WRITING

The History of SEGA

The History of SEGA is a forthcoming book I am writing for White Owl Books in the UK, covering the entire history of this illustrious video game company. It's something of a dream come true as a life-long SEGA fan, and I've been putting my all into it. I really hope you check it out once it hits book stores!

SUBSTACK

Since 2024, the majority of my writing has appeared on Substack. For those who may not be aware, Substack is a platform semi-social network that allows writers a place to publish their work as part of a newsletter and to establish a subscription-based audience, both paid and unpaid. At the moment my newsletter is totally free and I post both in-depth articles and lighter, more blog-like pieces. You can mind the four most recent Substack articles on the front page of this site. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing. 

GAME TRIPPER

A website that celebrates the love people have for weird, non-mainstream video games, I was invited to write an article on my own favourite diamond-in-the-rough title, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. 

GAMES THAT WEREN'T

As the name suggests, GamesThatWeren't details the known details of games that never saw release. They also covered my discover of the Phantom and Mandrake GBA games.

PHANTOM 2040

In 1994 an animated series that saw the Phantom placed in the (then) far-future world of the year 2040 debuted. Along with it came a video game adaptation that has since gone on to earn a cult fan base in both the retro game and Phantom communities. As the history of retro video games is also an interest of mine, I set about trying to learn all I could about the Phantom 2040 game. This eventually lead me to get in contact with Brian Babendererde, lead designer on the game. Brian was kind enough to not only answer a few questions about the game, but also shared design documents, sprite sheets and more. You can read my interview at the following links;

Part One / Part Two


LOST PHANTOM & MANDRAKE GAMES

In 2009, website Unseen64.net released information about cancelled games based upon The Phantom and Lee Falk’s earlier comic strip hero, Mandrake the Magician. Apart from some screenshots and that the games went unreleased due to the publisher going bankrupt, there was very little information about the games. Being a fan of both characters as well as having an interest in retro games, I decided to try and find out some more information.

After a fair bit of research, Twitter conversations and e-mail back-and-forths I got in touch with Sebastiano Mandala, one of the developers of the two games. Thanks to Mandala, I was able to share the history of the games’ development, design documents, concept sketches, a promotional trailer and, most excitingly, playable ROM dumps of both games. These can now be accessed through ChronicleChamber.com’s Preservation Project. You can also read more about the games on the ChronicleChamber site.