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Here’s how to learn Japanese simply by playing retro video games People say playing video games will get you nowhere in life. Here's how to have some great retro fun and prove them wrong.
Learning Japanese is hard and most people eventually give up when they realize they have to actually read books. You’re not some kind of loser who reads books, right? Fortunately, there’s another way. You can learn Japanese by doing what you already love. That’s right, playing video games can help you learn Japanese. You’ll still need to put in some work learning grammar and vocabulary, but video games can act as great supplemental reading material for people learning a new language. Here are 5 ways that you can learn how to read Japanese with retro video games. 1. Animal Crossing (N64) Watch this video on YouTube Animal Crossing was first…
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The games players love more than critics We use statistical analysis to shine some light on the divide between video game players and critics.
Who are the Star Citizen superbackers? Ever spent hundreds on a game? How about thousands? Tens of thousands? These people have. How do they feel about it?
We are producing way too many (good) video games There more good games out there than ever before, and they're getting longer. Let's look at the numbers.
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That time the Japanese adapted Crash Bandicoot and completely butchered it The classic PS1 game was much different in the Land of Rising Sun, which completely misunderstood the franchise.
If there’s one thing Japan is great at, it’s video games – but that usually applies to video games conceived and developed in Japan. When it comes to localized Western content for a Japanese audience, the results can be mixed. In the case of Crash Bandicoot for the original PlayStation, the Japanese version was unquestionably inferior to the Western version. Crash Bandicoot’s success in the West was because of two very simple ingredients. First, the overall tone of the game is the perfect blend of 90s edge. For example, the titular character is an edgy late Gen-Xer/early millennial with a distinct attitude. Crash may look kind of lame nowadays, but…
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The artists and paintings that bleed through Bloodborne The aesthetic roots of a masterpiece.
These are the most controversial games of all time, according to science We’re sitting here with a beautiful big dataset from Metacritic. It's time.
No Man’s Sky versus the actual universe: a scientific inquiry Time for some mind-blowing space facts.
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Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack sucks. Play N64 games these 5 ways instead You can pay Nintendo $50 to play N64 games on your Switch, but you shouldn't.
You can now play Nintendo 64 games on your Nintendo Switch with the “Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack” if you upgrade your membership to $50 per year. If there weren’t a million different ways to play old games from 1996, this might have been a good deal. But unless you’re the most extreme Nintendo fanboy or you have no choice but to play games on your Switch, there’s not much of a reason to give Nintendo your money, especially considering how awful this service is. Why You Shouldn’t Buy The Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack Nintendo 64 games were released over 20 years ago, so you’d expect flawless emulation,…
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The Destiny clan that saved a family Think of the average bunch of guys in an online clan and the word 'heart-warming' doesn't usually spring to mind. But then most clans aren't the Dads Of Destiny, a 30,000 strong group bound by two common themes: parenthood, and not being a dick.
Mint condition Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge breaks all records—sells for $156k Super Mario Bros is once again the most expensive video game ever sold. It's-a more money than sense!
Arming the citizens of GTA V leads to absolute chaos Modders have patched in the 'Crazy Peds' cheat from San Andreas.
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Finish Him! The innovative violence that fueled Mortal Kombat’s success A journey from its start as a failed experiment to re-birth as a predestined success built by the vision and innovation of its Midway Games developers.
We are now almost 30 years out from the 1992 release of Mortal Kombat, perhaps the most famous franchise in the vast genre that is fighting games. The iconic video game series offers endless lessons to developers who would like to take the same path. Get the best computer science help to free some of your time as you focus on developing personal projects. False starts Mortal Kombat started as an experiment that never saw the light of day in the way it was envisioned – a video game adaption of military science-fiction action film Universal Soldier (1992) featuring Jean Claude Van Damme. As Midway Games developers John Tobias and…
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25 most heartbreaking moments in Nintendo history Sadness and spoilers within...
A conspiracy of silence: How NDAs are harming the games industry Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have long been a fact of doing business in video games - but their enforcement can have wide-ranging, negative effects.
The best (worst) Watch Dogs multiplayer trolls Watch Dogs online has been designed to drive you nuts and here's a compilation of some amazing moments.
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These are the best basketball games of all time The 2K franchise hasn't always dominated the field.
When it comes to basketball games our minds naturally go to the 2K franchise, and there is a good reason for that. The 2K franchise has reached such a level of popularity that it’s almost unthinkable for it to take on a worthy competitor. But beyond graphics and visuals, there are many things that make a basketball game great. If we base our review entirely on graphics, obviously some of the latest games would get the top best NBA game places. No, the graphics are just here to make the game look good and help the player get into the suspension of disbelief; the gameplay and how the game feels…
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Destiny 2 is practically impossible to play if you’re a parent Bungie can do hunters, titans and warlocks alright, but it really struggles with the parent class.
The legacy of Duke Nukem We take you on the full journey, from hope to hopelessness.
5 plot twists that would have made great games even better When done right, a twist can be truly spectacular. Here's what they should have done...
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The ultimate history of fighting games Fighting games have always been around. The first one on this list landed in arcades in 1976!
The Street Fighter games are arguably the best-known fighting titles ever released (only Mortal Kombat comes close), and the series has sold a staggering 37 million copies. Fighting games, though, have been around since the very beginning of the medium. The first one we hit on this list landed in arcades in 1976 – a full 40 years ago! Lace up your gloves, charge up your ki, and let’s write the book on the history of fighting games. I tried to play, either on original machines or through emulation, every single game that could be considered a “fighting game” in the history of video games. I’m going to try and talk…
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5 plot twists that would have made great games even better When done right, a twist can be truly spectacular. Here's what they should have done...
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Top 10 licensed songs in gaming There are times when the use of a licensed piece of music is so perfect that it elevates the gaming experience to a new level.
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Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.
I’ve been delighted with Nintendo Switch, not just because Breath of the Wild is probably now my favorite game ever, but because the Joy-Cons really make the hardware feel special. Even more so if you were fortunate to get hold of the neon red and blue version. It may be because no other controller has ever had so much versatility, either for a single player or for the instant sideways turn into two stand-alone controllers. It shakes up a lot of other controller preconceptions, too, and in doing so made me think about all the controllers I have used. How over time that knowledge of where to move your thumb is accumulated,…
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Video game romance: a lost cause? You can't force love, especially not when it comes to western games.
Seditionis: Tower Defense reinvents while making love to the classics Seditionis harkens back to classic tower defense games while adding gripping new features—and we can't stop playing.
What to make of Star Citizen Star Citizen’s most vociferous detractors claim that it’s all a scam; its defenders maintain that everything is totally fine. The truth, as is so often the case, is not so simple.
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The Mission: the most bizarre soccer game ever made "Once you have acquired the ball it is used as your main weapon against the Ninjas."
Of all the ways a British child could have their Christmas ruined in the late ’90s — sherry-fueled arguments after dinner, a sibling raging because they didn’t get what they wanted, a burned turkey — there is a special place in yuletide hell reserved for crappy soccer games bought by well-meaning family members. For the contemporary gamer, soccer more or less means the slugfest between FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer. But before this heavyweight title card came to dominate, back in the era of the original PlayStation, the soccer games jostling for position more closely resembled a royal rumble. And much like in the WWE’s yearly 30-man brawl, the majority…
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Playing with the human side of history Games traditionally present history as monolithic spectacle, but this new breed focuses on the individual experience of simply existing alongside great events.
Legendary Commodore 64 Daffy Duck game finally found, playable for first time It’s a 228KB download, which was huge for the time.
Love in a time of Warcraft Sarah found herself cast as the Yoko Ono of WoW, being blamed for the dissolution of what has been a successful raiding guild.
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Is true next-gen Cyberpunk 2077 worth the wait? Cyberpunk 2077 releases on all platforms in one month, but the next-gen upgrades for the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions won't be out until 2021.
The launch lineup for PS5 (November 10th!) is looking pretty impressive, but fans of one of the most anticipated games ever now face a dilemma: the Cyberpunk 2077 scheduled for release on December 10th isn’t a real next-gen product. We have important news to share with you pic.twitter.com/qZUaD6IwmM — Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) October 27, 2020 A later upgrade to Cyberpunk 2077, taking full advantage of the next-gen hardware, will be available for free. — Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) June 19, 2020 While technically you can play Cyberpunk 2077 on your shiny new PS5, it will essentially look and feel exactly like the Cyberpunk 2077 in your PS4. The upgrades that allow…
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Former jewel thief reviews GTA 5’s jewelry heists A former jewel thief has taken Grand Theft Auto 5’s heists to task, and explains how he would have done it instead.
Meet the whale who spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on the MMO Black Desert Online "I love how we just casually talk about spending almost the entire cost of a full ride at Yale university on a video game."
I played No Man’s Sky with an astronomer to separate its science fiction from facts An infinite gaming world, but is any of it based on scientific fact? We sat down with one of the world's leading astronomers to put No Man's Sky under the intergalactic microscope.
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The ‘PC Engine Mini’ is a schmup fan’s fantasy This slice of gaming history can finally be enjoyed without hitting eBay and selling a kidney.
There’s something funny about how the modern trend of re-releasing old consoles can reflect something of what those machines were. The NES and SNES Classic were slick, packed full of great games, and flew off the shelves. My favourite thing about the Mega Drive mini, on the other hand, was getting hold of a set of non-functioning accessories to clip onto it: a 32X, a Mega-CD, and a Sonic & Knuckles cart. The Neo Geo Mini? Expensive, desirable, filled with brilliant games I’d never heard of. The Capcom Home Arcade takes the form of the Capcom logo, an aesthetic decision I found bizarre until realising it echoed seeing those same six letters on…
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Why esports needs to ditch online aliases Gaming handles may not be holding esports back now, but it can only harm the scene in the future.
Destiny 2 is practically impossible to play if you’re a parent Bungie can do hunters, titans and warlocks alright, but it really struggles with the parent class.
Before Old Kratos, there was PSP Kratos How Ready at Dawn humanized Kratos a decade before the recent God of War did.
