Cerise Magazine

Features

From the Editors

Craft Check: Sunpaint T-shirts

Sun printing fabric paint is easy to use, and doesn’t require any skill with painting. If you have (or work with) children, this project is an excellent one to share with young crafters.

Gaming in the Media: To Wii, or Not to Wii?

Latoya takes a deeper look into the console wars.

Interviews

Jess Hartley: Tabletop RPG writer

Robyn Bremner: Game tester, Capcom Interactive Canada

Articles

Inviting More People to the Game

Author: Cherie Thomason
Cherie proposes some simple ways to make games more inclusive.

Racial Inclusiveness in Gaming

Author: Latoya Peterson
Latoya explores the problems that the industry has with race and proposes some solutions.

Does Inclusive Game Design Make Sense?

Author: Andrea Rubenstein
Andrea takes on some of the common stumbling blocks that hinder inclusive game design.

The Women of Twilight Princess

Author: Ariel Wetzel
Ariel breaks down the major women of Twilight Princess and examines how the game uses female characters in general.

Gamer Stories

Buying My New Gaming Mouse

From Gamer to Game Designer

Reviews

Nintendo Wii and Wii Sports

Shadowrun

Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side First Love

Retro Review: The Dreadnaught Factor

The Dreadnaught Factor, Activision, Intellivision Entertainment System, 1983

My mother’s parents lived in a large, straight-out-of-the-70’s house just to the south of Seattle. My sister and I would tag along on trips there every few months, to visit our grandparents and make child smalltalk while they fixed dinner and talked about my aunts and uncle on that side of the family. It was actually a pretty cool house, to be honest, but nothing much for twin girls of nine to occupy themselves with.

Down in the basement, though, my grandmother had hidden away a special treasure: the Intellivision. Built in the early 80’s, along with the Atari 2600 and countless other now-retro gaming platforms, it enjoyed a short life of relative obscurity. My favorite part about it is its controller: reminiscent of a remote for a television, it has numbers and a small metal wheel at the bottom, for controlling movement. A lot of the games came with thin plastic covers that outlined which button did what for that particular game. Most of its games were ports from the Atari, including the one game that stands out for me over all others: The Dreadnaught Factor. (more…)

Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side First Love, Konami, Nintendo DS, 2007

Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side First Love, for the Nintendo DS, is an extremely well-executed port of Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side, one of the first games in the dating-sim genre which catered to girls. In this combination life-sim/dating-sim, the player is placed in the shoes of a girl just entering her first year of high school in Japan. She has three years to build herself up through classes, make friends, and hopefully find and date a guy who will ask her to be his forever in the quaint church behind the school. Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side First Love is an interactive, entertaining experience perfect for anyone who enjoys simulation games like The Sims or Princess Maker. (more…)

I am not what the gaming market considers a typical video game player. The last game console I owned was a Sega Genesis. While I play PC games occasionally, I don’t spend a lot of time scouring the Shire with a goblin horde playing Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 the way my boyfriend does. I haven’t succumbed to the lure of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft either: I don’t really have the time to invest in such tempting diversions. Like many people, I don’t like to invest a whole lot of effort up front in my entertainment in order to get a payoff. Nintendo was clever enough to realize that there are a whole lot of people just like me who weren’t being served by Sony or Microsoft, whose products appeal to more hardcore video gamers. For people who just want to pick up a controller and have fun, Nintendo invented the Wii. (more…)

Shadowrun, FASA, Xbox 360/Windows Vista, 2007

Shadowrun, for those not familiar with its pencil-and-paper RPG origins, is a cyberpunk/fantasy hybrid world. A Troll with an Uzi eats soy burgers at fast food restaurants, Elves are armed with an arsenal of magical spells, and Humans are wired to the teeth with cybernetic body enhancements. All those examples are pretty run of the mill for Shadowrun. Keeping that in mind, the video game, which is barely related to the source material (for a number of reasons that won’t be covered in this review), is a completely original team-based shooter. (more…)

I have a confession: I’m not a game designer… yet. I know what the title says, but this story, like every story, is a work in progress. It all started with a dream, but with every passing day it’s one step closer to becoming a reality. It’s my journey through life as a gamer, as a feminist, and as a game designer in training. (more…)

Recently, I went into a well-known electrical retailer here in Australia to get myself the Logitech G5 gaming mouse. I am a shopper that usually does all her research before entering the store. Actually, I prefer ordering things online, but I live in Australia. And here in Oz, internet shopping is not quite what someone who has lived in the US has come to expect. There, internet shopping has almost reached the stage of instant gratification. Order something, and you just about know that you can receive it the next day. Last time I ordered something electrical Down Under it took several weeks to get the right item to me. Well, when I finally decided on my new mouse, I wanted instant gratification. So I decided to brave the non-virtual environment. (more…)

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a game with incredible respect for its characters. In the Wii and GameCube installment of a flagship Nintendo series, the female characters especially shine. If there isn’t really any particular reason for a character to be male in Twilight Princess, she isn’t. At the risk of mild plot spoilers, I’ll walk by a few of the game’s characters and examine why they are such a successful component of Hyrule’s most inclusive incarnation. (more…)

There has been a lot written on inclusive game design: everything from what it is to how to achieve it. And yet, as much as the industry has changed over the years, the primary target audience, with few exceptions, has remained young, white, heterosexual men. But, from the perspective of the industry, does such a narrow focus make sense? (more…)

I am willing to pay to play.

As a gamer, I regularly dedicate a part of my budget to expenses associated with gaming. I spend $227 per year to have a membership to Gamefly, which allows me to preview and play through games across different consoles. Another $200 a year goes to games purchases – I tend to purchase three or four games per year.

I have budgeted money to purchase a Wii ($300) and next year, I will be looking to upgrade to a PS3. I am a gaming hobbyist – as my schedule includes a day job and freelancing side work, my serious gaming days are probably behind me. Still, I still spend over $500 a year supporting the industry, down from a gamer high of about $150 a month. (more…)