Rundown (6/14/2026) S3 2026: STOP! You’re Making A Mess!

This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Stop! You’re Making a Mess!

Header image is from Aokana.

Last week’s Rundown was, by far, the largest Rundown I have ever written, and that is for a good reason. There are so many games being announced, with such complicated backgrounds, and so much to dig into. Anybody who says that they don’t have anything to play is blind to the sheer deluge of titles being thrown around, led stray by shitty algorithms that decayed their capacity to explore. Just keeping up with all of the HUNDREDS indie games announced or showcased this month has been impossible, and I’m frankly SICK of it.

There are too many people making games, too many games on the market, and it has become far, far too difficult for even an enthusiast to keep it a buck. On one hand, this means that people are producing creative works, games are being made, many of which look dope. However, the sheer mechanisms around selling them, around distributing them, are kinda of broken. The industry is so conditioned to certain ebbs and flows, to these big boisterous hype cycles all in one period, to drumming up views, wishlists, and interest, but in a way that’s too scattershot for its own good.

All of this just compounds with the boundless barrage of nonsense that is making the act of talking about games, reporting on games, and engaging with games on a broader level, so difficult and cumbersome. In fact, let me try to count SOME of the issues that are plaguing gaming at the moment:

The cost of living crisis, period, which is affecting every starta of life, exclusively for the worse.
Stagnant wages that are forcing people to choose between rent or food, well before video games.
AI evangelists are inspiring layoffs across the United States in particular but the entire world more broadly, limiting the number of people, tech professionals and game devs included, who can readily buy games, as they have no job.
Game consoles becoming incredibly expensive, reaching a $500 starting price for modern hardware.
Game prices have been rising through a mixture of expensive DLC and a now standardized $70 MSRP
Live services are keeping players locked in a wide yet shallow ecosystem of daily retention bonuses and user-generated content
People are accumulating digital game libraries of titles they purchased during deep discount sales, granting them access to dozens, if not hundreds, of games that could keep them busy for years without buying any new titles
People are getting distracted by social media, gambling, gooning, AI generated faux social relationships, and losing the drive to play games.
Store algorithms becoming increasingly invested in directing customers to the most popular games, further burying titles that are not in the top ten list at any given moment. Steam included. Thanks, dingus.
An increasing number of games are using AI generated assets, code, concepts, and so forth, making it easy to suspect any game released after 2022 of being slop in disguise.
We are still feeling the effects of outrage merchants’ years-long campaign of being exclusively angry at video games, because they want a world defined by rage, especially if they get paid for it.
The industry doing such a terrible job at games preservation that people who want to play older games they grew up with will instead turn to piracy and emulation.
Retro gaming is getting big, they say, and between hacks, decomps, recomps, randomizers, archipelago, and MiSTers, there are oodles of ways to keep oneself busy while playing some of “the greatest games of all time.” Some people are seemingly just gorging a bunch of ROMs of old games on their phones, laptops, or mini portable game systems they got for less than a hundred bucks.
The butchering of the gaming press as countless sites shifted to the model of AI-assisted clickbait, has drained any and all value from the original sites built up by humans and pushed seasoned writers out of the industry.
The western industry is stagnating as China, Asia, and MENA are prominent growth sectors, dramatically shifting the tastes, power, and very language used to discuss games, as only 300 people speak both Chinese and English on the internet.
Political discourse, cultural atrophy, and the effective normalization of fascism had led a lot of people to be depressed, disengaged, and unmotivated to do anything but the easiest thing available to them. …And playing games takes effort.
The industry has been so effectively bombarded with so many anti-creative asset flips, AI generated slop, and low effort garbage that games discovery is genuinely foreboding.

Most of all, as a tech industry offshoot, gaming is harder to get excited about now than it has been in a long while. This is not some personal thing, it’s not that I’m getting older, bitter, and increasingly fond of toxic fantasies, it’s something that I’ve seen echoed all over the place. It is simply harder to be excited, optimistic, or even happy about ANYTHING tech related. It keeps getting more expensive, you keep losing rights, your attention is constantly atomized by big corporations with the GDP of a country, and it’s increasingly easy to view life as a cyberpunk dystopia without any of the cool shit.

There are fantastic games coming out, plenty of great games on the horizon, and a bunch more really cool titles that were revealed this past week. However, there is so much going on, such a persistent wave of pessimism and bitterness, that it can all feel overwhelming, exhausting, and like nothing matters. If life does not matter, and you are destined to die in poverty at age 38, unemployed, and discarded by a world that does not need you, the fuck’s a video game gonna do?

People want comfort, they want to believe that the world is in a good, or decent, place, as it gives them the luxury to indulge in the fantasies of virtual worlds. If the world is a swirling vortex of nightmares, with algorithmically boosted rage, where getting angry and reacting to things with bitter is becoming the premiere hobby, it’s easy to become blind to the fact that games are dope. …And it’s increasingly effortless to focus on how the business around them, as an example of capitalism, sucks the fuck.

All of which brings me to my ultimate point with all of this. Gaming is broken, but it is not uniquely broken. Nearly every evil plaguing the industry, from developers struggling to survive due to rising rent and grocery costs, to the overly long dev times, to this disgustingly crowded cabal of a segmented summer showcase, is due to systematic issues. It’s due to capitalism, basically. And you cannot fix a system without actively and materially changing shit.

The sooner that people with power either drop-dead or get out of the fuckin’ way, the sooner they will be addressed. Or, shit, maybe this is just an extension of the downfall of American dominance in its own way, and from these ashes, from this oversaturated mature market, a new market and economic system around games will emerge. A more Chinese system that caters to a sustainable culture that does not rely on the same boom and bust format or the immense commodification of hype.

I hope that things can get better. I learned from Danganronpa, a video game, to never give up on hope even when the world is literally burning all around you. But for now? Shit’s rough, buddy. I know I’m doing what I can to support the industry. I’m routinely looking at and for cool games, buying them up by the oodles, trying to keep track of the hot awesomeness as it percolates from the ether, and trying to throw myself into more games. All because I want to keep that love and sense of wonder alive within me.

Akumako: “…How much have you spent on video games this year, Natalie?”

Over $850!

Akumako: “BOZO!“

Yeah, it’s pretty stupid. I can afford it due to my living situation, but I will admit that it is excessive. However, I do want to support the industry, amass a vast library of games, and continue to add to it, even if I already have enough wonderful games to last me the rest of my life, and then some. Hell, just clicking the random button on my Playnite library gives me a barrage of bangers. Racing Lagoon, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Monster Hunter Stories 2, SSX 3, Oriental Blue, Wandersong, Scarlet Nexus, The Silver Case, LUMINES, Octopath Traveler II, Jumping Flash— I am spoiled for choice.

…But despite this, the calls of gaming do not cease, and we had TWO major showcases this week. Both Microsoft and Nintendo had showings, and after keeping up with them, I’m left feeling like I’ve made a mess in trying to tame this mess!

Microsoft’s S3 2026 Festivities
(No Games For Genocide, Bitch!)

I hate Microsoft so damn hard, dude. I hate using their digital suite for work given how many problems I have with my basic web-based Outlook client. The Windows 11 updates have been slowly causing my computer to suck, hitch, and lock itself when doing things it should have zero problem doing. Windows Search is genuinely useless nowadays. File explorer crashes an unforgivable number of times. And that’s before getting into the ACTUAL controversy with how they have been using their datacenters to enable the mass murder of Palestinians by the American-Israeli Genocide Federation.

Seriously, no matter how left you are, YOU DO NOT HATE ISRAEL enough. They have trained an army of RAPE DOGS to fuck their enemies. That sounds insane, that sounds made up, but no, it’s real! Same with the white phosphorus. War crimes are just police procedure when you’re part of the American Genocidal Hegemony, I guess!

I hate Microsoft for MANY personal and impersonal reasons, and there is a good reason why BDS launched their boycott on Xbox. Which you should comply with. Because Fuck Xbox! Xbox as a brand was tattered and worsened over time, lost its identity at a startling rate during the Xbox One generation, and I see zero reason to get excited for any of their games, because they keep canceling them!

Some people want Microsoft and Xbox to get better, but… I do not. I want them to get worse, to drop out of the console race, just so that I don’t need to talk about them or mention every damn time something’s coming out for Xbox. I don’t think good things come from the studio these days, I think good things only emerge in spite of Xbox being Xbox.

Xbox has no true direction. I believe that their leadership is in a complete mess after all the turnover and acquisitions. Despite her attempts at garnering a lot of hype and trying to act like she’s doing things, I still think Asha Sharma is just some executive who views her job as repairing a troubled brand. I don’t think she really cares about games or anything more than financials.

As such, I went into this showcase with pretty low expectations, hoping for at least some fun third party reveals, and zero vaporware reveals for games that will never get released. …Well, I didn’t really get the first one, and the second one remains to be seen!

The Miscellaneous Microsoft Trough
(Go Away, Xbox!)

Starting off, I want to go over the things I feel obligated to mention, but don’t have much to say about.

The Fable reboot received an additional trailer, in a manner that just feels pleading after being shown off so many times in prior Xbox showcase things. We have been hearing about this game since 2020, it’s effectively a new IP, it has been shown off in detail at this point. So, what do they offer here? A cinematic trailer featuring a would-be rival character who believes she should be the only hero in the world. It’s not an interesting character concept, and the inclusion here felt like an obligation, as the game is not coming out until February 23, 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Halo: Campaign Evolved, the outsourced Unreal Engine 5 remake of Halo: Combat Evolved, was shown off once again, this time with a release date on July 28, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. I continue to think it looks like crap, dismissing the art direction of the original for the sake of fidelity, and it’s not even releasing near the 25th anniversary of the original. Presumably because none can step on the toes of GTA VI.

I normally would not care but… seeing this makes me want to actually play the first Halo game, just so that I can experience what the game is like before the remake comes out. Do I have time for a 10-hour-long FPS before late July? …Yeah, I think so.

Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember was announced as a sequel to Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (2023). The first Wo Long was one of the more subdued major releases I had seen during this decade, was it made very little impact from what I could tell. It was just another East Asian Soulslike, releasing in an era where those were cropping up constantly. Very little struck me about it as distinct beyond the fact it was Team Ninja’s Chinese permutation of Nioh, and I don’t think it did particularly well.

Between quality experiments like Final Fantasy 0rigins: Paradise Strangers (2022) and Rise of the Ronin (2024), Wo Long lacked a hook, and its sequel… just blended in with Blood Message or Sword of Legends from last week. Sorry, but I just do not see such of a difference between these realistic high fidelity Chinese historical fantasy action games. They blur together for me in a similar way that military shooters do for me and retro-style indie games do for other people. …Wo Long 2 is coming early 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC.

Join Us was a pretty novel rendition of the underexplored niche of cult simulators, but I almost immediately rolled my eyes at how it was depicting the process of building a cult. The FUN part of building up a cult is the social manipulation elements, yet the trailer chooses to highlight the action, the shoot-outs with the police and media, and the end goal of summoning aliens or awakening monsters. Which… no. That should be less than ten percent of a cult sim. If you are going to explore this genre, you should make it more in the mold of Super Cult Tycoon 2. …But if this is your jam and Nutella, you can snag Join Us in March 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Senua 3 was announced with a vague trailer, showing the perpetually suffering Senua as she slaughters humanoid monsters, wanders through perilous places, and battles against ancient beings of a power and origin that mortal humans should never know. I understand that this series is important to Ninja Theory, and that Senua 2 was a huge project for them. However, I have no idea what is happening in these games, as all the trailers are exceptionally fidelity footage of a woman having a mind-crushingly bad time.

Reading the copy, the game, frustratingly titled Senua, or Senua: No Subtitle, the game poses itself as an “entry point” for the series, following Senua as she travels through the afterlife— I guess she died— in order to be reunited with her loved ones, fighting against aggressive forces as her mental issues compound. …I have nothing more to add to that, other than speculating that, if the release dates time up, this game is going to be pitted against God of War: Laufey for having semi-similar concepts That would be funny to me. Senua: No Subtitle will be released in 2027 to PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse got another showing, establishing that it has the RPG elements that one would expect of a Metroidvania title— nobody can be mad at me for using the term that way! Though, the biggest takeaway is that the protagonist is actually named Rose Belmont— I guess Sonia is in another timeline— and that the game is due out October 15, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC! …With a Switch version slated for later in the year. Gosh, Konami does not recognize how much the Switch audience craves their Castlevania.

After some other stuff, that I’ll get into later, the showcase ended on the… third summer showing of Clockwork Revolution. Announced in 2023, given a proper run-through in 2025, and was left to function as the closer of the whole show, since I guess a new Spyro was too niche. This steampunk-time-traveling-FPS-RPG was shown off again as the showpiece, and… it still looks good. But choices like this make me wonder if the producers of these events understand that you are SUPPOSED to end on a high note.

Tangent aside, the announcement about its release does warrant a discussion.

Clockwork Revolution is coming out in early 2027, where it will be an Xbox console exclusive. Back when the title was announced in 2023, that was to be expected, but Microsoft has done such a sloppy job of conveying a message that people have grown to expect that Xbox games would be multiplatform. Starfield, the Indiana Jones game, Gear of War Remake #2, Halo Remake, all of these games and more, which would have been seen as obvious exclusives, have been released on, or are coming to, PS5.

Where did this all go lopsided? Well, the first cracks appeared in early 2024, when they experimented with a few titles. By the end of 2025, it was accepted that ALL Xbox games were going to come out to anything that could run them. And now, Microsoft is adopting a loose “we’ll do whatever we feel like” attitude. This is a reverse course of messaging, and I think it’s all profoundly silly.

While I know that 30% revenue split is great, and Game Pass is where Microsoft gets MUCH of their gaming revenue, I cannot imagine many people buying an Xbox these days. People have committed to their own digital ecosystems. The younger generation prefers PCs, where you can play all of Microsoft’s games. And gaming hardware is so prohibitively expensive that if someone is going to buy a games system in this economy, they are probably only going to get a PlayStation or Switch.

I think Xbox has lost, and I have found their recent attempts at rehabilitating their image, with catchy headlines and Asha Sharma being active on Elon Musk’s X, to be… cringe. They are appealing to hardcore diehards above all else. I really don’t see ANYTHING that would make a newcomer WANT to jump into this ecosystem. And if Project Helix is just a gated off PC… that’s even less of a reason.

…I criticize them for this, but thinking long-term, and where this will get them… I hope their messaging continues to be subject to the whims of the waves. Because their failure is our gain as far as I’m concerned.

Gears of War: E-Day’s First Major Showing
(The Return to Form Apology)

I’m just going to save myself the trouble and link back to the little retrospective I did on Gears of War last year. In fact, here’s what I said when the prequel, Gears of War: E-Day was first announced back in S3 2024.

Basically, Gears of War was huge in the Xbox 360 generation, being a highly influential and successful series. Gears of War 2 (2008) is still THE game of that generation in my mind, not because it was the “best” game of the time, but because it captured the culture and trends better than pretty much anything else. However, the series started losing its direction after wrapping up its Xbox 360 trilogy. The original developers left to make Fortnite, a new studio was established, and while they succinctly captured the game feel of Gears of War, they did not take the story in the direction people wanted.

That might seem like an absurd criticism, but a lot of people did play Gears for the characters, the tension, the drama and trauma they underwent as they tried to save humanity from alien freaks. It was a compelling war narrative that was divorced from any pesky geopolitics, rendered with monsters and a level of absurdity, while taking itself fully seriously. I did not get it at the time, but with some distance behind me, I can respect it. …And I could see why a different creative team, trying to tell a different story in a different setting with a different threat, might just not hit the same.

So, after setting up Gears of War 6, The Coalition is instead going back to basics with Gears of War: E-Day. It’s an origin story for the series, telling the events of Emergence Day, or E-Day— which is actually three days. Unsurprisingly, the game… looks like a more mobile and intricate version of the original trilogy of games, limited yet enhanced by the choice to set the entire game in a single setting, watching as it is ravaged by war as you try to defend what remains.

Aesthetic changes were made to make the enemy threats seem more brutal, horrifying, reminiscent of the marketing of the original game, while the game retains its signature washed out, gray-as-heck color scheme, for better or for worse. While I think the 70s/80s inspired retro futuristic city architecture of the world is compelling, I’d be lying if I did not have visual clarity issues with the trailer. …Especially when spotting the grayish enemies, but I guess that’s what their spurts of gunfire is for.

Gameplay has been revised slightly to incorporate a new slide move and a jump button. I find both to be cute additions for how NES basic they are, but they seem to give the game an added sense of speed and verticality. While the core shooting is about the same as it always has been, which is to say pretty damn good.

My only real question, which I did not feel was answered by the showcase they had after the main Xbox thing, was the structure of the game. Is it a level-based affair, or are you allowed to travel across large sections of the city. Choices were highlighted and side quests were implied, and I think breaking up the game into beads of exploration could benefit the play experience. Some people would want to dawdle about the decimated world, try to save people, while others would love to rush forward to the next major threat.

While I’m sure that Gears of War: E-Day will be a good time, a throwback to a revolutionary game from 20 years ago, and possibly a point for lapsed or casual fans to get back on the horse, I have to ask… what’s the endpoint of this? Will this just be a stopgap before Gears of War 6? Will the 14 years interim between E-Day and the 2006 original be treated as fertile grounds for a prequel trilogy of sorts? Or do the developers, The Coalition, have no clue what they are doing after this?

Akumako: “Definitely the latter…”

Gears of War: E-Day will be released on October 6, 2026, exclusively for Xbox Series and PC.

Akumako: “The PS5 version was completed, then shelved!”

Persona 4 Revival Was Properly Revealed
(And I’m FINE With It)

After getting some environmental test footage last year, we were finally given the first real look at Persona 4 Revival and it looks… like Persona 4 (2008) was remade using the same tools and framework Atlus used for Persona 3 Reload (2024). It’s a PS2/Vita game remade in the mold of a souped up Persona 5 (2016), at the risk of homogenizing its identity, doing some slight rewrites or expansions, and streamlining a few elements. We just got a trailer and some screenshots, so all I can do is speculate at this point, and look at the game.

Yes, as is ALWAYS the case with these re-whatevers, the biggest thing to discuss is the art direction, and… I am nowhere near as attached to the art direction of Persona 4 as I am to Persona 3. Now, this sounds stupid, as I actually played Persona 4. I played the Vita version for 160 hours, becoming my main game for May/June 2014, when I was 19. However, while I love the characters, story, gameplay, and world of Persona 4, I never thought the game looked great.

Game save menu showing multiple save data slots with details including date, location, player level, and playtime. — **I had to replay *ten hours*, because I didn’t realize the sports club didn’t meet one week, and they were the LAST social link I had to complete!**

The developers aimed for a more realistic art style as the game took place in a rural, organic setting. Hell, they clearly used photo for textures, in what is extensively an anime game, trying to make it look as realistic as they could within their framework. It was a far cry from the unnerving locales of the Shin Megami Tensei games for the PS2, and it lacked the same surreal locations as Persona 3. Even the dungeons lacked the same palpable vibes of Tartarus, being largely defined around a central theme. Castle, bathhouse, nightclub, Famicom, mad scientist lair, heaven. It looked damn good for a PS2 game, and was an impressive early showcase of what the Vita could handle after the PSP was slumming it between the PS1 and Dreamcast. But looking back? Its look is not as striking as Persona 3.

There is also something to say about how Persona 4 Golden (2012) changed the art direction of many environments of the original PS2 title. I have seen that image macro float around far too many times to not have it seared into my brain. With Golden, I am inclined to just forgive its visual shortcomings or changes. It was 2012, for the Vita, for a tiny screen, while the original relied on PS2 tech, on specific things the Emotion Engine could do.

I can say that certain parts of the PS2 version look better or more cohesive, but it’s often at the cost of visual clarity and an atmosphere that does not always mesh with the game’s overall mood. Also, if Golden was the original and the PS2 version was the subsequent release, I would be spitting fire at it for applying a gross-ass piss filter to it and making things harder to see. Clarity or vibes? Who’s really got it going on? …No matter your answer, you’re dead wrong!

Moving onto comparing Persona 4 (Golden) (2008/2012) to Persona 4 Revival, the changes in fidelity and general model style are obvious, but the details compound the more you dive in.

The UI is somewhat similar, but ultimately redesigned, albeit with a more conservative bent than what I bitched at Persona 3 Reload for doing to the game’s visual identity. Text boxes are of a variable size, which I do not like for a visual novel style presentation. The UX elements showing the date, day, and weather looks materially worse than they did in Golden, looking like a beta version before a graphics designer added some appreciated color.

Inaba, largely, looks like Inaba, and I’m not going to gas up the original art design too much, as… they were using photos of trees for tree sprites in the original. Daytime is brighter, afternoons are coated in an unrealistic orange, murky gray skies filly the sky during rainfall. Character models look crisp and capture the well established look of this cast with no significant changes.

New conversation scenes have seemingly been added, along with a proper fishing minigame. The voice actors of the prior English versions has been completely recast, which I’m sure will cause a kerfuffle. (Motherfuckers are still salty over Chie’s voice actress in the year 2026.) Marie and the gardening from Golden return, implying that this is a full remake, rather than Reload’s failure to be definitive in any sense. ($100 game lookin’ ass.) Anime cutscenes are back, even though they always look significantly worse than the 3D cinematics, which are capable of doing things that just weren’t possible on the PS2.

The battle UX of Persona 4, similarly, never really impressed me. It was efficient, functional, but relied on a lot of lists and largely copied ideas from Persona 3 without having the same style. They replaced a REVOLVER with a CIRCLE! I thought that Reload did not understand this, and had comparatively boring UI that relied much on the original while not quite getting it.

Accordingly, I was actually glad to see Persona 4 Revival do something different… by being a kitbash of Reload and Persona 5. Characters are now represented via 3/4ths facing grayscale mugshots with two bars below them, located on the bottom of the screen. SP is now green, because the series REFUSES to have consistent bar colors. While the main action command is a TV knob, which I can mess with.

Combat itself though? That seems to be another reprisal of Reload. The Baton Pass system from Persona 5 is back, there’s a new super meter and something called “prime time,” one of which will probably be a win button like the Theurgy system. Do I think that’s a big deal though? Not really. Persona 4’s hardest boss was its first, and the game is not known for its difficulty, unlike the often intimidating encounters of Persona 3.

I guess you could say that I think Persona 4 is a lot less vulnerable to the adaptation sickness that has affected many other remakes that strive to completely recreate things. Or maybe I’m just a weirdo who, despite having had a relatively ideal formative experience with this game, did not really cop the vibes with the righteous deft. I think that everything here looks fine at worse, nothing seems like a betrayal of something sacred, and I am far more interested in other areas where this game can improve upon the original. And that’s… the gay shit.

I brought this up when the game was announced last year, and all I really want for this remake is for it to be gay. Like, really, really, fucking gay. I want Sanji to outright say he’s gay and start dating a guy. I want the Yosuke romance to be restored so Yu can be gay. I actually want them to keep the homophobia, because homophobia is part of the gay experience. MOST gays were homophobic before they came out of the closet! Fuck it, add MORE HOMOPHOBIA! And make Naoto both trans and gay, because they seems like the type. …Or HE if you think it’s CORRECT to decide what the pronouns are of someone you clock as an egg are.

Let me just address this now, because I feel like it. Should Naoto have been a trans man? Yes. Unfortunately, Naoto is not trans in the original the writers were cowards who valued waifu baiting too much and were a bunch of inherently stupid cis dudes. It’s the same thing for Luka in Steins;Gate (2009), and I know for a fact that they aren’t gonna change that crap in Steins;Gate’s remake. Similarly, I know there’s a 90% chance they’re NOT going to make Naoto a trans dude. Sega and Atlus are too cowardly to be based like that. I think they’re going to write Naoto as a cis woman who had a tomboy phase, just like in the originals.

If I’m wrong on EITHER front, if the remakes actually added canonical trans characters, then I will buy both games, full-price, with the DELUXE edition.

Persona 4 Revival is coming out for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC on February 18, 2027. No Switch 2 version, even though the game could definitely run on it, because Atlus likes staggered releases, I guess.

Crazy Taxi: World Tour Announced
(Verified AI Slop Revival)

So, Crazy Taxi. Sega announced they were bringing back this dormant IP two and a half years ago via a few seconds of footage, and the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to understand the impetus behind this decision. The original Crazy Taxi (1999) is a damn good game, the type of wacky, vibrant, and arcade perfect fun that Sega was so great at producing during the 1990s.

However, like all games, it was also based in the culture of the era it was produced in. It featured American pop hits of the era, to the point where the IP is inextricably tied to The Offspring’s All I Want. It was set in a wacky San Francisco setting as imagined through a Japanese game designers’ lens. And it was built around the concept of taxis, something that has been gradually threatened, if not eliminated, across the world through the rise of modern rideshare services. Hell, it got SO BAD that I distinctly remember people thinking taxis were worse, less reliable, and dirtier than Ubers or Lyfts. (That was before the pandemic.)

The last point, more than anything, is what makes me question the desire for a Crazy Taxi reboot. Who the hell wants to play a hyperbolic rideshare arcade car game when so many people are either dependent on rideshares for transportation or use exploitative rideshare apps to try and make some side money? (Very few people can make a living driving for Uber. I would know, I’ve seen their tax returns, and full-time drivers make shit.) Sure, Crazy the Taxi is so wacky that it may cease to feel like even a cartoonish simulation, but this is an indie game tier concept in today’s market. And while Crazy Taxi, of course, benefits from the value of its IP… how valuable is it really?

The original Crazy Taxi (1999) was a big game. It did well in arcades, was an easy snag on the Dreamcast, released right before the PS2 came out, and lived on with ports to the PS2, GameCube, and PC. It was the sixth best-selling Dreamcast game, it sold millions in the US across its various ports, and was one of the first games Sega remastered via their ill-fated, half-assed, 2010 Dreamcast revival. That’s not nothing, but I also feel the need to highlight how… nobody played the other Crazy Taxi games. Crazy Taxi 2 (2001) was a Dreamcast exclusive, never ported to anything. Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller (2002) was an Xbox game that came out during a pretty crazy time for car games, and its audience was pretty limited.

I would look at these, and that GBA spin-off, and think that these games should be re-released. That would gauge if people actually care about the series… and to keep the games available after Sega delisted the 2010 versions. Instead they poured who knows how much money into a reboot of the series, Crazy Taxi: World Tour.

The feature set of the game is about what one would expect. Arcade mode is back for those who want to snag some rides and get some cash in a time limit. The game is named after a World Tour campaign, where you try to become the best taxi driver in various locales while interacting with various characters, of course. Multiplayer modes, friendly and competitive, are present, of course. And the game will sport both a bunch of missions and vehicle customization. Because you need to be able to customize your car in a modern car game.

It all sounds well enough, and as an Unreal Engine 5 game, its fidelity is a lot more robust that I was expecting… but I do not like how World Tour looks.

The Crazy Taxi series existed in a murky time where realistic games… looked stylized. There was very little to differentiate a game that was grounded to the point they used photo textures and if it was trying to be something else. The character art implied a high level of stylization, as did the key/cover art, but what a modern Crazy Taxi game should look like is a bit ambiguous. Personally, I would just point at Sunset Overdrive (2014) and say “THAT.” Relatively grounded base character designs but with a cartoonish element to everything, and per the cutscene footage, I would say that the developers captured that pretty well. It looks a bit Fortnite-y, but that game does not and should not own that style. It sure didn’t invent it…

The official screenshots give a better look at the environment and character models, and… this is where the problems lurk. I think the characters look fine. They are decently cartoonish, have exaggerated proportions in spots, and capture certain designs of the original game in a way I find to be fine. Meanwhile, the environments look… way, way too realistic. This is especially noticeable with the cars, which have this shiny shimmering layer to them, light reflecting on the windows, and an elaborate chrome job on the titular Crazy’s Taxi. Concrete looks withered and worn in spots, water looks like video game water, grass looks like real grass, and the texture work overall… looks like it was taken from a different game.

Everything looks realistic, too realistic, and when paired with the exaggerated characters, it gives the game an uncanny identity. It made me wonder what was going on with this game… and then I went further down the Steam page, to the AI Generated Content Disclosure on Steam section, where it reads the following:

“At SEGA Corporation, we utilize generative AI as a support tool for developers, aiming to provide better content to our users and enable developers to focus more on creative tasks. We have used such generative AI support tools during development of Crazy Taxi: World Tour. No AI was used in reference to the performers in the game.”

Yeah, you might need to read this PR fluff twice, but subsequent responses from Sega PR, as reported by Game Informer, have made the situation pretty clear.

“Generative AI was used to support our teams during the development of background assets for ‘Crazy Taxi: World Tour.’ Assets generated were still subject to review by the development team.”

Ah. So, Sega is admitting that the “background assets,” or in other words, the environments, in this game were generated by AI and “review[ed]” by a human. …This is being done in a car game, full of locales that are meant to be rapidly driven through, not paid attention to, so I can see why the decision was made. You probably are not going to be staring at every wallpaper or building you see. However, it represents a disrespect of the game, of the world, and of the very ART of game design, all because the publishers wanted to pay fewer wages and save money.

To play the devil’s advocate—

Akumako: “That’s MY JOB!”

—The asset cost requirements of modern AAA games has gotten out of control. Making environments was never easy, but it has become increasingly difficult to use the same shortcuts that were commonplace generations ago. A lot of buildings in PS2 and PS3 games were just big bricks with a couple of mesh textures repeated over and over again and drawn on walls, with only extra geometry added for square windowsills and indentation. This is not very difficult to make, and the quality of the textures was not a huge concern, as it would ultimately be compressed.

However, as fidelity expectations increased, as models became increasingly complex, textures had to increase in both detail and quantity. At higher fidelities, it’s more obvious when textures are repeated. The era of quickly cobbling together good enough textures or tile sets has gone away, and now you need a lot of specialized skills in order to make a modern high fidelity game world. You need people to design cars, people to make billboards, to design buildings, to texture buildings, and to arrange them in a way that makes sense, rather than the looser reality expected in a lower fidelity setting.

The more realistic things look, the harder it is to make them.

So, how do you get around this sudden need for assets that take X multiple of time to produce and require increasingly specialized skills? Well, outsourcing as been a solution. Asset packs have also been a solution. Hiring contractors is another. But many game publishers have been presenting this as fiddly shit work, as non-creative, when it absolutely is. However, they view it as something to be automated by an AI, letting the power-guzzling anti-human plagiarism machine make the background for the performance the Real Artists are creating. …Except here’s the problem. The background matters.

If you set a game in a world generated by a power-hungry slop machine, if it lacks the clear effort and dedication of a craftsperson, then the world will not be enjoyable to go through. It will feel artificial, fake, and like it was made by someone who did not care, because it was made by a thing. Even IF you half-ass backgrounds, even IF you are just blurring photos, using a texture pack, or using software to make a mesh that, that is something, that is a creation. You might just view it as going through a process, but the fact there is a human in control, that they are pushing the buttons, making decisions as they go along, is what makes something meaningful.

A cartoon character with a blue body, red eyes, and colorful feather antennas holding yellow arms. — **THIS IS MEANINGFUL ART!**

Mind you, if the creators do not care about this, if they are putting up whatever, or having some algorithm generate what populates the various storefronts of the world, that still sucks. Here’s looking at The Crew games, which were full of this surreal yet half-assed crap. But I would take half-assed surreality over something competently boringly generated by a machine any day of the week. Hell, any day of my LIFE!

Even in the screenshots they provided, I can spot certain oddities that seem to resemble this AI generated assets, namely this picture:

A cheerful taxi driver in a diner uniform raises his fist while sitting in a classic yellow taxi with a young passenger, against a backdrop of modern buildings and palm trees.

Oof, where to begin? Let’s first start with the big guy having a ball. Is “Little Coast Diner” an AI generated logo? It looks like something I could whip up in ten minutes after booting up my software to make a canvas and find the right font, but I can believe that someone would make this. What about these storefronts? Burrito Bay makes sense as a restaurant, but what is this logo? Why is it in the Sega font? Why is it white and flowing in the middle of the day like this? Is it glowing? Because I don’t see any light against this murky dirty… sheet metal background? Then it’s right next to Hot Spoon Theory, which could be anything based on that name. Its sign is adorned with a logo of the three words, centered, a funky E, and a spoon in the background that obscures the name of the establishment. This is not even some “graphic design is my passion” thing, this is something either made by a machine, or a guy who did not give a damn.

Then there’s Crust King, who I guess is a pizza baron, and… looking up Crust King Pizza takes me to this site, where everything, logo included, is AI! The actual building itself makes no sense either, featuring a second story with no windows. I guess this place might just have tall ceilings, but in San Francisco? Not likely, pal

If Sega is using AI in their latest Crazy Taxi game, when who’s to say other studios aren’t doing the same? Sonic Team, RGG Studios, Atlus, even Vanillaware could all be using AI at this very moment, and just not telling us about it, hoping that we do not notice. That is horrifying, that is disgusting, but it’s a very real fear that casts doubts on the artistic integrity of Sega’s namesake. Hell, in the quote, they make this sound like a company-wide effort. Who’s to say that Alien: Isolation 2 isn’t being made with AI trained on assets from the first game and the imagery of the Alien movies? It’s hard to prove that no AI was ever used in the production of something.

The honor system is broken. There is zero punishment for companies not admitting that they used AI in their products. This is legal, this benefits corporations, and this is not what I want to see in video games, period. Shit like this is why I look at people who, out of principles, are stepping away from modern gaming as wise. Because they don’t want to engage in a game that was made on theft, that was made on an anti-worker technology, and consumes stupid amounts of power in order to generate assets for “cheap.”

I was already fooled into supporting an AI game once, and I don’t want to see a massive corporation, that spent hundreds of millions on ventures that amounted to NOTHING, embrace it as the future. Because I don’t want it to be the future. Because I don’t believe it should be the future. Can it work in limited capacities? Yeah. I cannot argue with the results and memos my boss generated using BlueJ, an AI for accountants and other professionals. I’ve been subjected to enough Claude coding sessions as my boss tried to update his website to know that it works. But I still utterly loathe what AI is doing to the world.

I don’t think we can get rid of AI. AI is getting shoved in everything, most major games in development probably used AI at some point as a corporate mandate, and you’ve probably played a game with AI in it without knowing it. But seeing it happen, in such a clear way, with no real shame or wiggle room in admitting it, with a visible impact on a game, beyond a few isolated instances… it feels terrible.

Also, having dredged up some gameplay footage of World Tour, released after the initial showing, it does not look good. For a car game, it does not seem to understand how cars work. Cars do not stop on a dime, they do not move like this, and anybody who has played the original run of games would be able to, intuitively, tell that many things are wrong here. The speed is gone, the mechanics that made it CRAZY Taxi are gone, and the drifting is so extreme its downright nonsensical. I don’t understand momentum, on a primal, basic level, and even I know that something is WRONG here.

Nobody should buy Crazy Taxi: World Tour, but it’s coming out in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC

Vivarium Re-Announced
(A Hand-Drawn Boku no Natsuyasumi Like!)

Oh, hell yeah, dude!

Despite the rise in popularity of cozy games, we have strangely yet to see many titles that have clearly aped the vibes, aesthetic, or structure of Boku no Natsuyasumi (2000). Well, aside from the successor from the same developers, Natsu-Mon, which is wallowing as an underappreciated gem. Personally, I blame the lack of any major event coverage of this title… and the delayed English language launch.

Akumako: “…You bought Natsu-Mon, right?”

Uh… I did now!

Akumako: “Orz…”

Point is, publisher Serenity Forge (Slay the Princess, To The Moon) and the freshly formed Studio Meadowflower have created a potential dream game. Vivarium is a hand-illustrated adventure game with a 70s/80s anime aesthetic that follows an 11-year-old girl in the rural town, where most of the adults are animal people, as she goes about her endless summer vacation.

…YES!

That is a perfect premise if I ever heard one, and the game has the aesthetics to match.

The painterly illustrated backgrounds are gorgeous and sport shading that alters with the time of day. Every character is given oodles of unique animations and framings. The world is lush, vibrant, and inviting in a way you can only do with 2D animation. It’s so committed to its era that characters talk in yellow subtitles. While the art direction is on point, nailing it with every facet in the game’s world and creating a shoo-in for best graphics of this showcase. SUCK IT every AAA game!

I’m also not evoking Natsuyasumi generally either, as so much of this game, its presentation, and the sort of tasks it shows are fairly direct inspirations, and that’s DOPE! More games should lift from old untranslated PS1 games like that. It’s easily one of the most exciting games of this showing to me, and I ADORE what I am seeing. However, I do have to point out two minor, yet frustrating choices.

One, per the trailer footage, the game counts downtime at a frustratingly fast pace. You only have so many hours a day in this cozy game, but you are not supposed to just stand around and soak up the atmosphere. Time doesn’t move based on actions or interactions or movement. Nah! Things move forward in Mario seconds, so you gotta work your little girl ass if you want to get moving!

This is more of a psychological thing to me. You can have a game with a ticking clock if the act of a day passing does not really matter, and in this never ending summer, I don’t think that’s a concern. However, HOW the clock moves, how your time is counted, matters a lot. I never had a problem with the timer in Chibi-Robo, because I knew the days did not really matter and I knew I had a set amount of minutes that gradually ticked down via an icon. I did not need more information, as it’s a pretty relaxed game.

In Vivarium, however, the timer is FREAKING HUGE! It’s on the HUD TWICE! And I don’t need that information, that stress. I want to enjoy my cozy Boku game in peace, thank you! If you need a clock, just have the clock, have it move gradually, and DO NOT make a minute pass in less time than a second. A 16 hour day being 16-minutes-long is already terrifying enough, don’t make it shorter! Noooooo!

Gripe number two is… the effect work on the art seems inconsistent. There’s some out of focus effect applied to certain scenes here, which I just do not care for. I do a decent chunk of visual arts and crafts, and even I know that blurring should mostly be used as an added effect or to make a point. If a character is panicking, sure, blur is fine. It enhances. But not when two people are having a casual chat.

I love the fact that the game is using a film grain texture for many reasons, as that is reminiscent of the way old, restored, animation looks. It gives the image texture, looks like it belongs, and makes the end product look more tangible and REAL. I love the cleanness and flatness of digital paining, of course. That also looks great. …But seeing Vivarium mix and match the two is just confusing. Please pick a style and stick with it.

Somehow, Vivarium is only slated to be released on Xbox and PC, which I REALLY hope is a temporary thing, as this is a Switch 2 and PS5 banger if I’ve ever seen it. Like I said, games like this live or die based on their release timing.

Also, uh, I somehow forgot that this game was announced back in 2023. …The past two years have been a decade!

Vivarium will be released sometime in 2027, and I REALLY hope they fix this platform limitation.

Persona 6 Announced
(With A Nothing Trailer!)

I still remember, in November 2013, when I woke up to see the Japanese announcement trailer for Persona 5. At this point, it had been five years since Persona 4, an eternity in that generation— and when you’re a teenager— and I was immensely curious as to what the game could be. Then, we got a now legendary trailer, the phrase “You are a slave. Want emancipation?” and stark image of five chairs, all shackled to a ball and chain, all colored blood-red. Upon this iconic image, we were greeted by those words. Persona5 2014 Winter for PS3. …Yeah, that DID NOT happen.

The wait for Persona 5 was brutal, and want on to shape how people viewed the Persona series. Not as a bunch of games to be released every few years, but as a near decade long build up of one entry before another took its place. I had hoped that Atlus would have learned their lesson, especially after Persona 5 sold over ten million copies, spiked the popularity of the older games, and manifested a lust for ports, remakes, and spin-offs.

The past decade has been red, then blue, and now yellow again with Persona 4 Remake, or Revival, coming out in a few months, but between the spin-offs, between the gacha trash, people have been wanting something NEW. A new world, new characters, and new stuff to get excited about. Because you can only go through Persona 5 so many times before it gets BORING!

Akumako: “Says someone who has not gone through Persona 5 once.”

Shut up! I want to, but I’ve got too much other crap to do. Like these stupidly long Rundowns!

This brings us to the ghost of Persona 6, which has been looming around for a decade at this point, waiting to strike and, after SO LONG, we finally got a reveal trailer. And it is… NOTHING!

…More generously, it is a mood trailer featuring a rain swept graveyard, full of western style tombstones, some interference, and an ominous statue over a green sky as some guy holds out his hand. A bunch of cryptic nonsense follows and then, bam, we get the logo for Persona 6, bright green, stylized as P6 in a circle, looking like a coin or a stamp.

No director, no staff, nothing beyond a confirmation that the game is coming to PS5, Xbox Series, and PC.

…THAT WASN’T EVEN COOL!

I’d say that we don’t know anything else, but we did get some official copy about what the game will offer, and it’s all pretty stock. It’s set in modern-day Japan, is about the power of bonds, involves balancing school life, friendship, and romances, implying that it’s another high school game. For the game’s hook, it’s taking on more of an occult theme, with rumors, urban legends, and strange incidents littered throughout the game. …That’s pretty much all we’ve got. Occult stuff, and that seems fine enough. Demons and other worlds are real in Persona after all.

Officially, that’s it, but there were a bunch of leaks of the game over the past month, and while many of them were just AI waste, some of these leaks featured the official Persona 6 logo. I’m not particularly interested in these thought, as they are mostly snippets of character designs and artwork, as far as I can tell, seemingly depicting the lead male and a central female character. I’m not going to spoil it for those interested in remaining spoiler virgins, but I will say that people don’t know what an actual bowl cut looks like, but that’s not surprising. Some people don’t know what cyan looks like, yet they are allowed to walk among us 6, or 7, days a week. His hairstyle is basically the same as Yu’s from Persona 4, he just parts it differently.

Persona 6 is currently slated to be released for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC whenever it’s done.

No Switch 2 because… lol, lmao even, buy a Steam Deck 2, hosers.

I should move on, but from this information, I’m comfortable saying this is another high school game. So, let me talk about some discourse I’ve had to be part of for a decade. Let’s talk about Persona’s minor problem.

Akumako: “There’s gotta be a better name for it than that.”

Don’t care!

For as long as “people” have “cared” about the series, since the modern trilogy of 3, 4, and 5, people have wanted to see the Persona series move beyond the high school setting. Why? Well, there are many reasons. Some just find the setting played out, especially due to Japan’s cultural fixation (fetishization) of high school aged children, and want to see something different. Some want to see the series’ structure applied to a different setting, such as an office or a college setting, where people are older, have real responsibilities, and cool freedoms. Many people played Persona games when they were in the succulent age of 13 to 22— middle school to college-aged, but have grown into adults in the interim and want to see the series grow with them.

Hell, I would argue that the median age of a modern Persona fan is, like, 29. Now, some of the younger Persona fans who went through the modern trilogy of 3, 4, and 5 might disagree with me, and insist that the fandom is full of people just like them. To which I say yes, but you are a minority. I was there, in middle school, in 2008, when people in their twenties were gushing about how great Persona was, and those people got older, they stayed invested in the series, while the characters stayed the same age. Also, Persona 5 was a decade ago. 16-year-olds who played that game in 2016 are now 26-year-olds.

Akumako: “That’s a Mathryoshka Fact!”

…And others find the inherently romantic-sexual relationships with characters who are legal minors to be icky. This has always been a worthwhile criticism, but rings true in a current culture where minors are frequently groomed, abused, manipulated, and sexually exploited for profit. Every day another hot young barely legal hoists her nubile girlish nudes to desperate men old enough to be her father for capital, power structure be damned. We just got through the revelation that there is a genuine pedophile cabal throughout the heart of America, linking hundreds of powerful people to the owner of kiddy-fuck island, Jeffrey Epstein. The world’s richest man is selling a child sexual abuse material generator.

In this current climate, it is easy to stigmatize all non-familiar, non-education, minor-major relationships and view them as, in some way, immoral, as they are so often built on shaky ground and so often lead to some flavor of abuse. There is something to be said for how there was a civility that has been lost— how the world is increasingly partitioned between generations. How the commodification of nostalgia has led a rising number of adults to engage with materials made for children and teens than ever before. And how increasingly disconnected the senior management of 40 and 50-year-olds at Atlus are in writing about high schoolers in the modern day.

I think this is a worthwhile point of criticism. Hell, I remember being a teenager and telling myself “I don’t want to be writing about a bunch of high schoolers when I’m 30.”

Akumako: “You’re literally writing a novel about a bunch of kids fresh out of high school.”

Almost Christmas means it wasn’t Christmas.

Akumako: “…What?”

They’re not in high school if they’ve graduated.

I don’t believe that we, as an aging species, need to keep going back to high school. It’s been done, and college life is WAY more interesting and varied, so I would like to see more things capture the experience. Balancing romance, friendships, hobbies, school, and work is a fun time. I know because I did, uh, four of those things. Besides that point, I think the ability to explore more hard adult subjects would do a lot to make the series feel more grounded, more human, and more personal to the characters. I think that’s what people really go to Persona for. To see people deal with their shit while you deal with shit in a safe simulated manner, forming bonds, and learning the power that comes from opening up your heart to others.

Akumako: “You learned that lesson, yet here you are.”

Here I am! Just ‘cos I knows better don’t mean Imma do better!

Akumako: “Ugh3 You’ve made your point, now move onto the purple subject.”

Spyro 4 is REAL!
(It’s Been 18 Years…)

Well, this was a pleasant surprise.

So, one of the more important games in discussing the matter of video game remakes is Vicarious Visions’ Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (2017). A full one-to-one remake of the original three Crash Bandicoot games for the PS1 by Naughty Dog. After years of being a dormant IP, the series was brought back, rendered in what the PS4 could do, with a focus on being a faithful conversion. It was lauded for its dedication, though in retrospect, the title was seen as a bit overly transformative with its environments, often substituting detail and making some contentious creative choices. All of which would have been fine if Vicarious Visions just let you play using the original game underneath, but that was likely impossible for technical reasons.

Despite initially launching as a PS4 exclusive, N. Sane Trilogy was immensely successful. It was a bit slow at first, but ultimately sold over 20 million units over its lifetime, setting a precedent that, if you take beloved old games, spruce them up with modern graphics, you can make some serious skrill.

With this in mind, and with their once lucrative Skylanders series effectively done, Activision Blizzard decided to do the same thing for the Spyro series, but granted the duty to Toys for Bob— and Sanzaru Games. Together, they made the Spyro Reignited Trilogy (2018), another shot-for-shot remake of a trilogy of PS1 games, and it was similarly praised. Though, it only sold over ten million units, which… is still a LOT of games! While Reignited also marked a drastic change in the original visuals, these were generally better received, even if they drastically changed the scope and scale of certain environments. However, the original games… were rough outlines in a lot of places.

Having a big success on their hands, Activision Blizzard had reason to revive both series and tasked Toys for Bob to make new games. This resulted in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (2020), a lovingly created sequel shipped out in a shockingly swift 18 months turnaround. …Unfortunately, it underperformed due to the brilliant choice to release this 3D platformed exclusively on PS4 and Xbox, right before the PS5 and Xbox Series came out. Switch and PC versions came five months later, and none of the versions were marketed sufficiently. Eventually, Crash 4 sold five million, but Activision did not want to wait, and instead had the developers shift to working on Call of Duty titles. Why? Because everybody under Activision was working on CoD at the time. It was a classic case of the workers being punished for executive missteps, and things got worse.

During this time, things were complicated. I highly encourage that you watch Liam Robertson’s Crash 5 video, as it was the result of years of investigations into the happenings at Toys for Bob. But the gist is that Toys for Bob wanted to develop a multiplayer battle mode for Crash 4 called Wumpa League while also developing another Crash game, Crash 5, which would feature a crossover with Spyro, but Crash would firmly be the main character.

Unfortunately, this did not happen, and Wumpa League was rebooted into a Crash Bandicoot multiplayer live service, known as Crash Team Rumble (2023). It stunk and only got 8 months of support before going into maintenance mode.

In February 2024, when Xbox was seemingly collapsing amidst Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, Microsoft laid off 1,900 people including 89 workers at Toys for Bob, which was about half, maybe more, of the staff. Rather than shutter the remaining staff and kill a studio that made them BILLIONS, Toys for Bob went remote, they were granted independence, and entered into a contract with Microsoft to develop a new title.

I have to emphasize just how BAD things were at Toys for Bob. The people who had been at the studio for years upon years had been discarded, morale was at a harsh low, and the studio no longer had the assurance, or fist, of an owner looking over them. So, they hunkered down, did what they could, and in this state, with a broken up studio, they managed to make a game people have wanted since before the Reignited Trilogy was announced. They made Spyro 4.

Spyro: A Realm Beyond was announced via a brief, mostly CG, trailer that showed little beyond a new dark threat encroaching and Spyro, now slightly older and adept at flight, soars into the skies. The logo then drops, and we get… 7 seconds of gameplay. It just shows Spyro breathing fireballs, swirling around in midair, and flapping his wings. Though, that’s pretty much all we need to know. Spyro is back, from people who get the character and IP, and it is advancing the series forward, instead of meandering or rebooting it. On its own, this is barely anything, but as a sequel to an established IP and developer… this is enough.

It’s a new Spyro, 18-freaking-years since the last one came out.

…And it almost didn’t happen, because Activision and Microsoft did not know what they were doing.

Toys for Bob was a wickedly efficient studio full of people who knew how to work together and how to ship games, FAST. They released fully featured platformer games every two years, even during the pandemic, and had a treasure trove of IP they could delve into. They were doing stuff that was unheard of and, if the people selling these games knew what they were doing, they could make OODLES from minors, Nintendorks, and nostalgic PS1 kids.

This is a marvelous business opportunity to someone who knows the industry, and with Microsoft’s IP library, there was no shortage of what they could make. Instead, they were neglected, sent to the Call of Duty mines, seasoned developers were fired, and the studio was gutted, left to piece itself together. …And they are looking like they’ll ship a game within three years.

Microsoft and Activision management have got to be some of the stupidest, clueless, willfully moronic dunderheads I have ever seen in the games industry!

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is coming out in spring 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2 and PC.

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered Announced
(The Next Nightdive Joint)

Why wasn’t this in the Xbox showcase? Actually, scratch that. I’m glad I only got six real topics from that showcase.

The original run of Thief games are among the most celebrated stealth games of the late 90s and early 2000s, or perhaps I should call them “immersive sims.” With the goal of the game… in the name, these were heralded for their grounded, realized worlds that ran the needle between Middle Ages Europe, the burgeoning industrial revolution, and low fantasy. Its world was full of a lot of supplemental tidbits, dialogue from guards and wandering NPCs, and cutscenes to better illustrate the characters in its intricate yet compelling story. Of course, this was also paired with a lot of influential and innovative stealth systems, a strong focus on darkness and visibility, an arsenal of traversal tools, the ability to schlep bodies after knocking them out with a big stick.

As the next game from the developers of Ultima Underworld (1992) and System Shock (1994), Thief: The Dark Project (1998) was a big deal among diehard PC gamers back in its heyday, hampered by the lack of a console release. Thief II: The Metal Age (2000) was a bigger and better sequel that aimed to improve on just about everything the first game did well, and it did even better, but not quite well enough to save Looking Glass Studios from bankruptcy.

This led the plans for the third game to congeal into Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004), which was not as good. It was Xbox title, moved to a new engine, shifted to an (optional) third-person perspective that changed how the game played, and had generally smaller environments. If only because of its similar pedigree, and the fact that both games were developed by Ion Storm Austin, it’s considered a sort of sister project to Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003). And if you know anything about that game, it’s probably nothing too good.

This more or less sent the series onto a prolonged hiatus, only revived by Eidos Montreal in 2014 with an attempted reboot, originally entitled Thi4f, but later named to just Thief. In their defense, no game in the series had that exact name. While liked by some, it was seen as a hard pivot of a very special game series to a lot of people and, with the numbers just not being there, the series never continued on. Well, there was a VR game, but as a VR game, nobody played it.

Now, the Thief games have consistently been widely available on PC, where they have gotten various unofficial source ports and fan patches to perform better. However, there has never been a major re-release, much less an attempt to get these games on consoles. This has led none other than Nightdive Studios to pick up the license from Eidos Montreal and do their own remaster of the title.

This is pretty much a best-case scenario, as Nightdive does great work, up there with M2 and Digital Eclipse, and can be thanked for spreading many classic shooters of the 90s to modern platforms. They strive to make these games as good as possible, and have even dabbled in full-on recreations with their much delayed System Shock remake. I like them, they are among the best in their field of bringing games to modern platforms while making them better, and only sometimes stumble their toes with some blunder, like using stupid default settings.

Per the blurb and trailer, Thief: The Dark Project Remastered will have various quality of life updates to be detailed whenever, along with the ability to play custom campaigns on PC. But the biggest change is to how the game looks. Now, Thief was never a looker. Its environments were murky, full of stone, and pretty dismal looking, but in a way that informed its aesthetic. Textures were low res, rendered blurry through bilinear filtering, and certain models that were hard to parse. Though, as a dark stealth game, seeing fine details was not the point.

To work around this, Nightdive’s art team redid the textures of the game, and… I hope that there is some option to toggle between the new and old look. Both out of principle, and because I don’t think the new graphics look too good. They look more like a lighting and texture pack than something that changes the game on a deeper level, and the texture fidelity is pretty low. This looks closer to what I would expect from a 2012 Xbox 360 re-release of Thief. There are also some slight aesthetic changes that doesn’t quite hit. The way light travels, the look of certain enemies, it looks just so slightly off.

Still, the original is available for those who want it— on GOG, it costs literally $2 as of writing— and knowing Nightdive, they will treat this game with the respect it deserves.

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered will be released for PS5, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2, and PC sometime this winter. Hopefully it comes out on the same day as GTA VI, because that would be funny.

The Nintendo Direct Section
(Nat-Nat Will Never Sleep!)

Surprise-surprise, Nintendo is actually playing along with everyone else during this year’s S3 season, launching their own 50 minute Nintendo Direct on June 9th. Accordingly, now it is a good as time as any to reflect on how their swanky new Switch 2 has done. And… contrary to what the whiners have to say, the Switch 2 had a good first year. Even a disappointing Mario Kart is still Mario Kart. Donkey Kong Bananza was a Nintendo banger that people only didn’t go bananas for because it’s not Mario or Zelda. Yoshi and the Mysterious Book was probably one of the most creative and dense 2D side-view games ever created, being more of an exploratory nature simulator in the shape of a platformer.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment was, for all intents and purposes, a quality Musou spin-off full of its own ideas and characters, only hampered by the post Tears of the Kingdom hangover. Pokémon Pokopia was a stellar cozy habitat creation game. Kirby Air Riders was party racing fun on the bun. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond… finally came out, even if it was bearing the weight of bad ideas made 6 years before launch. Pokémon Legends: Z-A was a gay old time, even if its buildings look worse than actual Xbox 360 games. Oh, and Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream was a fun fuck-around game that could have been more of a social media sensation, but Nintendo had to Nintendo.

Sure, it was not like the first year of the Switch 1, but you knew that was never gonna happen again, right? Honestly, I’d be more upset that Nintendo only released a few Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of games that really could have used a 1080p 60 fps upgrade.

Outside of that though? The most upsetting thing is probably the shallow horizon they’ve been casting. Prior to this Direct, Nintendo only had FIVE announced games in the pipeline. Rhythm Heaven Groove, Star Fox Remake #3: Reimaginings Are Remakes, Bozo, and Splatoon Raiders, all of which are coming out before the end of July. Fire Emblem 18: Fortune’s Weave was their only title for the rest of 2026 going into this Direct. While Pokémon Winds and Waves is a 2027 title I don’t expect to hear height nor hair of for a hot minute. Kinda don’t want to either. Pokémon discourse just takes the wind out of my butt these days.

Yes, yes, things have leaked, but that’s different from having something to latch onto, even if it’s just a darn logo.

On that note, without further ado, because I gots stuff to do, it’s time to dive into the Nintendo Direct, starting, of course, with the minor things of note.

Nintendo Direct 2026-06-09: Minor Things of Note
(Many Minors!)

Rhythm Heaven Groove was given one final looksie before its release, re-explaining how rhythm games work, and showing off two pretty important and more than novel features. One, the game will feature a genuine RPG mode where you press buttons to the beat in order to use various attacks and spells, which is just brilliant. The structure of a basic RPG is so versatile that it can easily be used in a variety of different formats, as exemplified by the Nintendo Pandemic Banger that was Ring Fit Adventure (2019).

Similarly, the decision to incorporate a troop of characters in various minigames suddenly makes sense, as Groove will feature over 30 co-op and competitive games, which sounds fun, but I just know people will complain about it being too short. Ah well, I’ll just roll my eyes through that when Rhythm Heaven Groove launches July 2, 2026.

Dragon’s Dogma II: Dark Arisen was announced as the port/expansion of 2024’s divisive Dragon’s Dogma II. The choice to use the term Dark Arisen for an expansion is confusing, as the original’s upgraded version was also subtitled Dark Arisen, and the announcement trailer did not do a good job of illustrating what this expansion actually offers. So I just waited for the press copy to detail what they are selling.

They added a gear appraisal system, where players can give their spoils to an NPC to unlock new weapons, armor, and other stuff. There’s a new campaign that follows the protagonist through an additional snowy region, Norgan, which is set to be even more aggressive because… ice area. And various endgame challenges are going to be added. However, this is paired with other free upgrades due out this summer, changing how the fast travel system works, which people did not like, and various nebulous quality of life and performance fixes. Will this be enough to raise up the game’s reputation after its mixed reception at launch? Dunno! We’ll need to wait until Dragon’s Dogma Duo: Dark Arisen comes out on October 9, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC.

Though, that was not the only PS5 port announced. A bunch were announced, including Lies of P, Stellar Blade, Devil May Cry 5 the upcoming Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Metaphor Re:Fantazio, the Kingdom Hears collections, and more. All of this is great news for people who are dedicated in the Nintendo ecosystem. However, seeing them crop up like this always makes me confident that we are doing something wrong by having all of these varying SKUs for games, when we could standardize software and hardware. That way libraries could be shared and people wouldn’t need to rebuy these games. But no, why be efficient when we can gas up competition…

Pokémon Pokopia is getting its own free underwater environment coming this August, along with a paid Expansion Pass that will add three new areas over the course of the next following a year and change. First starting with an underwater realm, Bubbly Basin, bringing with it the scattering miscellaneous additions one would expect. This includes outfits, friends, furniture, and friends, but the only thing that perked me up was seeing Manaphy. Whenever I see that majestic little critter, I always hope that it will actually lead to some body swap mechanic, but alas, I doubt that’s the case.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave was given its second showing, and it loosely aligns with what people were speculating. Rather than have a defined protagonist, in a series first, you will get to choose between one of four characters with their own stories, while competing in a tournament in the heart of the walled city of Dagsion. The prize? One wish granted by the gods! However, the matches are broken up by chunks of free time, à la Three Houses (2019), allowing players to venture about in the interim. They can train their allies, learn techniques, recruit allies, and travel beyond the walls to gain EXP.

With class changes, bonding scenes, some sort of real time action hack and slash sections, and the major battles in the arena, it looks sufficiently robust. Though, I think a game like this really needs its own Direct to explain its systems in detail. I guess that’s what August is for… After Engage failed to capture the same luster, I’m very curious to see what the reception to Fortune’s Weave will be, and we won’t need to wait long, as the game’s due out on September 17, 2026.

Ninjala 2: The Uncharted Planet is a game that I expected to just sit through, but to my surprise… it’s not a multiplayer title. The first one was a team-based multiplayer romp that was swiftly written off s a Splatoon-like that was only on the Splatoon machine, and while Ninjala 2 looks more like Fortnite, it’s actually an open world loot-driven action RPG that only has multiplayer as a mode. Otherwise, it is just a single player romp, and one with something to it. You can launch gum rails to zip through the vast world, it has a not insignificant number of competently designed baddies, and the number of weapons and abilities at the protagonist’s disposal seems fairly vast.

I have NO IDEA why GungHo Online pivoted to making a single player title like this, but the narration of the Direct claimed this was the “first part” of Ninjala 2, so I guess they are releasing the single player mode first, as its own game, while holding off on a multiplayer version until later. …Which is pretty brilliant in my book. Why make a bunch of assets for one game that would appeal to one type of player, when you can do, I dunno, 40% more work to make two games? Ninjala 2: The Uncharted Planet is a Switch 2 exclusive, launching spring 2027

DK Challenge was announced as one of the odder elements of the event. Using their ample access to retro games, Nintendo is launching a temporary event where players can play brief snippets of various Donkey Kong games in order to aim for the best time or meet certain goals. If they do so, they get various “challenge cards” that seem to do nothing, but look neat, I guess. It’s an odd limited-time event that ends September 1, 2026, but I think it makes sense as a bonus thing Nintendo could do.

With the Switch 2 decidedly NOT erasing their classic library, Nintendo has a treasure trove of older games that could be played freely, but sometimes ~~older~~ games need context to be interesting. Creating bite-sized challenges is relatively easy, just make a save state and check for certain values, and it gives subscribers something to do with these games, endears them to Nintendo, and gives them something to talk about. It’s not a bad idea, and if it works, then I could see it being something people corral around.

DK Challenge also makes sense as a limited time event, as the core content is already present elsewhere, but the decision to pair this with a Mario crossover in… Donkey Kong Bananza: DK Island & Emerald Rush, that also only lasts until September 1, 2026 is… stupid. This is a limited time event for a piece of bloody DLC, that should NOT be DLC, that is crossing over two IPs Nintendo owns. Just let people grab a Mario and Luigi outfit for Donkey Kong and Pauline whenever they want to. This is not going to make you any more money, it’s just creating a social economy of haves and have-nots.

Jujutsu Kaisen Rumble: Survivaton was announced as a game as part of a new venture by Poncle, the Vampire Survivors people. Recognizing the success of their debut title, and the growing mowing game genre they introduced, they made up the term Survivaton and are using it as a label for games made, or co-developed, or maybe licensed, by them in the style of Vampire Survivors. It’s part of their efforts to expand, spread themselves across the world, and fund a lot of smaller games. I can certainly respect the commitment, and desire one them to control and maintain the genre they more or less created, even if I worry that they might be in over their heads.

As for the game itself? Eh, it looks kind of lame. The entire game is structured like a multiplayer party game. You get kills, get to make a choice, and can choose to either strengthen your character or weaken your opponents. Then, after time passes, the two highest scoring participants battle it out in a format that… this genre and perspective was not made for. Still, this is way better than that Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash kusoge arena fighter, so there’s that. Jujutsu Kaisen Rumble: Survivaton will be released for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC sometime in 2026.

Pikuniku 2 was a big surprise to me, as it looked like the sort of quirky Japanese game that I would spend the rest of my life playing if I had Real Freedom. Instead, it’s a sequel to a 2019 platformer made by like four non-Japanese dudes. However, this is immediately more engaging to me because it is 3D. It’s a game about a weird ball with legs and eyes and no hands going through a simplistic yet striking 3D world with a bizarre sense of scale full of odd nonsense critters. While basic, its world is a place with some zest and teeth to it, which is super compelling next to… mono-color vector sprites. This one has frog robots. And giant feet. MADE OF GOLD! I don’t know how Devolver snuck this into a Nintendo Direct, but goldarn do I love everything about Pikuniku 2, coming to Switch 2 and PC in 2027!

Dragon Quest Monsters 4: The Withered World was given an actual trailer to announce the project, and as I expected, it looks like a more refined and developed follow-up to Tose’s Dragon Quest Monsters 3: The Dark Prince. The graphics took a perceptible uptick in quality. The world spins as you move across it a la Animal Crossing: Wild World. There are oodles of monsties to mash together into bigger stronger-er monsties, and they didn’t forget about the actual best girl from Dragon Quest V, Deborah! And that’s… All you need to know! The Withered World is coming out on PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2, and PC on December 3, 2026. Because something needs to be released after THAT.

Deltarune Chapter 5 was announced, which is good for all the people following that odyssey.

Kingdom Hearts 4 was shown off, still in the same Tokyo environment we saw however many years ago, with no release window in sight. It’s as if Square Enix does not understand the lust they’ve manufactured for this IP…

Atelier Karia: The Night Kingdom & the Guide of Memories was announced as the next bi-annual Atelier game, because those come like clockwork and… where else would you announce them?

Uh, anything else I can— Oh, perfect!

Tales of Eternia Remastered was announced following a leak, and as a Tose remaster of a classic 2000 RPG, it looks… somewhat transformative. The game’s sporting a new English translation, along with 9 other languages, and sees changes to its dialogue and text boxes accordingly. There’s a wholly new English dub because… the game was dubbed almost 30 years ago and the voice actors probably don’t sound the same. Some of them probably died! It has the staple disable encounters and speed up battle features, along with a garish waypoint system. Some portraits have been redrawn as anime portraits and look… like they were fed through an upscaling filter. Though, the environments look… strange.

The character sprites look identical to the PS1 original, yet the environments have all been redone. Eternia had some beautifully done backgrounds, but they were limited by the resolution of the original display resolution. Rather than just go with this, the developers have seemingly redrawn these backgrounds, but not as full illustrations. Instead, the background is pixelated, but at a higher resolution, something close to 640×360. It’s a significant boost in fidelity, while still being easy to peg as retro, and before I could think about how the old backgrounds were replaced, I saw that you could freely toggle between the old modes per the store description. So, no big deal. Oh, and everything was smooshed down to fit on a widescreen display, which was a carryover from the PSP version. It’s either that or black bars.

Tales of Eternia Remastered will be released on October 15, 2026.

And lastly, Star Fox (2026) got another showing, and even saw a demo released. I played it, pretty fresh after playing Star Fox 64 (1997), and while it does feel different, and looks higher fidelity, I still don’t think it plays all too great. The enemy placement is vital in a game like this, and certain sections, certain spawns, and the way the charge beam work, felt very… not modern to me, let’s say. Why does releasing A not fire the charged shot? Why do I need to do this weird double tap thing?

However, the far more interesting reveal is that Nintendo is not heading the development of Star Fox (2026). Instead, it is being headed by Velan Studios! Velan Studios was founded in 2016 by the founders of Vicarious Visions. After shipping the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (2016), they wanted a new start and were able to gradually build up a new studio, using the founders’ connections to net contract work. Their connections with Nintendo led them to create Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit (2020), buddy up with EA for the ill-fated live service sportball game, Knockout City (2021), and from there, the studio went quiet, preserving Knockout City with private servers while doing stuff in the background. That stuff turned out to be the Star Fox remake. …And now ALL of this makes sense.

Of course Nintendo would not want a bunch of New Yorkers to futz with their previous Nintendo 64 darling too much.

The Ocarina of Time Remake Announced
(I’m Indifferent Until I Learn Literally Anything About It)

Okay, fine, let’s talk about this now, right upfront, so you don’t need to wait.

I think there’s no real point to an Ocarina of Time remake except to make money off of legacy, hype, and nostalgia. Because, for decades, Ocarina of Time has held a spot as the generic personally deprived joker’s pick of the objectively greatest game of all time, a spot that it did not earn for nothing. It was a revolutionary game at the time, for how it used 3D, for creating this expansive journey through a genuinely impressive world. Just seeing Hyrule Field stretch on as day turned to night, pineapples flew at you, and skeletons rose from their graves, still has the twang of something special to this day. The key locations all have an immaculate vibe all their own, and are rendered as their own little play places where you want to hang out and explore.

The dungeon designs were great, making use of this new verticality thing, featuring immensely effective atmospheres, and being immensely memorable in their construction. Though, arguably the biggest boon for these games was their controls, camera, and the way they were played. 3D games were still struggling with movement, dual analog hadn’t really been used yet, and compared to the rigid tank controls or the looser controls of burgeoning platforms, Ocarina felt pretty seamless. You could even say it set a standard for general movement in third-person games. Yes, even more so than Mario 64.

The story, while not particularly overt, benefitted highly from in-game cinematics and camera choices, presenting an experience that felt cohesive from start to finish, and had a resonant thematic core for players of the time. The NES generation had gotten older, had seen games change, had seen the world around them change, and the act of venturing through this idyllic present of Hyrule before entering the Temple of Time. Then, Link becomes an adult, the world is ravaged, and the world is left changed, characters gone, aged, and replaced with something that is… easy to relate to. In fact, it only gets easier as one gets older.

Also, while the most boring to dissect of claim love of, it probably is, per the socially agreed upon ethereal standards of objective Christ-deemed quality, whatever that means, probably the “best” 3D Zelda in this mold.

_zelda

Majora’s Mask is too winding and only has a few dungeons, while its looser structure and looping time scaling makes it a harder game to commit to. That’s why I never got past the first dungeon. It’s effortless to play it wrong and too stressful to play it right.

Wind Waker’s ocean, however beautiful, loses its luster quickly and was bogged down by a lot of toothless traversal, if not loose wandering, immaculate vibes though.

Twilight Princess takes quite a while to get going and spends a lot of time establishing its world before sending you on a bunch of dope dungeons near the end. It’s still my favorite, but that’s because I grew up with it. Big surprise!

Skyward Sword was basically built to be the best and biggest Wii game of all time, but ultimately feels like a game that was limited by its hardware and control scheme, not enhanced by them. Even back in 2011, I thought it wasn’t great.

Now, Ocarina was of course not a perfect game. The only perfect games are puzzle games. Navi’s yapping, the Water Temple being tedious, Hyrule Field being boring, certain things being slow for the sake of cinematic flourishes, and to mask load times, the godawful text speed. You don’t need me to tell you these things. These problems, while minor in isolation, combined with the game’s occasionally dreary yet atmospheric visuals, can make the game a touch harder to go back to these days.

So, how do you re-whatever it? Well, I think that Ocarina of Time 3D (2011) did basically everything it needed to. Text speed moves faster, the Water Temple is a lot less of a pain in the butt, and while the redone visuals are a bit much in sports, I find other areas to be a far nicer. If you asked me what an Ocarina of Time remake should be, I would just point at that. Make the game prettier without changing the underlying art direction too much.

Heck, throw in some voice acting for key scenes, tweak the controls and aiming a bit to be a bit more like TotK, i.e., modern, and maybe add some new side stuff. The game was so influential that I don’t think it needs to be aggressively modernized, and I don’t think its mechanical identity should be replaced or overhauled. Just make a new game if you wanna do that.

So, what is Based God Nina Tendo do? Uh, change up the art style. In the brief trailer, all we got was a glimpse at the CG visuals, little more, and the game looks nothing like Ocarina of Time. It was just a small morsel, and I did not LIKE how it looked, because it’s going back to something that has crystallized in my mind, that has been firmly established, and saying “nah, it’s actually like this now.” But, uh, also, they only showed two shots, of one character.

Oh well.

I’ll pass judgment when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (2026) releases sometime in 2026, hopefully on the same day at Grand Theft Auto VI.

Muramasa Revenant Blades Announced
(After 11 Years of Waiting, Vanillaware Finally Brought A Game to PC!)

Holy cod, mackerel, and bonito, these dastards have finally gone and done it!

One of my favorite subjects to retell for those who were not there at the time is how the PC became a key platform for Japanese developers during the 2010s. At the start of the decade, PC gaming was undergoing a boom in popularity due to component advancements, the growing age of home consoles, and Steam serving as a safe and easy platform to release games. Windows 7 made computing FUN after Vista was a downgrade, and if people were going to shift to digital ownership, it made sense to put those files on a real computer, not a fake computer.

The market was thriving, the few Japanese developers who were releasing PC ports saw success, Japanese indie games found success they would have never had otherwise, and various publishers, like Idea factory and XSEED, were seeing great returns on investment by going over to the platform. I still remember the shaky steps NIS America took in bringing over Disgaea PC, how busted the PC ports of the Final Fantasy XIII games were at launch— even after launch— and being a whiny port-begging bitch who lost her marbles when sweet Danganronpa moved over to the platform.

However, there were holdouts, and some of the biggest ones were actually Sega subsidiaries. Yes, Sega, a company that owned PC centric developers and always gave the platform a decent chunk of support, even in the 90s. Sega of America once tried to launch a Genesis games on demand service for Windows 95!

RGG Studios was slow to recognize that the Like A Dragon series was perfect on PC, then swiftly ported out the majority of the series to the platform when given the opportunity. Atlus did not want to touch the platform, and did not see any major success— get rekt Catherine— until the surprise 2020 launch of Persona 4 Golden.

Going into the 2020s, which is to say H.F.I.L., the only major holdback hipster sonuvabitch was Vanillaware, who I love. Vanillaware is easily best known for their signature lavish visual style, offering games that are seldom imitated, never replicated, and function as some of the most gorgeous games of all time. GrimGrimoire (2007), Odin Sphere (2007), Muramasa (2009), Grand Knights History (2011), Dragon’s Crown (2013), 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (2019), Unicorn Overlord (2024), they don’t miss. …Unfortunately, I have not played any of their games since they released Muramasa: The Demon Blade (2009) for Wii, pre-ordering it, getting this dope fold-out art print, and having an absolute blast with it.

The artwork, the effects work, the simple yet enthralling combat, the worlds, and of course the unforgettable foods. I really wanted to replicate these feelings, but I did not want to do it on a Switch, where the resolution would be limited by its blasé power. Nah, I wanted it in full 1080p 60 fps on my computer, with no compression, no artifacts, just pure glory! …Instead, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was PS4 and Switch only while Unicorn Overlord (2024) came out on everything except PC. Even the Xbox!

At that time, I wrote off Vanillaware as choosing to never seeing the light. They were blind to the word of goodness, despite having started as a PC game developer. …And then I saw that they were re-remastering Muramasa, with all of the DLC from the Vita version for Switch, Switch 2, PS5, and PC.

HELL YEAH! One of the best looking games of all time is BACK, looking better than ever, and this, this right here made the show for me!

So, what sort of features can we expect in this remaster?

All six campaigns can be played from the start, no unlocks, no fuss.
The game has been upgraded to boast 4K visuals, featuring a level of fidelity that we could have only dreamed of back in 2009.
The English script by Ignition has been replaced with a new localization. Not because the old one was bad, but likely due to how this game is launching in 10 languages, and they want to ensure that all translations are consistent.
This new release features an English dub, which I think is unnecessary and unwanted, as this game is capital-N NIHON. But it’s an opition, so whatevs!
And this latest remaster boasts some flavor of “new modes” to “give you more ways to play this classic adventure, and to appreciate the game’s magnificent art and animations from a fresh perspective.” I don’t know what exactly that means, but that’s okay with me!

I am stoked to see this, so happy that Vanillaware is coming back to PC, and bringing with them the game that made me fall in love with them. All of the low-low price of $50. Which, in this era of $70 to $100 games, is nice! Consider this an easy review candidate for when Muramasa Revenant Blades launches in early 2027, as I want Vanillaware to be WINNING on PC right out the gate!

Also, a review of this would actually be on-brand for Natalie.TF, as Muramasa is technically a TSF game. See that pink girl in the trailer? She’s POSSESSED! And that’s HOT!

Xenoblade Games Get Nintendo Switch 2 Editions
(Xenoblade 1, 2, and 3 As God Intended)

I still don’t like how Nintendo has been handling their Switch 2 Edition upgrades, as I view it as such a scummy move to upsell people for a tenner or twenty bucks, and for what? Better performance and some minor extras? Bor-ring!. In a culture where some free content updates are expected for many games, including Nintendo games, I think that they should only be selling you stuff if it’s substantial. The very idea of paying for better performance when you buy new hardware is wrong in my mind, and I think that small free updates years after launch should be… encouraged.

If you are positing your games as evergreen titles, then is there anything wrong with just releasing a small yet significant quality of life update to reignite interest in them? Hell no! And if you are going to sell upgraded versions of games, make sure that they are actual upgrades. This is a sentiment felt by many Xenoblade X Nintendo Switch 2 Edition customers, as developer Monolith sort of bungled their upgrades for their 2015 open world action adventure game when releasing a Switch 2 upgrade a few months ago. They relied too much on super sampling upscaling, and made the game look worse, much to the chagrin of many forum dwellers.

This made these same musky RPG enjoyers cautious about what the other Xenoblade games would be like once they got their Nintendo Switch 2 Editions, as all of them could have used a performance boost, just to 1080/60. …Or 4K/60. Well, Nintendo just announced that, alongside oddball new features being brought to the three main Xenoblade games.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition received a rideable vehicle, which was not a thing in that game, known as the Ether Jet, a sort of rocket motorcycle. This makes traversal and backtracking fast and more enjoyable, but also comes with its own racing tracks. Yeah, they added a sci-fi motorbike, a racing mini-game, and new equipment designs, because someone had a vision. …Oh, and they also added fully voiced heart-to-heart conversations which, uh, sounds like quite the commitment, but I’m not complaining. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition shadow-dropped after the Nintendo Direct.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is also getting an update, adding a single new quest to get a single new blade, new outfits for Mythra and Pyra, and most excitingly, a new LIMITED battle mode. Yeah, that last bit was not made very clear in the Direct, but they added a new gameplay mode where you can send off Blades into “mercenary squad battles,” where they can be controlled directly. Meaning you can finally play as Pyra and Mythra in a Xenoblade game… but only in a certain type of battles.

Wait, what’s a “mercenary squad battle?” Are those the “Merc Missions?” Those were just expeditions where you sent out some Blades for them to come back with goodies in 20 to 60 minutes. Did they add “mercenary squad battles” to the game? I dunno! We’ll have to wait until the Switch 2 Edition comes out on July 30, 2026!

As for Xenoblade Chronicles 3, they added a “new Hero,” more fully voiced scenes, and an entirely new gameplay mode of “defensive battles.” It’s a series of overhead wave-based encounters interrupted upon level up, when you get three choices. …Did they just add a roguelite mode to Xenoblade 3? Yes. Yes, they did. Or, rather, they will, on December 3, 2026.

Why are they bothering with the extras? I don’t know, probably to monetize training new hires or something!

Xenoblade Genesis Announced
(Neat, But What’s Going On?)

Back in 2017, Monolith Soft began recruiting for a new fantasy game project, meant as a departure from the sci-fi and… low science fantasy— yeah that works— of the Xenoblade series. People assumed this was percolating in the background and, after taking the saga so far to an end with Xenoblade 3, it remained to be seen what was next for them. …Then, somehow, this fantasy project seemingly became Xenoblade Genesis.

Without the familiar visual style, focus on immensely scenic vistas, and certain animations, I would have not pegged this as a Xenoblade game. It has elves, spellcasters, nobility, a prestigious warrior’s school setting, mounts, and dragons. The most sci-fi thing here is the world itself, which takes place along the concave interior of a world, instead of the convex exterior. Gravity still binds people to the surface, but the sky leads to a cluster of six suns, and no matter where you are, you can look up and see the other side of this world. It’s a fantasy, and sci-fi, concept that has fascinated humans for centuries, but aside from the limited implementations in games like Halo, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horizon quite like this. Which is a shame, because it’s DOPE! Living in a world like this would solve most problems.

Aside from that… I’m honestly a bit lost by the trailer. It shows so much yet so little, flashes between so many characters and concepts without saying much definitive. Yes, yes, anima is magic in this world, the wielders are the Vesslai, yes, there was war, but who are the protagonists? Is the pink-haired girl the main protagonist? What is their goal? I’m not sure, but that’s often the point, to stir discourse, get people talking, before revealing more in the lead up to release, which is likely a year out. Xenoblade Genesis is currently scheduled to be released in 2027.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Announced
(This Should Have Been Nintendo Switch Sports 1)

…Nintendo’s handling of the Wii Sports series has been so strange. The original game was meant to be a retail title, rather than a pack-in, and only became a staple part of every console in the west after Reggie Fils-Amie fought for it. Wii Sports Resort (2009) was a better and fuller version of the original, with so many new ideas and a hardware patch in the form of a peripheral but not quite a replacement. I guess baseball, tennis, and boxing couldn’t be copy-pasted.

Wii Sports Club (2014) was just Wii Sports in HD, with a worse art style and one of the worst distributions for a casual game, ever. While the successor series, Nintendo Switch Sports (2022), came several years too late and shipped in Early Access. It only had six sports— tennis, bowling, swordplay, football, volleyball, and badminton— and… half of those are net games. Then, five months after release, it got GOLF, and two years after release, it got BASKETBALL. How riveting.

All of which is before discussing the asinine mobile-game-ass unlock system where you need to do your dailies to get proper character customization, or how the new Sportsmates™ critters were corporate incarnate. The fact Nintendo Switch Sports sold 18 million units is a testament to how much people love Wii Sports, and the fact Nintendo underdelivered this bad should be remembered. Because this is what they think of you.

Eager to gas up Switch 2 sales, and actually do this concept justice, Nintendo announced a sequel to Switch Sports, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. Yes, they are bringing back their best motion controlled sports game’s namesake, setting, and iconography. WuHu Island is BACK, the tropical theming has returned, and the vibes are similar, but not quite right thanks to the Sportsmates™ and their ripe onion-stinkin’ ass hair. At least the Miis did not think they were real people. They knew their place was with the hogs and the hens!

Akumako: “You know, changing around the context and using it ‘ironically’ does not stop phrases like that from being racist.”

This makes all the sense in the world— not as much sense as a Ring Fit Adventure – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, which would slay GTA VI in the polls on November 19th— but I digress. With a respectable number of 12 sports, this seems like a decent enough package, but I cannot help but look at this like a feature goblin and say… surely, you can do better. Switch Resort has no badminton, swordplay, or football, which are likely being kept for future updates. While wakeboarding, Frisbee™, disc golf, canoeing, and cycling should ALL come back as returning sports from Wii Sports Resort. Not because I want them, but because I believe in making things now better than they were in the before times. Nintendo though? Eh, they will pretend to care until we’re not looking. At least they believe in thumb inflation… Yeah, okay, I can see the eroticism of being pinned down by giant thumbs.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort will be released as a Switch 2 exclusive on October 22, 2026.

Final Fantasy Resonance Announced
(From The Ashes of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius)

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. One of the biggest problems with Final Fantasy can be attributed to how poor of a job they did at foresting the IP during the 2010s. Sure, Final Fantasy XV was huge, but they simply were not pumping out side games and spin-offs like they were during the 2000s. You had a new Final Fantasy game every six months back then, even if it was just a re-whatever. Instead, they moved away their spin-off teams, the folks who were pumping out stuff like Crystal Chronicles, over to mobile.

Matrix Software could have remade Final Fantasy V and VI for 3DS or Vita, but instead we got those garbo uggo trashcore mobile ports. Final Fantasy Dimension and Final Fantasy Dimensions II could have been released on whatever, but instead they were mobile only. Bravely Default, Octopath Traveler, and Triangle Strategy are all Final Fantasy in all but name, yet were positioned as their own IPs. Big mistake in my book. (I would have called Triangle Strategy Final Fantasy Tactics 3 just to mess with people.) Hell, even Elliot’s Adventure should just be a Final Fantasy spin-off— Final Fantasy: The Millennium Tales. Is it more of a deviation than Koei Tecmo’s Paradise Strangerz Featuring Jack Garland? NO!

Then there were the live services. So, so many would be bangers were instead relegated to being live services!

I would love for Square Enix to take the good live services they had and turn them into real games. That worked great for Octopath Traveler 0 (2025), or so I heard. …And that’s what they’re doing? Wait, really? Hell to the yeah to the woo to the hoo!

Well, actually, it’s not that simple.

Final Fantasy Resonance is the game we’re talking about, and it’s being sold as the first HD-2D Final Fantasy game, the first sprite-based Final Fantasy on consoles since April 2, 1994. Before I was born! However, eagle-eyed viewers were quick to claim that this was an extensive remake of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a defunct 2015 mobile game that, as the date should imply, was a touch more limited than what you could expect nowadays. While the game featured explorable environments, they were in the mold of an SNES game, with most of the visual budget being put in the character sprites and battle effects, with the game boasting some especially pretty character sprites.

Despite this, the press releases and copy do not call this a remake of mention Brave Exvius, and that’s because IT IS NOT A REMAKE! Curious, I perused some preview coverage of journalists, who presumably spoke off the record with some Square Enix PR people, and the story is that it’s not viewed as a remake, but an adaptation of Brave Exvius. This is all pretty obvious when trying to do some comparisons, as they really did not take a ton from Brave Exvius.

You see, Brave Exvius was a 2015 mobile game, so it was damn primitive by modern standards, looking like a souped up SNES game, playing like an app, and having a number of limitations. It was impressive at its time, but it became dated very quickly, and only survived thanks to dedicated fans. Yet, people Square Enix liked the story, characters, and world that had been created and, rather than let all this work amount to nothing, they are being reimagined as something new. Similar, but new. This is a somewhat odd way to go about retaining a game, and seeing as how tight-lipped Square Enix is, we’ll need to wait for the video essayist and Redditors to understand the comparisons and contrasts.

As a game itself… It looks really good! The world is gorgeous in the way that’s typical for HD-2D games, the character sprites look excellent. The effects work is flashy in a way I don’t tire of. And part of me can’t help but smile as I see an airship fly around an expansive miniature 3D world.

Admittedly, the cutscenes look a bit scuffed, clearly rendered in 3D yet transformed into loose goopy pixel art, especially when contrasted with 3D cutscenes lifted from other Final Fantasy games. Yes, similar to Fire Emblem Engage (2023), every party member has a Final Fantasy icon as a Stand in battle. It’s fan service, a bit silly, but that’s okay with me. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t tried bringing this approach to a console game by now.

Next, I always wonder who is making games like this, as that can tell a lot about the approach and quality of the project. Well, it’s not Alim, the original developers of Brave Exvius. They’re a mobile studio that only had the resources to make Voice of Cards, not really the right pick for this. What about Gumi, who started taking over development and developed the sequel, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: War of the Visions? No, that would be a terrible idea, because they’re all about that blockchain gaming, no joke.

Instead, the remake duties are being assigned to Lancarse Co. Ltd. Who’s Lancarse? Well, they are one of those fascinating companies whose backlog is really interesting, but not especially great. They made the following: Wii Chess (2008), Lost Dimension (2013), Zanki Zero (2018), Monark (2021), Ed-0: Zombie Uprising (2022), and The DioField Chronicle (2022)! …MobyGames also said they developed WiZmans World Re;Try (2024), a remaster of a DS game nobody’s ever heard of, but I checked the credits and, uh, no.

…Based on that track record, I think that Lancarse is the PERFECT developer to be heading up this project. Not because they have produced bangers, but because they have done a LOT, and when given the keys, when given a mold to follow, I think they might be able to do something nifty. Hell, Artdink went from making Sword Art Online games to making Triangle Strategy and the Dragon Quest HD-2D Remakes

Akumako: “Yeah, but they also worked on Tokimeki Memorial 4 and Fossil Fighters.”

Shut up! My version is funnier!

Anyhow Final Fantasy Resonance will be released on October 22, 2026 for PS5, Switch, Switch 2, and PC for the budget price of $50. No matter where it stands on The Chart, I’m hoping for the best!

Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Announced
(Natalie FINALLY Talks About Touhou)

Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil was announced from developer Shanghai Alice Reprise. …Yeah, that’s three terms to define.

You probably don’t need me to tell you what Touhou is, but I’ll do it anyway. It’s a multimedia, but mostly gaming, series that was born from the doujin scene of the late 90s and early 2000s. From the convention scene, it spread throughout the Japanese internet, into the American internet, and now persists as this thing that just defines much of the internet through memes, references, music, and so forth. It’s something I’ve never really gotten into, and if you asked me to name a character, I’d be SOL. But I have seen more memes, references, and music cues than I could bother counting

There’s a downright disgusting amount of games between all the licensed spin-offs and fan games, spanning just about whatever genre you could imagine. But there’s a Team Ladybug Metroidvania and an SMT clone (complimentary), and that’s all I need to know.

However, the Touhou games that most will think about are, of course, bullet hell games, with the series doing no small part in popularizing this subgenre of shooting games. The “main” and “numbered” titles are created by series creator, ZUN, and his studio Team Shanghai Alice. Development on these games began back in the late 90s, where they were developed for the PC-98, released at Comiket, and came out well after the PC-98 was irrelevant. By 1997, Windows 95 had become the de facto home computer everywhere around the world. Yes, even there.

The series did not really start to become defined until the sixth game, and effective start of the series, with Touhou Koumakyou 6: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (2002). This led to a series of numbered entries, and half-numbered entries, leading up to Touhou Kinjoukyou 20: Fossilized Wonders (2025). With a series this long and winding, access to games is naturally a bit of a problem. Sure, you can get games 9 to 20 on Steam, I checked, but you need a fan translation for them.

I have no idea why this is the case— maybe ZUN did not feel like hiring people— but evidently, things have changed.

Shanghai Alice Reprise was created as a team within Team Shanghai Alice to bring back older games that younger fans did not have the chance to play. …Because the game was only for Japanese Windows XP and could only be bought on a physical disc. So, they are doing a re-whatever of Touhou 6. They call it a remaster, I look at footage of these two and see entirely new assets, and say it’s a remake, which, uh, is a good thing, as the sprites for Touhou 6 looked like butts. (Though you can apparently switch to the old sprites if you like poopy.) Character art is stellar though… and they have touched it up for the remake while giving every character brand new, beautifully animated, sprites. Nice!

Now, Touhou is not my thing. I’m pretty terrible at regular shooting games, let alone ones this aggressive, but Touhou enthusiast and routine commenter Rain has told me that this was widely well received by the community. Hell, this may even do a lot to revitalize interest in the series as more people can easily play the games. This is exactly the type of game that could see a huge groundswell from being at a Nintendo Direct!

…Except the announcement of Touhou 6 Remake was only in the Japanese Nintendo Direct, despite being the first main Touhou game to be localized in English. Hell, localized in English and NINE other languages. Ah well. Would I expect the old fuddy duddies running things at Nintendo of America to understand how big Touhou is? That there’s like a hundred fan games of it on Steam at this very moment? No!

With the power of online communities, the news broke regardless, and people won’t have to wait very long at all to get the first officially localized mainline Touhou game. Touhou Koumakyou 6: New Classic – The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil will be released on September 10, 2026 for PS5, Switch, Switch 2 and PC.

Video Games This September Are Bonkers, Yo!
(Wake Me Up When Septembergeddon Ends)

A collage of various video game covers featuring titles like Wolverine, Trine 6, and Control, with the phrase 'OH NO' prominently displayed in the center. — **I just took this from Kotaku, as I did not feel like kitbashing a dozen games into a header image.**

After all of this, after dedicating something like 40,000 words to talking about these 2026 Segmented Summer Showcases, and seeing how people reacted to it, I have to to agree with what everybody has been saying. There are too many games coming out this holiday season! The core audience that loves single player story-driven games and established franchises is utterly spoiled for choice this year, with oodles of promising titles carrying over into 2027.

This is a good problem to have, but it’s a problem nevertheless, and for a few poignant reasons: People don’t have the money to spend frivolously on video games like they used to. Nobody, not even a full-time video game player, has the time to go through all of these. The games press does not have the capacity to sufficiently cover these games. Some of these games WILL be commercial failures strictly because of their release timing— it happened all the time in the Wii PS360 era. I know. I WAS THERE, in the trenches, buying games for 50% off two months after launch, flushed with birthday and Christmas money. And it was AWESOME!

This is looking like a holiday 2011 season all over again! …All followed by a vacant stream of releases in the weeks preceding and following Grand Theft Auto VI, the Jesus of Nazarath that shall “reignite interest in console gaming”, according to analysts. Personally, I think this is the funniest self-fulfilling prophecy shit we’ve seen in gaming so far. Games are so scared of GTA that they are willing to cannibalize one another just to stay away from it, and ensuring that, if you want to be part of The Conversation, and be Relevant, to buy a new game in November, you need to purchase and play GTA. It’s your only option. Well, that or Barbie.

I’m not going to play GTA VI. I don’t own a PS5, and I don’t know if my sister still has that Xbox after her divorce. But when was the last time I played a modern video game?

Akumako: “Uh, didn’t you just play the demo of the Star Fox remake?”

The point is that the games industry has committed itself to this unsustainable holiday season, and I’m genuinely excited to see how it pans out, what games are deemed failures, which ones break through the walls of reality to become hits, and is the hype around GTA VI winds up being all smoke and mirrors. Because GTA VI is not a game at this point, it is an event, and I have been taught to view it as a transfer of wealth above all else. Why? Because if you asked me what Grand Theft Auto V (2013) gave back to the world, I would have no answer other than wealth for Take Two and their shareholders.

While a lot of people are sure to play it, GTA V did not lead to any cultural revolution based on its content. …Beyond normalizing online dependency, microtransactions, large-scale role-playing, and all new forms of grief via its online modes. But I did not feel that it outwardly influenced gaming beyond giving publishers unrealistic ideals and normalizing things that transfer wealth from people to corporations. Accordingly, I do not see how Grand Theft Auto VI will offer any actual cultural shift. Well, beyond casuals buying a games console for the first time in a decade so they can be with it, unless livestreams, feed from Larry Ellison’s TikTok, and hot takes posted on Elon Musk’s Alt+88 are enough.

It’s going to be interesting, seeing this all play out, but I also cannot help but look at this and say… wake me up when Septembergeddon, Octobergeddon, and GTAVIember end.

Ubisoft Celebrates S3 2026 With LAYOFFS!
(380 People Can No Longer Support Their Families!)

Graphic featuring the word 'Tencent' in bold letters with decorative swirls and the phrase 'NONE CAN STOP THE TENCENT!' at the bottom, on a light blue checkered background.

I hate how much of the modern world views jobs as an inherently good thing, that job numbers are a metric that really means a lot of things. Yes, it’s important that people are contributing to a society, but jobs run the gamut in terms of value, viewing them as mere numbers obfuscates the nature of work. Not all jobs are good or necessary. And the fixation on jobs, on continued at-risk employment, dictated by a corporation, is a deeply dehumanizing reality for far, far too many people.

Unfortunately, it will be a reality for as long as the world operates on a model where people need to work so they can eat basic food, get access to the Human Right™ of water, and the other Human Right™ of shelter. But no, we cannot have that, as the world is not constructed for people, it is constructed for the benefit of corporations and the elites who run them, the Protagonists of Reality as I disaffectionately call them.

Akumako: “We are 20k words deep! Get to the POINT!”

After a fairly muted presence at this year’s S3, Ubisoft-Tencent announced that they are shutting down two of their studios. The Canadian Ubisoft Winnipeg and the Serbian Ubisoft Belgrade. Both are being shuttered immediately, while they are “restructuring” Ubisoft Barcelona to focus on development of their core IPs. As a result of this, 380 people are probably going to lose their job.

This is, unfortunately, nothing new for Ubisoft who, as part of Tencent’s newfound influence, and the incompetence of management, has become unable to sustain itself. Projects were canceled, studios were gutted of institutional skill as people were left without a career, and the folks in charge of this bleeding boat are able to sail away into sunny shores.

It’s nothing new, but goldarn does it sour my mood whenever I see such unrestricted avarice towards people who just wanna make games.

Akumako: “Hey, did you see that Xbox is planning a round of significant layoffs?”

…Anybody saying that video games are back after these Segmented Summer Showcases is wrong. Video games are still as rotten as they’ve ever been.

Progress Report 2026-06-14

An animated character with long blonde hair and large glasses leans over a podium, looking animated and expressive, while a crowd of simple, gray silhouettes is visible in the foreground. — **MOOD!**
**Source: Palladium by C.R.E.A.M.**

Oh SHIT! There’s gonna be a Class of ’09 Puzzle League clone? Fuck it, I’m there, day one. Some people tired of the series after all of the foot fetish stuff, but I don’t care. Macks is such a skilled creative that I’m down for whatever he’s got in the chamber. I’m here for the Other Office, Batman Beyond Ill, and Taste Closed dude whose podcast I listened to throughout the pandemic. I’m here for the Got Busy In A Burger King Bathroom motherfucker from the Beltway!

2026-06-07: About 7,000 words based on all of Microsoft’s stuff. Still need to finish yapping about Gears of War though. Damn that Crazy Taxi bit!

2026-06-08: Wrote… 2,500 words of Rundown, edited 12,400 words. Started studying for the CPA exam after a six year hiatus. Skeeted out 1,400 words for the Nintendo Direct and Ocarina of Time bits.

2026-06-09: WANTED to do more today, but studying took longer than expected because of how much I hate that shit, and then I had two hours of surprise work. THANKS DAD! Only wrote about 6,400 words or something. Wanted to play the Star Fox remake demo, but it was too late and I had to refinance my bloody home tomorrow.

2026-06-10: Added the final two bits of this showcase, 1,200 words, edited the Nintendo Direct stuff, got it ret-2-go, refinanced my home, did 3 hours of studying. Played more Aria of Sorrow.

2026-06-11: Finished Julius mode in Aria of Sorrow, drafted the review by adding 2,900 words. Wrote 2,900 words for the re-whatever Ramble, because I decided that’s the next goal, and I did not want to edit a review I wrote the day of. Only did 90 minutes of studying, because I was so miserable studying that I had to stop. I cannot do 15 hours of studying a week for a topic I don’t care about. I did not care about auditing when I was a student, I don’t give a shit about it at 31.

2026-06-12: Ugh, not a productive day. I tried starting work on the re-whatever ramble, but wound up going down rabbit holes as I did research into the history of the topic and realizing that my dataset was full of holes. Very frustrating. Kept getting sidetracked by things, and writing was SLOW. I think I managed to get out 3,500 words, but that was only because I was able to find some choice quotes to describe the climate towards game remakes in the 1990s. The Video Game History Foundation’s library is DOPE.

2026-06-13: Wrote like 4,300 words for the Re-Whatever Ramble that pertained to JUST aspect ratios, resolution, and CRT stuff. I’m gonna need to trim some of that down… later. Wrote 1,000 or so words about other stuff there, but I had to spend FOUR HOURS going through every North American GBA game to determine how many re-whatevers there were. Counting the NES classics, it’s 98. Well over 100 if you count Japan and PAL releases. Also 20 compilations. And there were only 176 fully original titles for the NA GBA! That’s out of 949! HOW?

Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report

2026-07-01: Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp Act 3: Worldly Wonders – DONE
2026-06-17: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Review
2026-07-22: Help! I’m Turning into a Mermaid! Review
2026-07-29: Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension Review
2026-08-04: Natsumi Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review
2026-08-06: Maria Mania Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review
2026-08-12: Natalie Rambles About Monkey Man
2026-08-??: Beast of Reincarnation Review
2026-09-??: TSF Series #019: A Change of Flesh
2026-??-??: re:Dreamer Review #6
2026-??-??: Coffee Buns Review (TSF Game)
2026-??-??: Fate Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba & Rain Request)
2026-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review (TSF Game)
2026-??-??: Thread – A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College Review (TSF Game)
2026-??-??: TSF Showcase 2026-01: Chronicstuss (Ouran Request)
2026-??-??: Natalie Rambles About Re-Whatevers
2026-11-18: TSF Series #020: Chateau del Bitz
2026-12-29: Natalie Rambles About 2026

Rundown (6/14/2026) S3 2026: STOP! You’re Making A Mess!

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Stop! You’re Making a Mess!

Microsoft’s S3 2026 Festivities
(No Games For Genocide, Bitch!)

The Miscellaneous Microsoft Trough
(Go Away, Xbox!)

Gears of War: E-Day’s First Major Showing
(The Return to Form Apology)

Persona 4 Revival Was Properly Revealed
(And I’m FINE With It)

Crazy Taxi: World Tour Announced
(Verified AI Slop Revival)

Vivarium Re-Announced
(A Hand-Drawn Boku no Natsuyasumi Like!)

Persona 6 Announced
(With A Nothing Trailer!)

Spyro 4 is REAL!
(It’s Been 18 Years…)

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered Announced
(The Next Nightdive Joint)

The Nintendo Direct Section
(Nat-Nat Will Never Sleep!)

Nintendo Direct 2026-06-09: Minor Things of Note
(Many Minors!)

The Ocarina of Time Remake Announced
(I’m Indifferent Until I Learn Literally Anything About It)

Muramasa Revenant Blades Announced
(After 11 Years of Waiting, Vanillaware Finally Brought A Game to PC!)

Xenoblade Games Get Nintendo Switch 2 Editions
(Xenoblade 1, 2, and 3 As God Intended)

Xenoblade Genesis Announced
(Neat, But What’s Going On?)

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Announced
(This Should Have Been Nintendo Switch Sports 1)

Final Fantasy Resonance Announced
(From The Ashes of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius)

Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Announced
(Natalie FINALLY Talks About Touhou)

Video Games This September Are Bonkers, Yo!
(Wake Me Up When Septembergeddon Ends)

Ubisoft Celebrates S3 2026 With LAYOFFS!
(380 People Can No Longer Support Their Families!)

Progress Report 2026-06-14

Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report

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This Post Has 2 Comments

Rundown Preamble Ramble:Stop! You’re Making a Mess!

Microsoft’s S3 2026 Festivities(No Games For Genocide, Bitch!)

The Miscellaneous Microsoft Trough(Go Away, Xbox!)

Gears of War: E-Day’s First Major Showing(The Return to Form Apology)

Persona 4 Revival Was Properly Revealed(And I’m FINE With It)

Crazy Taxi: World Tour Announced(Verified AI Slop Revival)

Vivarium Re-Announced(A Hand-Drawn Boku no Natsuyasumi Like!)

Persona 6 Announced(With A Nothing Trailer!)

Spyro 4 is REAL!(It’s Been 18 Years…)

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered Announced(The Next Nightdive Joint)

The Nintendo Direct Section(Nat-Nat Will Never Sleep!)

Nintendo Direct 2026-06-09: Minor Things of Note(Many Minors!)

The Ocarina of Time Remake Announced(I’m Indifferent Until I Learn Literally Anything About It)

Muramasa Revenant Blades Announced(After 11 Years of Waiting, Vanillaware Finally Brought A Game to PC!)

Xenoblade Games Get Nintendo Switch 2 Editions(Xenoblade 1, 2, and 3 As God Intended)

Xenoblade Genesis Announced(Neat, But What’s Going On?)

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Announced(This Should Have Been Nintendo Switch Sports 1)

Final Fantasy Resonance Announced(From The Ashes of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius)

Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Announced(Natalie FINALLY Talks About Touhou)

Video Games This September Are Bonkers, Yo!(Wake Me Up When Septembergeddon Ends)

Ubisoft Celebrates S3 2026 With LAYOFFS!(380 People Can No Longer Support Their Families!)

Progress Report 2026-06-14

Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report

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Discover more from Natalie.TF

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Stop! You’re Making a Mess!

Microsoft’s S3 2026 Festivities
(No Games For Genocide, Bitch!)

The Miscellaneous Microsoft Trough
(Go Away, Xbox!)

Gears of War: E-Day’s First Major Showing
(The Return to Form Apology)

Persona 4 Revival Was Properly Revealed
(And I’m FINE With It)

Crazy Taxi: World Tour Announced
(Verified AI Slop Revival)

Vivarium Re-Announced
(A Hand-Drawn Boku no Natsuyasumi Like!)

Persona 6 Announced
(With A Nothing Trailer!)

Spyro 4 is REAL!
(It’s Been 18 Years…)

Thief: The Dark Project Remastered Announced
(The Next Nightdive Joint)

The Nintendo Direct Section
(Nat-Nat Will Never Sleep!)

Nintendo Direct 2026-06-09: Minor Things of Note
(Many Minors!)

The Ocarina of Time Remake Announced
(I’m Indifferent Until I Learn Literally Anything About It)

Muramasa Revenant Blades Announced
(After 11 Years of Waiting, Vanillaware Finally Brought A Game to PC!)

Xenoblade Games Get Nintendo Switch 2 Editions
(Xenoblade 1, 2, and 3 As God Intended)

Xenoblade Genesis Announced
(Neat, But What’s Going On?)

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Announced
(This Should Have Been Nintendo Switch Sports 1)

Final Fantasy Resonance Announced
(From The Ashes of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius)

Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic – the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Announced
(Natalie FINALLY Talks About Touhou)

Video Games This September Are Bonkers, Yo!
(Wake Me Up When Septembergeddon Ends)

Ubisoft Celebrates S3 2026 With LAYOFFS!
(380 People Can No Longer Support Their Families!)