Welcome back to some serious EOFY savings. Hot Deals on Hardware seems to be the unofficial theme of the day—cheap VR headsets and greatly reduced “fancy colour” controllers, to be specific. I’m also liking the look of Red Dead Redemption II going for a mere $24. For what that game delivers, that’s an insane price point. Buy it. Play it. Thank me later, pardner.

In retro news, I’m celebrating the 34th birthday of Bonanza Bros., a coin-op great that begat a ton of console conversions. Crafted by a small team at Sega—which included artist/designer Manabu Kusunoki, who would later go on to work on Panzer Dragoon—this System 24 title played and looked like nothing else at the time. I can recall loving its 2.5D level design, the comedic animations of its titular robber “heroes,” and the rarity of being able to loot these 12 levels via 2P split-screen co-op.

This Day in Gaming

Aussie birthdays for notable games.

– Bonanza Bros. (ARC) 1990. Get

– Goemon’s Great Adventure (N64) 1998. Ebay

– Anna Kournikova’s Smash Court Tennis (PS) 1998. Ebay

– MTV Music Generator 3 (PS2,XB) 2004. Ebay

– Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PC,PS4,XO) 2019. Get