BY ALL ACCOUNTS, the Touhou Project has been a resounding success. What originally started out as a series of bullet-hell shooter games has evolved into a franchise spanning multiple brands across genres and platforms. Touhou Genso Wanderer Reloaded is one such example.

FANTASY DOUBLE FEATURE: Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear and Roberto Rossellini’s Europa ’51 both ask the question: how should we deal with the man who holds extreme views on life? Humor him or condemn him? Or—unsettling thought—listen to what he has to say?

YOH YOSHINARI’s Little Witch Academia is an anime franchise about young girls, witchcraft, and friendship. Following Akko Kagari, a student enrolled in the Luna Nova Magical Academy, it focuses on her journey to master the arts of magic. Akko slowly gets accustomed to what she can do. And while not naturally talented, she is able to show that with perseverance and a little help, trials and tribulations can be overcome.

THE G-FORCE Project 2018 Sembreak Dance Workshop will be held at the G-Force Dance Center, Expansion Wing of Festival Mall, on Sept. 15, 16, 22, 23, 29, and 30 for Batch 1, and Oct. 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, and 21 for Batch 2.

BACK in the mid-1990s I found myself hooked on a particularly intense habit: Johnnie To movies. I’d seen A Hero Never Dies and The Barefoot Kid (his one period martial-arts film) and had been digging through various DVDs ever since, hoping to find more.

THERE CAN be no denying that FromSoftware’s Dark Souls is brutal and difficult, often bordering on the sadistic in terms of its capacity to challenge players. That said, it’s beatable, and while its gameplay borders on the unforgiving, it succeeds in its objective. You get a massive sense of achievement in persevering through it and conquering the even-tougher-than-tough parts. It’s an acquired taste, a pain to get into, really. It’s also harder to put down once you’re hooked.

PAUL SCHRADER’s latest feature First Reformed — his 23^rd directing job — is a tiny feature shot around Brooklyn and Queens in only 20 days, on a budget of roughly three and a half million dollars. It’s also arguably his best work to date, or if not his best then somewhere up there.

IT WOULD BE an understatement to describe Sweden-based SkyGoblin as a small independent video game developer. Composed of a handful wearing a variety of hats, the company burst into the mainstream following the release of free ware adventure game The Journey Down: Over The Edge at the turn of the decade. Smartly, it leveraged the success to come up with a much-improved and highly expanded version that serves as the starting point for a point-and-click series of the same name. Given the limited resources it has had at its disposal throughout production, the commercially released Trilogy is nothing short of remarkable.

SINCE ITS DEBUT early last year, the Nintendo Switch has been a haven for makers of rhythm games. It’s certainly with reason; the hardware boasts of touchscreen and multiple-controller configurations, backstopped by portability and ease of use. It’s why such notables as Deemo, Superbeat: Xonic, and VOEZ have been ported over, and why even offbeat — pun wholly intended — titles like Frederic: Resurrection of Music, Crypt of the NecroDancer, and Hiragana Pixel Party have thrived on the hybrid console.

THERE was a time when fighting games were little more than button-mashing exercises. Perhaps the relative lack of complexity was due to the genre being in its infancy stage. Perhaps it was borne of the publishers’ intent to be as inclusive as possible. In any case, gamers still found them irresistible for the most part, if for no other reason than because they afforded the opportunity for instant gratification. In comparison to, say, sports titles, fights involved short matches and rematches. Bragging rights were passed on quickly and often, and the speed with which they were earned, lost, regained, and desired anew served only to ramp up the intensity of the competition.

SANTIAGO, Chile — A Chilean band is bringing smooth saxophone melodies and spine-tingling bass lines to classic video game soundtracks in its quest to attract more youngsters to jazz.

IT’S NOT HARD to understand why Nihon Falcom and NIS America have moved to port Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana in the Nintendo Switch. Having seen the title generate positive reception upon its release on the PlayStation Vita in 2016, on the PS4 last year, and on the PC earlier this year, they understand its potential to reach a new set of gamers via the hybrid console. Their confidence is not unfounded, and not simply because they carry a lot of weight in the gaming industry. More importantly, their latest contribution to the Ys franchise has been praised as the best yet.