What are “grabs”?

Grabs are basically still screenshots of video games. It’s an old term, used by magazines during the desktop publishing and video games magazine explosion of the 1990s. Before that it was photography. Since then: grabbing has become a lot more mainstream and sophisticated.

I love grabbing because it combines playing games (which I love) and photography (which I also love). You’re basically taking photos inside the game as you play. And getting good screenshots is a skill in itself. I’ve been interested in video game screenshots since the early days of Crash and Zzap!64 magazines, and addicted to it since I got a professional job doing it. Having worked on magazines that required good screenshots: I’m well versed in the art. And grabbing now is still huge fun.

Many modern consoles have grabbers built-in, and also emulators are a great way of getting screenshots of great old games that are still playable now. I go through phases playing games. I like to move around systems and periods in time. I want to play everything and screenshot games that are worth a play now. In short: I’ll never stop grabbing. Until the day I die.

And, past jobs working on video games magazines has resulted in quite a collection of screenshots on my hard drive. Many for games that were never released. Of course, almost all the screenshots on here I’ve taken myself. But a small few were given to me during the course of my work as an editor on PC Zone, PC Power and PC Player magazines. I kept a lot of the screenshots I acquired over the decades, and some I will be releasing on here for the first time.

Important note: there is no such word as “addicting”. It’s “addic-TIVE”. Anyone who uses the word “addicting” on this website will be put to death by firing squad.

You Have Been Warned, The King of Grabs