Arcadian Rhythms is a bunch of friends who decided that since they spent a lot of time talking about, thinking about and of course playing games it would be fun to write about them. We founded our site in 2011, our podcast in 2012, and generally became a bit more awesome in 2013.
2014 and 2015 were very nice, thanks.
Fun is the byword here: we have fun creating stuff for Arcadian Rhythms, and we hope you have fun with it too. We also like to think and engage critically with this splendid hobby of ours – the games themselves plus the industry and culture surrounding them.
Arcadian Rhythms is non-commercial. We are not ad-supported and rarely solicit review copies, which we’d like to think means we can say whatever we damn well please. In the event that we perceive a conflict of interest, we’ll usually announce it. Unless it’s on a podcast and we’ve been drinking. All opinions belong to those stating them. A durr.
Developer? Publisher? Interested in us covering something?
We don’t post news or promote crowdfunding campaigns so please don’t ask us to.
If however you have a game (finished – as close as it ever gets these days – or an alpha build) you’d like us to take a look at, that’s another story. Drop us an email at shaun@arcadianrhythms.com or aj@arcadianrhythms.com with relevant information, download codes or links, and all that jazz. We can’t guarantee that we’ll write about it – we run this site as a hobby and aren’t trying to cover everything – but we’ll take a look and see if any of the team are interested.
Who are these Arcadian Rhythms?
Shaun CG (Editor in Chief)
Having walked away from a ten year career in software testing, Shaun works as a freelance writer. He doesn’t pay himself to write here. You may occasionally see him blathering about something or other at weekends on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
Dump stat: sense of smell.
Favourite game: changes depending on mood, but usually Star Control 2.
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AJ (SEGA in Chief)
It all started back in 1994; I was instantly hooked. I was little bit worried after the self-titled album that followed, but ‘Globe Sessions’ sealed the deal and to this day Riverwide is still my favourite song… wait, this isn’t the Sheryl Crow fan club site!
Err, I play games and write about them. I like them. If you read my stuff and like it let me know. Let’s not speak of Sheryl Crow again.
I love h- shit!
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Dylan (Japes in Chief)
Dylan is a twenty-something male model who lives in Sweden, working as a handsome skiing instructor. He divides his spare time between playing games, and stubbornly insisting that his opinions on games are correct, which leaves very little time for the seducing of British tourists that you might otherwise expect him to be doing.
In addition to games and opinions, he likes various unpleasant cheeses, quad bikes, Loaded magazine and collecting vintage fountain pens. His favourite game is Planescape: Torment and his favourite unpleasant cheese is Winterdale Shaw.
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Spann (Pottymouth in Chief)
Chris (Spann to his friends) is a social media numpty who spends far too much time building spreadsheets and describing things as being ‘broadly positive, from a user perspective’. When he’s not writing macros for the man he reads impossible crime novels (the works of John Dickson Carr in particular), watches stand up comedy and sitcoms, and is abysmal at video games.
Spann’s favourite games include Bayonetta, Resident Evil 4, Tony Hawk’s Undergound, Shadow of the Colossus and Broken Sword. He eagerly awaits a game that features an impossibly proportioned skateboarding witch killing giant zombie Templars – although that could well be Bayonetta 2.
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Walker (Finn in Chief)
Walker is a mysterious figure who doesn’t have a bio yet.
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Potter (Griefer in Chief)
Potter is a mysterious figure who doesn’t have a bio yet, though you can read all you need to know about him in There is no Potter in Team.
He contributes to Arcadian Rhythms podcasts, assists with editing our articles and nauses the hell out of AJ.
But wait! What about those other guys?
Oh, for sure. We’re lucky enough to have quite a few intermittent contributors, who include or have included…
Kevin
Born and raised in Montreal, I found myself the child of divorce with a hard working father and a mother who seemed to always be in another castle. Babysat by video games I grew up with Mario and Link, and as they gained pixels I gained a hunger for more games, be it at the arcade or the home of a friend who owned a different console . I drew inspiration from the worlds and characters of the games and comic books around me and put this down on paper in the form of art, and continue to this day to play games to take in their stories and beauty and stoke my own fires.
Having worked in the video game QA business since the age of eighteen I’ve seen the industry from the trenches, have endured the terrible sight of bare bones games , and still can find beauty in the chaos. I’m drawn to play games of all types; though I lean very much toward the “old school†I can still appreciate a good multiplayer FPS or fighter, or dive in to a deep RPG.
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Guillaume
Guillaume’s love for bullets in Greed Corps is only matched by his disdain for them IRL. This may seem like quite the contradiction, but this (27 year ol’) boy is full of them at first glance. Having grown up as a Sonic kid, he quickly became a ”SEGA fanboi”. Thank goodness this died out around 8th grade. Now he’s just more-or-less your average SEGA fan… not too sure what that means today. Little known fact: he has taken apart every SEGA console he’s owned and put them back together in fixed or ”fully functional” condition since age 10. All but his Dreamcast which he has yet to find a reason to open up.
Aside from videogames, this crazy monkey likes to: climb around, study the biomechanics of the human body, play Keeper position in football, play with fire, play with/in snow, catch sharp spinning objects in mid-air, try to find a way to ”fix” Mankind, hope to find a cure for HIV in his free time, run around in forests/mountains (addicted to the Spartan Race), sky-dive, and, last but not the least, ride his bike.
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James
James is a Computer Evil Scientist, which is similar to, but materially distinct from being an Evil Computer Scientist. After spending some years pushing buttons for one of them giant Internet conglomerates with a double-O in the name, he left his job and became a freelance writer. Frankly everyone involved is much happier as a result.
Quite what he’s doing here is anyone’s guess, because he’s never played a Half-Life game and can’t aim properly with the analogue stick. Suggestions that it’s all a vain attempt to turn the purchase of an iPhone into a tax write-off are vigorously denied, even though they’re almost certainly true.
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Woolie
Woolie “ThirtyHitCheapz†Madden is a community organizer, tournament director and color commentator for Montreal Street Fighter. His email is wooliemadden(AT)gmail(DOT)com.
For more info about MTLSF and the Canadian Street Fighter scene, visit http://www.mtlsf.com/.
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We don’t have bios for Madd, mwm, Jonathan McCalmont or The Medieval Nerd but we love them all the same.