Arms is a fighting game developed and published by Nintendo. It was released exclusively on the Nintendo Switch in June 2017. MSRB is $60. Arms is a colorful marriage between a Fighting game and a Boxing game, like Street Fighter II meets Punch-Out!!. I'm not a fan of either genre. I picked up Soul Caliber … Continue reading Arms: The New Nintendo IP Punching Above Its Weight
The Nintendo 3DS was born in March of 2011. Its last major game, Persona Q2, was released in June of 2019. That means the system had a good long life of 8 years. I still play my 3DS, so I don't consider it dead yet, but I've realized that I've never made a post solely … Continue reading The Nintendo 3DS, 10 Years Later
The Switch is already 3 years old. Remember back in October of 2016, when it was just an idea? Pretty soon it'll be old enough to go to preschool. And then before you know it, your Switch will want to go to rock concerts and it'll believe it knows everything... When the console launched, it … Continue reading The Nintendo Switch: 3 Years Later
Normally I feel weird reviewing DLC, but I'll make an exception for Smash. It's been a while since I dissected something in this game, and I've had the itch to get out my video game scalpel. I need to come up with better metaphors. I gotta hand it to Sakurai, he always keeps us on … Continue reading Ranking Smash Ultimate’s First Wave of DLC Fighters
If you want a Game Awards done right, you gotta do a Game Awards yourself. Welcome to my year in review, everyone! And Happy New Year! 2019 was another year full of changes. I started out the year insanely overworked, and it only got worse as I went into summer. Both gaming and this blog … Continue reading My 2019 in Gaming
In his beginning years, Sakurai made it a point to learn game design by playing games. Each game was a textbook of mechanics filled with ideas to analyze. Since then Sakurai has taken a unique position in the games industry where he can observe gaming as a whole, sample and borrow mechanics, and make them … Continue reading Sakurai, Part 5: The Kirby of Game Developers
Overwatch, Anthem, Destiny, Fortnite, Call of Duty... In the short time I've been back into gaming, I've seen several publishers push their games into being subscriptions, trying to get their players to keep paying for content for extended periods of time, whether that's a schedule of DLCs, events, updates, season passes, or lootboxes. One of … Continue reading Sakurai, Part 4: Designing Immortal Games
Eight games in one! That was the tagline for Kirby Super Star, Sakurai's third game, and the first one to include smaller games with widely different styles. This has become a staple of his design philosophy ever since. Opening up a game and seeing a sprawling menu has become his calling card. Sakurai flirted around … Continue reading Sakurai, Part 3: Designing Games with Variety
Let's imagine video games as theme park rides. Many of the intense ones have a height requirement in order to protect young kids from getting hurt. In a similar fashion, most video games, in order to get much enjoyment out of them, have a "height requirement" in skill. It's true that many games teach you … Continue reading Sakurai, Part 2: Designing Complex Games
As we begin diving into Sakurai's works, our first point of discussion is perhaps what he's best known for: games that anyone can easily learn and enjoy. Sakurai labeled this design philosophy as Kirbyism. His flagship series, Kirby and Super Smash Bros., are superb entry-level games not just for their respective genres, but for anyone … Continue reading Sakurai, Part 1: Designing Accessible Games
