Rundown (9/14/2025) Find Yourself Within Silence

This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Find Yourself Within Silence

So this past weekend, while doing whatever it is I do most days, I happened upon a thread discussing a 6 minute video from Harvard Business Review discussing why you need to be bored. The video’s done millions of views and raises some interesting points, so I say watch it and come back here. …Go on, leave, I will be here all day.

…

Okay, so for those who refuse to heed my advice, the gist of the video is that people need to be bored. They need to disconnect from technology, from the wider internet, throughout the day, interact with humans, and be alone with their thoughts. This helps them understand their identities, understands themself, the meaning of their lives, and ask questions that help determine their identity and establish a healthy mental state. People naturally try to minimize this, but they need to break their phone addictions to avoid anxiety and depression. You don’t need to check in on what’s going on in Washington every hour, or even every day.

Now, the ultimate advice here is nothing new. The idea of digital detoxes has been around for a solid decade. And people have been bitching about these fucking cell phones for a solid two decades. But I found the video interesting as, quite simply, I only have in-person interactions with like two people these days, and they are both in their 60s. Meaning that it is harder for me to grasp certain more passive changes in widespread social habits.

When I walk outside, I see the same buildings I saw as a kid, cars are bigger but move the same, kids and people look the same as always. And I do not see a lot of phones in the wild when walking down the street or going to the grocery store. So, ignorantly, I assume that the way people live their lives can’t be that different. But, apparently, when you give people phones, they change their behaviors and try to curb out boredom. Something that I have had a surplus of for… the first 25 years of my life.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time alone and with my thoughts. I would leave for school at 7:45 every day, be the first kid to greet the school crossing guard, Ike, and I would be left with the entire school playground/park to muddle around in as I saw fit. However, I did not play as much as I wandered. Everything was always wet, so I didn’t sit. I just walked and spent time alone with my thoughts. I might have done some last minute review for a test, maybe read a school book I had in my backpack, but idly doing nothing was the most common activity. Come middle school, I had a good 15/20 minute walk back home every day, and I would most often walk by my lonesome, in silence, forcing me to listen to my thoughts and mull over this and that. Come high school, I began a long career of sitting on a bus and staring out at the streets, not talking to anybody, not reading anything because I cannot read in a moving vehicle. Either I dozed off, getting precious sleep, or I just thought about this and that, no greater stimulation, nothing more to do.

In community college, I would often spend an hour walking back home— because I did not want to spend $2.75 on bus fare to cut my travel time by 30 minutes. I just thought about whatever, worked out parts of stories I was writing, outline what I needed to do for homework. Oh, and analyzed what I was doing, who I wanted to be now that I was adult, figure out that I’m trans, that sort of thing. In real college, I started using paratransit, where I played the roulette to get to and from school. Sometimes the trip would take 15 minutes, other times I would exceed two hours. Sometimes the driver would be an hour early, other times they would be 45 minutes late. It was a damn crapshoot, and I didn’t have anything to do while on the cat/bus. I didn’t have a book on standby to read, not that I could read while in the car. I did not have a smartphone despite it being 2016 to 2019. I just had myself, my thoughts, and my own ideas, so I just thought about whatever. School, games, media series, my own creative ventures, what I wanted from my life, you get the gist, aight?

Now, come the pandemic in 2020, I was a true shut-in. I rarely left my house, and when I did, it was always for a structured reason, so that idle time largely died out. However, at this point I had already established myself as a writer. I was writing thousands of words of editorial or creative writing every week, forcing myself to contend with what I was seeing, develop my thoughts, and generally think about things critically. I had ample time to view myself, reflect on myself, and I did so throughout my writing at the time. By going through and re-editing my prior novels, writing Rundowns, and pursuing new concepts with TSF Series. Sure, in terms of non-screen time, that was relegated to stuff like vacuuming, doing the dishes, cooking, showering, and various other household chores, during which I was just idly thinking about whatever appeared in my head, but all of those are more active, uh, activities than just standing around or walking.

I have never sought out boredom. I actively try to fight against it by doing things and pursuing distractions all the time. But my experience with silence, with no stimuli, has likely changed how my brain functions compared to, say, certain younger individuals who have lacked the same bored opportunities that I do. Hell, just a day after seeing this video, I was directed to a study showing that smartphones make children’s lives worst if they start using them before age 13. Which… yeah, no surprise there, especially when you realize just what smartphones are good at and what they have been made to do.

Smartphone users are subjected to algorithms designed to foster engagement more than anything else. Social Phone Media users are encouraged to represent an ideal version of oneself while being fed idealized renditions of other people their own age. Viewing the outside world through a small pocket-sized screen when your brain is undergoing critical development is a generally bad principle. And as for sleep… again, no shit. For decades parents have been telling their kids to stop watching TV or playing video games before bed, so of course something more interactive, able to deliver anything to you, would worsen one’s ability to sleep. Especially when people bring it into bed or, god forbid, listen to things on their smartphone so they can fall asleep. But this is not a computer or screen problem, it’s a smartphone problem.

Personal computers are fixed and designated tools, designed primarily as workstations and as a means of doing things productively. Computers are not really made for recreation. They are things you leave behind when you step away or need to be opened up before they can be used. You can use them for fun stuff— watching vidya, playing gaimz, chatting with frens, or what have you. But they are clearly designed as business machines before recreational machines.

Meanwhile… I have no idea how anybody reasonably gets any work done on a smartphone unless it is taking photos, videos, signatures, orders, or something of the sort. You can use them to text, to make phone calls, and for emails and the like, but they are consistently worse than a desktop or laptop in terms of productivity. As such, it’s no surprise that most people do not use them for productivity, they use them for recreation. To watch videos, listen to music, chat with friends, play games, or browse feeds of disinformation placed in front of them. And this recreation follows them everywhere, offering them a hint of dopamine whenever and wherever they are.

I am used to the silence and find the act of just walking with no noise to be… normal, how things should be, and I do not crave anything of the sort when I am out and about. Because I am outside, and I don’t want to be a loser staring at my phone. I will take it out and snap pictures when I’m out in, say, a nature exhibit, or when I see a cute bunny on somebody’s lawn, because I want to share it with my friends. But that’s analogous to carrying an early digital camera in the mid-90s.

This comfort with silence, with nothing going on, is something I have taken for granted, as it is something I have learned since I was a little kid. And I think it is something that people have always just dealt with. But as humanity changes their access to information— to recreation— things that were taken for granted are being put at risk. Children— people in general— are being exposed to things without being given adequate teaching or training, and are (potentially) losing out on so much as they rewire their brains without knowing it.

Akumako: “…So are you going to actually change your behavior after thinking about this, or are you just musing again?”

Nah, I’m not going to change anything.

Akumako: “You check Discord, Bluesky, and ResetEra all the fucking time throughout the day, make several trips to DeviantArt and Pixiv every 24 hours, check your YouTube subscriptions a bunch, and have your dumb RSS feeds.”

Don’t forget about Nebula! Gotta make the most of that lifetime membership!

Akumako: “Fuckin’ wannabe socialist— you are doing all of these things, taking in all of this digital stimulation, from the minute you get up to the minute before you go to bed. You don’t actually let yourself be bored.”

Okay, so… the reason I indulge in all this digital stimulation is because I am in this constant war with information build up. I check them so I can put them aside, get the information, the files, the resources, hear the story, and then move on. I need to check all of these places because they provide me with useful information for what I do. Gaming news, new TSF works from artists I follow, general world news, communal trends shifting, or oddball stories that I find interest. I would love to be more systematic about when and how I check them out each day, giving myself a dedicated time slot to do something, but I do not have the luxury of a consistent schedule.

I don’t know when I start work most days, how long work will last or if I will have work after work. I don’t know when my mother will get the dishes ready for me to do them, or when exactly my mother will go to bed, as I like to exercise and shower after she falls asleep. I would LOVE to be able to plan out my days, determine how long I will spend doing activity X, Y, and Z, but I cannot really do that. I am a writer, and writing is not a regimented or organized job where you can consistently assign a time to a given task. I am a tax accountant, and it is hard to gauge how long a return will take unless you have all the information. And we rarely ever have all the information! And I have friends— people who will talk to me for hours on end— who chime in whenever.

This leads me to my point. You cannot schedule being bored, because I don’t think that scheduled and regimented lives actually exist. Or at the very least, they sure as fuck do not exist for me. And, contrary to what Brooks the bearded baldman has to say, I don’t think you need to be bored, I think you just need to think about real shit. And being bored helps you develop the skills needed to think about real shit. It helped me, but if you locked me into a room for an hour with nothing to do, all I would be doing is thinking about all the shit I gotta do and the hot takes I gotta deliver for decade old games. You gotta be bored to understand yourself. But the most consistent bit of praise I have heard from people over the years is that I have a very cohesive sense of self. I know who I am, what I am all about, what I wanna do with my life, and just need to go about doing it. I’m on the next level, and y’all just gotta catch up!

Akumako: “Your ego is dwarfed by your humility…”

Oh, shaddup! I am a blogger, yapper, and intaker/outputer of information profound and inane alike. I’m a tax accountant, I got my degree, I got my surgeries, got my papers updated, and I wanna spend the next 30 years of my life in the room I am in right now, at this exact moment. I wanna make stuff, talk to people, and keep on learning shit, trying to get a better understanding of these weird fucks called HUMANS. I fucking love video games. Fucking hating what capitalism has done to them! While TSF is my blood and passion.

I know what I am about, but do you? If you don’t know what you are about, who you wanna be, and what you wanna do before your body starts to make like a raisin, then do something. Clear your plate, put your phone down, go out into the woods, and do some heavy thinking, axxing yourself ‘what in the fuck I are?’ Then, with nobody else to spam rotten produce down your ears, you’ll eventually reach an answer.

YouTube is Destroying The Livelihood of Its Creators
(Thanks to Restricted Mode)

Goldarn it YouTube! You have a monopoly on online video, I use you for so many things, so many creators, yet you keep making it harder to not view you as a burning deluge of sin and evil. It was already deeply worrisome when they appeared to convert videos through an AI filter, seemingly with the goal of eroding people’s ability to distinguish between AI and non-AI videos. Because misinformation and confusion are OP weapons for fascist regimes and their conforming elites.

But I was inclined to think that was just some weird-ass fluke involving a feature that was meant to compress the video or whatever. Though, this past week, they earned their place on my shitlist again. I heard from multiple creators that YouTube recently changed what videos are visible to users, including subscribers, thanks to something called Restricted Mode. A feature I had never heard of, but exists to hide away certain videos based on… what an AI thinks is appropriate. I can only assume this was enabled by default for certain accounts, and because of that, a bunch of creators I follow have been suffering from reduced viewership. This means less ad money, less new people finding their videos, and their businesses are going to start drifting into the red, assuming they were not already in the red.

Now, I do not think that this was in any way intentional— I do not think YouTube is deliberately shadowbanning videos from channels they deem as undesirable. But the fact that this even happened is just bizarre to see, especially when many of the videos that are being restricted are clearly within the realm of PG or PG-13 at most. This is immensely frustrating as, quite simply, YouTube is the best place for creators to make money on the internet. Its systems are opaque, its features are full of frustrations, but it truly does have some of the best stuff on the internet, and without it… what even is The Web©?

I can only hope that YouTube does something, because if not… a lot of channels I like might go dark, and that would SUCK for them, for me, and for thousands of other bastards just like me. I get that the end of freedom in England, and parts of America, are applying legal pressure on them. Yet, this is a consistent problem with YouTube in that they don’t communicate shit properly with people who depend on them, and pump out broken systems for the sake of… I don’t even know what.

How Many People Does It Take to Make a Game
(And Who TF Counts as a Game Dev?)

Okay, here’s some dumb bit of drama that enraptured my mind, I’ve got an hour to kill before work, and I feel like spewing it from my mind. There have been a scattering of articles praising the recently released Hollow Knight: Silksong as a hugely successful title with a dev team small enough to fit into a sedan. Which is seen as impressive in the modern era. However, anybody who beats the game and looks at the credits, or knows something about the way games are actually made, will see that’s a bold-case lie.

So, how many people worked on Silksong? The credits, logged by MobyGames, cites 90 professional staff and 7 special thanks. So, 90 people were working on this game for 7 years? Well, uh, no. That’s not how it works. Unlike in the halcyon days of yore, the average game developer no longer lives at their office, sleeps under their desk, works 3,500 hour years, or has remotely stable employment. A lot of game developers come in briefly as contractors, doing their part, adding things to game, and then being shuffled off onto their next gig. The industry has historically been terrible at crediting these people, or anybody who leaves during production, and this begs the question of colloquially, culturally, and objectively, of how these people should be counted as game developers.

Let’s say someone worked as UX artist for a project for 6 months, in a development cycle that lasted 5 years, and their work was scrapped. Can they say they did dev work on this project, even though it was not, or barely, included in the final game? Well, yeah, I’d say so. Were they part of the main dev team, or even core dev team? No, I would not say so, as their work was not substantial to be included. They were not around for a huge chunk of the game’s development.

What about if somebody gets a job at a game developer, barely does any work, and gets fired by a manager a month later, after realizing they made a mistake in hiring this person? What if somebody from another dev team in the same studio worked on a project for a week, offering some advice and expertise to developers without ever touching the game with their own hands? What if somebody from a competing game studio took up a job at their rival developer, and spent years trying to sabotage a project before being fired and slapped with a lawsuit? Do these people belong in the credits?

Hell, what even is a game developer? A socially inept dickwad might say that developers can only be programmers by definition and that only programmers should be considered game devs. But I like to think that it is safe to say that programmers, designers, artists, and sound engineers whose work is directly seen or felt in the final product are safe bets. Testers and quality assurance were seen as less than developers for a very long time, but QA has become so important for first impressions and the health of games that I think they are safe to consider game devs. They make sure the games work and tell the programmers ‘yo, this shit is busted!’ Because they don’t know. (Or maybe they do but hope nobody notices. Typical programmers.)

However, what about other less direct roles? Are composers who work on games on a freelance basis involved enough to be considered game devs? What about musical performers who perform music specifically for a game? What about marketers? What about trailer editors? What about middle managers who just corral teams? What about executives who have zero idea what half of their employees do? Are translators game devs? What about community managers for games with an active community? All of them belong in the credits, because they were part of a broader project that leads up to this game as a final product. But should they all be counted as the same thing when some of them might have spent years on the project, while others started and finished a gig in a week or month?

I am mostly just asking these questions to rev up your brain. I personally look at the credits and break up game devs into main and supplemental teams, and judge the scale or a project from there. This is a very flawed method that could fail to represent the scale of a project, but using it, I would place Skilsong‘s core dev team at 16 people. This would mean that 74 people just worked on the game in a smaller capacity, doing things like voices, music performances, technical support, and “playtesting”— a distinct entity from “testing & QA.” Do I think this is right? Eh, not really. But it’s more right than anybody saying the game was made by three people, and it feels more accurate than saying that 90 people spent 7 years working on Silksong.

In conclusion, games are made by a lot of people, but it’s hard to gauge how much a lot of them do for a game. So any title boasting that it is a one-man project or saying that it had a dev team exceeding 1,000 people should be taken with a sack of salt. And the answer to the question of ‘how many people does it take to make a game’ is ‘however many it takes.’

Okay, freed from the curse of brain worms! NEXT!

Panzer Dragoon Zwei: Remake Unveiled
(Forever Entertainment Biffed It Again!)

Gosh has Forever Entertainment proven themselves to be SUCH a disappointment. It was easy to give them some leeway when they started out their attempts at remaking classic games like Panzer Dragoon (1995), Front Mission (1995), and The House of the Dead (1997). But all of them were lousy with problems, bad art direction changes, and clear budgetary restrictions, making them all pretty clear lessers compared to the original games, none of which are widely available on modern platforms. I would not care that much if these remakes at least had the decency of being paired with a good emulated version of the original games, but they simply are not. Because that is somehow too expensive, and it is more economical to recreate a game from scratch with the production values of, well, not a modern title.

After being announced years and years ago, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei: Remake was revealed with a blurb, key art, and oodles of screenshots ahead of a Tokyo Game Show debut. And it looks pretty bad. I was tempted to say it looks like an XBLA title, but no, it does actually look better than Yar’s Revenge (2011), but it definitely looks worse than the Apple Arcade refugee Air Twister (2022), which I should probably play at some point for a quick review, as it’s only an hour.

As always, I’m sure that the developers want to capture the original, to represent it and recreate it. But their direction is bad, execution is bad, and they clearly are not equipped for this sort of thing. It’s especially frustrating seeing this when I know for a fact that plenty of collection crafting and porting powerhouses would lose their shit if you asked them to do a re-release of the five-part Panzer Dragoon series for $70. Sure, some would not jibe with the polygon wobbling or low res ultra pixelated display of a more raw emulation. 3D emulation is always tricky. But just thinking of the economics of this situation drives me insane, as there is no way this is cheaper than just porting the damn games. We have Saturn emulators! Go ask City Connection or somebody! Anything other than this!

Natalie Fell Down A Retro Game Influencer Hole Again
(One More Mini Indulgence…)

**I liek gaimz~! I dunt liek maikng haeders fr trashies leik dis**

Okay, okay, one more mini indulgence before I get into Nina Tendo’s special treats and Mario going over the hill. There are a lot of trite arguments I see percolating through the discourse of gaming. Yet one of the most frustrating has been a dichotomy of old school vs. new school, something that has been a cornerstone of gaming discourse for at least 20 years. (The best reference point I have without digging through old forums is this song from the 2008 album Here Comes A New Challenger from GameMusic4All.) (God, I should write something about the video games to nerdcore to rap pipeline one of these days.) This type of cyclical argument always annoys me because, well, the argument has already been made. It relies on broad generalizations. And it has been discussed to a firm conclusion.

Good games are good, and you should like what you like. If you like old games, then fuck da police and play them however you wanna. If you are bored with modern gaming and want to buy a MiSTer instead of a Switch 2, then right on, dude. If you think newer games lack the same soul yet keep playing them… you might want to reflect on things, or not. I’m, fortunately, not a cop. If you are a Zoomie and don’t really care about old games, then fine. Nobody should need to play through 100 games before you earn the right to be a Gamer™ (and nobody should be a Gamer™). And if you are a teeny-bopper who thinks older games are better because they are not bogged down with all of this algorithmic predatory garbage, then you’re ahead of your class, kiddo!

Now, there is much to be said about the game design philosophies of different eras. But the capitalistic conflict-driven binary culture turns all discussions into arguments about the ideological superior. When, really, games were just designed for different eras, cultures, and audiences. What sparked this segment was some doing-the-dishes-background-noise discourse around older games not holding your hand like modern ones, but there is a clear reason for this. In older games, being cryptic was kind of expected, and for a few reasons.

The cryptic nature was meant to prolong the time players spent with games, as it gave them broader mysteries and puzzles to solve.
The rental market in North America incentivized developers to make games longer or a greater time invested so they would be rented more and rental store owners would buy more copies.
Games were expensive back in their heyday and there was an expectation that players would spend a lot of time learning them, mastering them, and getting to know their nuances. Gaming was still growing out of being arcade novelties, trying to figure out what home gaming could be, dealing with the technical challenges of making a game that felt like a true journey.
There was an expectation that players would not play games in a vacuum, that they would talk to their friends, peers, and third place game-liker denizens, about tricky parts. A game that you could just play, set, and forget was seen not a worthwhile game in certain respects.
By making games cryptic or harder to understand, this gave magazines things to discuss, which functioned as free advertisement for these titles. It eventually led to a cottage industry of strategy guides, a largely dead art that has been usurped by guides and longplays.

Meanwhile, modern games may as well exist in a different society altogether. Developers want players to finish their games, know that most of them won’t, but need people to jump from the first game to its sequel to keep the studio open. So, they try to make them more accessible, give them direction, and do what they can to make them accessible.

Gaming and entertainment have become so woefully accessible that people are awash with options of things to do and boredom is difficult to achieve unless you deliberately seek it out or are ‘phone poor.’ Which few people are.
Games have dropped in price due to rapid deep discounts that make it easy for someone to justify buying a handful of $10 games that they may get around to every few months. This, combined with a deluge of free live services, means that players are acquiring more games than ever, and are socially encouraged to hop from new game to game.
The language of games has become ever complicated through increased in mechanical complexity and graphical fidelity that there are far more ways for players to interact with the world or make progress. Thus necessitating the incorporation of overt environmental cues, quest logs, and journals that clue the player into what they just did.
The attention span and memory of the average person is probably worse than it was in the before times, because people are inundated with a girthy deluge of information every day. (Because of their God darn cellular telephones!)
Games are so positively expensive to make that they want people to have positive experiences. They do not want them to get frustrated or bored from a lack of direction, as negative user scores and reviews can actually hurt a game’s reputation and profitability. At least to a point.
Modern graphics are harder to read than older graphics, and this has been a discussion point for literally 25 years. Shit, maybe 35 years!

Games, like all media, are a reflection of the world they were created in, and that’s just an inherent part of what they are. They are typically, ideally, static pieces of software that reflects standards do their time, and do not age. Just like how black and white movies have not aged— the filmstock its on has, but the movie as a piece of art has not. If it does not appeal to people like it did in the roaring forties, then the movie has not aged. People have aged, society has aged, and standards have altered as we entered a NuEra.

What was seen as cutting edge will eventually be seen as antiquated, and that is fine. If somebody does not like older games, or cannot flirt with tank controls like the sexy li’l jawn that she do be do be do, then that doesn’t mean they’re bad. There are lots of different types of games and control methods that some people may or may not really futz with. And, again, that’s just fine. Liking games does not mean you gotta like everything, like how Big Baller Bookers don’t need to like all 313 flavors of book they have at Bizzy’s Book Barn… bitch!

The Biggest Nintendo Direct EVAH!
(Mr. Mario Just Turned 40~!)

The Nintendo Switch 2 still feels like a system that hasn’t been fully established… which I say as a Nintendo Switch 2 owner. While the system has come out and games are being announced for it consistently. Much of the system’s big future line-up has been kept under wraps. The design is iterative to the point where I would not blame someone for thinking it was just a Switch. And it is hard to get excited for it when a recession is looming, culture is rotting to the point where the deaths of evil people cannot be celebrated, and the global order is crumbling before our eyes. (Fuckin’ gonna have to look into movin’ my ass to Brazil or China or something in the next three months at this rate…)

There was a lot covered in this Direct, lasting over an hour, though I felt that it was missing a little something. …Because I have been expecting to hear about various reissues of old shit for several years at this point. Projects that are so expected they may as well be confirmed. I just want to know they exist and can be put on the shelf of a system library. Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime 3, Kid Icarus Uprising, Yoshi’s Woolly World, the remake and first ever official localization of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. (With a Thracia 776 remake delivered two years later, or as a standalone expansion.) But nope, we didn’t get any of these things!

Also, if this segment seems a bit scattered and rush, that’s because this was the rare example of a Friday blowout, and I started a 12 hour work shift shortly after it wrapped up. I only had about 32 potential hours to get this Rundown assembled, so lemme hoof it while trying to deliver the kweli-tee that you expect! First, by talking about the riffraff worth mentioning, but not much else.

Tomadachi Life: Livin’ da Dream continues to look like a bizarre mismash of bespoke events and player directed social chaos, but that’s kind of been the series’ MO from day one. It looks like a sufficiently fun romp, I have to wonder if rising player expectations for games will leave this game being perceived as unfinished or bereft of content. I mean, people spent hundreds of hours in Animal Crossing New Island Horizons (2020) but then complained about it being too bare bones.

Kirby Air Riders is getting a pair of $50 Amiibos with characters who can be swapped across various ‘machines’ and can store layer data. Which… sure. That’s a good think to steal from Starlink: Battle for Atlas (2018). I would complain about the prices, but what more can I say? Donald Trump and his cronies want a generation of Americans to grow up without physical toys in order to stunt their development and Keep America Stupid Forever. At least that’s my current theory, assuming there is any real plan beyond Project 2025.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment continues to look like a quality Musou game, but as someone who did not play through Tears of the Kingdom, I just do not give a hoot about the cast of playable characters. It looks flashy though, like it is making the most of the Switch 2 hardware, and even lets you do Game Share on Switch 1, so some poor soul can play the game at what looks to be 480p.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has been percolating around for a while, and after being demoed earlier this year, lacks much need for new trailers. But Nintendo dropped one more to give us the release date of December 4, 2025, and to reveal that they gave Samus a damn motorcycle that she can slot into! That is cool in and of itself, but she can also use homing missles to take out enemies as she drives and shred her way through space monsters. It’s honestly a great way to add more mobility to the game while still actively presenting Samus as Samus, and I particularly love how her arms both slot into the motorcycle, turning it into an extension of her body in a more subdued and unintrusive way. I would say that this leaves me hyped for Metroid Prime 4, but I still need to beat the remaster… and play 2 for the first time ever… and actually finish 3. I wish I didn’t have to sleep sometimes.

Resident Evil 9: Requiem, along with proper versions of Resident Evil VII: Biohazard and Resident Evil VIII: Village will be released for the Switch 2. Which is neat after RE7 and RE8 were cloud only releases on Switch 1, but this seems too little too late. People have already bought these games, they are on everything, and I don’t think there are people who only have a Switch 2 yet love Resident Evil.

Super Mario Galaxy is Back Bay-Bee!
(Back to SPACE!!!)

As we near the twentieth anniversary of Super Mario Galaxy (2007), it is only natural that there is a spike in nostalgia for the game. Both for audiences and the creatives behind the title, so it’s none too surprising to see Nintendo want to revisit it as part of a multimedia blitz.

The first component is the sequel to the highly successful The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), dubbed The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. A film that, through its title alone, promises to take myriad nods and influence from Super Mario Galaxy. …Which I am all for, as I love Mario Galaxy and love Mario Galaxy 2 even more… or slightly less— my opinion shifts depending on the day. Though, I have to say this is an odd choice for a second movie in a series. Every hack writer knows that there are three logical— natural— places to end a story. Space or Hell or the Real World. Yet neither location works particularly well for a middle chapter, as it sets the scales so high that anything you do afterwards is going to be seen as a step down. See Super Mario 3D World (2013) and the reputation it earned before Nintendo re-whatevered it five years ago. I’m sure the movie, just like the first one, will be a beautiful and fun 90 minute romp, but it needs to be stressed how weird it is to jump into the SPACE movie before something more routine. Like a Mario Sunshine and/or Yoshi’s Island movie.

As for games, Nintendo is taking this opportunity to remaster Super Mario Galaxy (2007) and pair it with Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010), dubbed Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2. A move that… makes a lot of sense, except they already re-released Galaxy 1 for Switch with the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection in 2020. A bare-bones overpriced $60 compilation that they sold 8 million units of because, one, it contained two of the best Mario games, and two, they made it a limited edition releases, ‘vanishing’ from store shelves after 6 months. I am still pissed that they had the audacity to do such a thing for some of their most beloved and cherished games of all time, but I can now see that this was the long-game.

They made Super Mario 64 (1996) available via the Nintendo Classics subscription service in October 2021. They announced Super Mario Sunshine (2002) for the service earlier this year. And since Wii emulation would be a ripe pain in the keister to implement on any wider level, requiring games to be rejiggered for controllers, Nintendo might just prefer re-whatevering those games. The long plan, effectively, was to sell players these games after they had already bought them via subscription services, or in the case of Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2, an exorbitant price tag.

This two game ‘collection’ is largely just the games in HD, with some control tweaks, maybe some minor visual updates, and a scattering of extras that don’t amount to much. Such as an assist mode, in what is probably the easiest Mario game to control. A sound test feature— a feature literally older than me. Additional chapters in Rosalina’s storybook, a vital part of the Galaxy 1 experience that didn’t need no stinkin’ retcons. And Amiibo support, particularly with two new Mario and Rosalina Amiibos. Who will probably just give you extra lives or something comparably trite.

So, how much for this two pack collection of games, one of which was effectively sold for $20 five years ago? …$40 for each title, and $70 for a physical copy of the collection. …For a second I forgot this was the company that priced Pikmin 1 (2001) and Pikmin 2 (2004) for $30 each and $50 for what were effectively two GameCube ports. It was a dirty move, especially after they put out a fully remastered face lift of Metroid Prime (2002) for $40. I am upset that they are being so greedy, but… this is not even close to the worst example in this Direct.

I will say that Nintendo is no longer struggling like they were in the dark era. Their American branch is not being by a value-seeking American Pizza man who will give them pushback on price. Nintendo wants to be a luxury brand, one where people need to work and spend to achieve their supposedly ‘immaculate’ quality. They want to preserve the value of things were selling for $20 in 2015 by doubling its price, and they want you to respect the value, because the value must be preserved.

Akumako: “How ’bout I preserve my cock in your mouth as I fuck you in front of your mother? Is that respectful enough for you?”

I understand that companies are supposed to be uncaring vessels that remove value from the masses and siphon it back to the shareholders, walking all over their stakeholders in the process. That is their job. This is just how reality works. We are just ants living in a world by and for corporations and the Men who run them. But I am so, so deeply bitter at what they have stolen from us. The idea of a value menu, or Nintendo Selects, or being able to get the latest and greatest games from 3 years ago for a Jackson and Jefferson ($20 US dollar bill and $2 US dollar bill, because 10% sales tax). Nintendo is no longer interested in catering to this demographic, and they ain’t gonna change anytime soon. (…Maybe if we have The Great Depression 2.0. …Baby, I want the Great Depression 2.0. It’s figuratively the only way we can get The New Deal 2.0.)

And this is just a Nintendo problem. Sure, certain publishers just keep games at $70 for years and don’t bother discounting them, but they at least have 50% or $60 off sales. I was willing to just shrug it off and accept it during the first half of the Switch 1 era, but we are in a different world economically. Things have gotten far worse for the average person, and these little microaggressions of greed are what stings the most.

Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be released on October 2, 2025 for Nintendo Switch.

…Also, this announcement really made me think, for a second, that Nintendo would announce a Super Mario Galaxy 3. One that makes reprises the more structured levels of Galaxy, certain visual motifs, yet renders them with a level of splendor, detail, and interactivity that was impossible on the Wii. Some might think the design is of its era, but I would disagree. After Odyssey and Bananza offered more freeform and loosely structured progression, I think a course-based 3D experience from Nintendo would be interesting to see. I mean, Astro Bot showed that people have an appetite for that sort of thing, and I would love to see a 90s style rap beef between a Galaxy 3 and an Astro Bot. Who’s weak, who’s strong, who’s got it goin’ on? When really, you’re dead wrong trying to pick a G.O.A.T.. Just enjoy your two cakes!

Mario Tennis Fever Announced
(Everybody Clap! NOW!!!)

Mario Tennis Fever was announced as the next big Mario Tennis game and… fair enough, it has been over six years since Mario Tennis Aces (2019). Per the snippet shown, Fever seems like a more iterative installment, delivering the type of zaniness people said they wanted from the prior games in the series by doubling down on bonus features. The more battle-like gameplay pioneered in Aces is expanded upon with slides and divers for more dynamic clutch recoveries. The concept of power-ups is directly infused into the game with the new Fever Rackets, allowing characters to use a variety of Mario-esque abilities. From igniting the ball to leave tufts of fire, creating patches of ice, shrinking opponents, or creating a clone with a… shadow racket. I guess somebody forgot that the double cherry was a thing. But I’ll never forget. Mario could be the greatest TF game series if Nintendo wanted to activate a generation. (I still cannot believe they made a Mario game with a body swap chapter and had him get his body back with the help of a trans character.)

The roster carries over seemingly everyone from the prior game, supporting my theory that this is just Aces Plus. Talking Flower from Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023) returns as an obnoxious commentator. There are trial towers to try your hand at if you want to become the best tennis ace there ever was, but without relying on online. The funny courts of Mario Power Tennis (2004) are being reprised with a new era of gimmick courses that aim to put the Mario back in tennis. They are even bringing in the random reality warping effects from Wonder, which I approve of being a Mario staple going forward.

There is also another adventure mode, and one that I… just don’t like conceptually. It follows some generic dark figure transforming Mario, Peach, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi into babies, robbing them of their tennis abilities. This forces them to relearn from the basics in order to get their age back. The slick environments, set pieces, and inclusions of oddball Mario enemies are appreciated, but I just do not get the appeal of the baby Mario characters unless you are a little kid or literal baby. They are not cute, they do not have unique personalities, and they mostly exist as lighter, more unruly, versions of main characters. …I say that, but I also cannot help but find it odd that they are not bringing back baby Donkey Kong, as seen in Yoshi’s Island DS (2006), because they wanted him to be the mentor/caretaker of a bunch of babies. I guess Yoshi was too obvious?

Mario Tennis Fever will be released on February 12, 2026 for Switch 2.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Is Getting Paid DLC for Switch 2!
(Because Super Luigi Bros. Wonder Would be Too Cute!)

Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023) is a game I have a skewed perception of. It was the first truly new 2D Mario game in a decade and aimed to be a bold rebuttal to the perceived stagnancy of the New Super Mario Bros. quadrilogy. Its striking character art, emphasis on carefully crafted set pieces for each level, wide dearth of playable characters, and emphasis on unique transformation all made it out to be a generation-defining game. It received immense critical acclaim, sold over 16 million units despite being a late era title, and will assuredly be a much cited game for all the kiddies who played it with their Nintendork ~~daddies~~ uncles.

…So why do I feel that the game just lacked a greater cultural relevance? I may just be in a bubble, but I do not, and did not, see people speak about this game with the same enthusiasm as games like Pikmin 4, Splatoon 3, Tears of the Kingdom, or Pokémon Scarred Scarlet Scare and Violated Violet Violence. If anything, I only saw them meme on it for having weird transformations and quirky ideas. I think this may be because Mario Wonder is designed as a shorter game, feasible to clear in a week if one is dedicated enough, and is just another platformer. A genre gaming has been spoiled with for the past decade. Sure, a Mario platformer, a well-designed one, but one that does not garner an enthusiastic fandom in the same way that other way more niche titles have. …Or maybe it just was not super interesting to talk about. I dunno.

Anyway, Nintendo decided to go back to this old chestnut by making Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park (2026). An expansion pack to the original game that… turns it into a 2D platforming party game. From collecting coins in a variety of unique locales with myriad gimmicks. Shoving your friends into lava using giant bubble guns. Playing hot potato with a bomb capable of blowing up at least seven Teslas. Griefing your friends by not placing blocks in convenient locations as they try to clear stages. Or play Phanto tag, a game where you fight to see which body Phanto posseses in order to add spice to the series and overwrite your lesser persona.

You know the mask means your mind will be relegated to the background, will be a mere reference for Phanto. You know that it will take your body, your life, and do with it as it pleases. Yet, you still want to wear it, don’t you? For the thrill, the idea, the prospect of having your very sense of self stripped away from you, it’s… strangely enthralling, is it not? Who knows what Phanto will do, who this new you will become? Will they be someone greater, better, or more important? And don’t you just want to be done with this world, to cease existing, become a passive observer without truly dying? It sounds… nice, doesn’t it? So why not just put on the mask? Put it on. Put on the damn mask!

…Sorry, what was that? Where am I? Who am I? Uh, right. I’m a Nat-Nat.

Akumako: “This is the third time this year she put on one of those damn masks…”

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park (2026) is coming out in early 2026, and looks like something that should have just been part of the base game. Or at least a free update.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Announced
(What the Hell is the Yoshi Series?)

…What the even is the Yoshi series at this point? It technically started softly with a pair of oddball puzzle games with Yoshi and Yoshi’s Cookie, a pair of fine puzzle games that have stopped holding any relevance after Nintendo gave up on putting out puzzle games. But the series did not truly begin until Super Mario Bros 5: Super Mario World 2 – Yoshi’s Island (1995). A banger title that really showed off the power of the Super Nintendo, delivered a timeless aesthetic, and remains a wildly creative and distinct platformer. I don’t like it. It has a frustrating scoring system and I feel like I am supposed to treat the game like surgery thanks to the damn baby. Fortunately, I know my opinion is wrong and that this is a genuinely great game.

They had established the series as a new evolution of 2D Mario, made it something new, bold, and fresh, so they immediately decided to change it two years later. Yoshi’s Story (1997) is a firmly ‘love it or hate it’ 2D platformer that released for a vehemently 3D system and is notorious for simplifying the experience drastically. The collection-driven efforts were largely supplemented with merely gobbling as many fruits as possible before venturing to the next stage. The aesthetic was bold, striking, a bit bizarre, and genuinely adorable for the time. It bridged a wide variety of art styles with an iconic happy score to make a game that could subside on vibes alone. But it immediately made Yoshi out to be a very fluid series that could be whatever it wanted to be.

…Then it took a seven year hiatus and came back with two mid-as-hell gimmick games. Yoshi’s Topsy-Turvy Universal Gravitation (2004), a motion controlled Game Boy Advance game only liked by people who played it when they were seven. And Yoshi Touch & Go (2005), which is basically a collection of two minigames. An auto-walker score attack game about using the touch screen to make bridges and throw eggs at enemies. That’s it. And a game about creating lines of clouds to protect baby Mario as he falls. The game looked pretty, but that is literally the only thing it had going for it.

In 2006, Nintendo Artoon make the first true sequel to Yoshi’s Island with Yoshi’s Island DS, a game I actually had as a kid, and… it was just a worse version of Yoshi’s Island. It had worse level design, frustrating second screen gimmicks, the character swapping that disrupted the flow of the game, and the art style clashing made it a… kinda ugly game despite being made of good elements. For a series revival by an outside company, it was an earnest effort to recreate a title that had become a classic at that point. But as its own title? There’s a reason why YIDS was largely forgotten. It’s fine, you could do worse, but it was just not very good.

A similar sentiment can be applied to the successor, Yoshi’s New Island (2014). A fine, unremarkable platformer that is only notable because it was one of Nintendo’s many, many first-party 2D platformers for the 3DS, and because it’s ugly as sin. I hate its low poly and oil painted aesthetic. It tries to emulate the look of the original, bring it to life in 3D, but utterly ruins the artistic integrity in the process. The 240p pre-rendered backgrounds look like they were pooped outta a dog’s wet hairy asshole. The 3DS gyroscope gimmicks just look annoying to perform. And the title spends so much time looking back at that past that it feels like little more than an imitation.

Then there was Yoshi’s Woolly World (2015) and it was genuinely great. A dense yet breezy experience rife with things to uncover, full of visual splendor and sights that take advantage of the Wii U’s visual prowess. Except instead of showing off massive sprites, tilting, and a crayon aesthetic, Wooly World was all about yarn, and still looks good today… even if it could really use a resolution bump. I know you deliberately included it in that April Direct, Nintendo. Where is the Woolly World Remastered? What have you done with MY SON?

…Then the same developer, Good-Feel, put out Yoshi’s Crafted World (2019) and it was just a step-down. The beautiful yarn aesthetic was instead replaced with a more general arts and crafts aesthetic, yet the image quality and models made the game look worse compared to Wooly World. The levels went from linear 2D adventures to more expansive areas requiring backtracking and flipping around the world to find secrets. And the music… was not very great. It worked, it was a fine game, but even contemporary assessments from Wii U owners were praising Wooly World over this.

So, where do you go from here? What is Yoshi at this point? A series of 2D platformers with a generalized gameplay style meant to showcase a wide variety of unique visual styles, for good and for ill? …Yeah, I guess so. That is the approach Nintendo is taking with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book. Well, kinda.

Per the reveal trailer, Mysterious Book appears to be more of a puzzle platformer than a standard Yoshi game. One with a lot of situational mechanics based on the player’s location, bespoke critters or NPCs for each stage, and no eggs to throw. It still has a few faster segments, but the game’s focus on small details, befriending helpers, and seeming lack of collectibles makes this look like a different type of Yoshi game.

However, the real takeaway from this game is its new art direction, which gives every character a deliberate craft like texture and stop-motion like choppy animation. A bold choice made palatable by the fact the game itself still runs at 60 fps, and as a low-key lover of this often neglected animation variant, I think it is always nifty to see stop-motion represented in a video game. Meanwhile, the backgrounds are clearly 3D models, yet feature a variety of texture and lighting techniques to make them look like living, shifting paintings. It seems like it should not mesh well with the clay and craft looking foreground, but they somehow manage to look cohesive while clearly delineating what is in the foreground and what is in the background. It looks pretty.

My only real gripe with what was shown is how… Yoshi getting sucked up into a book is a weird idea for me, as I don’t know if Yoshi can even read. And I find the title of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book to sound both generic and unexciting. You can find a mysterious book on basically every shelf of your local library, and children have been subjected to a decades-long psy op to think that reading is bad and lame.

Regardless, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is coming out sometime in Spring 2026 as a Switch 2 exclusive. Where it will probably be seen as another pretty good not great Yoshi game. I might have more confidence, but Nintendo has chosen to not state who is making this. Yep, they’re back on that old bullcrap again.

Virtual Boy Games Are Back!
(If You Pay Nintendo $100 for Some Plastic)

I still don’t understand how Nintendo just avoided putting out Virtual Boy games for the 3DS. It was so perfect, a way to play 3D games on a 3D system, and don’t you dare tell me there were technical issues. These were Virtual Boy games! Instead, Nintendo has been treating the Virtual Boy as an occasional punching bag for a good decade— as they should— but now they are finally re-releasing the games for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. With a total system library of 14 games, only maybe 4 of which are even worth checking out, this is more of a novelty, meant for diehard enthusiasts and Nintendorks.

However, Nintendo is planning on going all-out, securing the license for every Virtual Boy game across all regions, and making them available on both Switch 2 and Switch 1. That’s actually a pretty cool concept. …What’s the Nintendo catch? Well, to play any of these games— not as some optional feature— you need to use a recreated Virtual Boy harness. They can either use a cardboard model, which I’m guessing is a repurposed Nintendo Labo VR headset, that can be purchased for $25. Or they can buy a plastic Virtual Boy chassis for $100.

…What is your major malfunction, man? I get that this is a quirky and fun way to play these games. But, one, how does the system even know if the player us using these things. And two, why can’t you just emulate them to display a single image. You know, like you did in the trailer that you just showed us!

There is no technical reason why the games must be played this way. Virtual Boy emulation has been solved for probably two decades. And this is not Nintendo trying to preserve the artistic integrity of the Virtual Boy. Because it’s the Virtual Boy! It was always designed as a cheap gimmick and was abandoned a few months after launch for being a load of wet dog ass. Nobody would give a honk about it if it wasn’t a Nintendo product, and they could have just… let people play it however they want. No, I’m not going to go That’s So Nintendo and write this off, because this is just prime Greedtendo right here, and much about this Direct makes me think we are DEEP in the Greedtendo Era.

Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined Announced
(The Best/Worst Dragon Quest, But With 3D Scanned Doll and Dioramas)

In the lineage of Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest VII probably occupies the oddest spot in the series. DQI and DQII were both foundational entries in the console JRPG genre, setting up a standard and introducing the players to gradual complexity. DQIII was a damn revolution that went on to inform not only many JRPG conventions, but popularized class systems, and its DNA can be seen across video game-y Japanese fantasy media to this day. DQIV was an attempt to tell a sprawling multi-scenario series of smaller plot lines before coalescing into something grand and epic, and is probably my favorite game in the series for how novel it was. Yes, even in 2010/2011 when I played it.

DQV was a sprawling three act adventure that spanned the entire life of its protagonist and delivered a level of versatility and narrative weight that went on to shape the genre going forward. From its monster recruiting system to its selectable wives, its bold treatment of a certain character early in the game, and overall scale. It went on to become the face of the series in certain regards. Or, at the very least every bit of Dragon Quest media with a guy wearing a purple turban is aping DQV. Like Yūsha Yoshihiko or Dragon Quest: Your Story. It was a hugely beloved game in Japan, and I personally love it… even if I never beat it because act 3 was so expansive, it was like starting a second game altogether.

Dragon Quest VI is… honestly a blind spot in the series for me, as I was never able to find a copy as a teen, but it is as beloved as any other entry in the series. Its world was further expanded with the incorporation of a dream world and real world. Its expansive cast was given new dimensions with a revised class system. But a late 1995 title, it was slightly overshadowed by a new wave of PS1 RPGs hitting the market. Fortunately, thanks to games like DQVI, the Super Famicom had very long legs in Japan.

Dragon Quest VII (2000) took a small eternity before it came out— releasing after the PS2— and was likely not what people were expecting. The game relied on 2D assets in an era where 3D was still seen as the logical evolution for gaming. The title was exceedingly long, even amongst its contemporaries, yet lacked the pomp and spectacle that defined games like Final Fantasy VII with its lavish cutscenes and locales. And the fame was not particularly direct, being more of a slow paced adventure game with an RPG core, at least for a good chunk of its run.

Rather than having a dedicated main story, the game is largely made up of smaller episodes where the protagonists venture to a new town to solve its problems, rinse and repeat. This is a class-based RPG where it takes over 20 hours to get the class system, and even longer to get a full party. However, many Japanese audiences delighted in this prolonged journey, giving them a game to really work towards and build up over time while, presumably, saving up for their PS2. It was a particular taste… but it was not widely appreciated in North America, where it launched a six weeks before Final Fantasy X. Weeks before the GameCube and Xbox. And was the first main Dragon Quest came to come out in 9 years. As such, it was often glossed over, met with a less than glowing reception, as the game was a long commitment, and has a rather low nostalgia value, being a game released out of its core era. …Again, in the west.

Dragon Quest VIII though? That was a quintessential PS2 JRPG and everybody liked that one, except for certain Dragon Quest diehards who thought the game was a bit too reactive to criticisms of DQVII. While Dragon Quest IX was a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of Japanese kids who are now twentysomethings. I wished I was one of those kids, but I played DQIX alone in my room. I didn’t even have Wi-Fi!

So, Dragon Quest VII is the most love it or hate it came in the series, but it also got a second chance of finding an audience. After the highly successful run of DS remakes for DQIV, DQV, and DQVI, Square Enix opted to remake Dragon Quest VII for the 3DS in 2013, this time in full 3D. This remake was extensive. It changed a lot, tried to combat some of the pacing criticisms, and added new features, as expected. Though, like most remakes, it was debatable if this was an improvement or not. Still, this was a great opportunity for the game to reach a broader international audience during the height of a console as well. Unfortunately, the game was so dense with text that it took the title three years to leave Japan, being published in September 2016.

This limited potential sales, as people were waiting for the 3DS to be killed so they could resurrect it as a Christ of a handheld in the 2020s. But I actually bought, played, and reviewed the 3DS remake when it came out… and I did not like it, at all. I found the game to be interesting conceptually, but found everything to be slow, dull, boring, and deeply antiquated, saying it felt more like a game from 1990 than 2000. I have since smoothed over my opinions on the title— I was a dumb 21-year-old and did not approach the game with the right mindset— but it is still easily my least favorite Dragon Quest game.

I was always thinking that Square Enix could just port the game to modern systems for a quick buck. It is a fully 3D title and largely needs a UX and camera overhaul to work on modern systems. …And if they are going to be remaking Dragon Quest games, they should follow a sort of continuity and move onto parts 4, 5, and 6. It just kinda makes sense. Instead, they are giving Dragon Quest VII another remake, as I guess this is a game that just needs to be revived every thirteen years.

So, how does it look, how improved is it next to the other titles, and what is its main hook? Well, the most obvious change is in the presentation. Rather than use sprites or attempt a Toriyama faithful 3D approach, Dragon Quest VII is taking more cues from Fantasian and the aforementioned Dragon Quest: Your Story. The characters and environments were handcrafted, or modeled to look handcrafted, and carry with them a high level of fidelity, making the world and characters look like a bunch of dolls going through a realistic playset. It is far from the anime game aesthetic that I have come to expect from the series, but I also cannot say I dislike it. It looks a bit weird and wildly transforms the vibes the game has to offer, but it shows so much reverence for the original artwork and character designs that I cannot say it is disrespectful. Look at the name. It is a reimagining of the original, rendered with new technology. …But my preservation loving ass still wishes they kept the prior versions available on modern hardware. Or at least port the mobile version to PC.

Aside from that, the press release details various vagaries about a streamlined story, which could mean a lot of things. The battle system has been “overhauled” with the ability to use two vocations at once. Which sounds busted. And various quality of life improvements have been made, including the introduction of voice acting. Yes, yes, voice acting is a privilege in games, but goldarn can it make a story more endearing.

Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2, and PC on February 5, 2026. …Basically three months after the remakes of Dragon Quest I and II. So many remakes, ai yai yai.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake Announced
(Another Remake of a Remake!)

From the American perspective, Fatal Frame is such a weird series. It’s initial trilogy for PS2 was following in the footsteps of many games that saw the success of your Resident Evils, Silent Hills, and even Sirens and chased after the horror trends. It was never as big as others, but with a Koei Tecmo budget and ghost horror, it did not need to be a smash hit. However, after a successful run, the series moved over to the Wii, with Nintendo becoming a co-developer and co-owners of the series. …How the hell did that happen? No clue! But I’d imagine it was in exchange for funding, and that somebody at Nintendo thought that Fatal Frame could be their big in-house horror IP. Which makes sense if you don’t think about it.

Nintendo has a firmly family friendly image, so horror does not really work for them. Aside from oddball cases like the Famicom Detective Club games, is not something they directly deal with very often. So, when Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (2008) was done and ready to be localized, Nintendo of America and Europe ultimately passed on the game. Even though that would have been a hilarious component to add to their 2008 holiday line up. Animal Crossing, Wii Music, and a horror game chock-full of ghosts!

After this, the developers decided to use the new power and resources before them to do a remake of Fatal Frame II in 2012, which actually was localized… but only in Europe and Australia. Because Reggie wasn’t willing to throw an M-rated game out into the market right before the Wii U came out, and I guess Xseed couldn’t get the license.

The series then had the misfortune of being the Wii U’s big horror exclusive, Fatal Frame V: Maiden of Black Water (2014). Nintendo of America actually tried to sell this game with a hefty demo and some Nintendo Direct coverage, but sales were middling, and it was pretty clear that this just wasn’t gonna work going forward.

So, starting in 2021, Koei Tecmo has been re-whatevering the series. Fatal Frame V was re-released for all major platforms in 2021. A full remake of Fatal Frame IV came out for the same slate of platforms in 2023. Were these releases successful? I dunno! But they are apparently doing well enough for Koei Tecmo to shove out another remake, because they can’t just port the original PS2 games! That would be gauche! Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake is… what it sounds like. A remake of the Wii remake of Fatal Frame II (2003). Because I guess it’s the best one in the series?

Yeah, Fatal Frame is a big knowledge gap for me, as its particularly Japanese blend of horror limits its appeal in the Anglosphere, and I have not seen a juicy retrospective on the series. (I don’t really watch people who primarily cover horror games, but I’m open to recommendations.) As such, I don’t have much else to say about this remake other than… hopefully it’s good, respectful, and does well enough to greenlight a Fatal Frame VI.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC in early 2026.

Donkey Kong Bananza Paid DLC Announced
(A Bastardized Childhood and Roguelike Mode for a Brisk $20!)

Donkey Kong Bananza has proven itself to be a banger experience, a real system seller for the Switch 2, and a bold return for the Donkey Kong series, full of callbacks, references, and bold new ideas. If you like Nintendo, you should play it. …Or at least the demo, which I will play the day this Rundown goes live. However, for as full of content the game is, it naturally leaves room open for expansions and new additions, new levels and maybe even modes, which Nintendo is delivering with the DK Island + Emerald Rush DLC, released right after the Direct.

As the name implies, this is a piece of paid DLC, costing $20, though it offers very, very little. Just an explorable Donkey Kong Island level and a score attack roguelike mode playable on some of the games ~~levels~~ layers.

…I have three things to say about this.

First off, this rendition of Donkey Kong Island is pretty crap. This place was the main setting for the first and fourth Country games and was a fully explorable hub would in Donkey Kong 64 (1999). We know what it is supposed to be like, how it should be arranged, and as a DK64 kid (that probably explains a lot), I have a certain love for this place. How expansive, eerie, and branching it could be with the handful of other islands nearby, how frightening the sounds could be, and how there were little nooks and crannies everywhere. Combined with elements of the Country games, I think it could make for a massive and sprawling world jam-packed the cameos and unique points of intrigue. …But then they reveal this rinky-dink little island that’s about half the size of what it should be. The layout is wrong, the surrounding environments are wrong, and it feels more like a children’s playset rendition of Donkey Kong Island than a full 3D recreation. Hell, I think there are worlds in Banjo Tooie (2000) that are about as big as this.

Second, Emerald Rush is just a mode all about breaking as many green gems and accumulating as many points as you can within a time limit. During this, players will get random skill buffs, allowing them to do more and do things faster while going through a map full of objects with fixed locations. Spiritually, I’d say this is comparable to Luigi’s Balloon World from Super Mario Odyssey (2017). A way to make use of familiar systems and locations and add more life to the game even after players have completed it. Except that was a free update. Sure, Emerald Rush also comes with various new unlocks and outfits, but those are pretty standard things for games to add in routine patches.

Three, this update was clearly planned in advance. It was either done at launch or basically done at launch, and the idea of not making it a general update breaks a certain level of consumer trust. They said nothing about DLC for this game when it came out, clearly did not make this mode in two months, and deliberately chose to turn this $70 into a $90 game, which I personally find dishonest and objectionable. When Nintendo cranked up their prices to $70 or $80 for certain games, there was an expectation that they would make future updates free and only charge for major expansions, that they would try to preserve their goodwill. But, as we saw at the top of the Direct, we are in the Greedtendo Era. Nintendo does not actually care what you think, because you ~~are a sad, pathetic excuse of a person and you~~ will buy their crap anyway.

Now, this is part of a bigger problem that has plagued the industry for years, but before getting to that, I want to talk about another game that met a similar level of criticisms for its announced DLC.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Is Getting Paid DLC!
(And Stupid Natalie is Gonna Buy It!)

Pokémon Legends: Z-A received yet another trailer in line with its pre-release marketing push, showing how crispy the game looks on Switch 2 and revealing more Mega Evolutions. After wisely revealing a new Mega each week with Mega Victreebel, Mega Hawlucha, and Mega Malamar (my precious friend) they decided to unveil the Mega forms of the three Kalos starters, which all look goofy yet cool in the way that I can jibe with. However, this trailer failed to disclose that these Mega Evolution stones cannot be obtained via normal play, and to receive them in-game, you need to participate in ranked online battles. …Fuckin’ what? They are content gating new forms of Pokémon behind not only an online subscription, but hours of playtime, just to obtain a single new Mega form, and you need to do this over the span of months?

Kindly, stick a knife in your throat Nintendo. (I know some rage baiters are blaming Game Freak, but this is absolutely a publisher decision. Remember comrades, hate the publishers, not the laborers who are beholden to their whims.) I will not be bothering with any of this crap, as I am too old to be bothered with any malarkey. This only hurts the longevity of games, makes them incomplete experiences by design, and weakens the sense of ownership people have over the goods they purchase. It is an arbitrary unlock, and I hope that hackers are able to hack these forms into the game within hours of launch.

Also, guess I’m not going to have any Kalos starters on my team then! I thought they were a wonderfully balanced squad, definitely better than the crummy Unova or Galar trio, but if Nintendo does not want them to be in their best form, guess I should not even bother! …Actually, are they going to do anything to give players any reason to use Pokémon that cannot use the central mechanic of Mega Evolution? Because there are plenty of viable options already…

However, the immediately brow-raising bit of news esd that Pokémon Legends: Z-A is getting paid DLC involving the head swapping maniac Hoopa and a transdimensional journey. The DLC, dubbed Mega Dimension, will function as Z-A‘s postgame and feature new exclusive Mega Evolutions like Mega Raichu X and Mega Raichu Y, sending the protagonist through some manner of alternate universe. We don’t really know much about what specifically it will have to offer, but it indicates that Game Freak is doing more with this game. Unlike Legends Arceus, which just got out one bonus update before it before everybody said ‘Legends Arceus was just a prototype of Scarlet and Violent.’ And I seethe as I think about the future we could have gotten. A future where we got a year of Legends Arceus content, and SV had another year to hook.

At $30, this DLC sounds like it will be a truly substantial addition, bolstering the scale of what should be a fully fledged RPG. The value proposition will need to be made after both pieces of content are in people’s hands, but this does effectively turn Z-A into a $100 Nintendo game. And people are mad about that. Because it’s Pokémon. People have been traumatized by the Switch era of Pokémon games, and they get irrationally mad even when the series does stuff that the broader games industry has been doing for years.

Nintendo games have featured expansion passes for years. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Fire Emblem Engage, Pokémon SWSH, Pokémon SV, Breath of the Wild, and Splatoon 3 just to name a few. They have all effectively raised the price of marquee Nintendo games to a crisp $80 to $95, but because of the price hike of the Switch 2 version, Pokémon Legends: Z-A is the first $100 Nintendo game. At least, the first that comes to mind.

However, this approach of a $60 game and $40 season pass has been industry standard for a decade, and countless games have adopted this it. Meaning that, effectively, the actual maximum price for games is beyond $80 or $90, often exceeding $100. Not every AAA game has done this, and not every one will. Some games are just done and don’t need or have the capacity for extra DLC. But enough do this that I think it is safe to call it normal.

…But I still fucking hate it!

A modern bugbear affecting many industries, but pertinently gaming, is the matter of cost obfuscation, upcharging, and misrepresenting how much something truly costs. I hate the idea of buying a game and then realizing there is DLC that I also need to buy if I want the full experience. I hate how games that last decade can billow into the realm of hundreds of dollars as expansions expand upon themselves. How there is no one clear price for how much everything costs. And how games have gotten into the nasty habit of further obscuring things with editions upon editions. Publishers are trying to trick you, trying to lie about the value of things, and want you to make financial mistakes.

This is nothing new. This crap has been standardized since the Horse Armor era, but I hate how much it complicates the process of buying a game and procuring an experience. Previously, I was a big proponent of waiting for developers to finish games, to wait until the complete or game of the year edition comes out. But as things have continued to shift to digital, the matter has gotten more complicated. Once expected deep discounts have shifted from standard things that happened every X years to temporary sales that preserve the base value, yet encourage people to BUY NOW with the power of FOMO. It has happened to me before.

I have seen plenty of games just sit at the same base price for years and years, with the same DLC lumped onto it, and I just wish that this system were honest to me. That publishers had the cojones to slap their swollen phallus on the table and charge $100 for a game. Not just a game, but the base game and the planned DLC, lumped together, in one package, from the get-go, with no way to buy into a limited experience. You buy the complete version of the game, or you buy nothing!

Will this make it harder for people to afford games? Yes, absolutely. But being told the full cost upfront feels better, because it is honest. You are not being ~~nickeled and dimed~~ Lincolned and Hamiltoned after you thought you were done buying something, you just get the thing when it’s out, when it’s done. Of course, this only works if the DLC is actually finished, but… how often does that realistically happen? Most developers are at least 70% done with the first bit of DLC before their game even comes out.

Admitteldy, this raises questions about how DLC developed after a game became a success should be handled if they amount to a huge amount of new content. And this idea could be exploited by a flurry of paid emotes or skins. But if it were possible to just get rid of this piddly little service fee-ass shit charges, then fuck it. Break past $100 and charge $150 for a AAA game. All those dillholes talking about how expensive N64 games were when adjusted for inflation would cream their JNKOs upon hearing that shit. (What am I saying? These dorks wouldn’t have the courage to wear something so urban-themed.)

I genuinely hope Grand Theft Auto VI costs $150, because I seriously think that would break Gamindustri, and I want it to break. Tear it down! Then everybody will be forced to unionize!

I wish I could unionize, but accountants don’t got no unions…

Pokémon Pokopia Announced!
(Pokémon X Dragon Quest Builders, I Guess?)

Damn, if I was an early Alpher fed on PokéMango and Minecraft and somehow still developed my TF adoration, this shit would be my kino de la kino, fr fr.

The world of Pokémon (console) spin-offs has… underexplored during this past decade over this decade. I’d ask why, but the answers are obvious. A lot of spin-off efforts have gone into mobile live services that make more money and capture more eyes. The console spin-offs do well, but not crazy numbers. While dedicated Pokémon fans, the kind who whine about it on social media 20 hours a month, expect a specific type of experience, based on the Pokémon games they played when they were 12. Actually, no, that is just a rule. Everybody just wants to be 12 again, and that goes for Pokémon fans especially. I swear, if I hear another empty-headed nimrod going on about how ‘Pokémon should have always stayed 2D,’ I’m going to have to… do a segment on how moronic that sentiment is.

…Crud, I only have 12 hours before this Rundown goes live.

OKAY!

Pokémon Pokopia is a Koei Tecmo X Nintendo joint that can be described as the cozy crafting Pokémon game. The player takes control of a Ditto who transformed into a humanoid critter and stumbles upon a tuft of untamed wilderness for them to shift and organize into something civil. They are aided in this pursuit by a scattering of Pokémon who teach the Ditto various abilities, letting them punch blocks of dirt, plant vegetation, water crops. With these abilities, they gradually build up a significantly sized village populated by a scattering of (mostly) cutesy looking Pokémon. It’s an idea that is so obvious, makes so much sense, that I am surprised it has taken them this long to pursue it.

Cozy crafting games like this are something that I do not have any personal interest in— I need structured objectives. But they absolutely mesh with a significant subset of Pokémon games, and I know for a fact that many cozy game likers enjoy themselves a little bit of Pokémon. The choice to not have the player be a human, but a weird goopy transforming critter is such an inspired choice that I am tempted to play the game just to see how weird the transformations can get. And, needless to say, the game is incredibly cute, adorable, and is probably a dream game of sorts for a certain subset of people.

That being said, watching through the trailer again, I’m a bit disappointed in how the game looks. The lighting is flat, the world design is bland, the trailer ran in 30 frames per second, despite being a darn farming game. And while the Pokémon themselves have a variety of animations, they are clearly using the same animation cycles from Creatures Inc.’s archives. This is all fine, but this is not a game targeting the Switch 1 and Switch 2. This is a Switch 2 exclusive, when… there are oodles of better looking games on Switch, hell, better looking Pokémon games even!

Pokémon Pokopia— which I keep wanting to call Pokémon Pokétopia, will be released for Switch 2 in early 2026.

Danganronpa 2×2 Announced
(What a Needless Re-Whatever…)

Okay, this… this is just weird. The Danganronpa series was a flash in the pan success that grew far larger than the original creators ever really imagined. As a PSP visual novel, the prospects of the original Danganronpa (2010) were not set particularly high, but some savvy choices and generally good writing chops allowed the game to become a cult hit, gaining sales as its reputation rose, and leading the developers to expand upon it… and see it only grow in success and prominence. The following seven years saw the following entries and additions:

A bushel of light novels, none of which were ever officially translated, even though they contained vital lore.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012), a semi-direct sequel that aimed to build upon everything the original did.
A legendary written and translated Let’s Play hosted on the Something Awful forums.
A devout Tumblr community that sprung up before a localization of the first game was even announced.
Danganronpa: The Animation (2013), a semi-decent anime adaptation of the first game.
Danganronpa 1-2 Reload (2013), a re-release for PS Vita that was later broken into two parts and released internationally in 2014.
PC ports of the first two games that arrived in 2016, exposing the games to a far larger audience.
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (2014), a 2014 PS Vita horror-flavored shooter with a story that feels like it was rewritten until its thematic core was shaved into nothingness.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak High School (2016), a 24 episode anime series that attempted, and failed, to conclude the story of the first two games in the series. It is not canon as far as I am concerned, because holy shit does it do nothing that I like. I was too kind to it in 2016, because I denied the truth! Calling it Danganronpa 3/10 is somehow not mean enough.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (2017), the third main game in the series that attempted to cap things off with the most bombastic and wild twists possible. I personally loved it, but less spirited people felt differently, as they imposed their impressions onto the game and hated it for failing to conform. Personally, I was cackling like a madwoman for its last three hours, and loved how it fucked me.

For a story-driven series, driven by a handful of people, all based in a unified world, that is an insane amount of stuff to put out. The saga of Danganronpa was a wild one, full of highs and lows, but after V3, the momentum of the series veered to a halt. The creative leads left developer Spike Chunsoft, set up a new company called Too Kyo Games, and while they have collaborated with Spike Chunsoft since then, the Danganronpa series has remained… in a weird spot.

The first major release after V3 was Danganronpa Decadence, a compilation of the three main visual novels for Switch, which contained a bonus game called Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp (2021). This was effectively a souped up version of bonus modes from V3, paired with a crossover storyline and a deluge of extra story events. However, it was very much a fan-centric crossover, was not written by the original writers— I don’t know who even wrote it— and is completely divorced from the storylines that made these characters. It is taking characters from four games, throwing them onto the tropical island from the second game, and manufacturing a plot loose yet driven enough to facilitate a bunch of unique character interactions. I never played Danganronpa S, have no plans to, and fans don’t seem to be too kind towards it.

So, where do you go from here? Your series is looking at a decade since its last major entry, most of the fandom has moved on, and while you could just make a new Danganronpa game, that would risk alienating people by being too different, and it would need to live up to three games worth of expectations. (You stinkies and your expectations.) I personally think the Danganronpa series is fluid enough to support soft reboots and standalone titles, divorced from Hope’s Peak and the existing cast. But I’m sure I would get chewed out by Satoshi Marketing for even thinking of going in that direction.

What do they do? …Remake Danganronpa 2 on a technical level— keep the same script, designs, certain assets— and slap a new scenario on it from Yoichiro Koizumi. Koizumi never actually worked on Danganronpa 2, he was a scenario writer from… these games, but he has worked closely with series lead creative Kazutaka Kodaka for several years at this point. This makes him a fair pick for this premise, but I need to pause and ask a more important question before I can speculate on this idea.

Why are you even bothering remaking Danganronpa 2?

Now, I will admit that the Danganronpa games suffer somewhat from port decay. The PSP games were brought over to PS Vita, Abstraction Games basically made a Danganronpa emulator for PC, meaning the games still used the same low res assets as the Vita games. The PC port then served as the basis for the version on consoles. …Or at least I know that was the case for the PS4 version. Apparently the Switch and Windows Store versions have extras like a gallery feature and event theater, but I don’t know if they are still using the same guts. Point is, the first two Danganronpa games can be a little crusty. Just in a way that might make image quality freaks wiggle in their seats.

Beyond that… the limited voice acting can be a bit of a turn off for people who want every lint to be voiced, not just the most important ones. Some environmental 3D elements can look low res, or low details. And… no, that’s it. The games are on every relevant system, and there is zero reason to remake them… unless Spike Chunsoft wants to keep the series alive and is only willing to fund a remake of the most widely celebrated game in the series, Danganronpa 2.

Akumako: “Oh, really? Then, should I just start with that game then?”

No. God no! Absolutely not! Danganronpa 2 is built upon the expectation that the player finished the first game and knows the revelations from it. While its cast is mostly new, its final few hours are a direct sequel to Danganronpa 1. You are supposed to look at the cover and cast of characters and say ‘how did rich boy Byakuya Togami get so fat?’ or ‘Hold on, Makoto Nagei and Nagito Komaeda are anagrams and voiced by the same person. Are they the same dude? Did he go crazy and lose all hope? Is that why his hair’s white?’ Hell, DR2 outright spoils one of the final twists of DR1 by its second chapter.

DO NOT PLAY DANGANRONPA 2 BEFORE DANGANRONPA 1!

Now, I am not a spoilers beware type person, but I know that experiencing media in order enhances one’s understanding of it, it makes for a better experience. If you don’t believe me, watch Star Wars in the following order: 5, 8, 3, 1, 9, 4, 2, 7, 6.

Akumako: “But Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 3 were sequels and got remakes that you can start with and—”

Those games may as well be standalone experiences. Danganronpa is not like that!

Okay, so, back to the promise of an alternate scenario. Unless the premise is dope as hell, I don’t really care. I love Danganronpa. It was a key inspiration for my character writing, tension, and tone setting. It and Zero Escape highly influenced my creative writing on all sides. I even based my sprite art style on the 8-bit sprites from Danganronpa. I am currently over 200 hours into Hundred Line, which is basically the ultimate Danganronpa game, for better or for worse. I love the series, but it’s over. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, and I know I can go back to it at any time.

I do not need or even want a remake. While I can respect a writer coming in and saying ‘I got an idea for an alternate version of my favorite game’s story, and it’s super frickin’ cool‘ it’s hard for me to really care. I don’t need to see your official fan fiction, mate. I’m sure it will be good— even if the Conspiracy Route was mostly a joke. But nobody asked for this. People asked for an MGS3 remake. I probably did in 2015 after that pachinko thing. But this? I’d rather just see them make something new with new characters and a new setting. Even if it’s another Zanki Zero (2018)…

Danganronpa 2×2 will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2, and PC in 2026.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave Announced
(Here’s To Another Decade of Anime Genocide Discourse!)

I feel bad that I have not been able to keep up with the Fire Emblem series for… over a decade. I played 100 hours of Fire Emblem 13: Awakening (2012) and absolutely adored that game. It filled the Pokémon Conquest (2012) shaped hole in my heart. But the scattered release of FE14: Fates (2016) pulled me away, and I completely missed the legendary Discourse of FE16: Three Houses (2019) by being a cheap-ass. …And dumbass because I spent $40+$15 on that game and never even played it! But I did play through a year of Fire Emblem Heroes, where it served as my first gacha game. (Ugh, never again.)

After the moist muffin that was FE17: Engage (2023), fans have been eager to embrace the next Fire Emblem title, and they expected a remake of Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War (1996). Instead, they are getting a wholly new entry with Fire Emblem 18: Fortune’s Weave (2026). A next generation step forward for the series, set in an Ancient Rome inspired setting, and seemingly featuring the same sort of branching narrative that modern fans have come to expect from the series. …For better or for worse.

What the title has to offer beyond this is more vague, looking to be an iterative rendition of the mechanical foundations of Three Houses, though that seems fine. Fire Emblem: Three Houses But In Rome is enough to excite many people. Especially White boys. White boys freaking love Rome. In fact, it is cultural tradition for 12% of all young White men to study Ancient Rome in order to decide which three routes they want to take in life. They can either become a good considerate man who understands the way the world works. Realize how fake society is and become a woman. Or reject knowledge and become a Nazi. And it’s weird how it’s always one of those three.

Oh, and the helper mascot character from Three Houses, the comedically named Sothis, appears at the end of the trailer, implying that this is set in the same universe. Which… all Fire Emblem games could take place in the same universe, and it would not make a difference.

Fire Emblem 18: Fortune’s Weave will be released as a Switch 2 exclusive sometime in 2026.

Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection Announced
(How Is That Even Going to Work?)

Goldarn it, this was a Japanese exclusive announcement. Okay, so… Mega Man Star Force was a new Capcom multimedia venture sprung up by Capcom after the continued success of the annualized Mega Man Battle Network series. The idea was that with the Nintendo DS, there should be a new Mega Man card-based RPG series that made use of the DS’s screens and 3D capabilities. Rather than make something themed after Y2K tech optimism, they decided to get a little more out there, incorporate more spacey stuff, and add more contemporary anime-isms. This resulted in a 76 episode anime series, a collection of three games spread across seven different versions, and a niche within a niche fandom, much of which is consolidated in Japan behind a strong language barrier.

However, as a series that ran from 2006 to 2008, now is a prime time for nostalgia to be mined a modern re-release in the form of Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection. I admire that gumption and effort… But I need to ask how that will work, when these were dual screen games being brought over to single screen devices. Will they hide information in the corner like the Mega Man ZX ports? Well, the official English announcement trailer does not show how that works, but the Japanese one does and it is… bad.

As an RPG, Star Force used its upper screen to store a lot of menu information and handle certain navigation, but this trailer relegates it to a teensy corner of the screen, borderline illegible even if you squint. The developers could have revised the UX of the game and relegate this information to the sides of the screen, but they are instead pursuing this janky approach. They are replacing the text with higher resolution fonts, but they cannot rearrange where UI elements are?

The UX issues get even worse when looking at the gameplay. Star Force has a unique behind the shoulder gird-based 3 battle system where you used the bottom screen to select what techniques could be used in a given round of combat. You had to juggle the top and bottom screen in parallel, watching the top while selecting things on the bottom at set intervals. Here, the game just lets you pause the action as you switch between screens, enlarging or shrinking them in a way that just looks… bad. Why not just put the icons on the side and have the player navigate them using the right stick or something? I don’t know, but I also cannot say that I am too invested in this collection. Because while I was a Mega Man kid— as much as one can be when they are ass at games, I thought Star Force looked dumb when I was 12. And as a 30-year-old, I would much rather play any other Mega Man subseries over Star Force.

…But for those who loved these games, I hope that the jank-looking UX isn’t game ruining. If it was, the collection probably would’ve been canceled!

This means the only non über niche Mega Man games on modern platforms is the Legends trilogy. A series of games that basically just need a new set of controls, some UX tweaks, and a hint system before they are good to go. …And if they also decide to release the Legends 3 Prototype demo along with this hypothetical collection, I will be legally obligated to buy it and play it.

Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection will be released on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC in 2026.

…Also, you remember how the great Mega Man drought from 2011 to 2018 felt like forever? Well, we are approaching the seventh anniversary of Mega Man 11 (2018) and have gotten nothing new. …Unless you count Mega Man X DiVE Offline (2023), which you should not.

Progress Report 2025-09-14

So, an idea that I just have not been able to shake out of my mind this past week has been the idea of credit card or trading card sized storage devices. Ones that display artwork on one side, with connectors and legal information on the other, kind of like a handheld game cartridge mixed with a HuCard, but bigger and prettier. The idea would be that various media files, ranging from movies to TV series to anime, would be stored on a card, with the capacity being whatever is convenient to make the fantasy work. The fantasy of something with the visual appeal and presentability of a trading card and something so small it can fit in even women’s pockets.

Now, there is a good reason why such a format does not exist. Because the overt goal of storage is to make it as small as possible, to put it inside tiny electronic devices, and not in anything bigger or chunkier. However, as a piece of physical data storage, there is elegance in something bigger, it feels more substantial, and it is better to hold. A DS game card is objectively better and more capable compared to a Game Boy cartridge, but if you were to hold one, the Game Boy cartridge would feel more substantial. It is easier to look at, has a weird and presence to it, yet still remains small enough to fit in a child’s palm.

Part of the reason I find them so appealing is also due to the matter of display. When physical audiovisual media became prominent, people decided it should be displayed in the way one displays a book. On a bookshelf, with its spine visible, so you see the name of the book, the author, and maybe a bit of related artwork. I am not saying this is a bad format or structure, but it is one that I find to be rather dull from a presentational perspective. It is merely displaying a quantity of objects, rather than focusing on the key visual of the work, the cover.

The reason why this is untenable with DVD like cases is that they are, one, too big, and too often are gaudy in design, meant to appeal to the mass market rather than dorky enthusiasts. Hell, they used to change with every release back when physical media got re-releases. Simply, you do not buy things like that for the art on the packaging. But you know what people do buy for the artwork? Trading cards and vinyl.

Now, vinyl works as a display as it is a classy square poster— you can display good vinyl covers/sleeves like they are a painting/photograph. Most sane people don’t display trading cards, because they need to use them for stuff and the artwork is only maybe half of the card. But if you made the entire card a piece of artwork, affixed with a logo, then it would have more presence. It would be easier to view from afar, and it would, in theory, look like it belongs next to other items that follow the same design template. I can imagine someone having a display of cards to represent a collection rather than a bookshelf of games or DVDs. Or, if they are space conscious, they could just keep them in a card case and use up basically no space.

I think that part of why this idea appeals to me is that I have a strange aversion to the idea of physical data-based media requiring two components. The cartridge/disc itself and a plastic shell it is wrapped within. It is excessive, a waste of plastic, and exists just as a shell to should something the size of a thumb. …Or a disc that could easily fit in a darn jewel case, which is far smaller and uses up far less plastic.

I actually took out my Switch game collection and compared how much space the cartridges took versus the cases and it was a joke. I have a Switch game case holder that’s the size of a wallet meant to store dollar bills without folding them. It stores 48 game cards, and its overall volume is a little over a single game case. Now, these Switch game cards are too small, insubstantial, easy to swallow, easy to lose, and easy to hoover for them to be released on their own. They need a case. …But if the cards were, like, six times bigger, then they would be far harder to lose, and they could incorporate actual artwork, rather than just a teensy game logo.

Gosh, I spent so much time on this endslate topic that it’s kind of sad, but I—

Akumako: “Natalie, you just looked at your Playnite library, with all of these 2×3 covers for games, all splayed out nicely, and thought ‘this would make for a good physical display piece, I would like to make a wall of my bedroom look like this.’ It’s not a good idea, people would not want that. You are a weirdo who thinks that a collage of objects like this would look good. And you are dumb for thinking that everybody would use good artwork for every game released for this system .Just take this idea, file it away for that one project you are never gonna do at this rate, and end this stupid Rundown, alright?”

…Fine.

Also, I’ve come to realize that part of the reason I don’t like physical books is that there simply too many competing standards in terms of the dimensions of books. Strategy guides and magazines did not have this problem. Manga in the US market generally doesn’t thanks to Tokyopop. But between the fonts, spacing, and shifting size, I do not like physical books.

Akumako: “But what if they took every book and reprinted them using a uniform format to your liking?”

That would make for a materially better world…

Akumako: “Also, Charlie Kirk got shot! Here’s a video of him getting shot!”

Wowzers! A man who wanted people like me to be systematically killed died, so you can imagine that I’m not too displeased by anything that happened there. I also just love the way the blood leaks out of that skin sheathe. It’s almost cute.

Akumako: “…Are you doing a bit?”

Who knows!

Video games!

2025-09-07: Played more Hundred Line after basically a month-long hiatus, and the Monster route is COOL! Also, had anime with Cassie and the dog, talked to some friends because I have amassed many chatty Cathies, did some shopping and cooking, and wrote the 2,300 word preamble ramble. Not counting the endslate though, that is just a hologram.

2025-09-08: Wrote 900 word Silksong bit and 300 words for the YouTube bit. Was busy with Hundred Line again, getting through the Monster Route.

2025-09-09: Wrote 400 word Panzer Dragoon bit. Worked almost 12 hours. Played like 90 minutes of Hundred Line.

2025-09-10: Made some header images, edited the initial 5,000 words of this Rundown— not the endslate, that does not deserve an edit— and talked to somebody about taxes, writing an entire segment’s worth of stuff in Discoland. I like doing taxes. I checked out the demo for the new Digimon game before bed, and while it seems like a good mid-budget AA JRPG, it’s also just… kind of ugly? They are doing some sort of post-processing or lighting effect that gives the game a low resolution smeary effect that makes it look a bit like a Wii game in terms of image quality. Even with all settings cranked up, the game just has dreary color pallet and things simply do not look defined. I don’t know what is going on, but I really hope they patch the game to look sharper.

2025-09-11: Wrote 850 words for the Hundred Line review, chatted with Missy too much, and played maybe an hour of Hundred Line.

2025-09-12: 12 hour day, wrote 3,500 words before crashing out into Nemo land.

2025-09-13: 7,500 words written today, which was interspersed with general research and other guff! Also worked 3 hours, had to chop veggies, and do the vacuuming. Then I had to edit this MONSTER!

This Post Has 8 Comments

rain 09/14/2025 Reply

a detail missed on Z-A is that you CANNOT transfer the pokemon out of the game!!! even the pokemon you transfer into it via pokemon home are just trapped in the game seemingly forever
1. Natalie Neumann 09/14/2025 Reply
  
  I do not think that is true, as the official website states the following:
  
  “Connectivity between Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Pokémon HOME is scheduled to become available in 2026. Once you’ve linked this title to Pokémon HOME, you’ll be able to transfer Pokémon from Pokémon Legends: Z-A to Pokémon HOME and bring select Pokémon from past games to Lumiose City.”
  “Pokémon cannot be transferred from Pokémon Legends: Z-A to previous titles in the Pokémon video game series.”
  “If you transfer a Pokémon from a previous title to Pokémon Legends: Z-A, you will no longer be able to transfer it to previous video games in the Pokémon series.”
  
  All of which seems pretty normal to me? I don’t think you could ever bring Pokemon back to prior generations once they are transferred up. Come 2026, any Pokemon sent to/from Z-A will only be able to exist in Z-A or Home, but that is nothing really new. And I’d imagine that Champions will be designed to use the Pokemon obtained in Z-A. They just have not mentioned it yet.
  1. rain 09/14/2025 Reply
    
    They made it so you can transfer Pokemon from S/V to Sw/Sh with the only barriers being the Pokemon that aren’t available in the gen 8 Pokedex. This functionality is present between all Switch-era games BESIDES Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, this is the first break of that whole functionality.
    
    I was just a tad pessmistic on future transfers, but they likely HAVE to be transferrable up or this will be a bigger outcry come 2026 or 2027 whenever the next region comes out.
    1. Natalie Neumann 09/14/2025
      
      Ooooh. I guess I never had a reason to transfer down from SV to SWSH, so I just did not pick up on that factoid. This is probably due to technical reasons, or maybe just cynical ‘buy our new games and stop playing our old games’ reasons.
Anon 09/17/2025 Reply

Hello! I was wondering if you were ever a member of an old forum called Sleipnir’s Stuff?
1. Natalie Neumann 09/17/2025 Reply
  
  No, I cannot say I was ever a member of Sleipnir’s Stuff. I have never even heard of that forum. While I browse some public forums, I have never been an active poster anywhere.
  1. Anon 09/17/2025 Reply
    
    Case of mistaken identity then, sorry to bother you!
    1. Natalie Neumann 09/17/2025
      
      It’s not a bother. Not sure how you got me confused with someone else though, as I try to be consistent with my online aliases.

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Panzer Dragoon Zwei: Remake Unveiled(Forever Entertainment Biffed It Again!)

Natalie Fell Down A Retro Game Influencer Hole Again(One More Mini Indulgence…)

The Biggest Nintendo Direct EVAH!(Mr. Mario Just Turned 40~!)

Super Mario Galaxy is Back Bay-Bee!(Back to SPACE!!!)

Mario Tennis Fever Announced(Everybody Clap! NOW!!!)

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Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Announced(What the Hell is the Yoshi Series?)

Virtual Boy Games Are Back!(If You Pay Nintendo $100 for Some Plastic)

Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined Announced(The Best/Worst Dragon Quest, But With 3D Scanned Doll and Dioramas)

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake Announced(Another Remake of a Remake!)

Donkey Kong Bananza Paid DLC Announced(A Bastardized Childhood and Roguelike Mode for a Brisk $20!)

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Is Getting Paid DLC!(And Stupid Natalie is Gonna Buy It!)

Pokémon Pokopia Announced!(Pokémon X Dragon Quest Builders, I Guess?)

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