Spike Chunsoft is onto a particular theme right now. A few weeks ago it released a game designed to evoke a very specific cultural nostalgia that is core to a lot of aesthetics and narrative themes over there. Now, with Bakeru, it is tapping into something very different in terms…
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Tennis is a difficult sport to bring into video game form. It’s not because the sport itself is mechanically challenging. Compared to the likes of football it is limited both in terms of the number of players competing and the expansive flow of the game. And compared to something like…
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Without trying to be too controversially political about a game that is really little more than a philosophical manifesto with some gameplay bits and comic book graphics squished in between the lecture, there’s an ugly superficiality about what passes for mainstream left-wing politics in America. Dustborn is a textbook case…
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Schools are excellent locations for horror. They’re a shared experience for most of us, so developers benefit from the familiarity and can play on that to set up unease. Attending school is also a highly emotional experience that covers the full gamut thanks to a combination of societal pressure and…
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Ticket To Ride is, along with Catan, on the way to be our generation’s Monopoly and Risk. First released back in 2004, is has sold 18 million copies, been translated into most major languages, and has had innumerable expansions added to it. There have also been multiple video game adaptations,…
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I would be excellent at Survivor. I’m fully convinced of that. The people that go on that show are idiots. I’d go on there, get a little clique “alliance” together, play them off one another like they’re chess pieces, own that I was a total sociopath about it at that…
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It’s amazing to think that this is the first time there has been an official release of Fate Stay/Night outside of Japan. This visual novel kicked off one of the biggest anime properties of all time, turned into one of the biggest free-to-play mobile games, and made the companies producing…
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Hakuoki was my first otome game, right back when it was released on the PlayStation 3. Actually, I think it might have been my very first visual novel. It seems hard to imagine now, but a decade ago, digital distribution wasn’t in the same place, and visual novels being released…
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Every so often a new sport gains traction. It usually starts as a casual hobby activity, but then people being people find a way to make it competitive, and before you know it sponsors and organisations get involved and BAM, you’ve got a professional sport. The challenge these emerging sports…
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Here’s something about Japan that a lot of people in the West wouldn’t be aware of: The word “natsukashii”. There’s no real translation of that word into English. It’s related to “nostalgia,” in that it deals with memories of the past, but where nostalgia is typically associated with a longing…
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