I wrote an analysis of the Wario Land games! It covers Wario’s origins in Super Mario Land, his best games, and how the series eventually declined and was replaced by WarioWare. I also talk about Nintendo R&D1, the studio that developed Metroid, the Virtual Boy, and the Game & Watch series. You can also find … More You Should Play Wario Land: A Video Essay
I tried something new! I’ve been experimenting with video editing, and I’m pleased to introduce my new youtube channel, where I’ll post video essays about books, games, movies, and all sorts of stuff. I’ve already got a ton of footage and plenty of ideas lined up, and I intend these videos as shorter, more flexible … More Vampires as Allegory: A Video Essay
A friend of mine and I have had a discussion about the nature of difficulty in gameplay—what changes to a basic design make it harder to reach a state of victory, ideally increasing the sense of reward when the player reaches that state. I would suggest, and will talk at length here, about how games … More Challenging versus Punishing in video games
Or, Video Games that Challenge the Player’s Expectations The word of the day is Deconstruction. Deconstruction is, as I understand it, when a writer takes the tropes (the concepts and archetypes we viewers expect from a genre or series) and turn them on their head, questioning elements of the story that we take for granted. … More Deconstruction in Gaming
Crider the Writer 