When you think of Nintendo, it's almost impossible not to picture Donkey Kong. Yet despite Donkers' undeniable place in gaming history – and obligatory appearances in Smash Bros and Mario Kart – for the last few console generations, Donkey Kong platformers have been MIA. Enter DK's first standalone adventure in 11 years, Donkey Kong Bananza. While Mario's recent adventures saw him exploring the reaches of outer space or deftly possessing enemies with an anthropomorphic hat, DK's grand return is all about primal rage. As you smash and punch your way through walls, floors and ceilings, you can burrow all the way to the ground below, forging new paths and unearthing hidden treasures.

If you were an obsessive video game fan in the summer of 1994, you'll remember where you were when Edge magazine's August issue dropped. By then, Sony had already announced its intention to develop the PlayStation console – the previous October – but it was the cover feature in the world's most forward-looking game publication that really blew open the possibilities of the machine. As well as listing its specifications in full, Edge secured enthusiastic statements of support from Capcom, Namco and Konami. One breathless developer told the mag: "It's going to revolutionise the way computers are at the moment." Suddenly, the whole structure of the console games business was being threatened. All it needed was a push.

In 2022, Tony Hawk is a household name, skateboarding is an olympic sport and it's possible to master digital laser flips in any number of video games on TV. Early skate screen media consisted mostly of skeptical documentaries or whimsical California dreaming-style chronicles. Things changed when, in 1983, Stacy Peralta – who managed the ragtag team of skaters that Tony Hawk was a member of – effectively invented the modern skate video. Thanks to its performative nature, skateboarding would soon form a symbiotic relationship with the technology that showcased it. Peralta claims he hoped a few hundred copies of his first video might find their way into the new VHS players that were taking the US by storm.

Arcade-style sports games had quite the following in the early and mid-2000s. From Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to the many iterations of FIFA and NFL titles, these games had lasting impact on players, with many continuing to play new games or seeing remakes or remasters of their favorites. One such series was SSX, the popular snowboarding game that was released just over 20 years ago. SSX was the first title from EA Sports Big, a new-at-the-time addition to the EA developer umbrella. The game received critical acclaim across the board and received several awards, including 2001 Console Game of the Year from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.

Skating through a hi-def recreation of the late-1990s shopping mall in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 2 is, uh, strange. Everything is right where you left it 20 years ago: the smash-able glass, the empty storefronts, the bizarre nouveau-art display that for so long seemed like the epitome of consumerist architecture. And despite the fact that the video game franchise has felt beyond dead, it's all here in glorious, remastered detail. Yet none of that is what makes it feel odd. What's peculiar about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 2 is its doubled nostalgia: nostalgia for the time when I obsessed over the original games, for that world, and also for the world itself, the place that existed before Covid-19 quarantines and pandemic isolation.

When skateboarding video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater arrived on the PlayStation in 1999, no one could have expected the cultural impact it would have or how much muscle memory it would ingrain into dedicated fans. It was an enormous hit with skaters and non-skaters alike, helping to usher in a more-mainstream acceptance of skateboarding culture, define a new video game genre and teach tens of thousands the words to Motörhead's "Ace of Spades." Twenty-one years after the release of the first game, publisher Activision and developer Vicarious Visions will release Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 2, a ground-up remaster of the first two games, on Sept. 4, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. And while it sticks very closely to its source, the new game feels like it belongs in 2020, with a greater focus on representation and a firm grounding in that angsty skate culture aesthetic. Tony Hawk himself couldn't be more excited about the release. "You don't understand how many people ask me about [Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2]," Hawk told TIME.

The launch of the PlayStation 5 is still running on schedule despite the coronavirus outbreak, according to Sony. The company said that it has seen significant changes to the way it works – but that development is still continuing as expected. Sony said earlier this year that the console was planned for the holiday period at the end of this year, along with the Xbox Series X. And though the outbreak has led to "some challenges", it is still progressing as scheduled, the company said. Sony gave the update in a new results release, which also indicated a rise in the number of people buying and downloading games during lockdowns.

Sony has revealed the PlayStation for the upcoming PS5 – and claims it is a "radical departure" from what has gone before. Named "DualSense", the controller comes with a variety of new features including haptic feedback, new triggers that can make themselves harder to push, a built-in microphone and a whole new redesign. The chief change in that redesign appears to be that the controller is larger and bulkier than the DualShock 4 that came with the PlayStation 4, borrowing a design more akin to the chunkier Xbox One controller. PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said the controller marks a "radical departure" from its previous generations, and promised that more about the console – including its design – would be unveiled in the coming months. Both Xbox and PlayStation have taken the unusual step of showing off a variety of details about their new consoles, months ahead of their "Holiday 2020" release schedules.

When Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was released 20 years ago this week, initial projections for the game were modest. Although Sega's Top Skater had been a hit in the arcades two years before, and there had been a couple of early hits such as 720 and Skate or Die, the idea of an in-depth skating sim was untested. Activision aimed to ship 250,000 copies and developer Neversoft just hoped there would be an opportunity to make a sequel. The game went on to sell more than 5m copies across PlayStation, Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 and its success spawned one of the most popular franchises in video game history, generating more than $1.4bn in sales. Within days of release, it was clear players were forming a deeper relationship with the sim than either the developer or publisher had ever expected.

Tony Hawk knows that his last video game, Pro Skater 5, was a flop. The PS4 version has a 32 rating on Metacritic, a site that aggregates review scores from IGN, Game Informer and other media outlets. The PS1 version of Pro Skater 2, for comparison, has a near-perfect 98 rating, while Pro Skater 3 and 4, developed primarily for the PS2, have 97 and 94 scores respectively. Tony Hawk-branded video games have been inconsistent since 2007's Proving Ground, the last title developed by series pioneer Neversoft Entertainment. Tony Hawk: Ride and Shred, which revolved around a physical skateboard peripheral, were a gimmicky mess.