We’ve been friends for a while now, right? And after all these Famicom articles, you’re probably thinking, “gee, that lady sure does know Japanese.” That’s not true. My Japanese can best be described as existen...

Do you remember the film The Adventures of Milo and Otis? I don’t. It was based on a 1986 Japanese film called Koneko Monogatari. It’s not bad, I guess, if you think you can trust critics. It’s about a kitten getting lost ...

The official release date of the Nintendo Entertainment System was October 1985, but in truth, that was a test launch. Most people in North America didn’t have a chance to buy the console until Autumn of ‘86. At that point, the ...

I don’t have much to say about the sport of sumo. It’s really old and has held onto many of its traditions. It’s also not difficult to get the gist of. Push the other rikishi out of the ring or knock them off their feet. B...

Part of what draws me to Famicom games is the fact that I missed out entirely on the culture around it. Not only am I of an age that would have given the Super Famicom more significance, but -- and this may shock you -- I’m not Japane...

I love Moai. It’s an interesting aesthetic; huge, monolithic humans with warped proportions. But do you know who loves Moai more? Japanese video game developers. They show up as bosses and in the background all the time in a wide vari...

Nineteen eighty-six was a transformative year for Nintendo. Super Mario Bros. had released at the end of the previous year and ushered in a slew of influential games. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus (I guess), many of which were ri...

River City Ransom was an important game in the development of my retro appreciation. My early attempts at familiarizing myself with the NES included such titles as Kid Icarus, Friday the 13th, and -- I swear this is true -- Total Recall. It...

If you’re familiar with my Famicom Friday articles, you’ll know I’ve already bemoaned the lost soul of Konami, and I don’t plan to stop sulking anytime soon. What you might not know are the depths of my despair. They...

In 1991, Street Fighter II radically altered the video game landscape. It opened a portal through which all sorts of pretenders started flowing out. Some of them were good! Most of them were bad. The one I present to you this Famicom Friday...

While the Famicom saw release in the middle of 1983, most of North America wouldn’t see the NES until sometime in 1986. There’s actually a good few games that came out before the NES landed that never really got localized, such ...

Konami’s output on the Famicom was simply amazing. While we certainly got some good games on this side of the pond, such as Castlevania and Contra, there were a plethora of great titles that stayed in their homeland. They were once a ...

While the phenomenon of appreciating bad games exists everywhere in the world, perhaps no player base is as conscious of it as those in Japan. Unlike us, they have a very concise word for describing terrible games: kusoge. That’s "kus...

One of the fears that big decision-makers had in the ‘80s and ‘90s when it came to localizing games was whether or not it would appeal to Western audiences. We hadn’t been indoctrinated with enough anime and Pocky yet, so ...

I find it difficult to travel back and play early 8-bit consoles like the Atari 2600 or Colecovision. It’s not that their primitive graphics and sound fail to capture my attention, but rather, they’re so dedicated to replicating...

For this Famicom Friday, I think it’s time to jump straight to the Famicom Disk System. You may worry we’re moving too fast, but I’ve never felt this way before about anyone; I’m ready to take the next step in the re...

While it may have been analogous with our beloved Nintendo Entertainment System, the world of the Famicom was far different than the one we saw in the west. From the freedom explored by a Konami in its prime to the read/write frontiers of t...

One of the rarest and most unique entries in legendary RPG franchise Fire Emblem has finally seen an English translation, courtesy of a dedicated FE fan, some 23 years after its Japan-only releaseBS Fire Emblem: Archanea War Chronicles orig...

Retro-releasers Hamster - amidst its run of classic SNK fighters and arcade shmups - occasionally drop a title that's a little more niche in its appeal. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is the publisher's latest Arcade Archives release:...

Hamster's retro release for this week affords us the opportunity to look at the early days of one of SNK's most famous heroines - King of Fighters hero, pop starlet and all-around cutie-pie Athena Asamiya - as old-school arcade game Psycho ...

This week, your retro friend and mine, Hamster, has pulled up another classic '80s arcade and given it a new lease of life on a modern platform, as SNK shmup Alpha Mission takes to the skies once more on Nintendo Switch.Released in arcades ...

[With all the mini consoles being announced, both official and unofficial, it's fascinating to hear about what was essentially the NES in Japan, except not really. But don't listen to me prattle on about what the Famicom Disk System was or ...

I am ecstatic that I can go online today and buy so many new games for old systems. Just a few years ago, the only options similar to this at least on the NES were reproduction carts – games that either never came out in the west or n...

Launching earlier in July, the Weekly Shonen Jump 50th Anniversary Famicom is a celebration of classic anime and manga-based video games, pretty much all of which never saw the light of day on Western shores.Of course, such a cool niche dev...

About a month ago, Arc System Works and Tommo Japan announced that they were teaming up to make replica carts of Return of Double Dragon for the SNES. Now, the game is going to get a digital re-release on PS4 later in the year. Since the re...