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On children and “unwanted experiences”
“More than half of children in the UK using the internet have had an “unwanted experience”, a poll suggests. The NSPCC found 50.4% of 2,053 children had experienced problems such as bullying, being threatened or sexually harassed while online.” Take from this BBC news report. I wonder how much higher that statistic would have been ...
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Final Fantasy Tactics series – DS & PSP
In 1949 the New Statesman held a contest inviting readers to send in parodies of the great novelist and playwright Graham Greene. So distinctive and unique was his writing style that it apparently invited parody. A few weeks later the publication announced the winners and, to both their and his surprise, second place went to ...
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Final Fantasy Versus XIII. An interview with Nomura.
Eurogamer unbows and the room straightens itself. There’s a story that Tetsuya Nomura once told a games journalist, with distinctly un-Japanese frankness, that the questions were rubbish and he wasn’t going to answer them anymore. Brilliant, obviously, but as such it’s best behaviour and utmost politeness from us tonight as we sit down to talk ...
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Square-Enix Party 2007 – Overview
There was a time when the Final Fantasy brand was reassuringly focused. Each new sequential release was appropriately numbered and sought little more than to better the previous game’s scope and technical achievements. The setting and characters changed but the rules never did: Final Fantasy, as with most long-running Japanese products, was a series of ...
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On Life’s Finest Moments
It’s our last night in Tokyo and we just got back to the hotel after an evening of Yakitori and Karaoke. Somehow we managed to find the Karaoke booth Coppola used in Lost in Translation and so spent the evening (and early morning) exhaling in glorious harmony. Standing on the leather sofa, head thrown back, ...
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The mask slips
Even the pretence of subtlety is dispensed with here in what must be consumerism’s most brilliantly up-front advertisement (as seen at Harajuku station yesterday).
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SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS
My first ever 1/10 but there’s no gloating here. I hope it reads as heartbroken as much as anything. Deeply, deeply sad is the only appropriate conclusion for this broken sequel in the light of the majestic original. Not like this. This isn’t how the story’s meant to go. No, this should be the tale ...
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Going (square) soft
I’m leaving for Tokyo now and butterflies of delight and guilt and nerves and resignation and resolve flap around my stomach. Delight because being flown to Tokyo on somebody else’s dime is an unspeakably fortunate privilege and I am absolutely grateful for the opportunity. Having Final Fantasy XII pay for me to stay at the ...
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Death Jr. II – PSP review
Death Jr is the kind of kid you absolutely do not want to get into a ‘My dad is harder than your dad’ playground exchange with. Unless, that is, you really don’t get along with yours very well or, of course, if you happen to be Jesus. That said, having the Grim Reaper for a ...
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The animals went out two by two…
“Bracketed between best- and worst-case scenarios, then, somewhere between 2.7 and 270 species are erased from existence every day. Including today. …A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its ...