was a sprawling arcade, the perfect background for a one-on-one street match. You may have played the original assumed it was just a cool-looking callback to the game’s developers, SNK, and their arcade machine the NEO-GEO. Today, I’m here to tell you that it wasn’t just a callback, it was real.

Welcome back to Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight some of the best independently produced content on the history of gaming. Today, we’ll be talking about NEO-GEO Land, an arcade franchise most gamers may have assumed only existed in a video game, but was indeed very very real.

We’re going to take a look at the YouTube Channel NeoGeoNow, which has made INCREDIBLE videos about the history of SNK. In this video, he takes a LITERAL trip down memory lane where he highlights the past locations of SNK’s headquarters, and the special businesses that opened across the street. King of Fighters fans will be VERY familiar with this area. Let’s take a look!

Over the years there have been many attempts to resurrect NEO-GEO Land in Japan. Some of it may have been due to Japan’s nostalgia for SNK, or it may have just been an attempt for the current owners of SNK to meet the country’s heavy demand for SNK merchandise. Let’s take a look at a video done by Mad Panic Gaming, where he visits one of these pop up shops.

Seriously, can one of these open up in the US? Please? Heck, you don’t even have to open up a physical shop, just open a website with shipping to the US, it’ll make a killing among the SNK fans here.

Gaming History You Should Know – Neo-Geo Pocket July 30, 2023

It’s Sunday! Time for another Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight some of the best independently created content about the history of video games. You may have noticed we’ve become a bit obsessed with the company SNK recently, but even as newly-minted King of Fighters converts we were shocked to discover there was a story about the company even we did not know about until earlier this week.

If you were a kid in the 90s and were going on a road trip with your family you likely brought a Nintendo Game Boy or SEGA Game Gear with you. Within a pretty quick amount of time, Nintendo solidified the Game Boy as the definitive portable console throughout the 90s. However, despite what Nintendo would have you believe, other companies were offering portable handheld consoles. One of those companies was SNK.

What can we say about SNK’s Neo-Geo? Sporting graphical capabilities beyond what was possible with existing consoles (and a hefty price to go along with it) the Neo-Geo is fondly remembered by arcade gamers of the early-to-mid 90s. However, I had no idea at the height of the arcade platform’s popularity, SNK released a Neo-Geo handheld, the Neo-Geo Pocket!

The Neo-Geo Pocket flew so far under the radar, we didn’t even mention it in our history series on the Video Game Handheld War. In truth, it was because at the time we had no idea it ever released in the US!

YouTube Channel Lady Decade, who is a fantastic reference for Neo-Geo history, released a great documentary on the Neo-Geo Pocket and its color successor. You may even recognize some of the games that came for the platform including ports of King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown and even Sonic The Hedgehog! Give it a watch!