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So I just got my Dingoo yesterday, and after checking out a few games, videos, and music on it I thought I'll write up a review. Overall, I'm impressed with this portable gaming system, though it has a few software flaws which hopefully will be improved or corrected.

The 16-bit era might just have been the most exciting time in the video game industry. Rivalries were never quite as intense as those between Nintendo and Sega, not to mention underdogs like NEC/Hudson (with the TurboGrafx-16) and SNK's Neo-Geo. Nintendo knew that in order to take back market share from Sega, their Super Nintendo Entertainment System would have to provide gamers with some show-stopping titles.

I have been playing video games on my personal computer for at least twelve years, and in that time I have probably played hundreds of titles. Some games were fascinating at first, but quickly lost their appeal. Others, however, can stand the test of time, and are clearly true classics in the genre that I still have fun playing, many years after they were first published. As such, I write this article as my homage to retro-gaming - the ten best old PC games I have ever played.

The fighting game genre has spawned many classics- I know that for myself and many other gamers, some of our earliest or fondest arcade memories are set to countless games of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. I begged my mom for a video game console after playing Mortal Kombat in the arcade, and probably wouldn't have ever ended up a gamer at all if not for those (at the time) wonderful graphics and enthralling shouts of "Finish him!". Here, in no particular order, are five classic fighters that this reviewer thinks stand at the top of the heap.

When it comes to video games, the choices are almost innumerable. Even within a certain genre, many great games vie for your dollar. All of these choices make picking a top game extremely difficult, even from within a genre.

Dreamcast is hailed by video game players as the machine that could have been great, but thanks to the mass popularity of Sony and its push for more advanced hardware (in some ways) Dreamcast was killed coming out of the gates; doomed to suck the smoke of the Playstation 2 and X-box. The machine itself was impressive though and brought console gamers on to the Internet before Internet gaming with consoles was even the big thing. I owned a Dreamcast and thought it was awesome, though my game collection was not a list of titles hailed by purist. However, I can still name my top five games, regardless of the mass opinion on any of these, they brought me a lot of fun for a long time.

On September 9th, the Sega Dreamcast turns ten years old. Although the video game system was short-lived and lead to Sega leaving the console manufacturing business, it holds a special place in the industry thanks to its many innovations and especially great titles. Here are five Sega Dreamcast games that still hold up well ten years after the system launched.

These Games Are Action Packed, Heart Pounding Monuments in Video Game History

My choices for the Top Ten Games on the Sega Genesis video game system are not aligned with any popular vote or critical ratings from gaming sites. These are the games I recall having the most fun with, regardless of mass popularity.

When the Super Nintendo video game system was on the market, battling it out with the Sega Genesis system, I owned a Sega. However, I had friends who owned the Super NES and from time to time would play it. Comprising a very long list of Super NES games would be difficult for me, but I can list the three that I remember the most. On the Sega Genesis I enjoyed a variety of game styles, but most of my friends were into fighting games. So, when I was watching other people play the Super Nintendo it tended to be one of the Mortal Combat games getting shown off. Below are the top three games I enjoyed playing myself.

  Remember the '80's? Odds are if you're a gamer just hearing that makes you think of the good old Nintendo Entertainment System. The big N's first console to ship to North America, the N.E.S. was one of, if not the, most important game console of all time. It single handedly rejuvenated the video game market after the crash of 1983. It also was the birth console of some of the biggest names in gaming today. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Contra, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, they all started on Nintendo's gray box.

Gaming itself lives, learns, breeds, turns ill, and even dies just like a living creature. Whether the economy is good or bad, it often thrives. When the winds of change blow over it, it shifts to remain relevant. When a fixture of gaming's popularity spills over, it breeds new forms of media- music, a movie, toys, so-on. When it stubbornly refuses to innovate, it suffers from low interest and weakened demand. Gaming even collapsed and died at one point- only to be revived later, much akin to the mythical phoenix's life cycle. Most of all though, gaming evolves alongside its surroundings in order to survive.

The Atari 7800 never had a chance. Stacked against the dominant NES and a stubborn Master System, Atari's competitor was doomed to fail. The console was created in 1983 for full release the following year, but the faltering videogame market forced Atari to full it back. The ascension of the NES proved that consoles were still quite viable (if marketed correctly with good games), so Atari dusted off its shelved system. By the time it was released in 1986, the 7800 was saddled with tech a few years behind the curve. The comparisons between the 7800's launch library - which was also completed in 1984 - and the games burning up the NES and SMS were dismal. The system suffered little third-party support. It was eventually binned in 1991.

We've all heard of the Atari classic Space Invaders, right? Sure, of course, because we're not a pack of pop-culturally ignorant mother-scratchers. The same can be said about Dig-Dug and Breakout and Asteroids. These are the major titles, the games we all know and love to play.

Most people don't realize that I didn't get my start at the San Francisco Chronicle as the universally beloved pop culture critic that you know today. I was actually a Chronicle paperboy in the early-to-mid 1980s.