Sometimes it’s censorship. Sometimes it’s unfortunate implications. And sometimes it’s straight-up unexplainable. But whatever the justification may be, games get renamed all the time when they’re released across different regions.
Late last year, it was revealed that Link would become a racer in Mario Kart 8. But that wasn’t his first Mario rodeo. Nor was it the first time Zelda crossed over into the Mario series—far from it.
I remember the first time I went shoplifting. The sun was shining, Marin was singing, and I needed a shovel.
Two weeks ago, at EVE Fanfest, a convention for players of space MMO EVE Online, I began hearing odd snatches of conversation: “Dude, the pope’s in our hotel”, “Did you kiss the ring?”. This is at the same time as the real pope is out in Greece meeting with refugees, so, clearly, we’re talking about a different pope.
On November 5, 1995, a gamer called CJayC created the Video Game FAQ Archive. Later known as GameFAQs, the site was a hub for video game walkthroughs and FAQs, and later cheats, savegames, screenshots and so on. And that’s what it is today, only it’s a lot bigger than it used to be.
In the West, Twitch is an internet superpower. In Japan, things couldn’t be more different. Mainstream success will be tough, but not impossible. Nothing is impossible.
I played the opening few hours of Batman: Arkham Knight in August. You know what I did after that? I opened up the map, saw that it was forested with icons, and then turned the game off forever.
Some of the games industry’s most talented and experienced designers are making the leap from game development to academia. But how do you teach the art of making games?
Games have - to put it mildly - a weird-ass approach to love. But love is weird in real-life, too. In time for Valentine's Day, this is a celebration of video game romance in all its strange, stalkery, even inter-species forms. Enjoy - and maybe don't try them out in real life.
Steam sales are good, provided you have self-control. If you don't, you might feel like the Scout above whenever a big sale rolls around.
Featuring excellent pixel art and some self-deprecating humor from the very talented Paul Robertson.
Wandering around New York earlier this week, I found myself in the vicinity of the Nintendo World Store. I thought I'd pop in and have a look. I did not expect to encounter over 300 people queuing around the block.
Those Assassin's Creeds and Far Crys and Grand Theft Autos had to come from somewhere.
They should have brought a couple dozen more people.
Back in the early 2000s one company ruled when it came to getting attention. From pigeons trained to ruin Wimbledon to people paid to change their names to Turok, Acclaim was the king of press-baiting PR.
A few days before my dad died in August, I got the call I'd been dreading from my mother. She told me it was time to come home for my dad's last days. I live in California, and they live in Alabama. I packed up my PS4, super slim PS3 and PS Vita—alas, my desktop PC was too big—and made the journey.
You know the strange thing about my eight years with the Xbox 360? Despite the fact that I played it most days, I often felt kind of alienated by it.
"Gamers are being played [like a piano] every time you see the word SALE. This is a big psychology trick that is being used to siphon money from gamers." Indie developer Cliff Harris, in a blog post on why discounted video games are harmful to both gamers and developers. Read his arguments in the full post here.
