Edge October 2022

One of the joys of being a kid was visiting a friend’s home and getting to play with their toys – especially if they happened to have a wealthy parent who’d converted an entire attic into a playroom and set up a vast four-lane Scalextric circuit, complete with C450 Sound Track module for realistic crashing audio effects. (Side note: as tempting as it is to recreate such memories via the magic of eBay, it’s a folly that should generally be resisted.) For videogame developers, being given the opportunity to mess around with Nintendo’s monumental assortment of properties must inspire similar feelings. Not many people outside of the Kyoto corporation itself get to do so (horrendous Philips CD-i game Zelda’s Adventure probably didn’t help grease the wheels in that respect), but…

When Diablo Immortal brought Blizzard’s infernal ARPG series to mobile in June, the free-to-play game was roundly criticised for its methods of monetisation, especially after systems came to light that seemed to favour players who’d splashed out on the game’s loot boxes. In Belgium and the Netherlands, however, this wasn’t a problem – because in these territories, Immortal was simply never released. The former nation has banned loot boxes outright, while in the latter a cross-party motion called for similar legislation, just a few months after EA successfully overturned a 10m fine issued after The Hague in 2020 ruled that FIFA’s Ultimate Team had broken the country’s gambling laws. In May, meanwhile, a study on loot boxes from the Norwegian Consumer Council turned its eye to that same game, producing…

When Suntory Hall opened its doors in October 1986, it made history as Tokyo’s first dedicated concert hall for classical music performances. And within that first year came another landmark – because on the night of August 20, 1987, it wasn’t the music Beethoven or Mendelssohn that waltzed its way through the hall and out onto the streets of the Akasaka district. It was Koichi Sugiyama’s overture for Dragon Quest, and many more of his melodies arranged for the Tokyo Strings Ensemble, at the Family Classic Concert – the world’s first videogame concert. Of course, since then there have been thousands of concerts in the same vein. Perhaps you’ve attended some, whether it was the Commodore 64 Concert; Final Fantasy’s Distant Worlds and The Legend Of Zelda’s Symphony Of The…

Kultura Ex Machina CEO Yarden Yaroshevski is rhapsodising about the democratisation of art and how he hopes to achieve that with free-to-play MMO gallery game Occupy White Walls, when suddenly he stops himself. And, entirely casually, drops what might be one of the most tantalising questions we’ve ever heard in an Edge interview setting: “Have you heard about the time we pulled off the biggest art heist in history?” It began with Yaroshevski’s admiration for London’s National Gallery. For its collection of art, its iconic architecture, but most of all for the fact that – unlike most museums and galleries, which display less than ten percent of their total collection – over half of its collection is on show at any given time. The OWW devs had contacted the gallery…

Based on Boris Vian’s pulp crime novel, To Hell With The Ugly casts you as a himbo with a grudge. Handsome hero Rock Bailey is understandably keen to find out why he was kidnapped outside a jazz club – which he does via the timehonoured combination of turn-based bar fights and good old-fashioned sleuthing. It’s an enticing mix and the art is similarly attractive. Inspired by Vian’s caricatured characters (exaggerated by design to criticise humanity’s shallowness), developer La Poule Noire has magnified their features for comic and practical effect, with a deliberately limited palette making it more distinctive and readable. Will this blend of brawling and snooping work? We’ll find out next year when To Hell With The Ugly launches on PC.…

Game Samurai Shodown V Perfect Manufacturer SNK, exA-Arcadia TEAM EXA-AM1 SNK threw a lot of options at the wall in the ’90s in trying to find something to stand up against Capcom’s Street Fighter juggernaut, and it’s no surprise that only the best stuck around as viable series: King Of Fighters and Samurai Shodown. The latter’s latest iteration has just undergone location testing in Japan, promising “the ultimate culmination of the original 2D fighting series”. With a roster of 28 playable characters, including all bosses from the series to date, Samurai Shodown V Perfect has been built as a collaboration between SNK and staff at exA-Arcadia, whose off-the-shelf technology powers the cabinet. With artwork from series veteran Shiroh Ohno, returning to Samurai Shodown for the first time in over 20…