Toomanywires

I've been frequenting Akihabara since 2005.  Too long, and it's gotten to the point where I've become an intolerable hang. Come to Akiba with me, and you'll quickly tire of me pointing at souvenir shops or chain cafes and explaining how they used to be game stores, full of delights. It's a constant trip down memory lane. Pointing and mumbling - remembering something. Something better. See that store full of loli-perv crap over there? They used to have stacks of Saturn games for ¥10 each. And loli-perv crap, obviously. That shithole over there once sold wigs and Mega Drive games. And the second floor hobby-store across the road was once my favourite game shop. A huge floor space, packed to the rafters with titles from every gen, and inexpensive to boot.   That laptop-recycle store by the station? That spot was occasionally manned by a benevolent spirit who dispensed dead-stock Game Gear Games. I wipe away a tear and resume frowning at a ¥1700 copy of Final Fantasy VI

I've decided that I (probably) won't be buying any new games for the first half of this year.  Nothing until June (probably), which is when Street Fighter 6 and Final Fantasy XVI are due to be released. I'm unlikely to be able to resist that pair, even if I am shit at Street Fighter and single-player Final Fantasy hasn't been properly-good for sixteen years. It hasn't been great for twenty-two. I'm sure I'll miss some quality new releases between now and then, but nothing I absolutely must play immediately. Resident Evil 4 is great, but like everyone else, I've clocked it several times before. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be near-flawless I'm sure, but no other objectively-great series excites me less than Zelda. While I'm over the moon that Cosmic Smash will soon be revived In VR, I'm just not interested in buying a PSVR 2. I'm sure there'll be plenty of other new releases of note that I'll miss, but nothing im

I was a little unsure about Hi-Fi Rush. I have no nostalgia for Saturday-morning cartoons, am allergic to most things remotely anime-like, and suspected that its pop-culture references would be sailing over my head from start to finish. I can enjoy DMC-like action games, but they're not my favourite, and I'm always a difficulty-spike away from giving up. On the other hand, I couldn't help but be impressed by all those bright colors in the reveal trailer, as well as the comic tone, and was intrigued by the promise of a rhythm-based action game. Also, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get swept up in all the shadowdrop excitement.  I was unsure. But given that it's on Game Pass, I was bound to try it. Well, not only did I try it, but I also finished it. Predictably, it was routinely too anime-y for me, the references flew over my head, and I almost packed it in on several occasions. But I loved the colourful and vibrant art direction, warmed to the characters, and m

Major Pentiment spoilers ahead! Continue at your own risk Pentiment drops us into the 16th century Bavarian town of Tassing at three key moments that punctuate a 25-year stretch of considerable upheaval: twice as a visitor, artist Andreas Maler, and once as a resident, Magdalene Druckeryn. Crucially, time does not stand still when we leave Tassing - it marches ever on - and we are given the rare opportunity to see the long-term consequences of our actions. Over that quarter century, we experience change both major and minor. Seasons pass, townspeople come and go, apprentices become masters; new buildings sprout up, and old ones are left to ruin. Memories are misshapen and truths forgotten, and new histories are written. Relationships flourish as others wither. The kids grow up. And in those 25 years, life comes and goes. It is here, in its depiction of mortality, that I found Pentiment to be most impactful. I went to great lengths to save sweet, old Brother Piero, desperate to keep him

We all had a friend who had the wrong console. Everything they did was different. Their house smelled different. Not bad, just different to yours. They had dinner at a weird time, they didn't watch the same TV channels as you did, and they were always trying to sell you on the wrestling federation that you didn't follow. They listened to Blur; you preferred Oasis. They had the wrong console, and they swore by it. Lovely people, but they had the wrong flavour Ribena. My wrong-console friend had an N64 and that was my lone exposure to GoldenEye 007. An extremely limited sampling of an era-defining multiplayer experience, played once or twice during sleep-overs. An experience that I've heard my peers praise to high heavens since and one that, if I'm honest, didn't make much of an impression on my teenage self. I liked what I liked, and what I liked was Sega and Sony. Nintendo just wasn't for me, nor most of my immediate group of friends for that matter. As I write