Julian Rizzo-Smith

Julian Rizzo-Smith is a Sydney-based multimedia journalist reporting on tech, games and entertainment. 

Junkee •

Meet The Young Aussie Behind The Most Beautiful Game Of E3

In 2016, 16-year-old Melbournite Anthony Tan began work on his “deer game”, sharing screenshots to Reddit. In 2019, Way To The Woods was shown at E3 alongside the biggest gaming franchises in the world. How was Tan to know that screenshots of his little game would explode in the Gaming subreddit? That they would be discovered by Hello Games’ Sean Murray (No Man’s Sky)? “People really, really liked it, and I was like, ‘Oh. Oh, I have to do this now,’” Tan told Junkee of the initial Reddit b
Junkee •

'The Red Strings Club' Shows The Harsh Reality Of A Cyberpunk Future

The Red Strings Club is a low-fi pixel art cyberpunk player adventure game that takes everyday activities you’ve never really seen in a game before and turns them into fascinating mechanics for persuasion. It features a sexually-diverse and celebrated world, takes philosophical stances on dystopian futures and questions ideas about ownership, the ethics of capitalism and our dependent relationship with technology and our emotions, but it all turns a bit south in the game’s final act.
Junkee •

From 'Drag Race' To Overlooked Rapper: Why Aja Is Struggling To Find Their Flow

Aja finds themselves stuck between a drag persona they want to leave behind, and a rap career they can't seem to get started. Best known internationally as the fiery and iconically memeable RuPaul’s Drag Race and All Stars contestant — who famously called out Valentina on Untucked for “Looking like Linda Evangelista” — Brooklyn’s Aja has cultivated one of the most unique brands to come out of the show. Since All Stars 3 aired last year, they’ve eschewed the drag stardom they initially chased a
Junkee •

Cosplay, Moogles And Making History: Experiencing The ‘Final Fantasy’ Mardi Gras Float

Marching in the Final Fantasy x Sydney Gaymers float at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras felt like I was helping make history. For the first time in 40 years, a video game is sponsoring a float at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. For the first time ever, us members of the community-run group Sydney Gaymers don’t have to wheel wooden blocks on shaky flatbeds down the parade as they’re falling apart and giving them splinters. For the first time ever, I felt represented and part of a co
Junkee •

The First Pokemon Movie Is Still The Best Thing About The Franchise

The year 1999 gave us a lot in pop culture: the best episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in perhaps the worst season ever, the beginning of Star Wars’ menace of a prequel, the debut album of pop star cultural philanthropist and icon Britney Spears, and the Wachowski’s unofficial Ghost in the Shell live-action called The Matrix. More importantly to me, however, it saw the best Pokemon story of all time.
SBS PopAsia •

Meet the Melbourne artists creating music inspired by the anime classic ‘Akira’

Melbourne-based artists Black Cab’s latest album, Akira, pays tribute to “the dark heart of Japanese sci-fi anime.” Based on the audio and visual aesthetics of Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal 1988 dystopian sci-fi anime film, Akira, the album is designed as an alternative soundtrack to the film and was inspired by classic sci-fi, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, and the synth soundtrack to Apocalypse Now.