Rooftop Shouting

For my first big feature in a while, I looked into Niantic’s abandoned collaboration with Punchdrunk — a game about a secret society where you’d meet actors on the street. Art: Sajan Rai

I can’t seem to stop writing about Street Fighter-adjacent things. Here’s a short story on Red Earth and the pains of seeing a game once on location test and then never again, with a decent quote from the game’s producer. Images: Capcom

Capping off my Street Fighter history series, here’s a game that’s not technically a Street Fighter title, but played a major role in Capcom’s trajectory as a fighting game developer. Image: A. Sparrow

The most column inches I’ve written per unit sold, I’d wager. Image: Incredible Technologies

As it turned out, a lot of the Street Fighter series ended up being about the relationship between Capcom and SNK. Image: Felipe Magaña

Part three of the big Street Fighter project is a look at the time Capcom tried to start over. Image: Marc Aspinall

Part two of the big Street Fighter project is a look at Capcom’s detour back in time. Image: James Gilleard

Kicking off a big new series of old Street Fighter stories, I talked to a bunch of people about how the series got off the ground in the first place. Image: Darya Shnykina

Seven years in, Oculus has published some great games, but has only scratched the surface of what VR can do. So ahead of this year’s Oculus Connect conference, I talked to Jason Rubin and Mike Verdu about where they see the market going next. Art: Matthew Lyons

I followed-up the Final Fantasy 7 story with a look at what its main character is doing now. Image: Michael Firman

Independent retail is in trouble. Here’s why. Image: Jonathan Castillo

Three years after I did this for Street Fighter 2, here’s my oral history of Final Fantasy 7. Photos: Jonathan Castillo, Irwin Wong

After leaving Sony’s Last Guardian team, Rui Guerreiro set out to make a game with a similar look — twice. Image: Irwin Wong

It takes a lot of people to make a headset. Image: Irwin Wong

Last year, I bumped into someone who used the term “white label” to describe his work. I hadn’t heard of it, so I asked and heard about developers who make games but don’t appear in the credits and don’t publicly acknowledge the work. More recently, I decided to look into the idea to see how common it…

Shortly after the release of Mario Maker, I did a quick story on how Nintendo embraced Mario’s weird side in it. Image: Nintendo

As part of Polygon’s Life in Japan cover, I talked to the man behind Shenmue about game ideas that never got off the ground and what he wants to do next.

In the late 1980s, Hideo Yoshizawa, Masato Kato, and Keiji Yamagishi worked as part of a small team developing NES action game Ninja Gaiden. As part of Polygon’s Life in Japan cover (which also features the debut of Yamagishi’s first single from his new album, and the reveal of a game he’s composing music for), I…

A story in two parts. First, CAA’s history with games where a handful of agents began to represent game developers. Second, how the CAA team operates differently in 2014.

This is one of those ideas that I heard a lot over the years: “We should dig up the Atari landfill in New Mexico.” So when Fuel Entertainment and a group of partners managed to do it, I went along for the ride and put together a story on the hurdles they had to clear. Image: Tyson Whiting

About two years ago, Vanity Fair ran an oral history of The Sopranos and I realized I hadn’t seen much of that for games. So I copied the approach to look back at the best game ever made. Image: Mick McGinty

Part two in my Lionhead/Media Molecule series, I suppose, is this look at the development of Tearaway — a game that went the opposite direction of Milo and was able to focus its wild ideas. Bonus: Tearaway director Rex Crowle designed a papercraft version of himself for the story. Image: Rex Crowle

Lionhead’s attempt at building a virtual boy was bold, ambitious, and as it turned out, a little ahead of its time. Image: Scott Hassell

Lawsuits and a falling out with Midway: the story of what happens when a game becomes a phenomenon and not everyone gets paid. Bonus: Incredible Technologies dug up outtake photos from the infamous 1994 “Daniel Pesina, who starred as Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat has switched to BloodStorm” print ad. Image: Scott Morrison/Incredible Technologies

It’s a lot easier to write a story about someone who make games when he puts himself in the game. Weirdest moment: Going to a Sony press event, seeing a PlayStation-themed alcoholic drink menu with a “Papa & Yo” on it and thinking it was a strange fit for a game about an abusive alcoholic father.…

Before Street Fighter 2 snowballed the arcade industry, Takashi Nishiyama and his team created a predecessor remembered more for awkward pressure sensitive controls than the game itself. Nishiyama hadn’t done an interview in 12 years, so I took a shot and reached out. Image: Matt Leone

At the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, Jeremy Parish, Thierry Nguyen, and I scheduled interviews with game developers affected by the 2010 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami to see how things had changed a year later. Katsuhiro Harada discussed a scene that his team adjusted in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Hirokazu Tanaka showed hard hats purchased for his staff…