Since the all-but-demise of D3 Publisher’s Simple series of budget games, I’ve missed its particular blend of hooks-and-wire, no-budget ingenuity in gaming. It’s improbable for that type of development model to exist in the form of disc- or cartridge-based releases in the game industry’s current climate, and D3 hasn’t moved its business model into the […]
Conventional wisdom states that you need to spend some time with a videogame, really dig in there, in order to review it. Most days I’m with conventional wisdom on that one: just not today. Lately, I played Project Minerva for a few hours, and it committed so many unpardonable sins out of the gate that […]
Vingt-et-un Systems is showin’ em how it’s done. The Genshijin – just about to be released in the US as The Adventures of Darwin – was the highlight of D3’s Simple 2000 release schedule in 2006, and the peak of VSC’s creative output to date. This year’s spiritual sequel, The Nekomura no Hitobito, is even […]
This year’s release schedule seems to be mopping up all sorts of titles from the previous generation that nearly slipped through the cracks. Chulip, like The Red Star, managed to slip from its originally-scheduled 2004 release until this year. Naturally, the title’s elusiveness has contributed to its allure, as has the reputation (by association) of […]
For a game that spent three years in publishing-hell and entertains such lofty influences as Treasure’s Ikaruga and several of Konami’s classic 2D series, one might expect The Red Star to end up rather disappointing. This isn’t the case. This is a no-nonsense deep-action game that successfully fuses bullet hell with beat-’em-up mechanics. Bullet patterns […]