PixlBit

This is a natural 20 of arcade goodness.

Former arcade rats and fans of old school beat ‘em ups have something special to look forward to in the near future. Capcom is slated to unveil ports of their Dungeons & Dragons arcade games for PSN and XBLA at the upcoming PAX East. The two side scrollers were somewhat of a rarity in arcades, most likely due to the immense popularity of the fighting game genre, leading to arcades doubling down on those types of games at the expense of others. Now, though, players who missed out will finally have a chance to play these lost gems.

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Tomb Raided!

Games evolve quickly. Despite a trilogy of quality releases ending only five years ago, Tomb Raider was already starting to get left behind by the genre it helped to create in 1996. Now the industry’s best-known heroine is back and reinventing action-adventure once again.

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War transforms us, Snake. Into beasts.

A certain inability to walk into a normal life pervades the player’s thirst for playful violence after taking down the Patriots in the Metal Gear series. The Winds of Destruction will have to fill that void. Some, like Sundowner, claim we surround the Self with violence, because of the feeling instilled when you kill your enemies and liberate the less fortunate and able. Others maintain that we argue philosophy as a way of waking up the beast inside of the Self. Regardless of the means, these musings have persisted through the Metal Gear franchise from the beginning. With Metal Gear Rising, they mesh high and low culture together in allusions that complicate our reason for loving to play.

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The pixelated cartoon creating, dungeon crawling, soft core porno you should not play.

Can we talk about women?  They’re a wonderful part of our society; in fact they make up just about half of it.  With that many of them around, they’re able to have a huge impact by being mothers, scientists, lawyers, caretakers, nurses, teachers, doctors, police officers, and will even be fighting on the front lines of the U.S. military.  Yet, the makers of Picdun 2 think it’s just fine to stick ridiculously sexualized females into their stupid game to rake in a few bucks and set the entire gender back a few steps in the process.

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We give Square Enix some friendly tips for keeping the Fantasy alive.

When Jesse Miller, our resident features guru, asked if I would be interested in doing a Final Fantasy retrospective for the series’ 25^th anniversary last year my answer was a resounding “yes!” In the months that followed, I poured all of my love and dedication into a five part series detailing the 14 core Final Fantasy games. It was a labor of love for me; no series of games has been more influential or important to me as a gamer. I’m a staunch defender of these games, even when they go into weird territory like iOS time-wasters. That doesn’t mean that I’m blind to the fact that the series isn’t what it once was, however. As excited as I am for the future of Final Fantasy, I think that the fine folks over at Square Enix need to take a good long look at where the series stands. To that end, I have 5 things that I think could help immensely as we move forward into the next generation.

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