
Tokyo RPG Factory has had an unenviable task – replicating the golden age of RPGs.ย It has proven an impossibility, of course, as nostalgia is a non-renewable resource. For the first time in the studio’s brief history, it looks like they’ve said damn the torpedoes and moved full-speed ahead to making a contemporary RPG.ย Oninaki… (Cont.)

Usually, I hate best-of lists.ย And to be perfectly upfront, I expect this list to bend and morph as the years wear on, as the Switch has become a heaven for bullet hell. But when there are so many options out there, it seems like a list to sort through them is a good point… (Cont.)
You had to be there. Almost a decade ago, on a dead-man-walking console, no one was expecting the most fun shooter of modern times. That it was created by a… (Cont.)
Every time I sit down to write about Tears of the Kingdom, the game either subtly morphs on me, or my opinion shifts from a new discovery. It’s a maddening… (Cont.)
Once in awhile, a game comes along that provides you with an adventure that you didn’t necessarily want, but needed. It isn’t so much a breath of fresh air, nor… (Cont.)
It didn’t have to be this way. Not really. Even with dozens of bad decisions that drove the whole enterprise into the ditch, there still could have been something to… (Cont.)
In Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” the semi-satirical religion of Bokonism hits a bit too close to the bone. Vonnegut invented words to encapsulate terms and situations, much in the way… (Cont.)
Being mostly a Nintendo gamer, it’s been an odd time, watching the Switch’s success get put into overdrive-on-Pixie-Sticks-and-amphetamines through the pandemic. It’s been a sort of heat-check for Kyoto –… (Cont.)
Handing out winners and losers for E3 seems like an antiquated idea. But…when Nintendo brings Zelda, an exclusive Atlus JRPG, two Advance War remakes, and one of the great missing… (Cont.)
It’s easy to take this all for granted. Here we are, in 2021, with arguably the most Japanese videogame series in the industry taking a victory lap on Nintendo hardware… (Cont.)
You don’t need a yearly retrospective, do you? I’m not here to write one. 2020 has been a malignant, joy-sucking farce for pretty much everyone. It’s been a slog that… (Cont.)
It doesn’t take rose-colored glasses to see that Final Fantasy VII stands up. (Cont.)