jason brown

Jason Brown

I’m Jason Brown, writer and all round retro games expert for Retro Dodo.

My love for video games began at a very young age, when I encountered arcade machines such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man, most often on trips to the seaside as a tiny, impressionable child.

Back then, barely able to even reach up to the controls, the lights and sounds of every game in the arcade seemed to call to me – and I’ve never lost that sense of wonder and awe when it comes to video games.

In the early 90s, I got my first job in the video games industry at a publisher/distributor – and held many more positions in the industry, at various levels and at different companies, over the following decades.

My writing work began way back in the late 90s, with the first published review content for CeX – which gave my verdict on F-Zero X on the N64. 

Passion

I grew up practically worshipping arcade games – at a time when arcades were the place to be for new and exciting experiences that couldn’t quite be matched at home.

Nevertheless, my love for arcades and for Sega’s arcade titles in particular led to me getting my first ever console, the Sega Master System, in the late 80s.

Games such as Wonder Boy in Monster Land (the first game I ever completed), Spy vs Spy and Bank Panic remain some of my favourite titles of all time, giving me gaming memories that’ll last forever.

However, as far as consoles go, the SNES has to be my favourite – with titles such as Super Mario World and Zelda: A Link to the Past remaining utter classics that have stood the test of time like few other games before or since.

Having had at least one console in every generation at home since the Atari 2600, my gaming knowledge and passion extends almost as far back as the existence of home console gaming itself!

Expertise

Though my review for CeX is now lost in the mists of time, some 25 years or so after it was published, you can find thousands of my articles online.

In addition to my work for Retro Dodo, you can also find my work on sister site Card Gamer, as well as in places as diverse as Polygon, Nintendo Life, JumpCut Play and my own blog, midlifegamergeek.com. 

My work has also appeared in print publications, such as Lost in Cult’s [lock-on] and A Handheld History, as well as the sadly defunct Pixel Bison and Knucklebones magazines.

I write for my blog daily, with a much wider scope than ‘just’ gaming – covering comics, books, films, TV shows and tabletop gaming, amongst other things.