Around this time next year, there will be a special event near Fuefuki in the heart of Yamanashi Prefecture (the one you travel through to get to Nagano from Tokyo). For decades there has been an annual recreation of the Battle of Kawanakajima, one of the most compelling and dramatic…
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Once on the DDNet podcast, we got to talking about “canon” games – ones that many people would consider to have historical or aesthetic significance. These are games that are worth going back to, even after technological increments have iterated and refined their design. For the JRPG genre, we immediately…
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“Oh! Rikku’s wearing a bikini! It’s bright yellow and it’s a THONG!” Looking at Final Fantasy X-2 now, with its PlayStation 2-era fuzzies and jaggies, it’s hard to believe that it was once right up there with the most controversially fanservicey things out there. I remember the discussions that raged…
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The Rurouni Kenshin film series consists of five films in total (with the fifth, and final, released worldwide and exclusive to Netflix, in 2021). In the time since the first film, 2012’s simply-titled Rurouni Kenshin, the series has become one of the largest film properties of all time, with three…
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There’s no way I can start this article without acknowledging that professional wrestling, the one “sport” that I properly follow, is a staged performance. “Fake” is often thrown around, but that’s not entirely accurate when you’re talking about a performance that can involve being thrown off a ladder through a…
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In 2016, a study by Paul J. C. Adachi and Teena Willoughby was published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence that found that of people aged 17-25, playing sports video games increased involvement in real-life sports. “Sports video game play may be an effective tool to promote real-life sports…
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Mel Kishida wants his career to be defined by his work on the Blue Reflection series. If you remove this particular series, he’s still an enormously accomplished artist, but Blue Reflection in particular is something that he is deeply and personally involved with. Related reading: My preview of the upcoming…
Read MoreFeature by Harvard L. The third and final chapter in our breakdown of Castlevania titles will be a relatively short one, since there haven’t been all that many 3D Castlevania titles. The series has really struggled to convert to the third dimension and that, coupled with Konami’s apparent waning interest…
Read MoreFeature by Harvard L. Yesterday we published the first in a guide to the Castlevania series, looking at the classic roots of the series. Inspired by the GBA Castlevania collection that just released last week (which we all cannot stop playing!), we wanted to give people a primer to the…
Read MoreFeature by Harvard L. For anyone interested in gaming’s history, it’s often daunting to tackle some of the longer running series. We’re interested in accessibility and availability, as well as where the best entry point might be for someone new to the franchise. In the lead-up to October’s spooky season,…
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