Wes Fenlon

Wes Fenlon digs into the stories and histories that sit behind PC games, hardware, and the communities that form around them, treating PC gaming as a culture as much as a platform. He works as a senior editor at PC Gamer, concentrating on long-form features that foreground personal narratives, design intent, and the evolution of niche corners of the medium. His beat spans games, hardware, and technology, but the through-line in his coverage is an interest in how players, creators, and machines intersect over time. His work often returns to retro games, Japanese systems, emulation, and fan-made projects, using them to explain where PC gaming has come from and where it is going.

Features from the corners of PC gaming

Fenlon’s author bio at PC Gamer describes more than a decade of experience covering games and hardware, with a particular focus on PC and a brief at earlier tech publications before joining PC Gamer in 2014.

Within the masthead he focuses on writing and editing features, explicitly seeking out personal stories and in-depth histories from niche communities rather than daily news hits or routine reviews. That remit shows up in pieces like his recurring “This month in PC Gamer 10, 20 and 30 years ago” column, which revisits past magazine issues, early virtual reality experiments, and landmark releases such as Battlefield 2142 and Total War to situate contemporary PC gaming in its historical context. He also maintains recommendation-focused features and lists, curating games that fit his taste for interesting systems and overlooked corners of the catalogue rather than simply the latest blockbusters.

His portfolio is broad - PC Gamer’s archive includes coverage ranging from unusual action games to deep dives on classic series - but the tone is consistent: he writes in a feature mode, even when the subject is topical. A piece on the return of the “world’s foremost PC gamer” as Superman, for example, treats the story as a cultural moment at the intersection of celebrity, fandom, and platform identity rather than a straightforward casting update. In his recommended games and features pages, he frequently highlights titles with intricate systems or strong community identities, resonating with his stated interest in stories about how games affect culture and how they are made.

Across these articles, he operates more as a curator and historian of PC gaming than as a beat reporter chasing announcements or patch notes.

Retro games, emulation, and Japanese hardware

Fenlon’s author bio emphasizes that he “always jumps at the chance” to cover emulation and Japanese games, which defines a clear sub-beat within his broader PC gaming focus. He has written about a video on old Japanese PCs that is described as “delightfully 80s and extremely British,” using it as a springboard to explore obscure hardware platforms and the software ecosystems that grew around them. In feature work on retro game recompilations, he argues that paying attention to modern collections and restorations of older titles is essential because they represent some of the most exciting developments in gaming, tying together preservation, accessibility, and new audiences for decades-old work. These stories foreground the technical and cultural work required to keep older games playable, framing emulation and recompilations as central to the future of PC gaming rather than a niche hobby.

His interest in retro material extends into his personal play habits, which he references in his bio through long-term obsessions with games like Satisfactory, older Final Fantasy titles, and ASCII roguelikes.

That personal affinity for complex, system-heavy games informs his perspective when he writes about older platforms and compilations, and it shapes the kinds of projects he highlights for readers. In practice, this means he often treats retro releases and esoteric hardware stories as opportunities to explain why certain design traditions matter and how they survive through ports, remasters, and fan preservation. For anyone working on projects that touch emulation, retro collections, or Japanese PC heritage, he is attuned to both the technical details and the cultural stakes.

Fan projects, niche games, and communities

Fenlon pays sustained attention to fan-driven projects and unusual games that sit slightly outside the mainstream, using them to illustrate how communities build and maintain their own versions of PC gaming. His feature on a full Metroid Prime 2D demake, created over three years in secret by fans, foregrounds the craft and commitment involved, celebrating the project while acknowledging the risks posed by enforcement from rights holders. In coverage of China’s “anime GTA” Ananta, he focuses on the sheer eclecticism of its world - Spider-Man swinging, Batman punching, and a vampire who vomits rainbows - treating the game as a case study in how global pop culture and local development collide. He has also authored “A newbie plays Dwarf Fortress” episodes, leaning into the learning curve and community storytelling around that notoriously complex simulation to show what it feels like to enter a long-established niche.

This pattern extends to his coverage of original games and hybrids such as Star Wars: Galactic Racer, where he explores how ex-Burnout developers blend deckbuilding mechanics and roguelike structure into a racing game to create “real consequence” in each race. Across these pieces, Fenlon is less interested in surface novelty than in what drives creators and communities to invest years into a project or a genre. His writing tends to highlight the human effort, modding culture, and design experimentation that sit behind finished games, positioning fan work and offbeat titles as key parts of the PC ecosystem rather than side notes. That emphasis makes his coverage a useful lens on projects that depend on dedicated communities, mod scenes, or unusual genre mashups.

Hardware, events, and how games are made

While primarily a games writer, Fenlon’s background includes hardware and technology coverage, and he continues to fold those interests into his work at PC Gamer. He has reported from events such as CES 2016, outlining what to expect from the show and focusing on PC-related announcements and hardware trends that shape how games are played.

His professional profile describes a focus on stories about how games and hardware are made, tying production processes - both on the software and hardware side - to the experiences players have on PC. That perspective surfaces in features that look beyond the finished product to development histories, manufacturing details, and the technical infrastructures behind PC gaming.

Combined with his long tenure at PC Gamer and earlier work at technology-focused outlets, this gives his reporting a dual emphasis on player experience and underlying systems. He is comfortable moving between coverage of graphics and performance, event-driven hardware news, and narrative features about development and design, so long as the story connects to how PC gaming functions in practice.

For stories that require explaining technical decisions, hardware constraints, or the path from prototype to release, Fenlon approaches the topic as an opportunity to document process rather than simply to report specs.