ICYMI Archives

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince

Posted by Audra Bowling on January 3, 2024

I’m a relatively bright-eyed newcomer to the monster-collecting subgenre and Dragon Quest as a whole since I can currently count the number of games I’ve played in both categories on one hand. Still, I adore the inherent coziness of the DQ games I’ve played. Their traditional RPG approach is akin to… Read More »

What Omori’s Emotional Battles Teach Us About Mental Illness

Posted by Tim Rattray on January 2, 2024

If you’ve played Omori, you know how its oft-abstracted ruminations on coping with trauma cut emotionally deep. If you haven’t played it, you’ve likely heard people rave about exactly that. Or, a cursory glance may lead you to pin it as an Undertale-ian jaunt packed with subversive genre f… Read More »

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony

Posted by Noah Leiter on December 29, 2023

Many many years ago, over one dozen years ago even, the Four Heroes of Lunar struck down the world’s greatest evil sorcerer and saved the Goddess Althena, bringing everlasting peace to the land. This is how Lunar: the Silver Star’s PlayStation Portable remake, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, begins — it… Read More »

Lunar Legend

Posted by Ben Love on December 27, 2023

When I look back at my gaming history, the system that cemented my love of games in general and RPGs in particular is the Gameboy Advance. The clamshell silver brick that was my Game Boy Advance SP kept me occupied in the backseat as my mom ran errands while I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age. It kep… Read More »

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete

Posted by Scott Clay on December 25, 2023

On a tiny PlayStation demo disc back in the ’90s, a very different type of demo captivated me and never let go. The demo had no gameplay for the game, just an animated segment that lives inside my head to this very day. It was Luna’s Boat Song—a.k.a Wind’s Nocturne—that had grabbed my attention. At… Read More »

RPGFan’s 30 Most Anticipated Games of 2024

Posted by Zach Wilkerson on December 23, 2023

2023 sure has been a year in video games, hasn’t it? We’ve had a brand new mainline Final Fantasy game, an iteration on arguably the most popular Zelda game, and a game that quickly ascended to conversations about the best games ever. Let’s not forget the mound of other excellent games that came out… Read More »

Dave the Diver

Posted by Niki Fakhoori on December 19, 2023

I didn’t expect running a sushi restaurant would be easy. I just wasn’t expecting raising chickens, appealing to acclaimed movie directors and rap stars, and uncovering and assisting a hidden village of sea people to be part of the process. Just as the glassy surface of the ocean betrays the thrivin… Read More »

Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Fallen

Posted by Zach Wilkerson on December 12, 2023

Final Fantasy XVI continued the (now) long history of controversial releases in the series. While some, like me, think it’s close to the pinnacle of Final Fantasy, others have been more critical. But no one can say Yoshi-P and the rest of his team aren’t listening. They’ve done work to improve the f… Read More »

Super Mario RPG

Posted by Caitlin Argyros on December 9, 2023

The original Super Mario RPG, released in 1996 for the SNES, holds a special place in my heart. It was my first RPG, and I had no idea what an RPG even was at the time. It wasn’t until later that I learned what the acronym meant, and I realized that Mario and company helped usher in my love of the g… Read More »

Thirsty Suitors

Posted by Neal Chandran on November 1, 2023

South Asian representation in Western multimedia has been complicated for decades. As someone of South Asian descent (my family is from India) but born and raised in the West (specifically The Netherlands and the US), I’ve seen “us” depicted as supernatural mystics (e.g. Hadji in the Jonny Quest car… Read More »

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