Video game
“Died on B2. Turned to ash. Didn’t even leave a tombstone behind.” Wizardry is the holy ground you only reach if you can take a sentence like that as a reward. More than forty years have passed since the original was born on the Apple II in 1981, and the veterans who’ve been baptized by…
Video game
Mystery Dungeon is built on one very specific flavor of dread: game over means every item you were carrying is gone, and you walk right back down into the dungeon anyway. It started with Torneko’s Great Adventure in 1993, then branched off into Shiren, Chocobo, Pokémon, Etrian and beyond, racking up more than 23 million…
Sega
The Sega Saturn. When SEGA unleashed this machine on the world in 1994, it planted two mighty pillars in the Japanese games market — 2D fighting games and gorgeously rendered RPGs — and went toe-to-toe with the PlayStation in one of the fiercest console wars ever fought. Arriving as the successor to the Mega Drive…
Video game
Nearly 40 years after its 1987 debut, Street Fighter remains the gold standard of the genre — the fighting game series players all over the world keep coming back to. The series has shipped more than 55.5 million copies (as of fiscal 2023). Words like “Hadoken” and “Shoryuken” have soaked so deeply into pop culture…
Anime
There’s a phrase in anime fandom: “the Obari pose.” Hips low, fist thrust toward the camera, a machine surging with life in a single frame. When Masami Obari draws a robot, it stops being a hunk of metal and becomes something with a soul. Masami Obari, born in 1966, is an animator, director, and mechanical…
Video game
The worlds are all secretly connected. The story goes to some genuinely dark places. The music is on another level entirely. If you’ve heard the reputation but keep wondering “where am I even supposed to start?” — you’re not alone. The Drakengard and NieR series form a lineage of dark action RPGs stretching back to…
Anime
When it comes to Japanese mecha anime, there’s one studio you simply can’t leave out of the conversation: Sunrise (now Bandai Namco Filmworks). Beyond the Gundam franchise, it gave the world Code Geass, Votoms, GaoGaiGar and a long list of other classics. The catch? The catalog is so massive that plenty of newcomers end up…
Anime
“Time to finally catch up on the Persona anime” — if you’ve ever typed that search and immediately froze, you’re not alone. TV series, theatrical films, TV specials… the catalog is pushing double digits, and it’s genuinely unclear where the entrance is. The first time I tried, I spent a solid three minutes just scrolling…
Anime
Have you ever heard the words “Zero Requiem”? Anyone who has watched Code Geass will feel their eyes welling up at that phrase alone. The Code Geass series, which began in 2006, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2026 — the TV broadcast of “Rozé of the Recapture” begins in July, and a completely new title,…
Anime
The first Rumiko Takahashi anime you should watch is the 2024 remake of “Ranma 1/2.” It’s the newest series, still running since the fall 2024 season, with visuals rebuilt to modern standards — the ultimate entry point you can enjoy with zero prior knowledge. “Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha… where do I even start?” —…
