Month: January 2017
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Pied Piper House
Pied Piper House was a famed record store in Tokyo during the 70s and 80s, that has been revived as a temporary pop-up shop in Tower Records (until July of this year). They’d already released a compilation record, Best of Pied Piper Days, selected by the store’s original owner, and now they have a Vol.…
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Letter from a White Fox
Letter from a White Fox is an indie adventure game being made using the Pico 8 engine, with a setting based in Japanese folklore. Found via this Canvas post by Giulia Lamperti, who is doing the art for the game.
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Droning Over Yamadera
Here’s a second video by Mark McFarlane (see the first one here) shot using a drone, this time shot during a snowy weekend in the Fukushima and Yamagata prefectures.
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Onihei Hankacho
Of the three new series I wanted to check out during the 2017 winter anime season, this is the one I’m enjoying the most. As I had written in my preview post, I didn’t know much about this series except for the general Edo-period setting, and that the main character is a law enforcer. Two…
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Granblue Fantasy The Animation
I recently started playing the Granblue Fantasy mobile game — one of the most popular RPGs in Japan these days — so was especially interested in checking out the new anime adaptation that debuted this week (I had already included it in my 2017 winter anime post though). They kicked things off with 2 episodes, and although…
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A 5th of BitSummit, the Logo
I still don’t quite understand what “A 5th of BitSummit” means — other than the fact it’s the 5th edition of everyone’s favorite independent game festival — but I’m excited as always to see what is going to come out of this year’s edition (set for May 20-21 in Kyoto). They’ve just revealed the logo…
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The Fall and Rise of Yoshiki Okamoto
Another interesting feature I read this week from Polygon that dates back to 2013 is this one on the fall of Yoshiki Okamoto’s Game Republic studio. It’s a fascinating read, and becomes even more interesting when bookended with this piece published the following year (about Okamoto’s success with Monster Strike).
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Swery and the Sinner’s Sandwich
The recent news about Swery’s new studio, White Owls, led me to this old feature about him, published on Polygon in 2013. It still makes for an interesting read, and offers up some nice insights on what he’s all about and how he sees games and game development.
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Chichibu Distillery
Monocle has a new video up that covers makers of gin, wine, and whiskey, and one of them (the final part in the video) is the Chichibu-based Chichibu Distillery, maker of what looks like rather tasty whiskey. I’ve been to Chichibu a few times for hiking, but I should have paid more attention to this.