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• Japan Scares Me: Tokyo Game Show Rising, Strangeness, and Panty-shot Beat ‘Em Ups

  Does it ever. Japan has me trembling in my delicate booties. Typically it’s just one thing or another that gets me quaking in abject terror: a bizarre fan-made video here, a witch molestation game there. Today, Japan’s working overtime. Gaming exists, at the Japanese moment, in a state of flux. Traditional gaming appears to be dwindling – way back in June 2007, Screen Digest predicted that 89% of Japanese households would own a Nintendo DS, a number that will likely need to be increased after the DSi releases later this year – while simultaneously thriving thanks to Capcom’s Monster Hunter Portable juggernaut. Major publishers continue to consolidate while the nation’s auteur creators start crafting more and more games to suit Western tastes and flock to Western publishing houses. Hell, the Xbox 360, an American console, outsold the PS3 throughout September. Things are topsy-turvy over there. It’s enough to make a man skittish, especially with the Tokyo Game Show due to start in just forty-eight hours. Read More... Posted Oct 07 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, xbox 360, wii, psp, shadow of the colossus, ico, fumito ueda, team ico, chrono trigger, tokyo game show, japan scares me, dsi

• 9/9/99 9 Years Later

  Numerology fans take note; what was one purported to be the biggest day in entertainment history took place exactly 9 year ago. Plagiarism fans also take note: I got this idea from the latest episode of Retronauts. Yes, we're nearly a decade from the launch of Sega's little-console-that-could-but-didn't, and aside from making me feel incredibly old, this anniversary of sorts had me thinking about just where I was on 9/9/1999. My most distinct memory of that time period--which is mostly fuzzy and inexplicably filled with Pokemon--is being madly in love with a high school girl. Luckily for her, I was also in high school; but even with us having that much in common, it was never meant to be. So did I console myself by splurging and then weeping on Sega's newest system? Fittingly, Final Fantasy VIII absorbed most of my pain in telling the story of an emotional cripple that made me look much more stable by comparison. I eventually got a Dreamcast a whole year later, but my relationship with it was just as sordid and artificial as my high school fling. I used it. Read More... Posted Sep 09 2008, 11:00 AM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: ico, sega, sonic the hedgehog, grand theft auto, dreamcast, bob mackey

• Trailer Review: Prince of Persia

  There are a lot of things to like about the new Prince of Persia trailer. But I'm sad to see that our boy has been given a ghostly sidekick. She looks like equal parts Midna and Yorda, which means she'll probably save your butt and get in the way a lot. This was a slight problem in The Sands of Time, in which Princess Farah would accidently shoot arrows at the Prince. The red orbs that fling the Prince around are a little Metroid Prime-y, and the supplemental swinging granted by the sidekick seems to draw from Spidey. Read More... Posted Aug 22 2008, 08:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: metroid, prince of persia, ico, cole stryker

• Personal Firsts: My Gaming Scrapbook, From A to Wii

  Written by Amber Ahlborn At some point in the 1980s, the year nebulous in my memory, my mom bowled with her team every Thursday night. I loved Thursday nights because dad let me stay up late to watch M.A.S.H. and Benny Hill. Sometimes he and I would hop in the car and go visit mom at the alley, and that was the best. Dad would sit and watch mom bowl. Me? I would squeeze every last quarter I could get out of him. With a fist full of change and dollars soon to be converted into change, I’d walk down to the alley’s hamburger bar, snag a stool, and drag it through the glass doors into the arcade. Without deviation, I’d position my stool in front of the “Ostrich Game” and stay planted there until I ran out of money. I’m speaking of Joust of course, but at that age I could neither reach the controls without a stool to sit on nor read very well. Read More... Posted Jun 02 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: pac-man, metroid, wii, legend of zelda, snes, nes, ico, mega man, atari, gamecube, amber ahlborn, kaboom, katamari damacy, chrono trigger, firsts, pikmin, Playstation, joust, pitfall, star fox, ps2, frogger, super mario bros, ds

• Team Ico’s Fumito Ueda at the Nordic Game 2008 Conference

  As self-professed gaming aesthetes, we here at 61 Frames Per Second obviously have a deep and abiding love for the work of Sony Japan’s Team Ico and, more specifically, resident auteur Fumito Ueda. Ueda’s work on the Playstation 2, including the stylistic milestones Shadow of the Colossus and his team’s namesake Ico, are the go-to namedrops for anyone engaging in the persistent games-as-art discussion. His trademarks are characters that convey emotional depth through body language instead of dialogue and austere worlds that imply long histories and lost grandeur. It’s been three years since Shadow of the Colossus and the world’s been waiting with baited breath for any word regarding Ueda and Team Ico’s Playstation 3 debut. His recent talk alongside Siren designer Keiichiro Toyama on disruptive game design at the Nordic Game 2008 conference yielded no news on that project but provided some rich insight into his history in the industry and the early forms of his seminal works. Read More... Posted May 21 2008, 10:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, neogaf, sony, playstation 2, shadow of the colossus, ico, fumito ueda, team ico