Games From The Black Hole

The Manga Bible, UK edition out today, with German and French editions. Hot pink covers overprinted with black graphic imagery by Baron Yoshimoto. Block capital lettering in yellow for the title and white for author name.

Happy New Book Birthday to me! #TheMangaBible is in the shops today. I can't go into town and seek it out on the shelves because I have to stay at home until my shoulder heals, so please help me see how it looks in the wild. Pls post any sightings - photos if poss! - and link to reviews you see.

That’s Resident Evil Requiem finished. My hot take is that it’s the much more successful execution of what Resident Evil 6 was trying to do.

Today is my birthday!

As a present to me, why not load up my blog and choose a game to read about?

I’ve got thoughtful posts on all kinds of games from 1979 to 2025, across all kinds of systems both popular and obscure.

gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com

Honestly think my favourite genre of film/performance is unlikeable people who become fractionally more likeable as the film goes on. See… Bruce Campbell, Simon Pegg, Stephen Chow. No idea why but it’s clearly a thing.

Haha. I was the one who gave Time Extension the news tip. :)

Today is my birthday!

As a present to me, why not load up my blog and choose a game to read about?

I’ve got thoughtful posts on all kinds of games from 1979 to 2025, across all kinds of systems both popular and obscure.

gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com

Shining The Holy Ark – Dungeon mastery If Shining Force III (the best game ever made) is an amped up, firing on all cylinders, 32-bit rendition of Sega’s classic tactical RPG series, then Shining The Holy Ark is the same thing but for S…

Hopefully this tips you over the edge…

gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2022/07/10/s...

Yuppppppp. It’s a shame a generic sports game will sell a lot more to the general kids and casual crowd more than even a half decent RPG would

Totally agree! Shining The Holy Ark does the same thing.

The senior leadership who made Golden Sun and Shining Force are very much still there but getting very old. I imagine they could still make a great traditional tactics RPG, if they staffed up. But do the economics make sense?

The truth is that the games industry is brutal right now and at least Camelot is still going when other small devs in Nintendo’s orbit (Skip, AlphaDream) have long since disappeared. I imagine they’re glad of the work.

I’d LOVE a new Camelot RPG more than anyone, but that’s not Nintendo’s fault.

I’m not sure Nintendo is really to blame for this. They don’t own Camelot, who remain independent and are instead keeping them going with good, reliable work. Sure the could commission a new Golden Sun, but Sega could commission a Shining Force, Square Enix could commission Dragon Quest Tactics…

I don’t know how to use chatgpt etc but I imagine it’s going to a website and typing “oh no what groceries do I buy please tell me false god for I am so weak I cannot go on” as your brain atrophies and leaks out of your ears from disuse and the machine is like “buy eggs milk bread and a horse”

Oh man. Hope you and yours are okay.

It’s nice to see this get a fan translation even if it’s not that great. You can read about it, and literally every other Lupin III game, in this epic blog post: gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2022/10/30/l...

Oh boy

Gley Lancer – Modern options elevate a classic Gley Lancer is one of those shoot-‘em-ups that’s always kind of just been there in the background for me. I’ve never owned it or even played it before this week, but had somehow reached an unchalle…

Old post!

Classic Mega Drive shoot-‘em-up action with Gley Lancer.

gamesfromtheblackhole.wordpress.com/2021/10/24/g...

Listen to the latest Big Picture podcast if you haven’t already. There’s a great interview with Matt Johnson in which he discusses the editing and the hardest shot they did.

I assumed as much

Related: Why have Arc Sys not made a Street Fighter Alpha 4 yet

Ah. There you go! Very interesting they used an EU pack shot

I’m intrigued by the red square in the corner of the Street Fighter Alpha poster. At first I thought it was erasing the Virgin Entertainment logo but can’t quite find a version of the art that has the logo in that corner. So maybe they covered the ESRB rating with a red square for some reason

No new arrivals this week so here’s something beloved from the collection…

Charmed and fascinated by Chess Wars, a DOS game released in 1996 that features live-action cutscenes of medieval melee when playing pieces engage one another in battle.

Got me that Resident Evil Requiem and there’s an action sequence in the first hour or so that’s up there with the series’s best. We’re talking RE4 levels of tense sandbox action and satisfying release. Bravo!

To be fair, they weren't lying. This is great English.

You don’t always gotta be NiGHTS. Sometimes you just need to take a train and relax.

Wrote about the joyous RPG-esque systems of Across the Unknown, the new Star Trek game which I think RPG fans should definitely not sleep on:

“Enter The Matrix” arguably the better porn parody title and it’s official

Promo image for Sega-16's comprehensive retrospective on Shining in the Darkness!

Filled with memorable characters, fantastic visual effects, and a challenging quest, Shining in the Darkness was one hell of a debut title. It put Climax on the map and laid the foundation for a series that would run for the next three decades.

www.sega-16.com/2026/02/behi...