Rundown (7/19/2026) Creating A Post-TF Setting

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Creating A Post-TF Setting
• Natalie Muses About Digital Game Prices (She Just CANNOT STOP!)
• S&P Predicts The Future of Game Consoles (And Here’s Why I Think They Are Wrong)
• Once Upon a Katamari + Rolling Live Highlights Announced (Re-Whatever Brainrot Strikes Again!)
• Natalie Muses About Game Console Legacy (Natalie Complains About Scott The Woz)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Creating A Post-TF Setting

This past week, I reviewed Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid!, a TSF visual novel by Lachlan Snell. I loved the game, thought it was his best work yet, and would give it a full recommendation. However, it is in an unusual place as a TSF story. I mentioned this in my review, but the world of Hitiam is effectively a post-TF world. It’s a world where transformation, changing sex, and becoming a furry is considered routine, common, and normal in a way that goes against the typical premise for most transformation stories.

The game skips past several steps common to TSF and general TF narratives and, by extension, changes the type of story that is being said. It is no longer about an inexplicable and life-changing event. Instead, it is about someone changing their life in a way that’s, on some level, normalized and societally understood. Like a general lifestyle change, getting plastic surgery, or transitioning to a whole new gender. Well, okay maybe not the last one, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

Hell, with Snell’s games, the ability to transform oneself is so freely accessible and available that it’s triggered by just drinking something, or thinking about something. It is not quite at the level where everybody is a shapeshifter, but it’s pretty close.

As a TSF writer, I find this to be an interesting challenge to approach. How do you tell a compelling TF story in a world where transformation is normalized? Well, it needs a hook, some internal or external conflict, an angle worth exploring. A character could resist the transformation, insist that they are fine the way they are. They could be forced or coerced into transforming by someone with power over them, or via social obligation. Or the ability to transform could be something only available to certain people. Maybe coveted by the upper class, imposed on the lower class, or stratified, with certain transformations can be seen as taboo.

You can still do a lot with this concept— or you can just embrace the silliness of a setting where everybody turns into a big booby lady like Snell likes to do. But for as much as I enjoy Snell’s work, I am a bit too political to embrace something so sugary without adding some vinegar.

Another TF visual novel that comes to mind when musing over a TF world is Cinnamon Switch’s Coffee Buns, which is slated to be released sometime this summer. I have not kept up with the game beyond the initial demo, but the gist is that the game is set in a world where kemono tea allows people to become a furry, shifting the animal based on the contents of the tea. It can also change people’s sex, because of course it can. This is a fascinating concept that has yet to completely shift how society works in-game, but from what I can tell, that’s not really the point. The point is to tell the story of people are they react to this relatively new commodity, and how kemono tea gives the protagonist confused gender feelings. It uses this setting to tell a personal story about one nebby and their friends.

Akumako: “They’re called enbies, not nebbies.”

Eh, it’s the same letters, just arranged differently. I like my version better.

This brings me to a question I have been mulling over for years now. How would I want to tell a story in a “Post-TF setting?” Well, the answer can be partially answered by some of my works, such as TSF Series #006, but I’m talking about a setting I would really want to dig into. Well, for me, and because of what I like writing, I would likely eschew the sex swapping direction. It’s a good fantasy to explore, but not one that speaks to me as a creator. Having transitioned and dug through so many vanilla TSF transformation stories for TSF Showcases, I’m not itching to pursue an idea of a world where people can freely switch between male, female, and mix and match the forms.

I’ve always preferred body swapping or people transforming into someone else, not a sex swapped version of themself. Unfortunately, a world where body swapping exists… is just a dystopia waiting to happen. If body swapping were a thing, bodies would become an extension of one’s wealth and power throughout society. The rich, elite, and powerful would cycle through young, healthy, and conventionally attractive forms, effectively living forever. The poor and systemically oppressed would have their bodies stolen from them by instruments of suppression, debt, or theft, leaving them in undesirable forms— old, disabled, ugly, or generally undesirable.

Society would eventually be propagandized to view this as correct. Instead of getting cosmetic surgery, wealthy middle-aged people would be pressured by the industry to want to get a body that’s a couple years younger and already plenty sexy. Young vulnerable people would be preyed upon, their bodies coveted and desired by decrepit powerful figures who would use them as playthings to fulfill their twisted desires.

The Epstein class already likes fucking middle schoolers, so I can only imagine the shit they would get up to if they could snag the bodies of nubile 14-year-olds. (If I read famed literary work Lolita, it would probably break something in me, forever.) While young people, fresh out of school, would be pressured by the allure of capital and promise of power to trade away their greatest asset, their youth, in order to, I don’t know, eliminate their student debt? Save their parents from financial hardships by sacrificing their very self for financial gain? Hell, parents would just set up baby barns

Now, I could write these stories with relative ease. They would be prime examples of, to borrow a phrase from a friend, “Dark TSF.” However, the setting is a bit too limited for my novelistic pursuits. It would be a great topic to explore in a TSF Series, but I’m not getting on that horse for, uh… two months, and have already committed to a premise. Gosh, I hope that biography about organ transplants has some juice I can squeeze.

In other words, I do not want a world where everyone can just freely change sex via science magic, or swap bodies through the same means.

I am all for casual body and sex swapping between friends. Dare say, it is my favorite way to approach the subject, to the point where I have written over 600,000 words about a bunch of dorks enjoying a body/sex swapping summer romp. But in Verde’s Doohickey 2.0, this power is reserved for people who have a body/sex swapper, and there are only 25 in the world. That’s a hard limit.

Going back to the overarching question, what would I want for a post-TF setting, as a creator? What is one that I would REALLY want to dig deep into, and use as a platform for telling oodles of stories? Well, I do have a concept I’ve been musing over, and I feel like sharing it with you people.

This story would take place roughly 20 years after a nation-wide body swapping event affecting over a hundred million people. Due to the sheer scale and undeniable surreality of this, body swapping is something recognized by everybody in the world with a modicum of sense. In the ensuing years, body swapping events, along with occasional other human to human transformations (changes to age, race, gender, etc.), have happened, but at random, scattered across the world. They have also happened in large numbers, but not on a national, let alone city-wide, level. Maybe 1 to 2 million would be affected each year, which is de minimis next to a population of 8 billion.

So, 20 years later, body swapping has been normalized, affected roughly 3% of the global population, but mostly concentrated among a specific nation. Following the mass swap event, that nation underwent a partial collapse as the structure of society was unable to accommodate the loss, leading another larger nation to intervene and re-establish order. The first few years of this transition were rough, but in the following decade, the nation had an economic boom. Reconstruction projects were launched, jobs were plentiful, there was a baby boom, and innovation was rampant across all industries thanks to an injection of new people with new perspectives cast into new fields. Most people who got body swapped started new jobs and had loads of new ideas.

Alongside this, the nation also went from a socially conservative society to the most socially progressive nation on the planet, viewing gender and sexuality as mere suggestions, and not very binding ones. To people from more socially conservative communities, they are seen as the apex of deviancy. Conversely, the queers view them as aspirational and some have migrated to nation so they can be among the coolest cats on the planet.

After 20 years of this being normal, with nobody able to determine how or why this happens, people have largely moved on and accepted that body swapping is a thing that can happen but probably won’t. Most people have met someone who swapped bodies with someone else, even if they didn’t know it, but it’s something most people don’t think or worry about.

Body swapping is a key area of focus of academic study, for fairly obvious reasons, and new theories still emerge even 20 years later. The governments of the world have launched various programs to accommodate people who are subjected to this inexplicable phenomenon, with established procedure and law over who owns what following a body swap.

Despite the legal procedure for body swaps, not every swap is documented or acknowledged, and there is no medical way to tell if two people have been swapped. Most declare their swap and undergo the legal procedure, either of their own fruition or after being identified as a swapped person. Some people agree keep their swap a secret and only tell a trusted few, if anyone. Some people just pick up their new life and act like they have always been this person, never telling anyone, and never hearing from the other half of their swap. Those who swap into celebrities generally enjoy their own flavor of celebrity due to their recognizable face, frequently trying to imitate the person they appear to be. However, there is also a lot of body swap fraud, with people lying for clout, money, or status.

Though this is obviously real, some choose to not believe it, insisting that body swapping is impossible, even when faced with overwhelming evidence, because people can be that stubborn. Some lean on conspiracy to explain the body swapping phenomenon, insisting that this or that group invented this technology for this or that purpose, but regardless of the theory, they are universally racist. Others would believe that this is God’s gift unto the world, both a religious and non-religious sense. Some lie in fear that their bodies will be stolen, others pray to be freed from their prison of flesh, but none can control the whims of this phenomenon, no matter what they do or how hard they pray.

To emphasize, body swapping is a persistent background element of this world, with most people still, as always, focused on just getting by, and not expecting to suddenly find themself as someone else.

As a setting, there is a lot of ground to cover, stories to tell, and things that can be done here. You can have a wide variety of reactions to a body swap while having people generally believe it as a thing that happens, just not to them. You could have people use the government programs to claim ownership of these new bodies and let them live their own lives. You could have characters deliberately ingrain themselves in their new lives, eager to cast their old one behind after upgrading. Or you could have characters who want to claim the truth, yet are unable to do so, either because people don’t believe them, or don’t allow them. If some young guy winds up in the body of a poor old woman in another country, with a whole family depending on them, what recourse would be available if this old woman refuses to cooperate?

The randomness, permanence, and frequency of the swaps would allow me to focus on some of the things that draw me to this subject without needing to explain this or deal with the initial shock of “how is this possible” or “how do I get back to normal.” I would be able to go straight to the stage where characters are settling into their new bodies/lives, forced from denial to acceptance in a matter of minutes. I think that it would be a fascinating setting to explore through an anthology story, following oodles of characters and showing how this world, as in multiple countries, were shifted in light of this inexplicable body swap phenomenon.

…However, that’s not the full extent of my idea, that’s just the background. What I really want to pursue in this setting is basically my version of Student Transfer or Press-Switch. I want to use this post-TF setting to tell a story of someone who is given the first multi-function transformation device, in the world, and uses it to go on various route-based adventures involving characters in their workplace, a traditional office. Suddenly, something that was has existed in popular thought for decades is available in one’s hands, and the protagonist can share this gift with whomever they wish, or find some way to become them with plausible deniability.

Now, my main reservations about this idea is that it is too reserved, too creatively conservative, by focusing on someone not directly affected by the body swapping phenomenon affecting thousands of people each day. Is this the most interesting story I can tell, and am I telling it in the most compelling way?

However, I also really want to make an open-ended body swap office story where a post-college entry-level employee uses body swapping and transformation to bond with their co-workers, including college friends, via linear scenarios. …And if I am going to do this idea, I don’t want it to be in a boring regular world. I’ve seen that, I’ve made that, and I want to explore a setting where I have more control, where I can make up events that change what people think, where their standards are, and what they see as weird.

…I also do not want to make it too ridiculous, as otherwise I’d just struggle to treat the setting as a serious one. Going back to TSF Series #006, that setting has sex-powered elevator to Hell. I loved writing that, I loved making that, but I don’t want to spend years working on a setting like that. Similarly, I don’t want to use a contemporary setting for my next major project. Because the current world sucks, I can imagine something way cooler, and I wanna do that. I want to make a TF story set in a grounded world where body swapping and general transformation are real and documented phenomena.

Besides, some ideas work better as backstory, and if I really wanted to write some side stories about the events 20 years ago, I could. I could write about the day from multiple perspectives, describe the current state of the body swapped nation, and showcase random people whose lives were turned upside down following a surprise body swap.

To clarify, this is all ideas stuff— ideas that I have for Psycho Shatter VN: Vice Novus— but I’ve got quite a few other stories to get through before I can even think about tackling that beast. I’m gonna have to learn how to use freaking Godot and Blender to make that!

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Natalie Muses About Digital Game Prices
(She Just CANNOT STOP!)

…Okay, I know I keep bringing up the subject of physical versus digital games, and I inadvertently ignore the underlying assumption that people are talking about this matter as it pertains to PlayStation. (I just kept comparing the PS5 physical market to Steam, assuming everyone else was doing that, when that comparison does not reflect the reality of the PlayStation Network.) However, there is one matter that I want to discuss regarding all digital storefronts, and that is the prices set by the publisher or, for the sake of simplicity, the base digital sales price.

If you look through any digital storefront for full-priced titles that are 5+ years old, you will generally find a lot of $60 or $70 that have not undergone any depreciation in base price.

Just to name a random few I looked up, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020), Octopath Traveler (2018), Ghost of Tsushima (2020), Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), Persona 5 Royal (2019), Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021) are all still going for a base price of $60 USD. And that… that is strange, that is going against the established trends seen across games that are just a little bit older.

Bloodborne (2015) is $20, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (2015) is $30, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) is $20, Doom (2016) is $20, Ratchet & Clank (2016) is $20, Final Fantasy XV (2016)… was delisted and replaced with a $35 GOTY edition.

The thing I’m trying to highlight is that, sometime in 2019 to 2020, the culture around giving AAA games permanent price cuts shifted. Companies simply stopped cutting the prices of games on digital storefronts, preferring to keep a high base price. They did the analysis and realized that this approach would make them more money. PlayStation stopped doing Greatest Hits in 2018. Nintendo Selects stopped with the 3DS in 2019. Xbox… stopped Platinum Hits in 2015 or something.

You might be tempted to say that this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged retail. You could say that other retailers were inspired by Nintendo’s respect of value. Though, I think it is important to recognize why these price cuts happened in the first place. Of course, the idea was to bolster revenue on already successful titles, appeal to the low income crowd, and lure people in for successor titles. However, this culture of permanent price cuts also benefitted the retailers.

Retail wants people going through all the aisles, checking the shelves, and to impulsively pick up various titles to move inventory and allow them to nab their cut. Slashing the price helps, and the culture around price slashing was bolstered around these various Greatest Hits lines of games. It let publishers sell more copies, allowed for a greater inventory turnover at retail, and encouraged game-likers to try more games. What a great system!

However, without the element of retail, with everybody accessing the same store, with shifting publisher-set pricing and the ability to trigger sales through just a few clicks, the math changed. Now many retail games preserve their launch price, and this ultimately works for some pretty simple, yet devious, reasons. By being able to sell games at a high base price, publishers can maximize profits to customers with a high reservation price. This means they are not price sensitive and will buy any game they want even if the price is higher than it should be. $60? $6? It does not matter to some people!

By keeping the base price high, the publishers can play into and manipulate a customer’s Fear of Missing Out by discounting games dramatically and for a limited amount of time. If a game normally goes for $60, and is on sale for just $12, wouldn’t you be stupid to not picking it up now, when you have the chance? You don’t know when it will be on sale next! Well, other than the next seasonal sale— but it might be $18 then! If you buy now, you can save $6! So buy it now while you can!

All of this makes sense, and I can see why we wound up in a climate of high base prices and deep discounts. However, I also hate it.

I think every game sold digitally should drop to $20, and eventually get a 75% discount, because if a game is too expensive at a fiver, that’s a you problem. With digital goods like this, where the only direct costs are payment processing and maybe downloads, it seems ridiculous to preserve the value. It discourages people from buying games outside of sales, punishes people for having poor impulse control, and makes it harder to recommend games or get people to play them now. If a 3-year-old game is still retailing for $60, and a friend recommends it to the other, it would be foolish for this person to buy it for $60, especially it was just on sale for $30 a week ago.

I love sales, I absolutely have that thing in my brain where I get a kick out of getting a good deal on something. But the current climate where games do not drop in price, the gulf between a well-timed purchase and a poorly-timed purchase is just excessive in terms of dollars. I don’t really care if a $10 game is marked down to $3 as part of a sale, because $10 is a cheap thrill nowadays. But the $45 divide between a $60 base price and a $15 sales price is just absurd, and it happens to hundreds of games, several times a year.

I have the wherewithal to rarely (meaning only three times a year) spend more than $20 on a computer game. But not everybody is as disciplined by deals as me, and I only achieve this feat through price notification services. Nobody should NEED to do this, and this work for your deals cultural shift, epitomized by fast food apps, should NOT be treated as a way to get things for cheap by being savvy. Instead, this is justcorporate exploitation of those without the time and knowledge to use these features. This is Fast Pass shit!

So, how do you fix this? Well, storefronts could implement a price depreciation policy where a game with a price above X must be given a price cut after reaching Y years of age. Publishers would hate that, but if it was sufficiently liberal, such as a mandated $40 price cap after 5 years, they might not really care. Some may try to weasel around this policy, delist the original, break up the game into DLC, and push out a remaster, but that’s more of an economic decision, and probably not worth the effort.

Even if we do ensure a future where gifting, family sharing, refunds, and account inheritance are digital rights, right to repair is mandatory for all service games, and DRM-free options are available, this will remain a problem. The base price will remain a problem, and I don’t see a great solution to it.

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S&P Predicts The Future of Game Consoles
(And Here’s Why I Think They Are Wrong)

So, this past week my feed produced for me an article from GamesIndustry.Biz about predictions of the console market by S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan. Now, analysts from outside of games can sometimes accurately predict trends and analyze the industry accurately. Other times… you get something that boggles the mine, like this childishly ignorant analysis.

S&P’s analysis follows the underlying assumption that the memory crisis is temporary and will fade away by 2028, allowing Xbox Helix and PlayStation 6 to debut in the “$600 to $800 range.” This is a terrible assumption to make based on the current trajectory of everything. The memory crisis is looking like it will only get worse, and companies have been stating that they will not lower the price of RAM for as long as they can get away with. The RAM cartel has been making crazy margins, and unless they are given the boot of government or greater authority, they will continue siphoning wealth from everyone in the world, feeding it back to their wealthiest shareholders.

Any projections that views this current period as a lull that will be restored by 2030… is simply naive. With all the bad shit that’s been happening the past few years, I think the world in general is due for a course correction. Things are only going to get worse before they get better, and gaming will never quite achieve the heights it experienced in 2021. At least, not in the same way.

I vehemently believe that the game console, as we know it, will not have another subsequent generation. I sincerely believe that Xbox Helix will suffer out of the gate and, given the current slaughtering grounds at Xbox, I would not even be surprised if the console is canceled. Nothing is off the table for product cancelations, and I do not think that a 2027/2028 release would be possible unless they want to launch with literally no games. Things are going to break, something bad is going to happen, and whatever that is, it will not be clean.

The PlayStation 6 is going to be a $1,000 luxury brand item that will, by design, by necessity, price out the mass market and adhere to the cream of the K-shaped ekonomy. It will not be unique in that, we have been seeing a pivot to the upper class of the economy from MANY companies and brands, and the PlayStation 5 will remain as a budget option for the next decade. It will be a slow transition, but a sure transition, and due to the necessitated mass market scope of AAA gaming, I do not see the PS6 getting many exclusives until, like, 2032.

I expect PlayStation to gradually fade away as most game studios pivot to mobile and PC gaming as their main platforms, and for this idea of a premium high-powered game system to become unviable. PlayStation is on the way out. I doubt it will persist in its current form by 2040. While the brand will never fully go away— there are three decades of nostalgia around this thing— it cannot exist as it did as a locked down, limited-use recreational computing device.

Nintendo… Nintendo is gonna be fine for the next 20 years. They will be the last survivor in the console wars, but they will NOT ever make something as wacky or out there as the Wii or DS, as experiments like that cost too much money to create nowadays. They are owners of the biggest IPs in the world, and are now in a vehemently conservative era. The company could radically change if new management is implemented, but Nintendo is an old school company, believes in tradition, longevity, and thinking in terms of decades, not quarters. So long as they keep their head on straight, they’ll be okay!

Gaming brought people together in 2020, the boom inspired short-sighted investments buoyed by free money, acquisitions happened up the ass, but come 2023, the growth began to stall. People lost their jobs, oodles of projects were canceled, studios shut down, and consolidation forced many companies to reassess everything that was planned as projects changed, projections flat lined, and leadership shifted mid-stream. Growth is demanded from investors, as otherwise gaming is not an avenue worth investing in.

Unfortunately, broader gaming has lost the attention war for the casual user. TikTok, porn, and gambling have captured the lucrative young male demographic. Children are just going to omnipresent live services like the child sex abuse platform Roblox. And for the established gaming enthusiasts, they are being priced out through well-worn predatory practices, rising prices, and what I can only describe as an aggressive assault against the industry’s history and legacy.

This is mostly happening in the western side of the industry though, and from the ashes I am sure we will see more Chinese games trying to take the reins. China’s position would be bolstered by the fact that they produce components domestically and believe in worker rights, allowing them to build up institutional knowledge.

Speaking broadly, at this current trajectory, Chinese studios will be able to develop games better, faster, and cheaper than English-speaking studios. And when they are top dogs in gaming, much like with everything else, the very idea of a gaming platform may be seen as an antiquated concept. Because China understands that you don’t need a console when you have PCs and phones. …Though, they really need to move on from Windows and Android. Like, I know you guys developed half of these modern OSes, but do yourselves a favor and make something better, make it free, and save the world.

…Or in other words, capitalism basically turned the western gaming industry into a shambling mess. All the growth is going to exploitative services and China, who mostly produces exploitable services. Will this be a better future? I goldarn hope it will be! Also, as I’ve said before, if you’re young, do yourself a favor and learn Chinese. It will make your life that much easier in the next decade as the Anglosphere collapses.

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Once Upon a Katamari + Rolling Live Highlights Announced
(Re-Whatever Brainrot Strikes Again!)

It has become plainly obvious that one of the things I fixate on the most is how games are brought back, redistributed, and re-released. As I have said, I want every game on every system that can run it, and look forward to a platform-agnostic future. This is why I tend to over-focus on re-whatevers, any sort of live service to retail game conversion, and games being liberated from deliberately restrictive platforms. Apple Arcade, a video game subscription service for believers in their Apple overlords, is a particularly cast study for this discussion of platform. It is one of the only areas in modern gaming where games are released exclusively via a subscription service. Even Nintendo Classics are just re-releases.

Despite this, Apple Arcade games are often seen as phantom games that don’t exist in a playable form. Apple is not seen as a games company, and mobile is globally dominated by Android. It’s close to 50/50 in the US and Australia (for some reason) but it’s closer to 70/30 Android/Apple across the rest of the world. I’m sure we would have waves of discourse about Hardlight’s Sonic Dream Team (2023), but it was an Apple Arcade exclusive with no announced release for other platforms. Hell, certain games just vanished as they left Apple Arcade, like PlatinumGames’ World of Demons.

Some people do play some of them, and often praise these titles. And sometimes they get ported over to “real” game systems à la Air Twister, a game I still cannot believe exists.

Sadly, certain Apple Arcade games just do not get this treatment as companies don’t think it makes sense to throw out a cheap pre-made game for various platforms. There may be contracts preventing them from bringing a game off the service, but I think the reason why Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls (2021) is locked to that platform is simple. Konami does not see it as a valuable product worth selling. While Square Enix looked at Mistwalker’s Fantasian (2021) and thought that should be on PC and consoles, so they ported it.

…But this example here is just weird.

Katamari Damacy Rolling Live (2025) was the first fully original “real” Katamari game since 2011, and it was an Apple Arcade title. A pretty good one according to some of the 17,538 adults who played it. This would have been annoying— why do THEY get a new Karamari— but then Once Upon a Katamari (2025) was announced as the next “real” Katamari game via the July 2025 Nintendo Direct. Once Upon was good, not as good as the first two, but it had more new ideas than the initial HD wave. Unfortunately, it kind of came and went as a title, as it released in late October. You know, right between Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Lumines Arise, and whatever other J-games Katamari fans might care about.

Still, it came out, can rack up post-launch sales, and Bandai Namco would probably wait, I don’t know, two years to bring over Katamari Rolling Live to move platforms to net some bonus sales with another new title. …But then Mister Nandco Bamai decided that they should just release Rolling Live as DLC for Once Upon. But not the entire 40 level came of Rolling Live, just 10 select levels. …What?

Why would you carve up a full game, only take 25% of its levels, and sell it as DLC for a different game that… didn’t do too hot as far as I can tell. Sure, this is better than locking it behind one platform, but how would this be a better investment from a dev perspective? I thought game publishers wanted ALL the money!

This partial carving of a mobile game to gussy up a retail title is not unheard of. Nintendo famously repackaged Mario Kart Tour (2019) assets as DLC for Mario Kart 8: Deluxe (2017). Yet, I have to pause and ask how these decisions came to pass and what circumstances might have led to them. Cost-cutting? Maybe, but this actually seems like more work in a sense. To put out a brand-new Switch 2 version of this game, after Once Upon skipped the system, with new content? I guess, but who would approve that, and what market analysis would support that decision?

I don’t know, but Rolling Live Highlights will be released as DLC for Once Upon A Katamari on October 8, debuting on Switch, Switch 2, PS4, Xbox Series, and PC.

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Natalie Muses About Game Console Legacy
(Natalie Complains About Scott The Woz)

So, here’s another something-something I want to discuss. Scott the Woz! I like Scott, value his opinion, use him as a proxy for many things, and I tend to view his videos as a sort of comfort food viewing. I think he’s a generally reasonable and level-headed guy, barring a few instances that made me say “you sure about that, dude?” and this past week was one of them. But not just some overly capitalist “it’s our responsibility to control corporations” comment or obvious Nintendork stance. Instead, it’s a whole video about a topic that I’ve come close to discussing without diving in, a game console’s legacy.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that legacy is not important. Part of getting into the nerdy side of gaming is learning the history. This evolution of the medium, what made each console significant, and why the past was cool. The Video Game Canon, according to American Suburban White Boys, like Scott, is well established. And while manufactured in many ways, there was a sense of culture and collective experiences unique to each game system back then.

The NES had a feel, a texture, with its controllers, with how the image was displayed on period appropriate displays. The heft of the cartridges, the limitations of the system, and how those limitations were iterated on gives the system a unique character, before really considering the way games looked and played. Every system from about 1977 to 2012 had its own distinct identity, and elements that made its library and hardware unique.

All of these things makes the past, makes culture, easier to understand, with a clear beginning and end point. An end to a presidency, to a dynasty, or an era. It makes history more compelling to the imagination than throwing a bunch of events into a bin and expecting people to reach conclusions. It’s why modern history is broken up into decades, even if the precise events did not line up within those rigid calendar lines.

People want to latch onto things. People are desperate for identity, for community, for a sense of belonging. It’s why fandoms exist, why clubs exist, why people want to go out, why they went stir-crazy in the pandemic, why they are obsessed with following trends, with meeting societal expectations of being a productive fertile member of capitalism. (Not me though, but I’m the exception.)

People LOVE the ability to put others in boxes, to segregate them, and attach catchy labels to help them index people they encounter. They want to know the exact genre a person is. Just calling someone a gamer, Gamer™, or game-liker is far too broad. But saying that someone was a GameCube kid, Wii baby, or Xbox 360 teen? That tells you a LOT more information, due to the existing stereotypes and generalized ideas of what people of that era were like.

Akumako: “You grew up with a Nintendo 64? You’re probably autistic!”

Akumako! Just because it’s probably true doesn’t mean you should say it!

Akumako: “Bite me!”

I will when this is over…

Scott’s primary argument throughout this video is that legacy is important to history and to gaming in general. However, I don’t think he really makes a great case, gesturing at a vague idea more than he is adding ammunition to support his point. History is more engaging and exciting when things are changing, eras are defined, and innovations happen. Boring history is boring. But I don’t think he has a great reason for wanting all consoles to be unique, to have a legacy, beyond a desire for something interesting and worthy of discussion. Which, for the record, is part of his brand! He is a dealer of cultural ephemera.

As Scott says, the lack of change from system to system, of unique identifiable features across libraries and the system itself, makes game consoles feel less like distinct entities and more like just phones or computers. The Switch 2 is just a souped up Switch. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t need a distinct reason to not like it, but to make an argument, he kind of does.

I think what he is getting at here is that there seems to be a lack of cultural identifiers with the modern era of gaming. There is a loss of cultural shorthand, of a shared experience to rejoice over or to be nostalgic about. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and I still get chills when I hear the PS1 or PS2 boot up sounds via cultural osmosis. (I have never played a game on an actual PS1 or PS2.) The loss of unique identifies, of things to nerd out about, of shorthand, is a cultural loss for gaming.

Now, this is not a thing unique to gaming. The loss of curated tastemakers, of channels, programming blocks, publications, and collaborative groups makes it harder for lump things together. But the loss of these tastemakers, with the infinite possibility of user-generated platforms, of digital storefronts, is simply the direction that things work in the modern era. Everything becomes segmented, stratified, and culture is further atomized until everybody exists within their own cultural bubbles of intersecting niches, with few truly universal experiences. This is something people have been complaining about since Network Television gave way to cable, and was exacerbated when anybody could launch a news site in the 2000s.

Refocusing, the way games were being distributed, the way systems were made, has changed with the times. Experimentation, quirkiness, and unique appeals within hardware are generally not encouraged, financially or culturally. People figured out what they wanted from phones, so now they are just iterated upon. People figured out what makes a good computer, and now the numbers are just increased. And big budget games are too expensive to warrant many creative risks, so why would console hardware be any different?

Tech used to be fun, now it’s standardized, matured, and boring. What’s the difference between an iPod Nano, a second Gen iPod, and an iPhone 4? Oodles of things from the form factor, heft, and capabilities! What about an iPhone 6S versus an iPhone 17e? Uh, better camera, better specks, a lack of a headphone jack, and 17% bigger design? We figured out what works, and are just tweaking it as the worst thing people can say about this is that it’s boring. Because it does not need to be interesting, you already bought one, rely on it, and now it’s just another fridge or washing machine. A basic-ass utility

Video game hardware is boring, system software is boring. The rules were written, standards have been established, and this is the way things are barring any major pivot. I see value in making things that are quirky and fun, that make people feel something, but does this really need to be done at the library, at the operating system, level? Do people need to opt into one of three pre-defined experience packages every generation, or is it just better for them to have a system with everything on it, and let them self-select what they want? Limitations can make things more compelling and direct people into other avenues, but they also gate people off from experiences that just do not exist on their chosen hardware.

Sure, the modern approach turns consoles into just boxes that play games in general rather than specific games. The experience used to be directly tethered to the hardware, custom-made, but what’s more important? Maintaining something exclusive, limited, and kitsch to appeal to a small niche of people as they are given a formative memory that can be used to connect with people in the same group? Or making a boring base that anything can be grafted onto, available to as wide an audience as possible, that houses more unique experiences?

Just because something in the past was more interesting than it was nowadays does not inherently make it better. Unfortunately, many people are predisposed to looking back at the past through cherry-hued eyes, focusing on the unique elements, while ignoring the nuances played right before them. Especially as people get older, it’s easier to appreciate things retroactively, and I try to keep this in mind when gauging recent history.

…Also, Scott’s sloshin’ if he thinks that it’s still viable for a new version of a console to be released every year. Consoles are on the decline, they’re too limited, and the scale or production would make that unreasonable. Hell, even PCs do not really undergo meaningful technical improvements year-over-year nowadays. Annual models make sense with phones, because you can sell a hundred million phones in a year and people are using their phones CONSTANTLY.

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Bethesda Announced Plans for Fallout and The Elder Scrolls
(Please Ignore the Fact the Building is on Fire)

Goldarn it, why do I need to keep talking about Microsoft? I HATE Microsoft! Every WEEK I need to complain about them, and I don’t want to! Just go away! I don’t care if you need to FIRE everybody in the process, it’s better that man be free and destitute than a slave to a mad king!

Akumako: “Just put on your galoshes and start whining about Bethesda.”

Oh, this is a Bethesda story?

Akumako: “Yeah? Read the title, dumb-dumb!”

This past Friday morning, Bethesda announced their plans for the future with a formal declaration to their community. This comes after they released the second piece of DLC for their 2023 misfire, Starfield, after the ravishing of ZeniMax Online’s development staff, and after Obsidian lost a fourth of their staff and ending the contracts of key support teams before being shoved onto a Fallout project. The optics around Bethesda have been sour for a while, in part because of how little they have been releasing despite being a major AAA studio, and their statement mostly confirms what leakers and reporters have circulated.

• Starfield will continue to receive content updates, despite the lukewarm critical and cultural reception.
• Bethesda’s slapdash creator store will remain a priority, because some executive thinks they can be a mini-Roblox or something.
• Remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were announced in the driest way possible.
• Fallout 5 was formally announced, but with the caveat that it is a long way away, after The Elder Scrolls VI, and is still in pre-production over a decade after the release of Fallout 4.
• A Fallout 76 expansion, Raven Rock, was announced as a prequel to Fallout 3 to be released next year.
• Bethesda is still using their in-house gussied up GameBryo engine, the Creation Engine, to develop their games, because why would they pivot to Unreal now?
• The Elder Scrolls VI is being presented as their main priority, but given their current pace, it won’t be released until Skyrim’s 20th anniversary.

Thank you for being so transparent, Bethesda. But also, sod off, you disorganized dunderheads. After being a pretty widely liked studio… a decade ago, the attitude around Bethesda’s games has only worsened through retrospect and the realization that the games were full of hot air and things other people did better. This might be okay if they were at least regular with their releases, but they weren’t.

Bethesda’s output radically declined after 2015, and despite having multiple franchises under their belt, they were unable to capitalize on them. Any other studio would rest their entire production pipeline on something as big as Elder Scrolls or Fallout, yet we have not seen a “real” entry of either in over a decade, to the point where I’d call both chronically underutilized.

Skyrim was a cultural phenomenon, one of the most successful games of its ilk, and it arguably made AAA video games worse by being, well, not that great. The title has good atmosphere and music, but a lot of its game design is frictionless stuff for you to do with an underwhelming main quest and side quests that prioritize exploration above all else. Exploration is great, and in such a larger world, there is plenty to explore. You can play the game for dozens of hours and not even visit every major settlement. But a lot of the mechanics were streamlined to give the game a mass appeal, making it sometimes feel like an open world fantasy RPG for people who have never played an RPG before.

Now, is this a bad thing? Not really. You can criticize Skyrim to no end, its quest design, its console-ized menus, and the base game, as an entity, has been undermined by a 15 year history of the game functioning as a playground for modders. Skyrim is a base, pablum, fior di latte— nothing but milk and sugar— but if you don’t like milk and sugar on some level, the fuck’s wrong with you? It was a soft reboot for the series— the overwhelming majority of players never touched Morrowind or Oblivion, let alone Daggerfall— and came at a pivotal junction in gaming, bolstered by its various re-releases, making it a steady library fixture and a meme for how many times it was re-released.

Re-releasing it was fine, making DLC was a sensible call, but Bethesda never really committed their resources to a sequel to Skyrim. Instead, they made The Elder Scrolls Online.

This is something that I don’t think I’ve heard someone outright say, but TES Online has been pushed by Bethesda for a decade as a way to access The Elder Scrolls “content.” It came out three years after Skyrim, got console ports a year later, and tried to emulate it on some level to be friendly to new players. The idea was that “if you like Skyrim, you’ll love Skyrim with friends,” which kind of misunderstands the core appeal of Bethesda games. They are YOUR experiences, your character, your hero’s journey, and your version of the world. Playing with friends and playing alone can appeal to wildly different personality types, and if you’re playing an MMO, you cannot rely on mods to odd or change things at your leisure. Well, unless you’re playing World of Warcraft, rocking WeakAuras. (That term reads very differently nowadays.)

TES Online was meant to control, monetize, and appease Skyrim fans, according to people who probably don’t play games and view one as a substitute for the other.

Would a Skyrim 2 be able to capture what the first one achieved? Hell no. But would people buy it because it’s Skyrim 2? Hell yeah! Did Bethesda miss out on a billion-dollar game by not making Skyrim 2? Abso-fucking-lutely. Now Skyrim is an old game, it’s some primo unc shit, and there was an entire generation of game players— the last generation to enjoy a virile Gamindustri— that missed out on the HYPE of a new game in this series. All they got was some landscape and logo, probably cobbled together in a week or something.

…As for Fallout, that warrants a similar level of scrutiny. After reintroducing the series with Fallout 3 (2008), Bethesda was quick to capitalize on the IP, commissioning New Vegas for 2010, Fallout 4 for 2015, and a live service with Fallout 76 (2018), which I have canonized as a disaster. It could be the best live service on the market right now, but it’s still Fallout 76— YUCK.

…Then they just sorta stopped. Bethesda/ZeniMax thought the online game would tide people over, when the reputation and connection to the Fallout series just kind of faded away. New Vegas became a viral game for a while there, and a definitively trans game for… some reason, but there has barely been a peep about a new game.

Oh sure, rumors about a Fallout 3 and New Vegas remaster were swirling around. Buzz about a Fallout 1 remake, effectively a new game for most Fallout fans, was a-buzzing. But the fact that they had this hugely successful TV series based on the IP, with NO game associated with it? That’s literally throwing away tens of millions of dollars in opportunity costs. And this was NOT due to financial savviness or Bethesda not thinking the Amazon Fallout TV series would be a success. Bethesda just didn’t have the sense to greenlight a new project!

The problem with Bethesda is that they are just not properly organized for the size of the IPs they have. They did not scale with the expected scope of games, and have been spending 5 to 7 years trying to deliver the types of experiences they used to be able to push out in 2 or 3. Ideally, they should have dedicated TES and Fallout teams, always working on the next game in the series, but they never bothered doing that.

Instead, their only new single-player release for the past decade Starfield (2023), a game that showed an utter lack of creative drive, unique ideas, and technical expertise. The rest of the industry was making waves, and Bethesda was just treading water with a game that utterly lacked the same critical and cultural success as prior entries. Sure, they tried to maintain it with DLC, but I genuinely forgot that they even released a new bit of paid story DLC earlier this year. That is how little impact Starfield had.

If expanding the studio was not an option, Bethesda should have been loaning out their IPs for spin-offs and re-whatevers, like they did with Oblivion Remastered. That game did pretty well, but died out due to a lack of support and the way Game Pass makes games inherently disposable. (You don’t own it, don’t get to keep it, and need to pay to keep playing it, so get in, play it for a month, and get out.) Game Pass is a terrible model for long RPGs like this with mod support, meant to last players years if they are so inclined.

Though, I would say that Oblivion was not a great choice for this treatment in general, as it was a $5 game, was in HD to begin with, and mostly thrived on PC and Xbox 360. Per my view, the Oblivion Remaster was targeting Game Pass subscribers and PS5 users who might be interested in this game. But why would they be interested in a buggy reskin of a 2006 game that looks like it was lit by someone who has never seen the sun? Sure, it kept the IP somewhat relevant, but it felt like too little, too late.

In fact, that’s what any type of course correction at Bethesda feels like it would be now. Too little, too late. If you don’t keep your IPs around, on every system, and with new releases every decade, at a minimum, you are not going to be able to retain generational fans. You will be forgotten, ignored, deemed irrelevant, and your IP value will deplete until teenyboppers of tomorrow have zero clue what it is.

…Also, fuck you for jingling these keys when you are still planning another 1,600 layoffs. Microsoft gutted Id Software, and they expect some Fallout news to make everything hunky-dory? Piss off! Those people could have MADE a Fallout, you absolute clowns.

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Progress Report 2026-07-19

God, I need to STOP gabbing off about the end of consoles. It annoys me more than anyone, but whenever I see this crop up, I cannot help but go on a scree about how the end is inevitable and the future will be bland at a base level, yet customizable.

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2026-07-12: Watched Back to the Future with friends. Lovely movie, one of the best of its era, would watch it anytime. Reached a stopping spot with Mega Dimension. Wrote 4,900 word review of Mega Dimension. SOMEHOW!

2026-07-13: I fucking LOATHE how my boss chooses to offload the thinking and decision making of his work to a damn AI, and I just KNOW that so many managers and executives are doing just that, as it gives them a yes-person and the confidence to say outrageous things. My boss is not a dummy, but once you hit your 60s, your brain stops working right, as your body is expecting death. Edited Mega Dimension review, grabbed images, scanned all of Monkey Man, or rather Monky Man. It’s 42 issues, most are six pages long, and I am missing two of them. …Then I realized I made a mistake in scanning them, and the contrast was all messed up! The linework on these was very thin, so now certain things are illegible, meaning I will need to scan them, AGAIN, tomorrow! UGH!

2026-07-14: was busy compiling Monkey Man into a usable format and adjusting the scans to look clearer. Also, I realized there is BARELY anything to talk about in this series, as it is just a bunch of vague nonsense and fight scenes.

2026-07-15: Decided to start writing about Monkey Man, getting 4,800 words in. Then watched a Scott the Woz video about games legacy, got miffed, and write 1,100 words.

2026-07-16: Edited this fat bitch, pretty repetitive, but whatever. Wrote 3,500 words to wrap up the Monkey Man Ramble. Will need to draw a header image on paper and scan it up… But I’ve done ENOUGH for today! Watched Eddington at the request of Ouran, was a very interesting film.

2026-07-17: Was busy with family obligations for most of the day, wrote the 1,600 word Bethesda bit, started playing Class of ’09: Puzzle Showdown, but I had to stop after I realized this damn Puzzle League game is too hard for me! I thought this was just the game cranking up the difficulty, but no, even Tetris Attack gets this fucking hard. If you cannot perform in two seconds, you just die.

2026-07-18: Wrote 6,500 words about Eddington, Class of ’09 – Puzzle Showdown, and about the whole PC GAMING IS DEAD thing from the mid-2000s, because Jason Schreier cursed me! Decided to get a head start on the Natsumi Swap route review— SIX MONTHS LATE— and wrote like half the review, 500 words, will add 400 or 500 more and get it scheduled tomorrow. ALSO! Coffee Buns is coming out SOON, so I’ll probably review it in September.

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Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report

• 2026-07-22: Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension Review DONE
• 2026-07-29: Class of ’09 – Puzzle Showdown Review CANCELED
• 2026-07-28: Natsumi Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review
• 2026-07-30: Maria Mania Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review
• 2026-08-05: Natalie Rambles About Monkey Man DRAFTED
• 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)
• 2026-11-18: TSF Series #020: Chateau del Bitz
• 2026-12-29: Natalie Rambles About 2026