Happy Monster Hunter Wilds week to all who celebrate: Capcom's thrilling action game has sold 8m units in three days, which means that quite a lot of you are likely to be playing it. I'm a huge fan of this series and am delighted by the latest entry, but after filing the review last week, I've barely had a minute to play it since it came out. Regular readers will know that this is a familiar problem for me: I have two kids, so my gaming time is tight, and the living room TV is very often in use. I anticipated this, so in the run-up to Monster Hunter Wilds' release, I spent 200 on a PlayStation Portal – essentially a screen sandwiched between two halves of a PlayStation 5 controller. I can't decide whether it's one of the most unwieldy things that Sony has ever come out with, or one of the most elegant.

Nothing will make you feel old like the anniversary of a much loved gaming console. Perhaps none more so than the 40th birthday of the Nintendo Entertainment System (or the Famicom as it was known for its 1983 Japanese debut). Having launched in the very same year that the games industry crashed, Nintendo faced an uphill battle to make what would become the NES a commercial success. But we all know what happens next. Nintendo, through some shrewd decisions, creative talent and maybe just a dash of luck would become a console gaming right up to this very day.

Since its 2017 release, the Nintendo Switch has become a household game console for gamers and non-gamers alike. Few consoles penetrate the mainstream deeply enough to have parents referring to a console by its proper name, instead of their children's "Gameboy" or "Wii". Even fewer come together as a complete package that ties together the ideologies and technical ideas of their preceding consoles like the Nintendo Switch has. This graphic visualizes the Nintendo Switch sales success story alongside more than 20 years of Nintendo console sales. Nintendo has a long and storied history in gaming--but since the release of the original Game Boy in 1989, the company has favored a two-pronged approach with its game consoles: having both a portable handheld console and a home console which connects to a TV on the market.

In the early '80s, that elusive dream manifested as Laserdisc interactive cartoons (such as Konami's spectacular 1984 Western, "Badlands") and VHS-powered, live-action shooting galleries (developed for experimental home consoles, like the Action Max). Both approaches ensured a measure of spectacle light-years ahead of anything offered by the home consoles of the era, but the price for their visual extravagance was rigid, predetermined action sequences and a lack of meaningful engagement. Players would simply point plastic guns at their TV set to rack up points or wait for the prompt to perform button presses that had little to do with what happened on the screen -- early precursors to contemporary quick time events.

Hey, 1994 called and it wants its Super Metroid mechanics back. Then again, classic Metroid gameplay is not a bad thing and that's exactly what Metroid Dread delivers for series fans on the Nintendo Switch. Old-school gamers got an appetizer of what a modern 2D Metroid looked like four years ago in Mercury Steam's "Metroid: Samus Returns" for the 3DS. Now the studio is back with the entire full course as Metroid Dread doubles down on the classic formula that helped give rise to a whole genre now known as "Metroidvania." For folks who haven't played a game in the series since Super Metroid, 27 years is a long time – even longer if you go back to the original Metroid from 1986.

Pong was, however, the game that kickstarted the video arcade and home console industries, the profitability of its hardware and the simplicity of the gameplay – just two bats, a ball and a scoring system – ensuring its huge success and iconic afterlife. Devised by development engineer George J Klose as a means of repurposing calculator chips, it was a big success, leading to Mattel's legendary American football and soccer titles, and no doubt piquing the interest of a certain Nintendo engineer … It's a formative space shooter, with the player battling two computer controlled UFOs amid a rudimentary star-scape, but it's that curvaceous fibre glass cabinet (which earned the game a cameo in the 1973 sci-fi movie Soylent Green) that we'll always remember. Players aim and fire at passing battleships, targeting them via a rotating periscope fixed to the front of the cab. Its success inspired the nascent arcade industry to experiment with elaborate novelty interfaces, a factor that proved vital in maintaining the success of the coin-op industry as home consoles proliferated. Western Gun (1975, Taito) Alongside Tank, Western Gun (known as Gun Fight in the US) helped lay the foundations of the multidirectional shooter genre, allowing two players to navigate a cactus-strewn landscape, blasting six-guns at each other until one cowboy fell.

It's been a big year for gaming. To help you shop for the gamer in your life, whether you, a family member or a friend, we've rounded up seven fantastic deals that make excellent gifts for gamers. This HCG1 Pro Gaming Headset is an excellent addition to any gaming setup. It's universally compatible with all of your favorite platforms, working seamlessly with your PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch and any other device that allows a 3.5mm audio jack. Just as valuable, this pro gaming headset provides you with incredible audio and sound.

Quarantining during the coronavirus pandemic has helped us discover our inner video game fan. Sales of video games have surged this year, as both adults and kids stuck at home turn to gaming to stay entertained and connect with friends. During the second quarter, between April and June, total consumer spending on video games in the U.S. hit a record $11.6 billion, research firm NPD Group reports, up 30% from last year. "During the pandemic, many have turned to video games not only to keep them preoccupied, but also to stay in touch with family and friends," NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. For many parents with tweens and older children, video games can serve as an outlet to maintain fledgling relationships with classmates unable to physically connect at school.

Could Nintendo be having its heyday? There have certainly been ups and downs in the past few years, but the success of the Nintendo Switch console has truly put the House of Mario back on the map, and offered a viable and portable alternative to the encumbering home consoles offered by Sony and Microsoft. The secret to this success may be in quantity: Nintendo has released far more console iterations in the last decade than competing console makers, with a medley of handheld and home hardware models releasing in relatively quick succession. While this offered a lot of chances to get things wrong – which certainly happened at points – it also provided the opportunity to turn things around. And the willingness to experiment and innovate in the form factor of its gaming hardware has been crucial to get Nintendo to where it is today.

The Stadia is nothing short of revolutionary. Its core technology delivers on a promise decades in the making: console-quality gaming, without the console. But revolutions have unpredictable outcomes, leave a trail of destruction in their wake, and have a tendency to destroy those who start them. Will Google be able to see this through? Once Stadia is up and running, the system is nearly indistinguishable from playing a game on a console sitting under your TV, except there's no fan noise, no downloads or discs, and, well, no console. The bulk of my time on the Stadia was spent with the system in traditional TV mode.