Game-Art-HQ

Loaded is a top down view action shooting game from December 1995 and played a bit like Smash T.V & Gauntlet in 3D and a totally different setting, full of macabre elements and a very black humor, spiced up with a great soundtrack, fun and crazy characters like Fwank the Clown, awesome (for its time) color and lightning effects and a flawless multiplayer mode.

Loaded was one of the first Playstation games I ever played and was blown away as a 15 year old. The graphics were great, the gameplay super fun, especially while playing it with a friend and the music was just flawless. In fact I remember listening to the music often while using a cd player. Quite a shame that such an option ..maybe to download mp3 files from the digital or bluray games today is not a standard.

Loaded was a commercial success and got a sequel called Re-Loaded around a year later. The developers however, Gremlin Interactive were bought by Infogrames and well..that company is no more as well. Both games were sadly never ported to PSN and are only available as the old original copies on CD.

It was a surprise to me that Loaded was claimed for the Playstation Anniversary Project, but a very nice one, thanks a lot for this one @ C.R.O.F.T

“I missed ‘Loaded’ on release but got hold of it later on for it’s sheer craziness of the characters and backstory. Developed by Gremlin Interactive in the UK (woot yay!), Loaded is violent, bloody and consists of lots of shooting and blowing things up! Each character has their own style and weapon, and as an avid comic book collector as well as game player was delighted by comic book illustrators having a hand in the designs and graphics.Then I found out that the game had a comic written by Garth Ennis, man I needed that!…actually it still eludes my collection!

Here we have all six playable characters (Fwank, Vox, Cap’n’hands, Butch, Mamma, Bounca) in Level 1 Prison Holding Cells. Even though you could only play up to two characters at one time, I wanted all of them in my picture as I couldn’t choose a favourite; they’re all awesome. The colour and style reflects the game…no fairies and flowers here! Even though I did tone the blood down for the less mature audience.

It’s good to see the Playstation brand still going strong, the Sony consoles certainly weaned me off of Nintendo back in the day. 20 years on and the Playstation will probably be around in some form or another for the next 20 years. So enjoy my tribute to the original Playstation and all the other artists’ pieces showing that there is still a huge fanbase for older games and game related art.”