Didn't play all that much PlayStation 4 this year, but The Caligula Effect 2 was a pleasant surprise. I gave Kingdom Hearts a try and don't plan to ever play it again.

Do you remember the video game Mario? From Target's Wii launch guide for employees. archive.org/details/wii-...

Spent a couple hours gathering data and making a graph to post here before deciding it wasn't worth it. I do this several times a year.

This doesn't advertise any electronic games so it doesn't qualify for the Catalog and Circular Ad Archive, but I wanted to share this illustration of Pac-Man in the process of trying to swallow a ghost who is desperately trying to escape.

The JRPG Magazine Review Archive has been updated! This smallish update has 390 new scans and includes reviews from several PC magazines that were not previously included. Thirteen new games have been added, bringing the total to 978. spritecell.com/bp7-jrpg-rev...

What does it say about the state of gaming history education that the first google search result for the very common question "Why is it called Final Fantasy?" is an eight year old thread on Brave Exvius subreddit with 0 net upvotes, filled with bickering and arguments and replies from years later?

After going really hard on PvP during the bonus week I now have the 537th most achievement points in Guild Wars 2, on the North American server. Getting 305 AP in a week is incredible and I'll never be able to do that again, but I'm still over 7,000 AP from #1.

I hope there's an update on Catly at the Game Awards this year. I don't want to play it, I just want to know what the deal with this strange game is. They haven't posted to Twitter in 11 months and the website and Steam page seem to be unchanged too.

I recorded a whole lot of data about games nominated for Game Awards in order to try to predict 2025's winners. I did not alter any scores based on my personal opinion. Some of these I'm a bit skeptical of, but it will be interesting to see how accurate these are.

I love adding new, obscure games to the JRPG Magazine Review Archive and the next update will include Square Enix's iPod game Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes. Possibly the only review of the game in print.

PLAY issue 55 has six interviews interviews a row. Here are Keiji Inafune, Koji Igarashi, Takashi Tezuka, and Tomonobu Itagaki's.

I'm always interested in lists of video game genres and seeing what is counted and what's split. The January 2000 issue of GamesMaster has a fairly standard set of nine, though no music or educational genre. Shmups could charitably include all shooters. The Legend of Zelda is the prime RPG example.

A rather angry review of the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII from someone who doesn't seem to like RPGs that is still somehow scored a 71. From Station issue 8, scans by Out of Print Archive.

Made a few updates to the Shigeru Miyamoto Archive that I had been putting off to work excessively on the Konami game project. Next I'll work on an update to the JRPG review archive. Then it will be about time for the Game Awards predictions. Then the annual catalog and ad project update.

Today is not the anniversary of the release of Chameleon. There is nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

spritecell.com/bp14-every-k... Here it is, the most comprehensive list of games that Konami has developed or published on the internet. Featuring brief write-ups on dozens of important and interesting games as well as graphs and statistics about how they have changed over time.

Tomorrow I will publish the Konami game project, complete with the game about the real vocal group made up of four anonymous dentists.

I can't find any full Japanese version of that Miyamoto interview. Kyodo News is a news agency that sells stories to outlets so it may appear somewhere soon. I did learn that he'll be giving a lecture titled "Original!?" on January 24, though. www.kyoto-np.co.jp/articles/-/1...

Is there any video game series with a larger gap between games than Getsu Fūma Den (1987) and Getsu Fūma Den: Undying Moon (2022)?

How did Gigadrake Online not become wildly popular?

The only picture I could find of a game (Gradius, PC Engine) running on i-revo, Konami's Japan-only web portal service that among other things allowed you to rent and buy some retro games. Some sources describe i-revo games as being embedded in webpages, but this seems to be its own program.

Piranesi: The Video Game

I had never seen the arcade version of Bucky O'Hare, wow.

There's a website documenting moai heads in video games. Apparently Pandora's Palace was Konami's first use of them, not Gradius. moai.games

Kamek no longer tells Mario to "go to hell" in the Simplified Chinese script of the Switch version of Super Mario Galaxy 1+2. The Switch translation is more literal to the Japanese script, where Kamek tells Mario to roll on the ground instead.

You can only get Mimic with Cheese in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince as part of a promotion with McDonald's in Japan, and it ended over a year ago, what a bummer.

Months after playing The Caligula Effect 2 I'm still thinking about this car (the only car in the game) that doesn't fit in this too-shallow, too-wide garage whose door, if visible, would be angled, and which requires the driver to drive over a curb.

Even this far into the project I'm finding new Konami games. Like Etiquette Teddy, a Tamagotchi-like handheld game that checked how your breath smelled and a bear would become depressed if your breath smelled bad.

Bomberpino was a Bomberman game that was available by scanning a QR code in special boxes of Pino chocolates in 2023. Many sources describe this is a "mobile phone" game. You were given an error message if you tried to access it outside of a phone or tablet, but it seemed to run on a webpage.

Games named "Dance Dance Revolution": 1998 - Arcade original 1999 - PS1 2001 - i-appli (maybe has subtitle?) 2002 - PC, US only 2006 - Mobile Phone 2010 - Wii 2010 - PS3/Xbox 360, apparently different from the Wii version 2013 - Another arcade game 2014 - Updated version of the 2013 game

Mermaid Melody: Pichi Pichi Pitch and Mermaid Melody: Pichi Pichi Pitch - Pichi Pichi Party are two distinct Game Boy Advance games that came out the later part of 2003. One a rhythm game, one a Mario Party type board game.

The eye exam is the perfect game design. That big E is a great tutorial that teaches you the basic mechanic. But it doesn't baby you and quickly gets hard as they introduce the small and blurry enemies.

Many hours into pasting spreadsheet cells into bulleted lists I have realized that instead of a "developed by Konami" list and a largely identical "published by Konami" list, I should have a "developed and published" list, and then two small lists for the few games that were one or the other.

Fewer than 2,000 people have this many achievement points in Guild Wars 2. Before SpriteCell I was a prolific editor of the Guild Wars 1 and 2 wikis. Can't wait for Visions of Eternity.

I’ve finished the data collecting and statistic generating parts of my next project. I’m going to try something new and announce what it is before it’s written. Every Konami Game - every release of every Konami developed or published game, year by year, for each of the three big regions.

The insistence that this is a "Premium Value Product" makes me suspicious about the value of this product.

It's a bit weird that Fandom's 500 error page is Pokémon branded, isn't it? This was not on a wiki that was related to Pokémon. Did they pay a licensing fee for this?

The Suikoden I & II remasters are called "Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars" on PS4, PS5, Steam, Xbox One, and Xbox Series. On Switch 2 they are officially named "Suikoden I & II HD Remaster for Nintendo Switch 2 Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars".

How long do you think it will take for there to be a Switch 2 game that allows you to control a mouse with the mouse? It will definitely happen at some point.

I've been looking through Kingdom Hearts reviews from magazines since I'm playing it for (essentially) the first time. Of the 15 reviews I have on SpriteCell 11 complain about the camera, but one review said it was good. Seven reviews say it is a difficult game, while two found it easy (I agree).

There was someone, possibly working for a magazine, who wrote an MMORPG column through the 90s until right before World of Warcraft launched in late 2004. I believe I read them on a site that was unaffiliated with the original home. I'd like to read them again but can't find them.

The headline says fans are just now finding out how Mario got his name and are stunned, the article cites a *2015* interview, and the actual truth is that this story was known for decades before *that*.

Kit Ellis, who used to work at Namco Bandai Games America, says he ghostwrote the Game Developer magazine history of Pac-Man credited to Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani in 2005.

The amount of hours I've wasted because a guide/FAQ mixed up east and west...it's in the double digits over my lifetime.

Disappointed to see that, for the first time, ChatGPT is the number one referrer to SpriteCell.

Hudson Soft's American publishing arm, Hudson Entertainment, was seemingly left to its own devices, making games like Charlene's Beachside Solitaire and selling hip-hop ringtones. It's funny seeing "Hudson" credited with things like this in places while the Japanese side made cutesy Bonk games.

GameFAQs has a 1968 board game. (It also doesn't have dozens of mobile games released in the last 10 years I'm trying to find information on)

Is there any resource that allows you to see the release date and release countries of applications released in the App Store and Google Play? Both current and delisted, and I'm not interested in downloading anything.

Shigeru Miyamoto says Kazuhiko Hachiya (new outside director of Nintendo) engages in unconventional activities, like researching video games.