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Boy, do people love Final Fantasy Tactics. They love it so much they'd marry it, if human-video-game marriage were legal. It's a desert-island game for approximately 70% of the video gaming population; it's been replayed more often than The White Album. More »

A good video game menu is like a good roadie: It stays out of the way. But still, far too many menus waste far too much of our time. People want to play games, not mess around in menus! More »

Tales of Xillia is a great game—perhaps the best JRPG on the PlayStation 3. It was the second best-selling PS3 game in Japan last year (ninth best-selling in Japan overall), with 660,000 copies sold. And in a country where anything over 100,000 copies sold is considered a financial success, Tales of Xillia was a run-away hit. It was so popular that it is getting a numbered sequel coming out next week. Yet, despite its incredible level of popularity in Japan, it still hasn't come west. More »

Pardon this brief interruption to our regular video game concept art schedule, but I figured a movie that's on track to be one of the biggest of all time - and one starring a whole bunch of awesome superheroes - was worth the detour. More »

In the late 1980s, Nintendo's internal development teams set out to make two games that would forever define its classic Super Nintendo Entertainment System. One was Super Mario World. The other was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. More »

The Final Fantasy series as a whole has the best original soundtrack in gaming. While many series have a standout song or two, Final Fantasy has thirteen games—and many spin-off titles—brimming with instantly recognizable tunes. Whether written by Nobuo Uematsu, Masashi Hamauzu, or other composers, these memorable scores have captured the souls of gamers for the past 25 years. But even supported by a strong soundtrack, does the 3DS game Theatrhythm Final Fantasy have what it takes to stand on its own against the titans of the music game genre? More »

When you talk to people about game music, Nobuo Uematsu is gonna come up. More »

Earlier this week, game designer Phil Fish (above), best known for Fez, set off a firestorm. During a Q&A after documentary Indie Games: The Movie, a Japanese game designer asked Fish what he thought of modern Japanese games. Fish gave his honest opinion—rather bluntly. "Your games just suck," Fish infamously said. More »

Among hackers and modders, Sony's PSP is a favorite for its hack-ability. Depending on one's knowledge, the portable console can be altered to play custom games and programs (homebrews) as well as pirated games. Taking all it's learned from the weaknesses of the PSP, Sony developed the PS Vita with safeguards against such hacks and mods. But recently, a hacker in Japan has utilized a security hole to hack into the Vita and successfully run his own custom program, much to Sony's chagrin. The hacker known as "Wololo" recently talked with Kotaku about the Vita's security. More »

Back in 2011, innovative platformer Shadow Physics seemed poised to reap loads of love from the video game cognoscenti. The ambitious shadow adventure showcased impressive tech and was part of the freshman class of games getting money from Indie Fund. It looked like their path to success was set. More »