So what was I up to in 2018? Well, I did a few reviews and guest-hosted my old column several times at Anime News Network. My geek highlight...

A new version of Phantasy Star appeared on the Switch this month. As with most games in the Sega Ages line, developer M2 added plenty of gr...

I don’t hesitate to call Crystalis the most rewarding game from the NES era. I never grow weary of replaying it and noticing something new...

Any discussion of Crystalis and its unfairly short legacy brings up a question: Why didn’t SNK make another one? The answer is usually “Beca...

Was Crystalis a big success? I would guess not. SNK never revisited it, and this was a company that gave Prehistoric Isle a follow-up. Cry...

Crystalis gets ideas from many sources, but it most blatantly plunders  Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky . That’s...

NES titles get guarded praise at best when it comes to storylines. This was a era when video games had the barest of plots, and players were...

It’s strange that Crystalis even exists. In the late 1980s SNK was a company forged in arcades and accustomed to a diet of eye-catching, qui...

Crystalis really needed a comeback. It’s one of the best games that ever appeared on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and I was dismayed ...

The Cat Returns often goes neglected in the Studio Ghibli catalog. Some deem it mediocre. Others say it’s mildly amusing but inferior to it...

Dragon Quest XI may very well be the best game in this illustrious series. That’s a bold statement when one considers its rich array of pre...

[Might Have Been tracks the failures of promising games, characters, and companies. This installment looks at Phantasy Star III , released f...

Ah, Low G Man . Or Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man , as it is fully and needlessly titled. It’s the perfect example of a standard-issue NES a...

Want to collect games for the Nintendo Entertainment System? Well, bad news: you’ll need money. The NES was a fixture of many a childhood in...

Hey, I haven’t written about Trouble Shooter lately! I should, because this little two-game carnival of side-scrolling action and heavily a...

GamePro wasn’t the first game magazine I read, but it was the first one I outgrew. I wasn’t alone in this. GamePro pitched squarely to the y...

I’m not sure what I’d choose as my favorite anime series. There’s a lot of competition. Yet I never sway when picking my favorite terrible a...

I haven’t been to the Toy Fair in a long, long time, but I always like looking at the new trinkets it brings. After all, a good chunk of t...

If you ever want someone to realize just how excessive video game magazines were in the mid-1990s, you don’t need to say a thing. Just grab...

I mentioned my minor gripes with Gravity Rush 2 before, and I explained how trivial they seem to me. I’m bothered less by the game’s unrelia...