So throughout, Venus Returns is kind of shocking. Not at all in terms of its sexual content— which is again quite tame— but in terms of the level of detail, the pains taken, the way you can actually hear buttons unfastening. Turns out video games are art, after all.
Otakon’s my home convention; I rarely miss a year. Despite its very large size, a raw spirit of grassroots fan enthusiasm seems to fuel the event, even after its decades of operation. Today anime/manga has completely settled into the culture, and we get events here in New York
As mentioned before, we want to win any hand possible, as fast as possible. There is no reason to score high, nor to play defense as you would in the standard four-player game. This will be a brute force method.
(I have an Otakon 2026 writeup coming, but I did a lot that weekend and it got kind of massive. However, on Anime NYC weekend I only did a couple of things because I wasn’t actually at the con. So I’m going to write up those things relatively
I’m passionate about the classic battle manga/anime Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken). I’ve been mesmerized by its perfect blend of post-apocalyptic grime, absurd violence, and sweeping kung-fu melodrama since I discovered it as a kid, and my love for it has never
As promised way back at the pro meet– where I played a round with one of these authors and was complimented by the other, by the way, ohoho– I’m going to review the strategy books I picked up. (Both of these books (Uchikawa, Matsumoto) have been made available on
There’s a lot of talk about the rising cost of mainstream video games right now, led of course by Grand Theft Auto 6 being priced at, effectively, $100. But taking inflation into account, video games used to be a lot more expensive than they are now: going by some
At the risk of setting off any local rivalries, I am pretty certain that the center of the riichi (Japanese rule) mahjong boom in America is right here in New York City. To bring up just one point, I don’t think you’d see a large, dedicated riichi parlor
This week I decided to go see the Masters of The Universe (He-Man) movie on a cheap matinee before it drops out of theaters, which might already have happened by the time you read this. The trailer for this movie was a constant presence before nearly every film I
An emulator setup is kind of a project— a project of finding files, dragging and dropping them at great volume, and fiddling with settings— so I want to make an early impressions post on my new AYN Thor handheld before I make a final review. Why did I need a
I previously mentioned taking up Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond and having a pretty fun time returning to trading card games after frauding my way up to the top ranks of MTG: Arena way back during the pandemic. I had played the original Shadowverse— which is modeled after Hearthstone, with more Magic-
I say this despite the last feature on this newsletter being a slam review of a promising but ultimately disappointing anime: I don’t really like to write negative reviews, not anymore. I would rather not be let down in the first place. And I don’t really like to