>Flipper's Guitar (Cornelius's band with Kenji Ozawa)

Apparently there was some interest after Spirited Away, so that's when my local multiplex decided to show Castle in the Sky. It really was awesome! And all of the other 10 people there surely thought so as well. Last year my local arthouse did a fairly complete Ghibli retrospective too, but of course that didn't start…

Friday I went to see Westside Xtreme Wrestling: Broken Rulz XV, which, heaps of unfortunate spelling aside, was surprisingly great. wXw is probably Germany's biggest, most prestigious promotion and already drew names like Kenta Kobashi, Bryan Danielson and Chris Hero. This weekend I got to see Tommaso Ciampa and Matt…

I think I might finally, actually complete a Europa Universalis game for the first time ever. In Ironman mode at that! I managed to turn that crappy situation with my exiled troops around, which allowed me to take the southern tip of Korea. Having easy access to the Yellow Sea apparently scared Ming into not trying…

Agreed. I'm generally wary of evaluating games like "1) This game lets me do x 2) I think the idea of x is cool 3) Therefore, game is cool", but Dragon's Dogma melded the gameplay and experience~ nicely. Climbing griffins and showering them in fire was satisfactory enough from a gameplay perspective, but having the…

Hey, welcome to the "Sadwick is the worst" club. I'll be keeping records; Girard will be bringing the tea.
Daedalic, bless their hearts, generally just can't seem to write a decent main character for their marquee titles. All in all, I still enjoyed the game, but… brace yourself.

I find that something like England is even better because you're relatively isolated on the islands while still having enough neighbors to keep things interesting. If you want a really gentle introduction, you could try Japan for similar reasons plus no need to worry about papacy and reformation and the like.

I've returned to my pile of unplayed and half-played games, with pretty good results so far. Okay, so starting an ironman game in Europa Universalis 4 in a pretty busy week wasn't the best idea, but I quit soon enough after getting screwed over by the "in exile" mechanic. I get what it's there for, but it still kind…

I agree with Sanziana, 1864 sounds really intriguing. That description of Bismarck is also pretty close to the image I have of him, courtesy of Jonathan Steinberg's excellent Bismarck: A Life. Hardly a fine character, but the kind of person who just generates incredible stories wherever they go. Stories where it's…

I'm not sure it has, which is part of why it's hard. Miyazawa is apparently quite infamous for using not-quite-standard grammar and made up words that may even throw native speakers for a loop. How's the movie version? The soundtrack is by YMO's Hosono, so at least that should be pretty good, I suppose.

I watched some segments from Jam Films (specifically Kendama, Hijiki and Justice) for the first time in, what, ten years? And boy did they hold up. If I enjoyed Justice a little less this time around it's only because my appreciation for the others has grown. The performances in Hijiki are great and Yukihiko manages…

I still thought it was quite typical in a lot of ways (doesn't he trot out his old observing-the-change-of-your-body and blackish-lump-inside motifs again in it?), but if you enjoyed it, I'm reading Men Without Women at the moment and while I'm personally a bit down that the stories are so far from Bakery Attack or The…

The closer comparison would be something like SimCity. It's very different in that in pours a lot more effort into flavor than finely tuned mechanics. I don't think it works well as a sandbox-type game, but the mission-based modes are pretty fun. It's definitely rather slight, but there's a time and a place for that.…

I don't know why, but GameBoy soundtracks hardly ever get any respect. The Muda Kingdom theme https://youtu.be/N7Ol9YqAu6M is one of my definite Super Mario songs and the first thing that came to mind for this topic is the Mega Man 2 ending theme — yes, the the GameBoy one. https://youtu.be/fVQ3xMKkR5… Admittedly that…

Okay, cool. My knowledge mainly comes from the Kamchrouch mix that made the rounds a couple years earlier plus some select artists. Any good compilations you'd recommend?

From what I gather a lot of what was released then was covers of American or British songs, but that's really not to discredit how good they were at owning them. The vocal melody of Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco", for example, fits Cambodian way better than English.

I finished Counterspy, which I'd grown inexplicably fond of. It's pretty shallow and has some pretty large design flaws. However, maybe that's also why I like it. Despite the ever present threat of a game over it's rather low stakes and relaxing. Its design oddities remind of the experimental '80s home computer gaming…

After moving to a new city six months ago I finally start feeling like I arrived. I got a nice place, everything I need and enough decorations to elevate my living situation above the purely functional, and my internet is finally decent. Which means I can stream movies again!

I've got a visitor but only one controller, so if anything either Achtung, die Kurve (if I can clean my keyboard…), Koi Koi or something on DS (Ouendan?). I must be forgetting some options I have, so on that note:

Bingo. The de Chirico nod on Ico's cover is beautiful, but the game having its own visual identity is much more welcome than "established thing, but in a video game!"