Bubble Bobble is one of the greatest games ever made, and it’s also my go-to game when I’ve been asked about my favourite game of all time. Taito’s certainly done some interesting things with the Bubble Bobble IP over the years, and while a lot of the spinoff games have been excellent – I’m thinking titles like Rainbow Islands, Parasol…
A full disclaimer here: I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. I respect the contribution that the series has made to the history and development of video games, but I do find the characters aggravating, and the aesthetics garish. More simply, I just prefer slower-paced platformers that…
Read MoreRain is a common motif in noir. Whether it be the grim, dank, and hostile urban decay of Se7en, or the neon-drenched dystopia of Blade Runner, water is so common to noir that there is, to quote Paul Schrader in his book Notes on Film Noir “an almost Freudian attachment…
Read MoreFor some decades now, wrestling game fans have been seriously limited in game choice, with only titles produced around the dominant brand, WWE – such as WWE 2K23 easily available to Western audiences. However, the publisher of WWE made a huge misstep with WWE 2K20, dropping Japanese developer, Yukes, in…
Read MoreLoop8: Summer Of Gods is too easy to overlook. I know, I put it to a side myself while I was playing much larger and high-profile games (such as Final Fantasy XVI). I do feel like I did this game a disservice, however, as it is different and has the…
Read MoreOnce, many years ago, I read an argument that the enduring popularity of Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons in its homeland in Japan has to do with a very real desire for a “sea change” or “tree change” among Japanese urban populations. If this is true (and I believe there is…
Read MoreEver since I first laid eyes on Bullfrog’s classic Theme Park, I’ve been equally smitten by theme park simulators and also terrified of what they make me do. Don’t get me wrong; the classic blend of management simulation – like it or not, you’re more or less balancing an Excel…
Read MoreBleak Sword DX is the latest Apple Arcade game to make its way over to consoles. This Devolver Digital-published title was always an admirable and interesting effort to take the core tension and taut action of the Souls “genre” and make it work on mobile devices. It did work and…
Read MoreJust yesterday I reviewed Demon Sword Incubus. This is a truly terrible “erotic” game that needed to remove the one “quality” it had going for it so it could have a console release. The Nintendo Switch port of Sakura Dungeon has also been released this past week, and while it…
Read MoreIf the developers of Demon Sword: Incubus put half as much effort into the actual gameplay as they did with their array of costumes designed to show off more than cover, it might almost have been worth playing. Mind you, with a scintillating narrative that includes lines like this, I…
Read MoreI love Hatsune Miku. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that on this site before. However, I’ll keep saying it as long as the character and the games she appears in are as adorable as Hatsune Miku: The Planet of Wonder and Fragments of Wishes get published. Crypton – the IP…
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