“PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X are absurdities built by corporations eager to make more money”. Well, someone could argue that this applies togames themselves :)

Nintendo sue aside, I don’t get why they aren’t banned yet. If people want to drive a kart they have plenty of go-kart tracks to choose from, without endangering pedestrians, cyclists and themselves on normal city streets.

Golden Week in Japan is awful for travelling, sure, but the same goes for most places during important holidays. For example Italy during this same week (Liberation Day on 25 April and Worder’s Day on 1st May) or during Ferragosto (Mid-August). If you want to know what hell is like, then try visiting Florence on one…

Good. We, as humanity, should reclaim one of the oldest universal symbols of civilization, present in almost every culture of the world since at least 15.000 years. The Nazis took “the sun” from us, it is about time we take it back.

I actually didn’t hate Vivendi’s The Fellowship of the Ring, but that may simply be because it is one of the only media which feature Tom Bombadil.

This is why P3 is still the best of the three modern Persona games even if it plays itself worse than the others. P4 and P5 both have better style, better gameplay, better locations and settings, but they never even get near to touching the eerie and unsettling chords that P3 managed to. As others said, even the base…

Persona 5's initial subway impact is amazing, especially if you experienced it yourself or even if you din’t, but have never been in a big city in your life. For me it was a funny reenactment of both, as I come from a small mountain town in the Alps and my first impact with a reeeally big city AND a subway system was…

Great article. You captured the essence of the heartbraking feelings this game manages to convey. I honestly don’t know if there are other games which are as sad and depressing as the two Niers. Sure, there are sad stories, sad episodes, sad characters, sad moments, sad soundtracks, but I don’t know of another game…

In a few hours I’ll start playing Okami for the 5th time, on the 3rd system. After more than ten years it remains the best game about Japanese history and mythology, the best creative use of cel shading, the best Zelda lookalike and one of my favourite games ever. But yeah, having to repeat the same bosses several…

I was not a big fan of Xenosaga’s gameplay and environments but I still remember the saga fondly, simply because of the story and the characters and the overall feeling. So, awful gameplay aside, I’ll just never understand how the writing in Xenogears/Xenosaga and on the Xenoblade series is from the same people, or…

I may be in the minority but, despite being an avid consumer of almost everything coming from Japan, I am kinda looking forward to a Western game set in Japan. Diversity and different approaches is what we need in the media. Some are good, some are bad, some are meh, but they all bring something in the discourse. The…

This is the problem with Germany’s Nazi-censorship laws. They are so strong, literal in meaning and radical that portraying Nazis is almost impossible, even when it’s clear that said portrayal is critical or simply historical. This gets ridicolous when for example someone posts an image with an antifascist no-swastika…

My two cents on hostels after travelling two times for a month each in Japan:

The Monte Grappa map doesn’t represent the real Monte Grappa, which is way more south than the Dolomites, but it is the direct rendition of the area between the Valparola and Falzarego pass, between the Sas de Stria and Lagazuoi mountains, google it and you’ll see. I know this, because, well, I live there :)

I studied and worked in translation and it is a fascinating universe. It’s amazing how much subtlety, meaning and cultural references are lost, and sometimes even created, in every piece of translation (be it games, movies, books, commercial texts, simple dialogues, etc.). And considering that japanese products are…

“the black widget that forms Pac-Man’s mouth (...) isn’t even food. It’s a piece of plastic, and it was rocket-hot...”, and yet you say the riceball was cold inside: here’s your proof that the whole dish was just microwaved. Paying for microwaved food is painful :(
“The rice was fine. It was rice.” Noooo way, rice is…

The general game-style may not be for all, but in my opinion FFIX’s backgrounds are among the most beautiful and consistent in the history of pre rendered backgrounds, if not the best.

The reason why FFIX almost never gets the credit it deserves is that its humble but angelic voice is mercilessly swept away by the brutal noise of FFVII vs FFVIII fights.

Well, that’s what Japanese animators, video game makers and mangaka usually do :D

Every time I see Morgana, I remember the first time I heard its nickname in-game, which is the same word as the one vulgar one for... pussy (not as in “cat” though) in Venetian, but also quite known in northern Standard Italian .