The Pocket Players

Custom Robo Arena (Nintendo DS) is basically the ultimate take on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, with a huge customization factor. With hundreds of parts for you to build your own mechanized mayhem, this game is anything but standard issue. [...]

(PATA PATA) Feel the rhthym!
(PON PON) Move your body!
(CHAKA CHAKA) March to war!

Patapon is a brilliant and adorable mash up of rhythm and strategy originally released on Sony PSP back in 2008. This game revolutionized rhythm games, and that’s not just hyperbole; it literally turned the genre around.

What I mean is most rhythm games are reactionary: music plays, notes fly across the screen, and you press the right buttons or slide your finger on the screen in keeping with that tune. In Patapon, the player creates the music himself and it’s the game elements that must react to him. [...]

Warning: Contains spoilers for many Final Fantasy games, and I talk about sappy Valentine’s Day love stuff.

There is no more iconic love story in video game history than Cloud and Aerith (unless you were shipping for Cloud and Tifa) from Final Fantasy VII. Fans were so enthralled by this couple that they wanted to see their story progress despite Aerith dying early in the game. Since then, most FF games have focused on a couple and their love story.

But I will argue that one love story in the series was more well-crafted and meaningful than all the rest. It was the man who won Aerith’s heart years before Cloud fell from the sky and into her life. His name was Zack, and his romance with Aerith in Crisis Core – Final Fantasy VII (PSP) was both epic and tragic. [...]

It’s being hotly debated on the forums that the Game Boy Advance (especially the GBA SP) is possibly the best portable console crafted by mortals. So, I decided to spend this Throwback Thursday reviewing an original action RPG that perfectly shows off the system’s capabilities – Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2. [...]

As a frontline soldier of Nintendo throughout the Console Wars, I never allowed myself to own a SEGA Genesis, but I always knew great pleasures lay just behind enemy lines. Shining Force was one of the most tempting titles for me at the time, but thanks to iOS (the Switzerland of the Console Wars) and Game Boy Advance, I have a chance to experience this classic strategy/RPG. [...]

Quite often, I just get that itch to play something online – ideally an MMORPG. But with Phantasy Star Online 2 still unconfirmed for Vita in North America, it’s been hard to get my fix. So, this week I decided to whip out the closest thing I could find on a handheld, Phantasy Star Zero for Nintendo DS. [...]

Sit back, pop in your headphones, and let the sounds transport you to another world: A world of Sword & Sworcery. You will embark on a surreal adventure where you will play music on the trees, bring loathsome rainbows to life, and slap the moon in the face as you seek to tame the Cosmic Geometry known as the Trigons. [...]

So, we all survived the Mayan Apocalypse. Hooray! But the big countdown to the end of the world got me thinking; What if we didn’t have so much time to prepare for the apocalypse? What if we only had 30 seconds to see it coming? Well, at times like these we need a hero…a Half-Minute Hero! [...]