The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club (Page 2)

Gapoli is not the Sega/Sammy Super Game, but you can trade your points for a TV, so maybe it actually is

Before I go any further I need to explain the weird, fascinating legalized prize-room gambling going on in this app.

I revisited the Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy in theaters and it's still a masterpiece

(This will contain spoilers for the now over 40-year-old original Gundam films. These plot points are so old and so well-known that even if you haven’t seen Mobile Suit Gundam, you’ve probably seen an anime that’s made a joke about them. Giving you a spoiler warning for

I saw Atarashii Gakko the other day, and now I understand with all my heart how those idol guys feel

I saw a major Japanese idol group a few years ago. I won’t say who because I don’t want their fans to read this and take it the wrong way. That’s how idol stuff is, I’ve learned. There’s a reason for that word, “idol”, and

I inevitably got hooked on Konami medal games for a week - 2 - Coin pushers, horses, and everything else

"For example, the game gates progress with gear that only stays equipped for one dungeon and which costs medals to use: how interesting, you know what we call that? An ante!"

I inevitably got hooked on Konami medal games for a week - 1 - Intro and Bingo

(This ran quite long so I decided to split it into two pieces: one is a general introduction to the concept, and the other is about the various bingo games I played.) Recently I got hooked on watching a Youtuber play various Japanese medal games— fake money gambling games with

How to properly use the AI Analysis feature to correct your mahjong style in Riichi City (or wherever else you play)

If you want to get better at riichi mahjong, studying and evaluating one’s own games is a must. A major part of sharpening your technique is looking at your own decisions honestly, asking yourself “why did I do that?”, and using that information to correct bad habits. Lately, a

The Kimagure Orange Road movie is a slow execution of a romcom heroine

I came to the Kimagure Orange Road movie as part of an ongoing discussion between myself and other otaku friends who are likely reading this. Drawn in by the virtuosic opening sequences and Akemi Takada’s drawings of the heroine, I watched about 13 episodes of the TV series before

Otakon 2024: on Sunday walk into the game room, dethrone the guys winning at Gundam, then immediately leave

(I've got hardly any photos of interest from Sunday, so I'm going to continue to use Saturday shots, and use this space to show the cool cosplays that I didn't have room to put into prior reports.) You partied hard on Saturday and you

Otakon 2024: every year me and a bunch of old dudes get in a room and yell about Shaider

Friday was quite a night and I was really in no hurry to wake up the next morning. I don’t think I was at the convention center and about until about 11 or so. From there we hit the artists’ alley for quite a long time, because… Saturday is

Otakon 2024: how we beat the autograph line

(When I wrote this I realized I had written thousands of words more than I expected; if you're wondering where I've been for a couple weeks it's been this. Breaking this up into pieces was the only way to make this not just a

Otakon 2024: it's the dealer's room. three anime are out of print and you can only save one

The dealer's room hasn't significantly changed in the last few years, and as such I already know who my dealers are. They’re Discotek for their best-in-class blu-rays of classic anime, and Retro Saikou for their affordable, well-curated random treasures from across the years. These are

Otakon 2024: it doesn't matter how many cabs are in the game room if half of them are broken

At the start of the convention proper… I slept a little more. I always think I'm gonna be up at 9 to check out fan panels and stuff, and I have been in the past. But y'know lately I have a couple drinks and watch videos

Otakon 2024: the important thing is you show up on Thursday

(Due to the sheer unexpected length of this convention report, I will be posting it in multiple parts, with some of those parts paywalled to subscribers. Barring any hiccups, this should come out daily on weekdays. I'm posting the first one on a Friday because I think my

fgc

Beta report: The new 3-versus-3 mode in Guilty Gear Strive is chaotic, hard to read, probably not to be taken too seriously… and is a total blast

In this video you can see what Arc has in mind for the 3v3 mode, ideally. It’s not what happens when you play it for the very first time with a bunch of randos. The other weekend Arc System Works beta tested a new 6-player, 3vs3 game mode in

Trains rule, so it logically follows that Train To The End Of The World is the anime of the season

The first event of Train to the End of The World is the activation of 7G internet exploding the world. Things get significantly weirder from there. Train to the End of the World is a mellow travelogue in a comical, surreal post-apocalypse, like if the Yurucamp girls were trapped in

The 20-year-old game put on the biggest show at Evo 2024

Now I wasn’t at Evo– for those of you not in the know, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world and something of a Super Bowl/Anime Expo at the same time for our subculture— but I did spend my entire weekend holed up watching the tournament final

Tournament report: I got bodied at mahjong at Riichi Nomi Open

Nothing has ever burned out my brain quite like playing competitive riichi mahjong. To play the game at a high level in person (as opposed to in an online game), you need to maintain a state of intense concentration for a long, sustained period. You’re not just struggling to

20 years ago, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence dared to be the philosophical mood piece of a blockbuster cyberpunk action series

"(Oshii's) thinking about everything we make... human attempts to build a purer, better form of ourselves without all the original sin. Something innocent."

The fighting game based on a mobile game has a reasonable battle pass, while Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 expect you to take up a part-time job

Nobody likes battle passes, but they’re tremendously psychologically effective. Players in a battle pass game are dished out a cookie-crumb trail of little tiny in-game prizes the more they play the game. The “premium”, as in paid, battle pass hits players with FOMO over some attractive grand prize; if

anime

How the alternate universe Genshiken spinoff Spotted Flower caused fans to disown a beloved millennial otaku icon

(Just as a heads-up: I’ve kept things relatively non-graphic, but very late in this piece I describe a sexual assault in the manga in question. I'll also be talking about a comic that only exists in English in fan scans, and which for reasons we will get

video games

In Tekken 8, I have to shift my brain between “smart” and “stupid” gears over and over again

In its nearly decade-long run, Tekken 7 left behind a complete package that left nowhere to go next. The gameplay is that unique Tekken blend; it works because it works, and you don’t mess with it. The graphics are already pretty high-end ten years later. The cast– adding enough

Metallic Rouge took me back to the 2000s, including the profound final-episode disappointment

(There are spoilers in this piece for only the last five minutes or so of Metallic Rouge’s final episode, which are so important to to the series overall that we have to discuss them in full.) I’d been excited about Metallic Rouge since I first heard about it,