As I did last year — read it here — this is my list of favorite media for the year, which is basically me telling you what I obsessed over the most in 2011 (as far as I can remember, since it’s usually the case that some terrific things get forgotten by the end of the year). It’s not a “best of” list, I did not sample everything that came out this year, this is just something that I put together to remember what it was that I liked in a year, and I figure it can also act as a guide for some people who are looking for recommendations in various categories. I choose five items for each medium, which I list alphabetically (it’s rare that I can really choose one thing over the other), and then include a few honorable mentions.

Again, I don’t include books since I unfortunately don’t read enough of them (the vast majority of my reading time goes to the web, magazines, and comics). 

Favorite Games
This category is definitely one where I can choose an absolute favorite, and that would be Forza 4. Not only is it the game that I’ve spent the most time playing, I’ve become obsessed with it, and it turned me into a huge fan of the Top Gear TV series (see below). For the platform, I only list the one that I played the game on.

• Forza 4 (Xbox 360)
• Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (Mac)
• L.A. Noire (PS3)
• Portal 2 (Xbox 360)
• Sideway: New York (PSN)
• Honorable Mentions: Back to the Future: The Game (Mac), Cave Story+ (Mac), Dead Space 2 (PS3), Dragon Age II (PS3), Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (PSN), Pinball FX 2 (the Marvel tables, XBLA), Saint’s Row: The Third (Xbox 360), Uncharted 3 (PS3)

Favorite Games (iOS)
As with last year, I’ve separated the iOS games, because as much as I do enjoy playing games on my iPhone and iPad, I’m afraid that for the most part they still would not fare well against my console selections. 

• Assassin’s Creed Recollection
• Bang!
• Elder Sign
• Kard Combat
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
• Honorable Mentions: Aquaria, Bug Princess, Jetpack Joyride, Neuroshima Hex, Shadow Era

Favorite Magazine Apps
Last year I didn’t include a magazine category because I felt like it would have been too difficult to narrow it down to five — and you can always follow my other site, The Magaziner, to see what I like in terms of magazines — but this year I do feel like these are the ones that I look forward to reading the most (and yes, it’s all digital, I don’t read much print these days). I should also add that these are not necessarily what I feel are the best magazines apps in terms of innovation and execution, but rather the ones I like because of content. I included the Izneo app, a digital platform mostly for French comics, because through I buy the weekly Le journal de Spirou.

• Bloomberg Businessweek
• Izneo
• Letter to Jane
• SPIN Play
• The New Yorker
• Honorable Mentions: GQ, Wired

Favorite TV Shows
Again this year, it’s the category I have a tough time keeping short, since there are quite a few series I really do enjoy. The most conspicuous addition, and to be honest, the series I enjoy watching the most these days, is Top Gear, and from the newest season I’ve been going back through seasons to watch more. I’ve never considered myself a car guy, or been particularly obsessed with cars, but there’s something about the way the show is filmed, and the humor found throughout, that has completely sucked me in — here’s a post I wrote a few months ago about all of this. You’ll also notice Glee, which I only started watching this fall — I found myself immediately addicted, rushing through the first 2 seasons and eventually getting caught up. What can I say, it makes me happy watching it. 

• Breaking Bad
• Game of Thrones
• Glee
• Louie
• Top Gear
• Honorable Mentions: Boardwalk Empire, Bored to Death, Community, Curb Your Enthusiasm, How to Make it in America, Justified, Luther, New Girl, Parks & Recreation, Sons of Anarchy

Favorite Movies
Since there are many films that haven’t reached digital/video yet, there’s still a lot I haven’t seen (like all the big December releases). I think I cheat a bit with some of the picks as well, as some of the honorable mentions may have been released in 2010. Most telling though is that my top 5 was composed of 4 documentaries before I saw the Tintin film today (and there are more in my honorable mentions). 

• Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
• Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
• Drive
• Senna
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Honorable Mentions: Bill Cunningham New York, Bridesmaids, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Lemmy, Moneyball, Source Code

Favorite Albums
I had a really tough time here narrowing it down to five, and so many of the honorable mentions are probably all to be considered a “6.” Also, I will admit that the album that I really have enjoyed the most this year is Q-Tip’s The Renaissance, which came out in 2008 (but that I got into after watching the Tribe Called Quest documentary). I will do special episodes of the Codex and play all of this music (in this category, and the next).

• Days (Real Estate)
• James Blake (James Blake)
• Strange Mercy (St. Vincent)
• The Year of Hibernation (Youth Lagoon)
• Undun (The Roots)
• Honorable Mentions: David Comes to Life (Fucked Up), Let England Shake (PJ Harvey), Mirror Traffic (Stephen Malkmus), Shangri-La (YACHT), Torches (Foster the People), Underneath the Pine (Toro Y Moi), Wild Flag (Wild Flag)

Favorite Tracks
It wasn’t as easy to come up with this list as last year, since I’m a 100% Spotify user these days — last year I mostly looked at the play count in iTunes. But to help narrow it down I looked through the playlists of all of my Codex episodes, and came up with the following. 

• “England” (PJ Harvey)
• “Our Hearts Are Wrong” (Jessica Lea Mayfield)
• “Ravan” (Brasstronaut)
• “Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)” (The Roots)
• “Video Games” (Lana Del Ray)
• Honorable Mentions: ”Audio, Video, Disco” (Justice), “Civilization” (Justice), ”Please Ask for Help” (Telekinesis), ”Tada no Tomodachi” (Salyu x Salyu), ”The Noose of Jah City” (King Krule)

Favorite Comics
I always find it difficult to really remember my fave reads of the year, but here are a few that I quite enjoyed. Also, I will say that my most enjoyable comics-related reading this year was going through the entire Tintin series, something I hadn’t done in years (probably in 2 decades). 

• Batman, Inc.
• Daytripper
• FF/Fantastic Four
• Mister Wonderful: A Love Story
• Northlanders
• Honorable Mentions: The Walking Dead, Punisher Max

It’s Sunday night, and although the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) officially kicks off only on Thursday (for the first of two business days, followed by public days over the weekend), the fun stuff — and by this I mean the arrival of friends coming to town for the show, as part of the industry (press, development, and publishing) — has just started. I’m also very much looking forward to the annual 8-4 party on Tuesday night, a big bash organized by Tokyo-based localization company 8-4. It’s always a hell of a lot of fun — with good ol’ Milky (of EGM and now Q Entertainment fame) in charge of the tunes — and brings together most of the people that you’d want to see who are in town for TGS.

And even though I no longer do any regular gaming-related coverage — and it’s been a couple of years now since the release of Arcade Mania — I’m lucky enough that I still get to go on the business days (I need to thank my good friend CheapyD for that), and you can bet that the first thing I’ll do on Thursday when I enter the hall is make a bee line for the Sony booth to try out some of the insane number of PlayStation Vita titles on show.

Here’s a to wonderful week-long celebration of something that is so near and dear to me — GAMING!

Update: And here’s more on what Milky plans to play at the 8-4 party (hint: you’ll be very happy if you like Lumines).

My initial intention with this post was to bring up the fact that Kieron Gillen, longtime games journalist, has effectively said goodbye to his game writing days (for the most part) to concentrate fully on his comic writing career, in part bolstered by the fact that he just recently signed an exclusivity deal with Marvel Comics, and that later this year he’ll be co-writing one of the company’s flagship titles, Uncanny X-Men. I especially wanted to bring this up because as a farewell message, he wrote a terrific essay on what it’s like to be a writer in the gaming press, and how to deal with it (and the shitty pay).

But, what all of this also brought to mind for me was how it’s yet another WEF alumni making it big in the comics industry. WEF, that’s the Warren Ellis Forum, a message board that Warren had back in the day (must be around 10 years or so now) on which I was a regular poster/reader. Not only did it count a lot of people who back then were just thinking of getting into comics (or maybe not even thinking about it), people like Kieron, Matt Fraction, Brian Wood, Antony Johnston, just to name a few, who are now writing some terrific books, and making up a sort of new guard if you will.

What you may not know as well is that it was actually from the WEF, after being invited by Warren to participate on a project, that I did what I consider to be my first foray into this career of mine. See, even though he tweets like a motherfucker (literally), there’s a heart of gold in that man.

Just a note to say that I continue to update my new gaming site, GAME, on a regular basis, with a new selection going up every couple of days. The latest additions are the flash “experience” Every Day the Same Dream (pictured above), the latest PixelJunk release (Shooter), classic PlayStation-era platform/puzzler Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, and the PS3 Breakout-homage Shatter.

Also, I am open to the idea of sponsorship, although it would need to be done in a way that fits the site’s aesthetic (meaning no “block” ads). If you’re interested, get in touch.

Kotaku has posted a great essay by Tim Rogers covering today’s launch of Final Fantasy XIII in Japan — or rather, from the point of view of taking a sensible approach to the launch.

What do I do on Friday nights? Well, this last one I decided to build a site from scratch from an idea I had earlier this week (last Saturday night, actually) and the result is now online, and called Game. As I explain in the “About” page, the idea is simply to recommend games — these are not reviews, I will only include games I like — using a format that’s short and to the point. Also, I wanted a look for the site that was at an extreme opposite to what gaming websites usually look like.

Why do this? It’s been just over a year now since Arcade Mania came out, as well as me leaving Wired’s Game|Life blog, and I started missing writing about games. Anyone who follows my Twitter feed will know that I tend to recommend a lot of stuff there, but I wanted to do something that had a bit more permanence.

For now, my plan is to add 2-3 games a week, and they don’t have to be absolute new releases — right now, anything released in 2009 is still fair game I feel. Also, games will cover every platform, so expect flash/browser games, iPhone games, console games, etc.

I hope at least a few people find this useful, and I invite everyone to follow along on the site (and you can of course subscribe to the feed as well).

Is it just me, or does this photo from MUJI’s Xmas 2009 page for their “gateau au chocolat” mix look like a certain yellow pill-popping fiend.

Matt Alt shares the responses from a 2channel post that asks Japanese gamers what they play when they go to game centers. The last one he highlights is a bit sad (but almost understandable):

Whenever my friends and I go to the game center we basically stand around for a while and leave because there isn’t anything a beginner can just start playing.

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention that for more on the game center scene in Japan, you should definitely pick up a copy of Arcade Mania by Brian Ashcraft and little ol’ me — makes for a great stocking stuffer!

It’s been a good month for fellow PauseTalker James Kay, with his Tokyo-based game studio, Score Studios, finally launching its official website, as well as their first few iPhone apps, which includes the sheep herding game Flock It (above).

• French-Cameroonian designer Serge Mouangue is hosting the “WAfrica: A Dialogue with Japanese Culture” event (October 3-23) at the French Institute in Tokyo, with the intent of “[introducing] Japan to Africa in previously unimagined ways.”
• The Tokyo Game Show starts today at Makuhari Messe with two business days, but Saturday and Sunday (September 26-27) are open to the general public.

If you’re into the web and design, there’s a very good chance that you already know about Information Architect‘s annual Web Trend Map poster. Going one step further this year, iA teamed up with Craig Mod to create an online web app version of the map. The way it works is that when you populate a map with Twitter feeds, the system looks at all the links that are posted, and creates a “Trending Links” list, which appears in the sidebar on the left. It’s an awesome way to get a quick heads-up on what people — or “micro curators,” as iA and Craig describe them — are linking to and talking about. You need to have an account in order to create a map (and to do that, you need to purchase the original Web Trend Map poster), but anyone can access the maps already created.

My contribution comes in the form of my “Gamingsphere” map, which I describe thusly: “Tweeting games by people who play them, write about them, talk about them, and just plain love them.”

Ever since I first saw a trailer for Fez at a PauseTalk a couple of years ago — when Polytron‘s Jason DeGroot (6955) was still living in Tokyo — I’ve been anxiously waiting to get my hands on a controller to bring that little Gomez to life myself. Well, I finally got my chance this past Friday. Jason is in town for a few weeks, carrying with him a demo version of the game on his laptop. So yes, despite my “current situation,” Jason was kind enough to come on over to my place, plug up that laptop to my TV, and I was then holding an Xbox 360 controller, playing through the demo level.

I won’t go into details, but let me just say that what I played was an absolute blast. If the idea of constantly rotating a world in order to maneuver through a level sounds like a chore, quite the opposite, it becomes quite natural, and you’ll quickly find yourself jumping, rotating, and then jumping again in no time. The 8-bit inspired visuals are indeed a treat, and Jason’s music fits the game’s atmosphere perfectly. Fez‘s release sometime next year cannot come soon enough.

In a related note, Polytron’s Phil Fish will be talking about his upcoming iPhone game (in collaboration with Infinite Ammo), Power Pill, at PechaKucha Night in Montreal (Vol. 13) next week — I posted more details on PechaKucha Daily earlier today.