I'll be presenting a paper this weekend about Xenogears, games criticism in Japan, and the 90s at this year's Critical Game Design Graduate Conference at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. If you'll be there, please say hello! I'm looking forward to meeting more grad students interested in games.
Love seeing collaborations like this! There's so much room to work together to share and celebrate Japanese game history internationally, rather than resigning ourselves to the idea that it has to happen in a closed environment
A scan of a page with the iconic green dragon and red sword icon and Wizardry logo, and a lot of hype text about the game much imported by Japanese CRPG fans finally getting a release in Japanese! Pretty much every Japanese micrcomputer is mentioned as platforms for the official JPN release.
📖 Bytes of Game Ads 📺
Just as we'd get excited for JRPGs to be localised in English, CRPG enthusiasts in Japan of the 80s would be the same about their favourite Western RPGs. Here in this cool ad from LOGiN's October '85 issue, the Japanese localisation of Wizardry (1981) is being heralded.
New book now coming out very soon. Next month!
A mockup of a Jeopardy board question that reads "Konami's depiction of Count Dracula iconically called this type of person "a miserable little pile of secrets"
In the 90th episode of GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES, we journey all the way back to 1984 to discuss the first published textbook on video game development, Atari legend Chris Crawford's pointed, prescient, and idiosyncratic THE ART OF COMPUTER GAME DESIGN: rangedtouch.com/2026/01/31/9...
I’ll be applying to present again this year! Replaying Japan is a great venue and I’d encourage folks interested in scholarship on Japanese games to check out the journal, too.
【告知】『はじめての百合スタディーズ』(水上文/中村香住/近藤銀河)でます！人生と共にあった百合を、重なりつつも異なるクィア/フェミニストである三人が語る一冊。
併録の米国百合受容を論じるエリカ・フリードマンの論考、百合の歴史を読み解く品田玲花の論考も百合を論じる上で必読の論考となってます！
www.ohtabooks.com/publish/2026...
Apparently this game was briefly considered lost, but the author found some old floppies in 2017, they were resuscitated by a curator at the Strong National Museum of Play, and now you can play it online — museums rock.
To launch a special attack, it needs to pose. That is an unavoidable requirement of robotics engineering. from the remote control dandy fan-TL
A rough drawing of Chun-Li, a Chinese woman in twin hair buns in the middle of, presumably, beating the stuffing out of M. Bison.
I’m feeling very into Capcom lately
One of my senpai played bird calls for me from their denshi jisho and I was amazed! Bird calls in a dictionary!
Basically I can't wait for you to get to that and I salute the ongoing perseverance.
The part in this episode where the idea of playing this game with a partner comes up brought back the memory of my beloved girlfriend watching me play the Cathedral boss fight for over 40 minutes, asking if this was actually any fun whatsoever for me, and me promptly giving up on the game entirely.
CFP for the next issue of G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment, on “Queer and Trans Game Studies in Global and Local Contexts” is out!
This issue aims to map current developments in queer and trans game studies.
For full details: www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-bey...
Hironobu Sakaguchi, recently, on his X account, has been posting an absolute treasure trove of design docs and promotional materials from early games. These are early design docs from Final Fantasy 3.
Congratulations! I'm really looking forward to picking it up!
A slightly troubling anatomical breakdown of Mario from the 2nd issue of Weekly Famitsu, titled "We Totally Get How Mario Feels." Scan from the Internet Archive.
Issue 2 of Famitsu and they're doing THIS to Mario.
joining the war on AI on the side of bong joon ho
Blue Boy Trial revisits a 1964 landmark case, focusing on the trans women whose testimonies shaped Japan’s approach to gender and identity for decades.
We dive into one of the year's best, and most important films.
📢 TODAY - November 21 @ 2PM ET 📢
⚒️🏠🧑🏿💻 TreaAndrea Russworm talks about what the Black arts tradition can tell us about The Sims, broken systems, and utopian possibilities⚒️🏠🧑🏿💻
🎟️ TIX + Info: buff.ly/DDUsvVm
💸 Our talks are always FREE and PUBLIC. DONATE: buff.ly/3PQ2HDE
He sounds like a bird!
Additionally:
One thing a lot of my friends missed from other social media platforms was interacting with venerable Japanese game devs. To that end I've made a list of folks I know are here, focusing on devs whose games you will have heard of. Please share and tell me who I'm missing! go.bsky.app/5R1tEtT
Tragically I would
Insane 😭
“Pinball machines, however, won’t lead you anywhere. Just the replay light. Replay, replay, replay…” - Haruki Murakami, Pinball 1973
@kaihat.su has been posting here and there about it.
