When Technos brought their pioneering Yoshihisa Kishimoto designed 1986 beat ‘em up Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun overseas, they changed its name to Renegade and altered the game’s graphics quite drastically, from representing a very local Japanese […]
Author: Michiel Kroder
Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey
So get this, right? Apparently, Arthurian figures Sir Lancelot du Lac and sorceress Morgan le Fey were bound and made immortal by Merlin’s magic when he cursed the latter to eternal life in the form […]
Smoke and Sacrifice
Michiel Kroder offers up his review of Solar Sail‘s open-world, narrative-driven RPG, Smoke and Sacrifice Almost a year ago I was tempted to hold up my hand for a download code of Solar Sail’s Smoke […]
Battle Princess Madelyn
The idea for Battle Princess Madelyn came about because its head of development, Christopher Obritsch, loved playing Ghouls ’n Ghosts while his daughter Maddi watched. And when she told him she wanted to be in […]
Raging Justice
Fan of vintage brawlers Michiel Kroder reviews MakinGames‘ nostalgic, rambunctious debut. “Whatever happened to the scrolling beat ‘em ups, the Double Dragons, the Final Fights and the Streets of Rages?” It’s an often heard lament […]
The subjectivity of difficulty
So here we finally are, at the conclusion of Michiel’s three part article on difficulty in videogames. In the first part, I argued why difficulty and challenge are still such major components of what makes […]
The real fake difficulty
Michiel Kroder discusses the idea that some videogames that are touted as being difficult actually lack real consequence for failing To summarise my previous piece on game difficulty, I argued that difficulty ultimately matters in […]
Why difficulty really matters in videogames
If you have read my previous contribution to Cane and Rinse, you might think of me as someone who’d welcome any breezy, pleasant piece of interactive entertainment that does not require any sort of mastery […]
‘Git Gud’, or: An ode to the monogamous gamer
Up until now I have remained faithful where it concerns my romantic relationships But I have a confession to make; I can hardly remember a time in which I was faithful in my relationships with […]