Adult art calls for adult responses, and tbh that includes an awareness that some personal discomfort/wariness for challenging pieces may stem from irl experience with traumas explored in the material, not pearl-clutching prudishness. (Of course this discomfort should never mutate into censorship)

Octopath Traveler 0 looks really interesting to me, however getting to that would involve me getting through Octopath Traveler 1 and 2 and you wouldn't convince me otherwise.

once again the year in music has been dominated by this video of Takenobu Mitsuyoshi singing the Daytona USA theme www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9f...

I find watching videos and reading articles about playing games without HUDs fascinating. It's always about immersion. I don't do immersion, I like menu-driven games, but I'll turn off bits of the HUD to play the game on my terms. Mini maps and quest checklists off to let me get lost to explore.

This time last year I put up a post about Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (and the original Dragon Quest II). Right now I'm working on an article about Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, and hope to share that with you soon. pixpen.co.uk/2024/12/02/g...

I just finished Dragon Quest 2 HD2D Remake. Honestly astounded that they made it so much bigger, and yet that didn't make it less enjoyable. Loved this one. Will get an article about 1&2 written fairly soon.

Introduce yourself with five concerts you've seen. Depeche Mode Thundercat Mew Sungazer Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy

Hong Kong fire and Grenfell are just alike. Fire spreading through unsafe building materials installed due to penny-pinching, killing dozens. One difference: before the HK fire is even out three executives at contractors have been arrested, eight years after Grenfell no-one has been arrested.

this is insane both on its face and with several more insane details once you read the full thing

Thought I was going to read about a DQ remake but instead I got a thoughtful meditation on growing up as video games were also growing up. Whewie more @dialacina.com please

I think I might finish Dragon Quest 2 HD2D Remake this week. I think I'm close to done and then it reveals more to do. Just on 2's remake alone I've spent more time on it than the 3 remake. Both 1&2 together is probably gonna take me around 60+ hours. Still having a great time with it though.

In Xenogears and Xenoblade Chronicles 1, 2 & 3, if you are in the middle of a jump, you cannot go into a pause menu.

Dragon Quest 2 HD2D Remake isn't the longest game I've played, but it feels massive when it's seemingly going to be 3-4x the length of the original game.

Smaller, passion-led projects created by talented people who care about their craft are still out there! Please don't give up. Support the internet and the creatives you want to see! 🧵

Jackson puts into words very well the reasons why I've generally avoided using the term "JRPG" in my own writing, even if that's supposed to encompass much of what I cover, because it fails to convey what I'm writing about.

instead of posting about the game awards, make a post telling me about what games we're special to you this year and why

Rebecca was one of the founders of Interplay and programmed & designed for some of the most influential games of my youth, notably Bard's Tale I & III and Wasteland. She will be missed.

It appears our beloved Rebecca Heineman has now passed on. She lived her life in such a way as to leave a trail of joy in her wake next to a long list of creative accomplishments. She was a fixture in many communities and a titan in games history. Becky was the best kind of person.

I'm nearly 40 hours into Dragon Quest 1 & 2 HD2D Remake and I still feel like I have so much to do in it...

This week: community and continuity form a thematic throughline for seventeen new picks: critical-distance.com/2025/11/09/n...

dragon quest 1 is in the air lately, so please enjoy this old blog exploring the development of one of my favorite relationships with a jrpg world map tunditur-unda.neocities.org/posts/2020-0...

That's Dragon Quest 1 HD2D finished. Game's certainly much bigger, took me three times as long as the original. I know I'm merely getting started, onto the second game!

my latest is out for skybox!!! 💜 the casting of teruyuki kagawa in yakuza kiwami 3 is not only disgusting in itself, but also ridiculous in its hypocrisy considering rgg's past recasts and the series. i feel, and write, very strongly about it please read, i think this is some of my best work 💜

there's just no way

Trying something different with facial hair, it's a work in progress.

NEW BLOG POST: My experience with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is defined by change, both in the game and within myself. pixpen.co.uk/2025/11/04/t...

NEW BLOG POST: My experience with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is defined by change, both in the game and within myself. pixpen.co.uk/2025/11/04/t...

INCOMING CANON FIRE! A deep dive into the ABSOLUM, the latest from the Streets of Rage 4 team! I dig into how it evolves the arcade spirit of games like Capcom's Dungeons and Dragons beat-em-ups, its remix of fantasy tropes, and even its take on gender and identity. canonfire.net/post/7992333...

NEW VIDEO: Cosmic horror, social distrust, technology as a means of reaching out into the void and religious iconography stalking the streets of a sleepy Sardinian town. Here are four unique tales of terror, and why you should pay attention to them:

It wasn't Gabriel Knight 3's cat mustache puzzle that killed "adventure games." They never died, even if the industry killed off Sierra On-line. www.endlessmode.com/video-games/...

Spent some more time with the Dragon Quest 1 HD2D remake and they really did just make a very different game out of Dragon Quest.

Jill, I was under the impression that your skillset would have allowed us to avoid this specific scenario PlayStation 1 Barry had explicitly assured me I needn't worry about this happening

So, today I'm announcing a new book project... and doing a call for papers: crpgbook.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/t... It's an anthology of video game history outside the usual US perspective - an accessible & exciting panorama of different realities - and I'll pay 300 USD per article. Please share :)

Got a draft all written, so I'll spend some of the weekend getting it into good shape. Expect the article some time early next week.

every government that has implemented austerity has become so historically unpopular that they’ve now had to start inventing fake new parties just to give people anyone right wing to vote for. so there’s only one solution. to do it even harder

In the meantime I'm making a start on my next game. I am intending to have something written about this too.

In progress getting my writing on Final Fantasy Tactics The Ivalice Chronicles together. Compared to what I wrote about The War of the Lions five years ago, I really feel like I've turned into a different writer. Looking forward to sharing this when I've finished it.

Got this game set up to play tonight because the place I bought it from sent it early.

Fiction doesn’t have the power to change minds on its own. It can’t do that. Stories are not magical.

Time for a 🧵 of cool games you might have missed in 2025! I will be including stuff that's come out in November/December 2024 as well, since those months usually get left out of lists for both years.

I finished up with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles this morning. I've got a piece of writing in the works on that game, hopefully will have it up fairly soon!

thegamingbrit's video on silent hill 2 remake got him a lot of shit but he was 100% right when he said that constantly remaking classic games by destroying them completely to make them "look modern" is the creative impulse that leads to replacing everything with ai slop. same thing different degrees

"The land of Ilavice"

the real innovation to Devil May Cry wasn't the expression and technical depth it brought to 3d action games it was the fact that it put a big ass score and ranking element on the HUD to force people into actively thinking about engaging with all its depth

Revisiting Final Fantasy Tactics has honestly made me want to go back to Final Fantasy XII again. If I did it wouldn't be the Zodiac Age version.

long appreciated that the initial point of Kirby was to be something more approachable in a genre that was, at the time, trying to kill you. This is that ethos at its simplest, but it still has its obvious charms decades later.

In case you missed it, my latest blog post went up yesterday

In case you missed it, my latest blog post went up yesterday

I am once again thinking about Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis (2001)