Captain Tsubasa Returns To Consoles

Captain Tsubasa, aka Oliver Atom, aka Los Super Campeones, made a long-awaited return to video game consoles last week with the release of Captain Tsubasa: Rise Of New Champions.

I haven’t gotten my hands on the game yet but I did take the time to dive into the history of the world beloved franchise featuring Japan’s most famous & fictional superstar athlete for Gamecrate.

LINK: https://gamecrate.com/brief-introduction-captain-tsubasa/26213

Takahashi’s original manga series ended in 1988 with Tsubasa and the Nankatsu youth squad winning various youth tournaments, including the U-17 World Championship as a member of Japan’s national youth squad. The series ends with his decision to travel to Brazil to continue playing soccer.

Through various sequels, fans watch Tsubasa grow from aspiring pre-teen soccer hero to a globe-trotting professional adult soccer player. The first sequel, World Youth, featured Tsubasa joining Brazilian club Sao Paulo/F.C. Brancos and winning the FIFA World Youth Championship with Japan.

In Road To 2002, Tsubasa has moved to Spain to play for FC Barcelona/FC Catalunya, though he is temporarily relegated to the team’s B squad. He is reintegrated into the main team in time to help them defeat their eternal rivals, Real Madrid, in a thrilling 6 – 5 victory. The series continues with Golden 23 in which Tsubasa, still playing for Barcelona/Catalunya, also helps the Japan national team qualify for the Olympics.

The manga’s current run is titled Rising Sun and focuses on Tsubasa’s and Japan’s exploits in the Olympics where Japan has made it past the group stage and is facing off against Germany in the quarterfinals. One can assume that they’ll defeat Spain the semifinals and move on to win the final versus the winners of the quarterfinal matches between France, USA, Brazil, and Argentina.

How video game companies are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic

I have a new story up at Gamecrate, excerpted and linked below:

Twitch TV raised money for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund on March 28 via Twitch Stream Aid. The 12-hour event featured artists, such as Diplo and Kaskade, and athletes such as Richard Sherman and Darius Slay, playing alongside pro gamers to raise funds for the program that supports the World Health Organization’s efforts in slowing the spread of the virus and in developing a vaccine against it.
League of Legends competitor Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok donated $25,000 to South Korea’s efforts against the virus. In a statement released in early March, Faker explained that he “felt devastated for those that are working day and night to battle the COVID-19. I really wanted to aid those battling the outbreak and felt that donating to the Community Chest of Korea was the optimal choice.”

Read the rest at Gamecrate: https://www.gamecrate.com/how-video-game-companies-are-responding-covid-19-pandemic/25653

Death Stranding in the time of social distancing

Good news! I’m contributing to Gamecrate once again! Here’s my first article after a two-year hiatus:

“From Sapiens to Ludens” is a phrase plastered across the online homepage of Kojima’s company, Kojima Productions. Ludens refers to Homo Ludens, aka “man who plays,” and is an idea that is at the heart of his company’s mission. The company statement includes a phrase explaining that “playing is not simply a pastime. It’s the primordial basis of imagination and creation.”
There are a number of references to Homo Ludens within Death Stranding itself. The most direct is found in a letter from the character Heartman titled “Bridges Needs Homo Ludens.” In it, he writes: “Homo ludens – they who play. Be it deliberate or unintentional, Homo ludens unite people – creating culture, shaping the very world around them – not through violence, not through laws or proscriptions, but rather through metaphorical acts of play.”
Cultural theorist Johan Huizinga coined the phrase Homo Ludens in 1938 when he published Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. In it, Huizinga writes about the necessity of play for humans and its central role within human cultures.

Digital Football Review Roundup!

This one goes out to my fellow gamers and football fanatics! Below are short takes with links to the full reviews of both Pro Evolution Soccer 19 by Konami and FIFA 19 by Electronic Arts. Both reviews were published on Gamecrate.

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Writing about sports video games eventually evolves into an exercise of avoiding sounding like a broken record. The scenario depends on what the new, annual replacement brings to the table. Five years after my first review of a Pro Evolution Soccer title for this website, the scenario now teeters a bit into the negative side of things than the positive as Konami have delivered another solid entry but with fewer extras that gamers have come to expect from sports titles.

Review: Pro Evolution Soccer 19 & the power of football without many extras

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The Champions League is here! I’m not simply referring to the annual return of the Union of European Football Associations’ insanely popular football (nee: soccer) tournament. Electronic Arts has committed a huge coup with FIFA 19 as it’s the first title in the franchise to feature the European tournament in fully-licensed glory, along with the Europa League and the Super Cup. The inclusion marks another step forward for the franchise in EA’s quest to create the total digital football experience.

Review: In FIFA 19, champions, and a franchise, rise

The Historical Battles That Inspired Battlefield 1’s Operations Mode

Electronic Arts’ Battlefield series of games took a strong turn towards historical accuracy this year when the company released Battlefield 1 this past October. The game is a first-person shooter that takes place in a few countries during the Great War/World War I.

BF1 includes a new multiplayer mode with stages inspired by real battles that occurred during the war. I wrote about some of these battles for Gamecrate.

It’s no surprise that Battlefield 1 has raked in buckets of cash and praise in equal measures since its release in October. The latest installment of Electronic Arts’ first-person shooter series introduced The Great War/World War I to the series’ legions of fans, as well as a number of new, historically accurate weapons, vehicles, and new multiplayer modes.

One of the new multiplayer modes is “Operations,” which aims to replicate some of the large-scale battles fought during the war. The four battles represented are spread across numerous sections on two maps (three for maps in the Ottoman Empire) and combine aspects of Rush and Conquest: attackers must seize control of one to three control points to advance while defenders can regain any lost territory until all points are lost.

The maps and battles are also based on real-life events, and do their best to replicate the atmosphere of what were then new modes of warfare: trench and aerial. In this article, we take a look at the historical conflicts that influenced some of the battles in the game.

http://www.gamecrate.com/historical-battles-inspired-battlefield-1s-operations-mode/14984