MeltedJoystick.com Gaming Blog

Trendy Entertainment is Now Chromatic Games

Sun, 24 Mar 2019 15:08:08 -0500

In a surprise announcement at the beginning of March, Trendy Entertainment, the Indie developer we at MeltedJoystick love to hate, revealed that they were dead and gone. While everyone at MeltedJoystick has something of a love/hate relationship wit...

5 of the Laziest Game Design Techniques Devs Should Avoid

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 15:36:00 -0500

As we all know, game development, like any form of media and art creation, can be a lot of work. While Indie development studios typically make due with a small team of dedicated folks with a lot of passion for the project, big �AAA� corporate developers create games with credit rolls that sometimes last longer than the actual gameplay (I�m looking at you, �PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale�!)....

Review Round-Up: Winter 2018

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 15:34:24 -0500

Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here�s what our staff has reviewed since last time: Nelson�s Reviews: Thanks to inclement weather, the MJ Crew�s local coop nights were canceled on far too many occasions this Winter. Between the weather, the fact that we�ve been deep into...

He�s Everywhere III!: Dragon Quest Edition

Sat, 02 Mar 2019 17:06:16 -0500

The first time I roasted Chris for his early-March birthday, I had to cut-down the large number of Chris-like people and creatures that inhabit the entirety of videogames to 10. In the next roast, I stuck with creatures from Nintendo�s �Pokemon� franc...

Backlog: The Embiggening � March, 2019

Sun, 24 Feb 2019 16:05:44 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! The hoary, old chestnut states that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, or vice-versa. Here at the MJHQ, March is coming in like a big, annoying pile of snow, so it better damn well go out like a tropical paradise. At least we�ve already got our shovels (and snow blowers) at the ready, which will help with the lion�s and lamb�s share ...

Square-Enix and the Pants on Fire

Sun, 17 Feb 2019 14:46:33 -0500

Remember way back in 2018 (3 months ago) when Square-Enix earned special praise in the MeltedJoystick Year in Review retrospective? It is with great sadness that we must recant that praise and return Square-Enix to the garbage heap with the rest of the �AAA� mega-corporate publishers. When Square-Enix released �Dragon Qu...

Science: �Copyright Infringement is Good for Everyone�

Sun, 10 Feb 2019 15:30:49 -0500

At long last, science, that great discipline through which all Truth is revealed, has taken a look at a unique phenomenon of the modern world: Copyright. Since the Digital Revolution brought on by the advent of the Internet in the early 21st Century, IP rightsholders have tried desperately to continue enforcing their will on the general public through excessive lobbying, which has led to increasi...

Backlog: The Embiggening � February, 2019

Sun, 03 Feb 2019 13:46:51 -0500

Welcome back to another look into the near future! After getting off on the wrong port� err� foot, 2019 is still chugging along. Let�s see what February, the month for lovers, holds in store for us to love. Or hate. After multiple months without licensed garbage, annual sports releases, or super-casual fluff, the shovelware has come home to roost. Fortunately, the numbers aren�t great enough t...

The Two Faces of Nostalgia

Sun, 27 Jan 2019 16:22:18 -0500

As gaming comes into its own as a mature medium, it is looking more and more to the past, as do so many other artistic media. Remakes, remasters, reboots � all are just euphemisms for �rehash,� as developers and publishers struggle to come up with new ideas or even to iterate on existing ideas in meaningful ways. Nowhere is this love of hindsight more prevalent than in the now-fully-mature Indepe...

Japan Takes a Step Closer to Dictatorship with New Law

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 16:21:15 -0500

We aren�t even a month into 2019, and an Epic Fail that is destined to make the Year in Review list is already on the books. According to information dug-up and translated by Siliconera, Japan managed to sneak in end-of-the-year legislation that bans any and all forms of hardware or software ...