Tomorrow, the fourth Evercade Showcase will be broadcast and is likely to contain news about new cartridges and (possibly) new hardware.

The last showcase revealed Neo Geo carts, new Super Pocket devices and more, so what could possibly be in store for tomorrow's event?

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Created by Japanese-born American comic book artist Stan Sakai, Usagi Yojimbo is a cult comic creation that originally debuted all the way back in 1984.

First featured as a comic strip in Steve Gallacci's anthology Albedo Anthropomorphics, and later in issues of the Fantagraphics Books' publication Critters, it also went on to receive its very own comic book in 1987. These all followed the continuing adventures of Miyamoto Usagi, a samurai rabbit, as he made a pilgrimage across Edo-period Japan, encountering bounty hunters, ninja clans, and various monsters from Japanese folklore.

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Don't worry – you're not suffering from déjà vu. If you feel like you've read this before, it's because we're republishing the article (with minor edits) to celebrate the release of the new version of the song that has recently been shared online by Konami. This piece was originally published on August 2nd, 2024.

It's almost impossible to talk about Metal Gear Solid 3 today without somehow mentioning the game's iconic theme: "Snake Eater".

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Back in the early '90s, when I would have been around 12 or 13, I recall my older sister taking me to a somewhat dubious house in a rather run-down part of a local city. I can't even recall why we were there, but one of the occupants fascinated me because his room seemed to be filled with nothing but failed technology.

His pride and joy was a Commodore CDTV—plugged into a giant CRT and playing Psygnosis' Planetside demo—but his latest purchase was a Barcode Battler, which he gushed about endlessly. How he gained the funds in order to purchase all of this gear, I'm not sure (and I probably wouldn't have wanted to find out at the time), but he made quite the impression on my young and developing mind for precisely the wrong reasons.

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After the news was shared online earlier this year that Monolith would be closing its doors for good, there were a lot of tributes written about the studio's 30-year-plus history.

As you'd probably expect, many of these went on to celebrate the company's involvement in the development of groundbreaking first-person shooters, such as Blood, No One Lives Forever, and F.E.A.R, as well as its work on licensed games like Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel. But the reality is the company's output was actually a lot more interesting and diverse than many of those accounts would have you believe, featuring a ton of other lesser-known titles that have since gone on to generate small but passionate followings that continue to exist even to this day.

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Ninty Media has already given us the GameBook and GameBook Color, and it is completing the trilogy with GameBook Advance, a crowdfunded tribute to Nintendo's all-conquering 32-bit handheld.

Over 550 people raised £42,568 to help make this particular book happen, and, in doing so, helped to secure talent such as former Nintendo Official Mag Editor Tim Street, Did You Know Gaming's Liam Robertson, Retro Gamer's Nick Thorpe and ex-Nintendo Life staffer Ryan Craddock, as well as artists such as Jay Cobs, Jonathan Traynor, Thiago Radice and Iago Machado.

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Released in 1999 and based on the 1996 novel of the same name, Fight Club is a landmark moment in countercultural American cinema. Critically misunderstood by many at the time of release and a disappointing commercial flop for its studio, 20th Century Fox, it has since gone on to become one of the most influential movies of the past few decades, and its themes of misplaced masculinity, nihilism, rampant consumerism, disenchantment with working life, rebellion against authority and—ultimately—mental health have, if anything, became even more important in the modern era.

It's not the kind of film which immediately lends itself to adaptation into a video game, yet that's precisely what happened in 2004, five years after David Fincher's film had flopped at the box office before building up a sizeable following on home media. It was perhaps the film's striking critical resurgence which convinced 20th Century Fox's game division, Fox Interactive, to explore the idea of turning it into a game; after all, both the Die Hard and Alien franchises had spawned successful video games in years previously.

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Two weeks ago, when Time Extension ran a feature on our struggles, we weren't optimistic about turning things around.

There was a crisis of confidence that perhaps we weren't needed, weren't wanted, or that the community wasn't interested. The response was the complete opposite. We received around 400 new supporters, bringing in roughly ¥160,000 (£830 / $1100) per month. There were hundreds of new emails in our inbox, which we are still going through. The response was overwhelming and deeply heartwarming. In fact, we now have more supporters from outside Japan than from within.

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In 2024, FX released Shōgun, a new 10-episode miniseries starring Hiroyuki Sanada and Cosmo Jarvis, based on the 1975 historical novel by James Clavell.

The show, which like the book documented the adventures of the English sailor John Blackthorne in 17th century Japan, became a huge hit with critics and audiences, eventually leading to further seasons of the show being greenlit. Reviewers, in particular, praised the show for its performances, writing, and direction, with the famous video game designer Hideo Kojima also heaping praise upon the series, comparing it favourably to "Game of Thrones" in his own assessment on social media.

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One of the formative figures of video games is Tomohiro Nishikado. Known for creating the arcade game smash hit Space Invaders, I caught up with him about his long and storied career.

“I was born in Osaka, in a place called Kishiwada, and I spent most of my young life there until I moved to Tokyo when I was 18, when I went to university. My father ran a business related to the making and maintenance of craftsmen's tools. So when I was growing up, I could always find spare materials and tools to make things.

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Developed as the first game to specifically require the use of the DualShock controller, Sony Computer Entertainment's 1999 platformer Ape Escape (known in Japan as Saru Getchu) was built around a pretty simple yet ingenious premise.

A bunch of mischievous primates have escaped from a lab and have been sent back through time, so it falls to you, the player, to travel across the different eras to recapture them, using the DualShock’s analog sticks as your primary method of control. In the game, players would take on the role of a young boy named Spike (referred to as Kakeru in the Japanese version of the game), having access to an impressive array of toy-like gadgets to track and trap these rampaging simians, with the end goal ultimately being to put a stop to their nefarious ringleader: the evil monkey mastermind, Specter.

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When the Dreamcast launched, I was fully invested in Sega's ecosystem. Sure, I'd flirted with the PS1 and N64, but the Saturn—with its generous selection of 2D fighting games from Capcom and SNK—was my go-to system at that point. It was hopeful, then, that Sega's next system would continue this tradition, and the arrival of titles like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter III, Capcom vs. SNK 2, King of Fighters '99 and many, many more affirmed that.

There was one big problem—the standard Dreamcast controller was terrible for fighting games, at least compared to the legendary Saturn six-button pad.

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If you've ever been lucky enough to visit the historic UK city of York, then there's a good chance you've visited the excellent Sore Thumb Retro Games, an independent store packed to the rafters with video games, anime products, vintage toys and much, much more.

As a regular visitor to the city, I've been popping in multiple times each year and on a recent trip, store owner Lee Cunningham mentioned that Sore Thumb is getting its very own video game—and if that wasn't cool enough, it's been coded by the 13-year-old David Carter.

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Cast your mind back to the video game landscape of the early '90s, and 2D remains king. Granted, 3D gaming was on the rise thanks to titles such as Star Fox, Alone in the Dark, Virtua Racing and Doom, but with the wave of 32-bit consoles yet to materialise, the industry was at an odd crossroads; CD-ROM tech had mostly been used for FMV and pre-rendered titles like The 7th Guest, Night Trap and Myst—games which promised an immersive, cinematic experience yet lacked a deep and meaningful degree of interaction.

Into this landscape, a tiny two-man UK studio released a game which offered an innovative way to represent characters in 3D whilst maintaining a film-like level of storytelling and player agency, making it far more suitable for the name "interactive movie" than any of the FMV pretenders of the 1990s; it also joins Alone in the Dark as a pre-Resident Evil example of a what would eventually be known as "survival horror". That game was 1994's Ecstatica, developed by Andrew Spencer (of Andrew Spencer Studios) and Alain Maindron.

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"Currently, in our bank account, we have £2100 (around $2800). It's not even enough to pay the rent for one month," explains Joseph Redon, head of the Japanese Game Preservation Society. He's describing the end of the non-profit organisation he set up in 2011 with the aim of properly safeguarding Japanese gaming history before it is lost forever.

The GPS has successfully preserved thousands of Japanese games—including many floppy discs, which have a finite lifespan—and related media, such as magazines and books. Honorary members of the society include Tomohiro Nishikado (creator of Space Invaders), Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage composer), Yoshio Kiya (Dragon Slayer, Sorcerian) and Tokihiro Naito (creator of Hydlide)—yet, despite attracting the support of such legendary figures and operating in one of the world's most influential nations when it comes to interactive entertainment, the organisation is on its last legs.

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If you had to create a shortlist of the most colourful and creative Sega games, Samba de Amigo would no doubt rank toward the top.

Arriving in arcades back in 1999 (and on the Sega Dreamcast one year later in 2000), Sonic Team's Latin-inspired rhythm game about a sombrero-wearing monkey named Amigo was an instant hit with players, drawing a ton of praise at the time for its unique maraca-shaking gameplay, as well as its stylish art design and radio-friendly soundtrack. Because of this, it has since gone on to become regarded as something of a classic in Sega's back catalogue, and later ended up inspiring a Nintendo Wii port in 2008, as well as a multi-platform sequel, Samba de Amigo: Party Central, in 2023.

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In December 1996, Sony Computer Entertainment published the video game PaRappa the Rapper in Japan – a groundbreaking title about a paper-thin rapping dog on a quest to win the heart of his beloved (a humanoid flower named Sunny Funny).

Developed by NanaOn-Sha – a game company that was founded several years earlier by the Japanese pop star Masaya Matsuura (of the band Psy•s) – the title went on to become a worldwide sleeper hit and has since acquired a passionate fanbase thanks to its charming visuals (designed by the American artist and graphic designer Rodney Greenblat) and its memorable tunes featuring catchy lyrics about everything from learning karate (“Kick! Punch! It's all in the mind”) to needing the restroom.

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The latest season of Charlie Brooker's superbly subversive Black Mirror has recently gone live on Netflix, and one episode in particular will be of interest to gaming fans: Plaything.

In it, murder suspect Cameron Walker, a former video game reviewer, reveals that he has been "playing" an unreleased life simulation game from the genius programmer Colin Ritman for many years, with the aim of revolutionising human life as we know it.

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Jon Hare is a figure whose name is likely to conjure up warm nostalgic feelings in the hearts of many who grew up playing computer games in the UK in the '80s and '90s.

As one of the co-founders behind the influential software house Sensible Software, he helped design some of the best football games for home computers like Microprose Soccer, Sensible Soccer, and Sensible World of Soccer, as well as a bunch of other non-sports-related titles too, such as Parallax, Wizball, and Cannon Fodder.

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The ModRetro Chromatic made waves for a number of reasons when it launched last year, and rightly so. Representing a way to buy "new" Game Boy Color hardware in the modern era, it boasted super-accurate FPGA technology, a robust design and a great screen. The Chromatic quickly gained a lot of interest from the retro gaming community—and the fact that ModRetro was also going to be publishing a host of homebrew Game Boy titles to accompany the console only added to its appeal.

The Chromatic also earned plenty of praise from games media; I gave it a glowing 8/10 review, saying it was so good Nintendo itself probably couldn't have done a better job. I wasn't alone in this judgement; The Verge said it was "among the best ever made" in the field of aftermarket Game Boys, while GamesRadar called it "a remarkable modern Game Boy that'll outlive my original". GameSpot called it a "remarkable recreation" of Nintendo's original handheld, and Nintendo World Report said it was "the closest thing to perfection as you can get." Retro Dodo said it was "the perfect modernised Game Boy" in its review—and many other outlets were equally effusive in their praise.

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