Console

Stranger’s Initial Struggle All too often, creativity isn’t rewarded with commercial success. That was the case for the 2005 release of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, an imaginative effort that blended third and first-person action in a ...

Psikyo=Colorful Art Kyoto Across the company’s thirteen-year lifespan, Psikyo cultivated a rich legacy. Although the Kyoto-based developer dabbled with erotic mahjong games and even a sequel to Lode Runner, it was their arcade shooters that ...

Time to Go Commercial From Fishing Derby for the Atari 2600, SEGA Bass Fishing for the Dreamcast, to Natsume’s Reel Fishing franchise, gaming has a bounty of sport fishing simulations. But here’s the thing: they ...

Tutturū! Released in 2009, Steins;Gate continues to captivate audiences. Centering on the exploits of teenaged Rintaro Okabe and a band of scientists, the visual novel ingeniously wove elements of science fiction, classic tragedy, and otaku ...

The Touhou Project began with a collection of meticulously-coded bullet-hell shooters, or danmaku. Coded by a former Taito programmer who operated under the moniker of Team Shanghai Alice, the games earned distinction not just for the ...

All too often, sequalization is motivated by money rather than any earnest attempt at artistic expression. Perhaps that seems like an excessively cynical perspective, but I’ve seen far too many follow-ups that either offer only ...

The Disappearance of Pinball In 2007, Budapest-based Zen Studios released their first virtual pinball title. At the time, physical machines were growing increasingly difficult to find. Arcades were on the wane, and most remaining amusement ...

History Class on Mild Hallucinogens Chances are, you might have heard of Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempts to colonize America. After getting caught secretly marrying one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, Raleigh hoped to make amends with ...

Not Just a Chip Off the Old Block With vibrant visuals built with voxel technology, Riverbond could be mistaken for yet another Minecraft clone. But developer Cococucumber isn’t interested in subjecting players to another derivative ...

Across the eighties, Games Workshop co-founder Ian Livingstone wrote eleven single-player adventure gamebooks. Each built upon the basic framework of Bantam Books’ popular Choose Your Own Adventure series that delivering branching storylines, where different decisions ...