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Japanese role-playing games are often criticized for following formula too closely. But all too often, the person making this claim hasn’t played an entry in Gust’s Atelier series. After nineteen iterations across a twenty-year span, ...

The twilight era for gaming systems routinely brings about a software schism. On one side, there’s an abundance of shoddy shovelware that has curiously eluted quality control standards. Prompting by the size of the install ...

While many games might suffer a misfortune or two, 2014’s The Witch and the Hundred Knight faced a perilous number of tribulations. Development of the title was anticipated to take a year and a half. ...

Over the past thirteen years, the Yakuza franchise has produced seven main entries, an equal number of spin-offs, and a trio of re-releases. Such an abundant output would have sapped the creative energy from most ...

In film, auteur theory contends that the director is the primary ‘author’ of a motion picture, responsible for overseeing and uniting the entirety of a movie’s aural and visual elements. As such, a film symbolizes ...

Although the conflict only lasted for four days, the Battle of Toba-Fushimi was a pivotal moment in Japanese history. Following the forced opening of the Hakodate and Shimoda ports by Commodore Matthew C. Parry, tensions ...

Much like artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Francisco Goya, and Édouard Manet, Senran Kagura creator Kenichirō Takaki is obsessed with the female form. But unlike the painters of yesteryear, Takaki-san’s canvas is a console connected ...

When Pinball FX 2 was first launched in 2010, the franchise earned a passionate legion of fans thanks to its technical prowess. While eschewing recreations of real-world machines, the series offered a prolific roster of ...

Amidst most of the twentieth century, the term, ‘simulacra’ typically implied inferiority. A painting based on a photograph was separated from its source material by two degrees, and subsequently would lose some of its essence ...

Dissonance in video games is quite common, whether it’s gratifying gameplay at odds with rudimentary visuals or a promising premise draped around stereotypical characters. But the recent release of Rad Rogers: World One exhibits a ...