We hear you kids in the back: “Disney is nothing but kiddy bullshit! There’s no way Kingdom Hearts can be hardcore with Mickey Mouse in it.” Really, mister? Then you have no sense of history and you’re about to get some. Wipe away those knee jerk images of princesses and dancing cats - we’re about to expose the bloody, black powder underbelly of Disney’s hardcore legacy of sheer brutality! ...

There’s an ancient and oft cited survey floating around the web that claims that Mario is more popular than Mickey Mouse. Sure, sounds believable. Even if the source of the poll has gone unaccredited since 1990. So, in order to present the following article in terms our audience can understand: Mickey is basically the Mario of everything else. ...

The internet is often thought of as a well of information, but that’s a flawed metaphor. It’s much more like a worldwide network of networks, if you follow my logic. And as the internet ages, it’s becoming littered with servers, and those servers are becoming littered with old data. ...

It seems a lot like Disney and Square-Enix are on different wavelengths as far as developing games goes, what with a Warren Spector project in the works and Final Fantasy XIII well on the way. But there was a time when these two juggernauts of adolescent entertainment teamed up to make sweet, sweet video game love in the form of Kingdom Hearts. ...

Licensed games come and go, so most of us don’t bat an eye when titles based on movies and TV shows fall into obscurity. Today, they’re ephemeral by nature, seemingly designed with an expiration date only as far off as the coinciding property’s DVD release date. ...

We suppose our regular readers, weaned on the violent acts of Marcus Fenix and Solid Snake, deserve an explanation. Why has GamesRadar devoted five whole days to anthropomorphic rodents and smile time gags on the week Halo 3: ODST hits shelves? It’s partially due to poor scheduling (not necessarily on our part!) and a lifetime of love for The House of Mouse. ...

The Week of Disney: You’re soaking in it! Go ahead and pretend these characters mean nothing to you. Once you’re done lying to yourself, pretending you don’t have no connection with the likes of Mickey, Donald and Goofy, let’s marvel at just how astounding it is that almost every person in the world born in the last century shares some familiarity with these characters of unrivaled legacy. ...

We’ve all had our fun spotting recurring elements in games. So many kidnapped princesses! So many spiky-haired antiheroes! But why the constant repetitions? Are developers that lazy? Or could games, in their transition from high-score one-upmanship to narrative medium, have tapped into the basics of mythic tropes? ...

We decide the winners of 27 years of system rage, so you don't have to. ...