There is more to New Theland than meets the eye
There must be a unique, exploratory freedom to the design of indie games. Indie games often plumb the depths of the human experience and push the boundaries of the medium, despite their graphical or budgetary limits. I find myself often impressed by indie games constructed or designed by extraordinarily small teams, such as the one that crafted Anodyne 2. Analgesic’s members are Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka, a pair of designers who pride themselves on “specializing in single-player, narrative-heavy adventure games with experimental flair and twists on traditional gameplay.”
On this, Anodyne 2 profoundly delivers.
The Legend of Zelda is more than a video game series
It was an unbearably hot summer day in 1998 when my mother drove me across town to my friend’s house. We were young, shy, and stupid, and play dates were few and far between mostly because both of us lacked the courage to bother our parents. In the midst of our sleepover plans, he had concocted the best feature: we were going to rent a Nintendo 64 from Blockbuster Video.
In the long ago, lost, forgotten realm of the Before Times, when the biggest struggle of the 90s was what I might say to my crush the next Monday, getting…
Why finishing RPGs is a unique euphoria
I was fourteen years old when I helped Yuna destroy her Aeons. As Junya Nakano’s breathtaking piece A Contest of Aeons played, I cemented myself to the reality of Final Fantasy X’s most brutal moment: I wasn’t going to simply finish out the game’s narrative by destroying its final boss, I had to eradicate Yuna’s journey down to its bones, pulling the final threads of her religious fervor until the basis of her belief in Yevon dwindled to nothing.
Lost to the Hours
Up until that point, Final Fantasy X had consumed much of my free time for the better part of a year…
A transformative experience, powered by creative destruction, whisperwave, and unrelenting beauty
There can be no greater pleasure in life than being the person you want to be. It doesn’t sound like a profound statement, but for many people the pursuit of the self is more than some grand existential journey or traveling abroad. For too many marginalized folks out there, the quest to accept oneself and be accepted is as simple and as complex as sitting down for dinner with your family or requesting that those who love you call you by your real name.
It should be easy to support those you love. It should be easy to give people…
The action-combat survival horror masterpiece that deserves a resurgence
Irecently dove into Resident Evil for the first time. After years of playing through various popular entries in the iconic survival horror franchise, I was able to mesh with Resident Evil Remake in a way that was both satisfying and personally groundbreaking. I’ve long held an artistic appreciation for pre-rendered backgrounds, but fixed camera angles and tank controls have been something of a bafflement. …
Emulators and ROMs preserve gaming that has been made inaccessible
When I was in seventh grade, a friend of mine pressed a floppy disc and a slip of paper into my hands. On the paper were instructions, lazily scrawled in blue ink pen, for how to access the ZSNES emulator and play the ROM of Final Fantasy IV (then still Final Fantasy II in America). I took the floppy disc home, booted up my family computer, and followed the instructions that helped me set up the game and the controls and get everything running on this virtual Super Nintendo.
This could be the right time for the overlooked RPG to find an audience
“The future is overflowing with hope.”
In 2019, Katsuhiro Harada, a director/producer at Bandai Namco, dashed our hopes — he sent a tweet that felt like the final, definitive nail in the coffin of ever getting a Xenosaga remaster:
This actually progressed to the remaster’s plan, but failed in a profitable market analysis. Sorry guys, This plan will be difficult to resurface… [via Gamespot]
Citing that it would make no sense from a profitability standpoint, Harada confirmed that a Xenosaga HD remaster had been revisited as an idea, but failed during market analysis. …
I am no longer a Jill sandwich
In the far-off past of 2002 — fully a decade before the deluge of remakes and remasters we know today began— Capcom saw an opportunity to remake the premier version of their 1996 bestseller. The initial Resident Evil title (Biohazard in Japan) was a smash hit in the United States and abroad, selling over four million units, and not only bringing a sub-genre into the mainstream but dragging zombies into the popular zeitgeist of both game and film. …
Brandon R. Chinn
Author of the Kognition Cycle. Works featured in Moonchild Magazine, Twist in Time, Selene Quarterly, and other anthologies.
