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…
Before I played Bustafellows, if you had told me that you could take the narrative qualities of noir fiction and pair it with the otome genre, I wouldn’t have believed you. As a genre, otome isn’t quite the “doe-eyed romance and frivolity for girls” genre that those who haven’t played…
Read MoreOne of the quieter events that piggybacked off the Nintendo Switch 2 launch was the release of the first in Hamster’s Arcade Archives 2 series. Ridge Racer launched with the console, and now there’s already a second title, with the arcade dogfighting sim, Air Combat 22 (don’t be surprised that…
Read MoreTamagotchi are one of those iconic things that you just hope hands around forever. The little devices that you pin to your backpack or carry around in your pocket for micro-distractions throughout the day are wholesome and charming. You’d be lucky if you spent more than five minutes with your…
Read MoreHideo Kojima is the video game industry’s big auteur. The Stanley Kubrick of games. The guy who somehow gets a big budget to make his strange experiments, even when they defy the industry best practice, and as we all know, the games industry is very best practice orientated. It’s all…
Read MoreHow do you “guarantee” 60 million clicks on a mouse? I get that’s an impressive number, but a guarantee is a legal term, and so does that mean that if you can somehow prove that you’ve only got 59,999,999 clicks on your mouse before it craps out, you’re entitled to…
Read MoreEver found yourself looking at the state of video games and going: “Why are so many things becoming so simplified and streamlined?” RPGs are melding into big action games with pacy combat, rather than stats crunchers, strategy and simulation games are often so simplified that it’s impossible to actually lose…
Read More“Oh, great,” your little guide through the minigames of 100 in 1 Game Collection tells you as you unlock the next one. “A terrible puzzle game.” At least our little Dante is aware that you might not be enjoying your trip through hell. Look, I knew exactly what I was…
Read MoreYakuza 0 is in so many ways the finest game in a very fine series. The development team took full advantage of it as a prequel to not only tell the story of where series protagonist, Kiryu, and favourite frenemy/rival, Goro, got their start, but also capture a unique moment…
Read MoreThe survival game genre has exploded in recent years, with countless options flooding the market. Most of these titles hyper-focus on crafting mechanics – a design trend that became ubiquitous after Minecraft’s success, shoehorned into games where it doesn’t always make sense. As someone who cherished the original Survival Kids…
Read MoreRaidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was originally released before Persona 3. That was a very different time for Atlus as a company and this entire property. Before Persona 4 and, particularly Persona 5, took the broader Shin Megami Tensei name to the mainstream, SMT were these dark…
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