In terms of games, I mean.

Itsuwari no Rondo

Itsuwari no Rondo ("Rondo of Lies") is the first game by Osaka-based developer Fun Unit. It's also the best SRPG on the DS so far (and by a wide margin), and one of the best such games to come out in years. In many ways a Fire Emblem rip-off, Itsuwari adds so many new ideas to the formula that calling it a "rip-off" would simply be uncalled for.

Winning Eleven: Play Maker 2008

The Wii version of Winning Eleven 2008 reinvents sports gaming. There, that's it. When other sports games churn out new versions year after year playing the same way they've played pretty much since the days of the Famicom, Play Maker reimagines what it's like to control a sports team and lead them to glory.

Reviewed inside: Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban, Ex-Ranza, Golden Axe II, Gunforce, Gunstar Super Heroes, Hagane, Ikari No Yousai, Jet Set Radio, Kidou Soukou Dion, Kisuishou Densetsu Astal, the GBA Made in Wario games, Sword Maniac, The Super Shinobi, Ushio to Tora and more...

I've played a lot of arcade games in my life. Most of them have been Taito games.

There's relatively few series which I'll occasionally feel the need to just go back to and play through every single chapter just to refresh myself on them, but for whatever reason a couple of weeks ago I got it into my head to play through the entirety of the Half-Life series.

The first thing that needs to be understood in any discussion regarding the business of videogame news reporting, is that the sources of these news are always the game companies themselves.

More hints about the Americanization process of the video game, more examples of unavoidable reference. Comedy and drama in equal part.

Darius is about the fight for life. Before human beings were the dominant life forms in the Galaxy, the Great Old Ones ruled the universe.

Since the Night Slave review was published we've had a few readers inquire about PC-98 emulation, which can be a bit tricky to figure out, at least for those who don't speak Japanese, because all the major emulators are made by Japanese people and are hosted on Japanese websites.

Insomnia is finally getting a hardware section. Here's why.

The point of this article is to clarify my RPG reviewing policy, in light of the astounding revelations seen in my recent article on the subject. So yes, from time immemorial, all electronic games touted as RPGs have had more or less nothing to do with role-playing, but then how are we supposed to treat them when we are obliged to review them?

I've played many arcade games in my life: sometimes just for the music (before it became easy to import OSTs), and sometimes because the mechanics were so smooth and well-designed that every play was a subtle and sublime experience.

This is the part where I explain why I am forced to link my own articles again and again on this website, in an effort to get as many people as possible to read them.

Role-playing games are games in which players assume the roles of fictional characters and collaboratively create stories. Players determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a system of rules and guidelines.

And to conclude our "games as art" thematic week here on Insomnia, we've devised a little test for you, which should help you determine once and for all which side of the fence (or closet, if you prefer) you're on. Simply answer the following questions, then scroll to the bottom of the page for your results.

"Never say never again." Now there's a wise message for you, from James Bond of all people. After my recent article on "artfaggotry in videogames", I thought I was through with the sorry subject, but "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

I've spent most of my life in L'Aquila, a small city northeast of Rome. My uncle also lives here, and has had a successful arcade since '82. I spent most of my gaming youth in said arcade, playing many titles and having fun with many people; between rounds of Street Fighter II and Puyo Puyo, I mastered games like Darius Gaiden and Rayforce.

One of the things that never fail to infuriate me about game reviews is the way reviewers handle the subject of game pricing. In short, whenever you see the price of a game mentioned in a review, it's a sure sign its author has little understanding of the game in question, and even less of the genre it belongs to.

Gunstar Heroes (1993)

Gunstar Heroes is best described as an awesome boss-rush glued together with shit. Shit meaning it has every design element of one of those terrible Euro shooters (see: all of them), also known as euroshmups.

Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night.

Imperishable Night is the third in the Shrine Maiden series of shooting games on the PC, created by Team Shanghai Alice (actually just one person, ZUN). The previous two installments were Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, which now looks slightly dated in comparison, and Perfect Cherry Blossom, which still remains extremely impressive.

TimeShift

It speaks volumes about the wealth of FPS titles currently available that TimeShift has been released to relative indifference amongst fans of the genre.

R-Type Tactics

If someone had tracked me down while playing R-Type in an Athenian arcade in the late '80s, and told me that twenty years later I'd be playing an R-Type-themed strategy game on a handheld device a hundred times more powerful than all the machines around me put together, I'd have undoubtedly asked him two questions.

Assassin's Creed

In Assassin's Creed you play as Desmond, a bartender in the year 2012 who's been kidnapped by a pharmaceutical company and forced to undergo experiments in a machine called the Animus.

Dairantou Smash Brothers X is the Japanese title of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, just in case anyone doesn't know. This game is very significant for me, and I will try to partly explain here the reason why (partly -- not fully, you see. I am saving something for later.)

If I was writing a review of Rez HD I would be deathly sure to avoid saying three things: 1) trance vibrator omg vibrator get it, 2) synesthesia and/or Kandinsky, 3) underneath it all it's just a rail shooter like PANZER DRAGOON but omg here it's so much more!

Out of all the lame "arguments" I've heard so far from those trying their luck at defending No More Heroes, the only one I am willing to acknowledge as valid is, "Well, I enjoyed it."

Shin Chuka Taisen

There is a hefty stack of Japanese Wii games on my desk as I sit down to write this review and one glance at it should tell you this game is rather special. It is... the only one with a full color spine. It also happens to be the only one that's 2D. Between these two seemingly unrelated facts, might there be... a connection?

Reviewed inside: Arrow Flash, Captain Lang, Crying: Asia Seimei Sensou, Curse, Dahna: Megami Tanjou, Divine Sealing, Eliminate Down, Herzog Zwei, Emirin's Disney platformers, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, Super Airwolf, Verytex and X-Dazedly-Ray.

Deus Ex (2000)

If, as Jean Baudrillard once wrote, what is inherent to articulated forms of meaning is that they cannot be translated into each other, then the "interactive movie" form is the essence of electronic gaming. By that measure, Deus Ex is the best electronic game yet. So good in fact, that, as Matt Warner explains, it's almost magic.

OutRun 2 Special Tours SDX

We don't normally devote too much space to reviewing ports and simple upgrades on insomnia, yet from time to time we come across a few which deserve to be exempted from this policy, and you better believe that this is one of them.

New Super Mario Bros.

I don't buy music often or watch movies, so I play videogames to fill that lonely, hopeless void. Everyone who plays games loves Mario. Anyone who says they don't just isn't doing it properly.

The issue of "sequels in videogames" seems to be a highly problematic one in the world of game reviewing, and one which, moreover, I have not yet seen anyone discuss and explore in depth, and with any degree of understanding.

I am going to start this off by dismissing as hogwash the notion that Overture is the true sequel to the original Guilty Gear. Apparently, at one point, series designer Daisuke Ishiwatari said that all games from X onwards were only side-stories, or something to that effect, though I've also heard he later did some furious backpedaling.

Guilty Gear 2 -Overture-

Overture joins Culdcept Saga and the Senko no Ronde port in the ranks of 360 games catering to those looking for something beyond the Action, Sports, FPS and "RPG" formulas that dominate the current-gen console market. It's absolutely nothing like I expected it to be, and that's a good thing as I was expecting it to be completely shit.

Herzog Zwei (1989)

A long time ago, in a country far far away, a ground-breaking new game was released for a console still in its infancy, by a company largely unknown in the West. The company was Tecno Soft, the console was the Mega Drive, and the game was Herzog Zwei.

Test Drive Unlimited

The open road, the dusty highway. Here today and gone tomorrow in a cloud of expensive exhaust fumes and burnt rubber. The boyish fantasy of the road trip never tires, no pun intended. Re-creating this dream has been the holy grail of pad-wielding petrolheads for many years, yet few games have managed to do the vanishing point justice.

Touhou Fuujinroku ~ Mountain of Faith.

I really want to complain about this new Touhou game. I love the series and have spent months playing each and every installment from PCB on, getting fairly good high scores in all of them, yet I was really disappointed by this one. Let me explain why.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent

Generic action movies give their heroes a choice; usually it's between getting the girl, killing the bad guy or both. But with better films come better thought-out problems and dilemmas. This is the predictable road that Ubisoft have decided to sneak down for the fourth game in the Splinter Cell series.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback

PAYBACK IS A BITCH! When a routine escort mission goes horribly wrong, you find yourself in the middle of an extremist plot aimed at throwing the world into chaos. In this dirty war against an insidious enemy that knows no boundaries, only an underground gun-for-hire can succeed.

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom

The Kingdom Under Fire series is a rather perplexing one. It keeps morphing into different genres, or genre combinations, as if the designers are either exploring possibilities in order to come up with something completely new, or are not quite sure what they want, or as if perhaps they are directionless and simply following trends.

Kororinpa

The Japanese language is a very onomatopoeic one. A huge number of "words" in Japanese are just sound effects, and daily conversation is littered with sound effects used as regular words. It's a lot of fun, really, but the reason I bring this up is to explain the title of this game: 'kororinpa' is essentially the cute sound of a marble rolling.

No More Heroes

This game fucking sssssssucks and I fucking hated almost every moment I spent playing it. It's nothing more than an ugly, gimmicky, cheap-ass, third-rate, five-dollar GTA knock-off, whose only redeeming feature is its funky comic book vibe, and perhaps also its at-times slightly amusing dialogue.

Furu Furu Park

A collection of mini-games for the Wii! What a delightful treat! Pick from a variety of strikingly original, charming mini-games and play for high scores in the okonomi ("preference") mode, or embark on a gripping dating sim in ikemen ("cool guy") challenge!

Star Ocean: The Second Story (1998)

Like the Elder Scrolls series' do-anything, be-anything freedom? Like JRPGs at the same time, you fucking weirdo? Well, let's smoosh the two of them together and see what happens!

Noo Kone Puzzle Takoron

First off, about the graphics. I don't know why this game doesn't look too good in screenshots, perhaps it's not very photogenic, but for some reason all the screens released by Compile Heart make it look kinda blurry and with rather dull colors. So take my word for it that this is one sharp-looking high-res 2D puzzle game.

Prey

Death in videogames is, for some reason, an issue that seems to be more controversial in first-person ones than anywhere else.

Shikigami no Shiro III

Risk and reward. Whether it be in the form of sleeping with your best friend's girlfriend, or robbing a bank, or jumping off a high bridge with a giant elastic band attached to your ankles, throughout history mankind has enjoyed taking big risks to gain an exciting payoff.

Kekkaishi: Kokubourou no Kage

By night, junior high student Yoshimori Sumimura is a "kekkaishi" -- a demon-hunter specializing in creating magical barriers around his prey. By day, Yoshimori's got some other demons to battle: an addiction to sweets and a seriously crotchety grandfather!

Sengoku Musou Katana

I got thoroughly sick of this game within ten or so minutes of firing it up. By that point I had made up my mind to completely trash it, so the only question left was how much longer to keep playing before throwing it in the garbage bin and writing the review.

Night Slave (1996)

Intense side-scrolling mech action blends with (mostly) lesbian porn in this outstanding shoot 'em up, released in 1996 for a series of computer systems the West never had a chance to experience.

Michigan

Before Suda 51's Grasshopper Manufacture made art-house-film-as-FPS Killer 7, they worked on survival horror curio Michigan. Taking control of a cameraman in the employment of news network Zaka TV, it's your task to investigate a series of bizarre happenings and monster sightings in the city of Chicago, Michigan.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

Few sentences get me as worked up in the world of videogames as those containing the words 'Japanese' and 'real-time strategy'. At the same time, few games can provoke such strong feelings of aversion in me as those whose titles contain the words 'Final' and 'Fantasy'. Man, this game is something else alright.

The King of Fighters XI

Mukai, a member of a mysterious group, stole the Orochi seal. Taking advantage of all the confusion caused by this, Ash stole the Yata Mirror from Chizuru. In the advent of the new tournament new faces are handed invitations while old ones, such as Eiji Kisaragi, make their return to the ring.

Sonic The Hedgehog

If the demo proved Sega had learnt nothing from the mistakes of Sonic Heroes, then the full game reveals they may not even know what those mistakes were.

Reviewed inside: the ActRaiser games, Gleylancer, Alien Soldier, Bushido Blade, Cyborg Justice, Dynamite Headdy, Holy Striker, HyperZone, Mario Kart DS, New Super Mario Bros., Rhythm Tengoku, Tetris DS, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and more...

... and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words.

--Kürnberger

ASH -Archaic Sealed Heat-

Considering that a large part of Ash's development was done by Racjin (known mostly for working on licensed properties such as Naruto, Hagane no Renkinjutsushi and Bleach), their name is conspicuously absent from the box, the title screen, and even the game's official website.

Dangun Feveron (1998)

I was just about to concentrate on either Do Donpachi, which I've been playing for a long time, or Progear, which I just recently got into after seeing some superplays and FINALLY getting what the jewelling is all about. But then I fired up a game I thought I would hate, and then I got hooked.

Arcana Heart

After the rather disappointing Tenkaichi Kenkakuden I would not have imagined that Yuki would have a game such as this in them, but that's what people can do with proper motivation.

Let's Go Jungle!

It's a rare game that makes me smile these days but when I first played this kooky light gun shooter I was smiling ear-to-ear. That first credit at least was loads of fun -- I lost half my life bar before I even knew the game had started.

Touhou Bunkachou ~ Shoot the Bullet.

The Touhou series is already almost a decade old. It started out on NEC's PC-98 computers (which were essentially PCs with a few NEC-specific hardware standards, thus rendering them somewhat incompatible with other PCs of the time), and then moved on to Windows-based platforms.

Time Crisis 4

Despite being one of the fugliest arcade games in recent memory, Time Crisis 4 kept me amused for a little while. Its first stage, a fast-paced shootout set inside an airport terminal, was rather fun, and though it goes downhill from there, there's still a couple of neat ideas here worth looking into.

Mario Kart Arcade GP 2

Don't let the number in the title fool you: this game is more of an update than a true sequel. And though I love updates as much as anyone (and more than most), that's only true if the original game is worth updating in the first place.

Ketsui ~Kizuna Jigokutachi~ (2003)

For several years Ketsui was the only Cave shooter you couldn't play without flying to Japan or dropping several hundred bucks on the PCB. Most of their previous shooters had been emulated, and all the rest had either already received ports or eventually would -- but not Ketsui. It's always been, and still remains, a game for the few.

My reviewing policy regarding ports and compilations is not to review them -- at least not in the same way as I review the original versions of games. I'll explain my reasons.

So the good news is that the only region-locked current-gen consoles are the 360 and the Wii. The bad news is that those two seem to be winning the console war, which means they'll end up with a ton of games you can't play.

I often get asked -- mostly by Americans -- why I insist on referring to Japanese videogames by their Japanese titles. Many of them are offended when they see me referring to Ghosts 'n Goblins as Makaimura, or to Virtua Tennis as Power Smash. This alienates them; they see it as pretentious and elitist.

Culture is a site of the secret, of seduction, of initiation, of a restrained and highly ritualized symbolic exchange. Nothing can be done about it. Too bad for the masses...

--Jean Baudrillard

There's a common misconception regarding this site which it is time I cleared up. A lot of readers seem to have assumed that insomnia is a website more or less dedicated to covering the arcade scene, and that my favorite genre of games is shoot 'em ups.

I've had this thing for years, where I keep a top-three ranking of the best cities I've yet visited -- 'best' here being shorthand for "most suitable for me to live in, long-term".

I don't remember exactly when this started bothering me, but it recently got to the point where I can't ignore it anymore. I am talking about the word 'gameplay', which I believe is the single most useless and misleading word in videogame terminology. But let me explain myself before you start booing.

Senko no Ronde

In G.rev's third arcade game players control robots called "Rounders" and square off against each other using a variety of offensive and defensive techniques. Rounders dance around the screen spewing out bullet patterns borrowed from manic shooters, or transform into bosses in order to unleash even more overwhelming attacks.

Resistance: Fall of Man

At this point in time, Resistance: Fall of Man defines mediocrity in the FPS genre. It's got absolutely nothing new to offer, and the only exceptional thing about it is that it's remarkably polished, considering it was made by a company that doesn't usually do FPSes.

Culdcept Saga

I got totally hooked on Culdcept Saga at first, putting a dozen hours in it over the space of a weekend. Part of the reason was that I needed a change from the all the subpar action titles already flooding the 360, and part of it was that I'd come to miss this strangest of strategy franchises in the five or six years since the previous installment.

The night before the new Gundam game started hitting arcades across Japan I was going round in Akihabara, visiting my favorite joints for some Mushi Futari and After Burner Climax action.

Oneechanbara vorteX

Before playing the new Oneechanbara I had somehow managed to convince myself that it would turn out to be a decent game. Half an hour in and the only thing on my mind was: "How much more of this do I have to endure before I can sit down to write the review?".

Chikyuu Boueigun 3

Although D3 Publisher has so far released only a handful of titles outside its budget Simple series (most notably several K-1 fighting games), they now seem to have decided to enter the full-price market more aggressively.

Zegapain XOR

Zegapain is an anime show by Sunrise (the house of Gundam) which aired between April and September last year on the TV Tokyo network. For an obviously manufactured series it's rather good -- at least judging by the six or seven episodes I've watched so far.

Pink Sweets ~Ibara Sore Kara~

After the release of Ibara I had my doubts as to whether Shinobu Yagawa would remain with Cave, and, if so, whether he would be able to keep making the kinds of games his fans have come to expect from him.

After Burner Climax

With After Burner Climax Hiroshi Kataoka's career comes full circle. Kataoka, who is now head of Sega's arcade division, says he joined the company just out of college in 1992 because he wanted "to make something as good as After Burner".

A while back I noticed that some cool guys over at the Shmups forums were putting together a glossary specifically devoted to shooting game terminology. Long-time forum stalwart Craig Gabrielsen was responsible for compiling and keeping it updated, and all users were invited to propose additions and corrections.

Bullet Witch

In the year 2013 mankind's downfall is almost complete. A series of catastrophes, including earthquakes, wars, viruses, and extreme weather conditions, have decimated the population and left entire nations in ruins.

Jingi Storm: The Arcade

I first heard about this game back in early June while browsing the Madman's Cafe BBS. One of the site's owners who goes by the handle "The Professor" had just attended the initial location test and was reporting back with bad news:

Espgaluda II

For the first few weeks after Espgaluda II was released I found myself more or less beginning and ending each day with it. I'd visit Akihabara's Hey arcade early in the morning to get a couple of credits in before a line started forming, and then I'd go back late at night for a few more credits before closing time.

Hokuto no Ken

Arcsy's new fighter is the good Hokuto no Ken game that fans of the manga have long been waiting for. And though poorly balanced and glitchy, and clearly lacking the potential for lasting high-level play, it still offers up a genuinely interesting system, and tons of style and personality besides.

Nearly a decade after the second Dynamite Deka game appeared Sega is finally putting the finishing touches on the third installment in the series. To say that this was unexpected would be a major understatement -- brawlers are just not being made for arcades anymore. But will this one manage to change that?

It feels strange, doesn't it, that these days most consoles launch in the US first, and then in Japan. Even if we are talking just a week's difference, that's still a world away from the old days, when Americans had to wait half a year or more to get their hands on a new Japanese console, and Europeans even longer.

Xexex (1991)

In 1991 Konami thought it had a surefire hit on its hands. Widely advertised and hyped in magazines such as Gamest, Xexex was set to be the next big thing in the world of arcade shooters, and there were already rumors of ports for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM and the planned Super Famicom CD-ROM upgrade.

Mushihime Tama

Mushihime Tama is a sequel to Uo Poko (1998) in all but name. That charming little puzzler has now been dressed up with character designs and themes from Mushihime-sama, Cave's hugely popular shooting game, and lavished with as many tweaks and additions as the designers could come up with.

Triggerheart Exelica

After years of producing inspired mahjong titles, Warashi returns to the STG scene in order to cash in on the genre's relative renaissance. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't look like there will be much cashing in to be done, since players are mostly ignoring it.

Power Smash 3

Wow, what a game. The most spectacular tennis matches are taking place across Japan's arcades at the moment, in what is surely the best versus title to come out in years. Ostensibly just a sports game, but with all the immediacy, depth and excitement of a fighter, Sega's latest Power Smash marks the series' triumphant return.