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Groovy Baby! Twenty years on, the Sega Dreamcast remains revered, in part because the publisher took numerous creative risks. One of their most memorable ventures was 1999’s Space Channel 5. Boasting flamboyant colors, a swinging ...

Fighting Game Auteurs Beyond beloved franchises like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, Arc System Works is no slouch when it comes to adapting existing properties into fighting games. From Persona 4 Arena to Dragon Ball FighterZ, ...

More Vocation Than Mere Recreation Luo Guanzhong’s fourteenth-century novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, probably isn’t suited for most modern readers. Most contemporary works are born into a mass mediated ecosystem where immeasurable amounts of ...

Setting is Indispensable Context is an oft overlooked constituent in gaming. Although 2009’s The Saboteur replicated the familiar driving and destruction mechanics of the sandbox-action title, it was the colorful recreation of Nazi-occupied Paris which transformed the ...

History ‘Acquire-d’ Traditionally, franchises grow with each successive iteration. But spin-offs sporadically scale things back, pushing the property in daring, new directions. From Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart’s reimaging of Hyperdimension Neptunia as a tactical ...

Solid Game from a Lesser Known Name 3000th Duel arrives without the benefit of a generous marketing budget or the pedigree of a prominent developer. But those things shouldn’t dissuade you from seeking out this ...

Time to Get Busy! In the real world, those days where outstanding duties outstrip daylight hours can be exasperating. In the Rune Factory franchise, the onus of being overburdened cultivates a completely different sentiment. Deciding whether to ...

Abiko-based M2 Co., Ltd takes their ports very seriously. Sure, you can find SEGA’s older arcade and console games running on a multitude of machines, from legitimate compilations, licensed hardware, and even in the quasi-legal ...

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 ...

‘Ship These Ships At least two of acclaimed director Quintin Tarantino’s feature films demonstrate the power of the medium. Both Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood entangle history and fantasy so tightly, ...