It was a surprisingly strong week for horror games this week, with an excellent remaster of a Project Zero game joining the spectacular visual novel by Square Enix, Paranormasight. In reading some of the reviews of these games I was reminded that far too often people treat Japanese and Western…
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Now that Fire Emblem Engage has settled down a bit, I wanted to talk about the series as a whole, because Nintendo’s inability to see the value of making these games accessible on modern platforms is starting to get frustrating. Related reading: All Fire Emblem titles released in English, ranked!…
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Over in the world of literature, there has been quite the kerfuffle over the last week or so. News broke that the estate of Roald Dahl, and the publisher of his books, Puffin, would be taking the author’s body of work and, on the advice of sensitivity readers, making several…
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A high-profile and very controversial game released this week. I’ve been loathe to mention it by name, because we made the decision very early on that we wouldn’t be covering it, but Hogwarts Legacy has created a lot of discourse this week, and there is something of tangential relevance to…
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Today, the Australian Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke, announced the Revive National Cultural Policy, which outlines the new(ish) Labor government’s position on the arts and the investments that it will make as part of that. Buried within it is some support for the games industry, but calling it a…
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“We’re screwed. Writing is over. That’s it. It’s time to pack away your quill, your biro, and your shiny iPad: The computers will soon be here to do it better.” This quote came from a writer for The Spectator, and it was in an article talking about the explosive growth…
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Starting in 1977, the legendary rock musician David Bowie produced the Berlin Trilogy of albums. In a surprising move, he chose the avant-garde, ambient artist Brian Eno as a songwriting partner. One of Eno’s biggest contributions to the albums was his “oblique strategies” – a deck of cards with different…
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Whenever Americans tackle Japanese material or attempt to situate a film, TV series or otherwise in Japan, there’s an inherent tension between what works in American cinema and entertainment, and what is representing Japanese culture and aesthetics accurately. Too often, under these circumstances, the work turns out to be something…
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Fire Emblem Engage releases this month as the latest in Nintendo and Intelligent Systems’ long-running and highly lauded properties. I want to use this opportunity to go back to the very first Fire Emblem to be released in English, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (simply called “Fire Emblem” for the…
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NOTE: This is a feature that was originally published in the December 2022 issue of the Dee Dee Zine. For much, much more deep insight into everything to do with video games, art, and Japanese culture buy the magazine here (or any of our other magazines from our online store).…
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