I've been quite busy the past few weeks, still writing essays but in general as well. I didn't like how little was going up so I wanted to put up something even if it isn't amazing. This is just an...
2022-02-15 20:29:20 +0000 UTC View PostNormally I try to bring a faux-expertise to what I write here. While I can at least meaningfully speculate on something that confuses me, I generally try to have as informed an outsider perspective...
2022-02-04 03:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostSilent Hill fandom in this day and age is known far and wide within gaming as being extremely angry, even by video game fandom standards. This is distinct from merely Silent Hill fans as individual...
2022-02-02 03:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostSomething I rarely think to mention are the things I'm glad have changed in games over the years. It's easy to identify cases where increasing size of the corporations creating them has led to wors...
2022-01-28 03:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostIn almost every sense, essays here are just "for me" but there are always degrees. Sometimes I'm trying to bring across a point I care about, or to try to better understand historical context. This...
2022-01-26 03:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostThere's something very presumptuous about putting a year at the end of your game's name. It is like a tacit promise to the consumer of two things. The product you are selling is going to be followe...
2021-12-25 03:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostArcade racing games used to be a pretty big business. Sega built a name for itself off games like Hang-on and Outrun. Namco's Ridge Racer was a bright burning flame during the PS1's reign as the do...
2021-12-22 03:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostThere's not really a snappy way to say what I'm getting at with this post, but there is something that permeates video game discourse and especially becomes a problem as a game gets analyzed and ov...
2021-12-17 03:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe early rush to get out software used to produce a lot of strange objects. The fundamental hardware design of a new system was almost totally incompatible with how a previous piece of hardware wo...
2021-12-15 03:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostThere's a somewhat famous quote from Jaime Griesemer, a designer on Halo, talking about game design and construction. In it he describes a game like Halo as "30 seconds of fun" repeated in differen...
2021-12-10 03:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostOften at console launch you'll get one or two licensed games—if you know anything about either launch games or licensed games you know full well that this is a terrifying crunch to put literally ...
2021-12-08 03:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostThis is an essay I was basically destined to write the second I chose to actually do any sort of project like this, but the announcement of Star Ocean: The Divine Force and some gentle prodding fro...
2021-12-02 23:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostIt used to be that the weirdest games came from Japan, and the even weirdester games never left the country. We've largely moved past that period, both because the weirdest moderate budget excesses...
2021-12-01 03:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostI didn't want to write this follow-up. If you haven't read it, this will be me expanding on "Machismo and the Marketing Masculinizing of the Video Game Hobby" which may be found here (2021-11-26 03:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Quintet's a developer with a lot of clout for a very specific crowd. It’s a company that burned exceptionally brightly on the Super Nintendo, carving a legacy that sparks reverence from fans of t...
2021-11-24 03:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe choices for RPGs on the PS2 in the first year were pretty slim. This was especially the case if you wanted traditional turn-based RPGs. While From Software and Level-5 would produce a number of...
2021-11-19 03:00:59 +0000 UTC View PostJust want to mention that there will be some experimentation with making the audio versions of posts the top of future posts to see if I like that a bit better presentationally. The full text of an...
2021-11-17 21:38:55 +0000 UTC View PostI talk about the PS2 a lot here, it's probably where the broadest spectrum of my knowledge comes from. It's the system I tracked as many games for as I could, subscribed to multiple magazines, read...
2021-11-17 03:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe games as art debate is stale and pointless. The question of whether a medium can produce good art is stale and pointless, hashed out eternally over the 00s and 10s. I'd much rather declare vict...
2021-11-12 03:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostHey let's shoot for some synergy, the PS2 Grand Theft Auto games are being remastered/have recently been remastered as of when this goes up. It's hard to describe how singular these games were in d...
2021-11-10 03:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostFighting games are easier (though still extremely hard) to update than do sequels to. When you're making Street Fighter II: Champion Edition your roadmap for what needs fixing is tons of open playe...
2021-11-05 02:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostAs everything on this patreon is probably already making clear, I love throwing on games from 10, 20, 30 years ago and just observing them for a couple of hours. To take dim memories and cast them ...
2021-11-03 02:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostSega of the mid 00s was a tragic company to watch, desperately latching on to whatever new identity it could in the wake of its utter destruction as a hardware company, but still retaining a glut o...
2021-10-29 02:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostThe creator of the Ryu Ga Gotoku (Yakuza) franchise, Toshihiro Nagoshi, has left Sega. It's the end of a long tenure at the company dating back thirty years and with dozens of classic games that he...
2021-10-27 02:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostI'm sick of all the complaining I do here so I want to talk about a game I threw in one night and ended up adoring even though I think it is technically kind of a failure to be an approachabl...
2021-10-22 02:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostBy the time this likely goes up it'll have been a few weeks since Koichi Sugiyama passed. If that name's not familiar to you then... well mostly I'm sorry for the information this is going to trans...
2021-10-20 02:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostLet's talk about Tetsuya Nomura, a man with heavy involvement with many of Square's most mainstream games and ever a lightning rod for debate about his merits as an artist, game designer, director,...
2021-10-15 02:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostLet's talk about Adventure games. I love a good slow paced adventure when I'm in the right mood. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (buy it buy it buy it) was so good it got me to actually write aga...
2021-10-13 02:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostSo I sometimes intend to use this for subjects I sort of hope age poorly. In this case it's the reaction that's been brewing in my mind for like a year now to the FFXVI reveal and why the game fund...
2021-10-08 02:00:01 +0000 UTC View PostEvery so often I have to pursue a topic that is of consequence to no one but me basically. If every essay here was me doing sad prognostifications about the state of the industry this place would b...
2021-10-06 02:00:02 +0000 UTC View Post