Io Black
@ioblack
Co-creator of drugsandwires.fail (on hiatus). Tech, gaming, roleplaying, occasional moments of lucidity. Marketing was a mistake.
It’s not officially licensed yet, but She is Beautiful offers a pacy mash-up of Memento and The Bourne Identity with an added sapphic twist.
Feels kind of apt, given that the franchise got its start in the pages of Hobby Japan’s RPG Magazine. There was even a tie-in TRPG at one point.
- Another example of a pre-Yasuda replay can be found in the June 1984 issue of LOGiN, which features an original adventure created by members of Keio HQ. Strictly speaking, the format can be traced back to D&D itself, since even the White Box included a short script-style session transcript.
Some thoughts and addenda on the article itself: - In an interview with the group New Games Order, Takanashi revealed that “Al Siddhata” was Tadashi Sakamoto (坂本 忠司), a member of Takanashi's gaming circle Cadet Club. Weirdly, Donkey Command got a pseudo-sequel in the November 1983 issue of LOGiN.
I'm usually the first to argue that those stereotypes about German bureaucracy are blown way out of proportion, but this right here is the textbook you're expected to memorize if you want to apply for a fishing license.
Certain concepts have been nested in our collective gaming experiences for so long that it's very easy to forget every single one of them started off as somebody's particularly bright idea. (From Jon Peterson's Playing at the World: Second Edition, Volume 1)
I know that we banished the idea of "character" and "whimsy" from the 40k milieu a few decades ago, but trying to make dinosaur-riding space-elf barbarians with laser lances all tidy and respectable so they don't clash with the 5,393 Space Marine variants misses the whole point of the exercise.
I kind of miss the days when franchise blockbusters came with their own risible scent-based tie-ins. A real lost art.
Some of it's surprisingly sinister too, like this extended missive interrogating a fellow-traveller accused of "not only falling out of the struggle, but denigrating and hindering our work by spreading lies behind our backs." All deathly earnest in that way only committed 20-somethings can be.
I've been dimly aware that my uncles were hardcore Maoists in the early '70s, but didn't really appreciate how deep in they were until leafing through one of their notebooks from back in the day. It's heady stuff, page after typewritten page of spy thriller-level dossiers, reports, and polemic.
The arrangement didn't last: Communication Group went bust in the aftermath of the '97 Asian financial crisis, and according to some Korean posters, was publishing D&D material without a license towards the end, which might explain this extra-sketchy version of the "King's Feast" adventure.
The thing that'll forever keep me poking into the lesser-known corners of RPG history is the prospect of unearthing buck-wild artifacts like this: a "Limited Edition" Korean boxed set from the '90s bundling Basic D&D's Companion and Master Rules with the Japanese Crystania RPG.
Very exciting. Any relation to the RPG/wargame hybrid Tsukuda Hobby put out in 1990? Given their history of sourcing designs from university circles, I wouldn't be surprised if they picked it up for publication - especially since they'd just fallen out with ORG, who produced their last Gundam RPG.
I'm about a million and a half years late rolling up to the "art is too expensive!!11!" dunking contest, but seriously: looking back, about 80% of everything I drew as a teenager was done with cheap pencil or a Bic ballpoint on the back of an old printout.
Capping the year by blitzing through Mohrta, a GZDoom-powered Souls-lite sheathed in pleasingly chunky retro-visuals channeling equal parts '80s anime and Metal Hurlant-ish weirdo-fantasy. It's scrappy in places, but so committed to its vision that it's easy to overlook the occasional rough edge.
Oh, yeah. Predictably enough, imAI was all over fireworks packaging this year, replacing the usual "early 2000s graphics card box" aesthetic with a Twitter feed's worth of garish, over-rendered slop.
Y’know, I’m used to a bit of questionable naming when it comes to German fireworks, but…
It's struck me that the most challenging aspect of bringing Wares Blade into English hasn't been parsing the rules, but the sheer volume of people, places, and things needing romanization. Our master list of geographical locations alone is just shy of 300 entries - and that's only the core rulebook.
How could anyone gaze upon this buffet of tactical options and not come away convinced that yes, imAI-powered gaming is indeed The Future™?
As well-preserved as the core loop is, though, I'd still give an edge to the Eidos duology, whose denser, richer urban environments reward furtive exploration far more readibly than neutron bomb-empty New York or Paris. (Never mind Invisible War, where "cities" consist of five-odd alleyways.)
Nine years and three computers later, I've finally rolled credits on the original Deus Ex and can once again show my face in the respectable corners of cyberpunk fandom.
To your original point, though - I've seen Yokoyama's concepts for the costume, but the bird seems to have been derived from this particular Mœbius piece:
The LionWing release will be a more substantial animal than this, mind - The Renewal, the updated core rulebook we're using as the basis for our localization, pulled in a smörgåsbord of content from the RPG's myriad boxed sets, including literally hundreds of additional abilities.
I’ll ‘fess up - half of the reason I‘ve hung onto some of the less legitimate chunks of my game collection is to remind myself of a time when deranged, wildly inaccurate media summaries were the province of flesh-and-blood humans, not burning piles of VC cash.
Spent the weekend with Lunacid, @akumakira.bsky.social's vaporwave-tinged celebration of all things King's Field. It's a less punishing affair than your typical Soulslike, but neatly replicates From's blend of compelling exploration and cryptic puzzles while still finding room for its own quirks.
And yes, the contents are just as amazing as the cover lets on. Any one of these pages is a shitpost meme template waiting to happen.