A post on SimFiction, a video game blog.

I’ll Have a Starburger, Starfries, and a Space Coke, Please Having played Starbites for almost 25 hours and obtaining my first ever platinum trophy on it, I can confirm with absolute certainty that it...

Gritty Unrealism There’s nothing like an arcadey racing game when you’re a few whiskeys deep in the rumpus room on a weekday evening. Wreckfest has been my go-to for this sort of activity for the last...

A Long, Long Way to the Top The Ascent is a twin-stick shooter RPG set in an almost painfully detailed cyberpunk world, and the most striking thing about it is that world. The game takes place in one ...

Fixin’ for Some Skitchin’ I put on roller skates once in my life. It was at my friend David White’s house when I was a little kid. We were in a narrow outside space between the main building of his ho...

Our 10th Issue/5 year Anniversary Special! That's right, Sega Mania Magazine is 5 years old! To celebrate, our 10th issue is going to be our biggest and best yet. For the first time we'll be expanding...

Back to the Grind I haven’t posted anything in a while. I don’t really know if there’s anyone out there who looks at this site regularly, but I have been getting a few comments lately so I feel like I...

Starting a New Pagie I didn’t realise it at first, but during the first few days of 2026 when I was asked the old “what are you playing?” question by friends and family, it soon became apparent to me ...

In 2025, I finally got my rumpus room sorted out, and I managed to finish plenty of video games. It’s been quite the eclectic mix of old and new, and I decided that it would be fun to rank them. That’...

A Real Page-Turner I ended 2025 on a jaunty note, as far as video games go, at least. The Plucky Squire was added to my Christmas list on a whim and was purchased for me by my lovely wife, and over a ...

NEO-GEO Nostalgia I’m not lucky enough to have a NEO-GEO floating about in the rumpus room (obviously, I really wish I did), and until recently I don’t think I’d ever even seen one. I am interested in...

Who’s Making All These Hats Anyway?  Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a visually resplendent action adventure game with a Dreamworks-style aesthetic and a melancholy atmosphere set in and around a village h...

Sylux, Psychics, and Sidekicks There’s something about the Metroid series. It’s a franchise that I’ve been interested in for a long time but didn’t leap into until Metroid Dread. Sadly priced out of m...

I’ve never played a Prince of Persia game before! Not the old ones with the rotoscoped animation and the punishing gameplay, or the more recent ones with the parkour-based platforming and the multiple...

Battle of the Ninja Sometime in the last couple of years, the planets aligned on the same night that a full moon cast an eerie light over the bamboo forests at the base of Mount Fuji, and two separate...

Is This a Rescue Mission, or Another Bug Hunt? One of the last scripts I wrote for the sadly-defunct TripleJump YouTube channel was a giant list ranking every single Alien and/or Predator video game e...

Une Lettre d’Amour Aux JRPG When you start a new game on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, you’re asked to select a difficulty setting. The game tells you that in order to get by in normal difficulty (know...

In the midst of playing the sparkly and new Mario Kart World and getting addicted once again to the wonderful Dragon Quest Builders 2, I decided to start another game. The Precinct is an isometric cop...

It’s a Knockout I bought a Nintendo Switch 2 on the day of release. I’m not actually sure if I’ve ever done this before. Maybe with the PS Vita? I got really caught up in the hype for that one. Let’s ...

The Ninja Game That Ex-Zeeds Expectations My most successful writing endeavour to date was a script I put together for the TripleJump YouTube channel about the ten most disturbing 16-bit video game bo...

It’s Slime Time An oft-forgotten monster type in the preternatural pantheon (unless you’re a fan of JRPGs or Dungeons & Dragons, that is) is the humble ooze or slime. These corpulent masses of gelatin...

A City-Builder That You Just Might Dig Developed by Polymorph Games and reaching full release on 31st January 2025, Foundation is a laid-back city-builder with a peaceful, pastel tone and a light-hear...

Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard, Elf, and a Couple of Legendary Bards The idea of the Gauntlet games always appealed to me as a kid. It had that exotic-yet-comfortable classic fantasy vibe, featuring swords...

Not Without My Drainus I don’t feel all that qualified to assess Drainus. I really like a good shoot-’em-up, and have lots of respect and nostalgia for the genre, but I’m actually shockingly bad at th...

A Tumble in the Jungle As a small child with a wide-eyed interest in the natural world, I embarked on one or two trips to a place called the Tropiqaria in West Somerset. It was (and still is) a small ...

Bounce Your Balls Through Spooky Halls If there’s one thing that Atari’s block-bashing 1976 arcade hit, Breakout, needed to make it a little bit more eye-catching, it was a sinister sprinkling of ghos...

Become a Vessel of Destruction Despite not being a “boomer” (I’m D-Generation X, baby), I’m quite fond of Boomer Shooters. Anything that reminds me of simpler times blasting away on the likes of Duke ...