We’ve been featured on the official PlayStation blog today, talking about our Burn Zombie Burn themed Home space as well as the upcoming “In Space” DLC (the trailer for that is shown below). For those interested, there’s also a nice interview over at IGN with Dave Dow, a creative lead at doublesix, with him talking all about the new Home space.

I’ve written a feature for the Escapist as to the origin of Japanese mecha games and that the effect of samurai has been a culturally palpable one. I didn’t come up with the title but it’s catchy and apt I think. Enjoy!

I’ve written yet another entry to my column about the wondrous Virtual On series. This is to commemorate the upcoming digital download version of Oratorio Tangram. I hope you enjoy my somewhat lengthy ramblings (this also got posted on Gamasutra).

So here it is, the final part of the Coffee Boy Chronicles. This part goes into more technical detail on what designers actually do and it isn’t as glamourous as many people assume (though it often is as fun in all fairness). Unsurprisingly, the second piece has generated a similar amount of buzz as the first did.

This edition of my regular mechanical musings is more conceptual I suppose, as it covers the genre of mecha gaming in relation to just simple presentation of mecha (like the Gundam Musou games, which are more aesthetic tie-ins than functional ones). Here’s hoping it stops ignorant numpties from calling Gundam Musou a “mecha game”.

As per usual, I wrote a piece about lesser known mecha games out there. This time I covered the wonderful Bangai-O series by the Japanese developer, Treasure. The point of the article was to highlight the obvious (though somehow overlooked) fact that these games are very much functionally inspired by anime series like Layzner, Ideon and Macross. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my continued nerdy musings!

I’ve restarted my regular column on all things mecha gaming over at the wonderful Game Set Watch. This edition covers the unfortunate fallout of making a Macross game, as they’re often a functional travesty. However, this is more down to the nature of what is being functionally represented as the mecha have three varied modes. Meaning you have to make three games occurring simultaneously with one another, which is no mean feat!