The Book of Melee is the perfect primer for those interested in the story of the competitive scene, from triumphs to turmoils, over the course of 18 years.

Tucked away within PAX East’s Indie Megabooth, One Step from Eden caught my eye, and for a simple reason: It looked like Mega Man: Battle Network.

Back again from a long hiatus, I hope to fire off a barrage of takes for all you bozos out there dumb enough to read anything I write about video games (thanks for the clicks and likes, I love you all!). For this edition — the first since November (yikes) — I’ll be dishing out mini-notes and thoughts on Nier: Automata, gatekeeping, and adding a game to my all-time favorite list, plus a bit on working from home (super interesting, I know).

PAX East has come and gone. In the days following the trade show, The Punished Backlog’s Kei Isobe sat down with fellow writer David Silbert to discuss the good, bad, and ugly of this year’s show.

A Whole New World Yoshi’s Crafted World is not merely another well-crafted (get it?) Nintendo platformer with clever level design, uplifting music, and plenty of extras to collect along the way; it’s the truest imagining of childhood play in video…

Size Doesn’t Mean Everything The reason that Super Smash Bros. works is because Nintendo has a vast catalog of intellectual properties to pull from. As I stated when I started this challenge, I haven’t played many games from the roster.…