This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie Has Spent Over $12,000 On Video Games in 13 Years
- Natalie Will NOT be Reviewing Class of ’09: Puzzle Showdown (It Was Too Bloody Hard!)
- Xbox Backwards Compatibility Comes to PC! (Play 4 Original Xbox Games on Your Windows Machine!)
- HUGE Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Development Details Just Dropped (Thanks to Lewtwo and Friends!)
- Are Video Games A Millennial Medium? (No, But Not For The Reasons You Think)
- Natalie Watched Eddington (Politically Prescient in the Worst Way (Complimentary))
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Has Spent Over $12,000 On Video Games in 13 Years
This past month, gaming went to shit in a handbasket, and there is ample reason to be cynical, disdainful, or generally bitter toward the future of the industry. Not the medium though, don’t get it twisted. However, one topic that has stood out to me in this murky quagmire of discussion has been the subject of game affordability. This has never not been a hot topic, dating back to even the 80s when games cost like $150 and could be beaten in two hours if you were good e nuff, and I could talk about that.
…But I don’t wanna! I want to address this topic by looking inward and asking “How much dirty money have I spent on video games over the course of my life?”
Now, the answer to that is impossible, as I do not have a record of every game I owned as a child, and I did not have any formal accounting of my expenses and/or gifts as a kid. Everything was cash when I was a kid! However, I do have records of all my credit card expenses beginning in June 2013. This marks when I began becoming invested in PC gaming, when I built my first PC, and when I got my first seasonal job.
(I was a custodian at an office building near my house. Normally, some disabled kids would clean the office, as a workplace assistance program, but during the summer and winter, when they were off of school, I would clean the office. I continued doing this for two years.)
So, looking at this record of my “lifetime” spending on games, what do the numbers say? Well, they say I have a fucking problem.
In 13 years and one month— yes, I know that’s a stupid date range— I have spent over $12,000 on video games.
HOW and WHY?
Well, to provide a different chart than the one above, that breaks things out by year, we can pretty easily break things down.
My categorization is a bit plentiful, but largely self-explanatory excluding how I handle my Humble Bundle purchases. Certain Humble purchases gave you both a Steam key and a DRM-free copy, and I simply did not care to consider what was a Steam game and what was a DRM-free game for this project.
Throughout the 2010s, my buying habits made sense. I was building out a new library on PC, so I bought a bunch of cheap games, spending just under $500 on them, because I did not have a steady income. In 2014, I got my first steady job, so I started buying more games, including a PlayStation Vita, over a hundred bucks in Vita games, while continuing to build out my PC game library. 2015, well, I just spent a lot more on games, definitely more than I should have at the time, but I was emboldened by my new job, eager to play more games at launch, for higher prices, and throwing away money on Kickstarters. $150 of my 2015 spending was just on Bloodstained.
2016 and 2017 are not interesting. I was saving up money, adhered to a budget, and stuck to it. 2018? That is when I bought a Switch, three retail games, Kamiko, a pro controller, and screen protector, for just under $500. The Switch buffer continued forth, eating up a significant amount of my spending each year while I was buying fewer PC games. This trend continued for from 2020 to 2022, and much of the reason why can be attributed to a change in focus.
This was a time where I was playing Dragalia Lost every day, doing regular Student Transfer scenario reviews, editing my old novels, writing two new novels, and working from home on account of the pandemic. I was not really focusing on PC gaming at the level I was previously, and while I bought a couple hundred dollars worth of games, I was only buying things when they were remarkably cheap or I had a strong desire to snag them. Then came 2024, where I had a clear change in methodology.
This is when I became increasingly paranoid about the future of games preservation, being able to buy games, and delisting. Throughout 2024, I went from wanting to buy games when they were cheap, or I wanted to play them NOW to wanting to buy everything I was interested in once it got cheap enough. I was not spending too much on any give game. I mean, I did buy Palworld for myself and Cassie, I bought Dokapon Kingdom with the intent of playing it with friends, and I bought Minecraft to play with friends. But I did not buy anything else over $30.
Plus, part of me did feel like I was somehow “supporting the industry in a time of need.”
Akumako: “Yeah, because buying indie games for $5 from key resellers and maxing out the charitable portion on Humble Bundles really supports the devs…”
This brings us to 2025 and… what the fuck was my problem here? Well, I bought a Nintendo Switch 2, Pro Controller, and Pokémon Legends Z-A with its Mega Dimension DLC. That’s $700 right there. But why did I spend over $1,000 on Steam games? …In my defense, I bought about a hundred games or DLCs, only reaching full price with The Somnium Files 3 and Hundred Line. But that’s a pretty crappy justification.
My problem was three-fold. I was not in a good mood throughout 2025 for various reasons. It was 2025, my output was lacking, I was unable to pursue my creative ventures, I was stressed out at work and craved the dopamine hit of buying something, and I felt rich after netting an incredibly generous bonus.
Akumako: “Natalie worked her ass off and got a $35,000 white-collar worker bonus.”
…Thanks. Not like I believe in OPSEC anyway.
Still, that did not justify my actions. Like, did I need to spend a hundred bucks on the Yakuza Kiwami next gen upgrade, Kamiwaza: Way of the Thief, Stardew Valley, Head AS Code, Birth ME Code, Two Worlds – Epic Edition, Little Busters! English Edition, Tower Hunter, Touhou Luna Nights, Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, Drainus, and Bladechimera? Of course not! Still, I had my eyes on all of them, thought they looked cool, so I bought them, supporting the publishers when gaming was in a slump and wanted the satisfaction of adding something to a pile or list.
…Then I kept at this in 2026, spending over a thousand dollars on games in the first half of the year. Why? Because I wanted them. If I see a neat looking game that I thought is cool on some level, I will now just BUY IT if it becomes cheap enough. When I see Judgment, Like a Dragon: Ishin!, Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Sonic Colors: Ultimate for less than $60, I don’t rationally assess if I will realistically play any of them. I look at them, think about what I know about digital game pricing, acknowledge these are deep discounts, and decided “that’s a damn good deal.”
My fixation on buying cool games if they are sufficiently cheap is what has been driving me to buy games throughout the past three years. It’s why I grabbed Paper Mario 2, Mario & Luigi 6, and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong Remake for a hundred bucks in total. Because when else are those games going to be this cheap?
Now, is this a problem that is harming me financially? Eh, not really. My monthly take-home pay is over $5,000 between my revenue streams. My mortgage was refinanced to be under $2,000 a month, my HOA assessments are currently $700, they’ll go down significantly in 2027, and my patronage bill per month is… $120 on average. I don’t pay for electric, phone internet, or food, my mother pays those as a form of rent.
Akumako: “$300, $60, $40, electric is variable… that’s a damn good deal.”
This means I have a lot of cash left over to spend on stuff, and I choose to spend most of it on my mortgage, where I try to pay over $1,000 in additional principal payments. With my financial position, I can easily afford to spend $2,000 a year on video games. Hell, if I wanted to clear out my Steam wishlist, which has over 550 games, I could afford it! Though, uh, less than 400 of them have been actually released. …Also, of these 400-ish games, less than 30 of them are on GOG. That is why I don’t use GOG very often.
This is not a problem for me, especially because I so rarely buy games for less than 50% off, but also… I should not be doing this. I should be focusing on saving money, accumulating it, and investing it in order to get a secure steady return. I should only buy things I actually want, and will actually use. This is logical. …But I still LIKE doing this.
Why though? Why would someone as logical as me take comfort in buying things I don’t plan on using, and likely never will use? I could try to compare it to people who collect physical things. Games, books, vinyl, media, tchotchkes, model trains. I could call myself a tsundoku but for games— tsunge to make a call-back. Yet, I knowingly lack the argument that “it’s okay, I can always resell it or give it away later” often used by collectors of physical tat. Though, for me, and for most collectors, the reason to collect is less to secure an investment and more to accumulate things that give them a sense of security.
Collectors value access and availability above all else. Knowing you have something is emotionally reassuring, it’s cathartic, and makes one at peace when they see a collection. I know that because that’s what I felt when I was buying physical games regularly and why I bought my physical games. I don’t have any intention of getting rid of them, or reselling them, I like knowing that I secured them while I could.
With digital games, you lack the tangible and physical element, but through accounts, licenses, rights, and files on your drives, you do have access to them. I care FAR MORE about having ready access to something over legally owning something, which can be reflected in what I have on my computer. 20 days of music, 40 days of podcasts, 90,000 images before counting my dedicated comic collection, and 1.3 TB of ROMs, fan games, and abandonware. I am a digital hoarder who wants to keep as many things I care about as is reasonable on my drives. I would install everything if space was no object, but TBs cost dollars. So when I see something I want, I will grab it.
You might be wondering why I am not a physical hoarder if that is the case. Hell, if anything I am a minimalist with the stuff I have in my room. I don’t even have shelves! But it all makes sense with some Nat Lore™.
Akumako: “Don’t attach a TM to that unless you actually trademark it.”
In late 2014, around the time I turned 20, my bedroom was besieged by bedbugs. They infested my bed frame, my mattress, and led me to basically take down everything in my room. After this experience, stripping my walls bare and putting my games in a bug-proof bin for a few months, I realized… I don’t actually care about physical crap. After this, I never re-read or revisited any of the stuff I shoved into my chubby hole. Then in 2023, when it came time for me to move to my current residence, I decided that I just did not need or want my old game stuff. I had not touched it in years, and I did not need stuff when I had memories.
…Still, I would be lying if I said that my reasons for going all-in on a digital collection of every game I think is neat or cool is anything more than a financial vice. Some people are big into eating expensive food, some like concerts, some enjoy travel or general vacation, and some like the thrills of luxury. I like the feeling of having ALL THESE games at my disposal, acquired through fully legal means.
Now, I would love to play through all of these games, yet the one thing that my disposable income cannot get me is time.
Okay, okay, I went on this personal tangent, but what was it all for? Am I going to change my behaviors here? Eh… probably not. While I recognize that this tendency to accumulate digital licenses is emotional, illogical, and stupid, I also feel that I should be putting my money back into games, and this is one way to do it. Sure, these sales won’t DO much of anything, as they are outside of the relevant period. Sure, I’m sending 30% to Valve or GOG, and whatever percentage cut the likes of Green Man Gaming, Fandom’s Fanatical, and other keysellers take. But money is money, and either the money is gonna go here or it’s gonna go to my mortgage. And an extra $2,000 a year ain’t gonna do much…
Besides, this is FAR from the dumbest financial thing I’ve done. This is still $3,000 less than what I spent on sweet Colombian pussy.
Akumako: “How the fuck are you in the top 20% wealth bracket for your age, you dumb bitch?”
Natalie Will NOT be Reviewing Class of ’09: Puzzle Showdown
(It Was Too Bloody Hard!)
So, here’s something I planned on saving for a proper review, but I’m instead going to be talking about Class of ’09: Puzzle Showdown here and now.
Last week, SBN3 released the fourth Class of ’09 game, pivoting away from the genre of visual novels and into the realm of a puzzle game. Specifically, a Puzzle League slash Panel del Pon clone— taking specific inspiration from Pokémon Puzzle League (2000) that is so blatant in its UX design that it’s a wonder how this is legally sound.
Now, this seemed like a compelling concept. Class of ’09 went viral in 2023 among Zoomies who were captivated by the earnestness and rawness of the games’ depiction of late 2000s edge and rawness in the form of a radio drama shaped like a visual novel. Many people came for the sense of earnestness, comedy, and a script that was both incredibly quotable and earnestly funny. Me though? I’m just a fan of SBN3. I haven’t been for as long as the OGs, but I went through his back catalog and think he is a highly skilled, multifaceted creator. If you haven’t seen Heaven Ain’t Hard to Find yet, or bumped The Comedy Noise LP, get on that shit.
The story of Puzzle Showdown is pretty light. In July 2009— after the eponymous class has graduated— most pre-established characters gets their cell phones hacked and is forced to participate in a puzzle game. Whoever defeats the mastermind— The Puzzler— shall get a reward of some manner, and also everybody’s phone will be unlocked. What follows is a six-part campaign of precipitously increasingly difficult versus battles, ranging from baby mode to oh god this is a nightmare, following various characters as they try to get the mysterious prize.
While I appreciate the ability to change character perspectives across various mini-campaigns, the main story suffers from the fact that it’s largely of roughly 60 skits between characters without much of a compelling narrative through line. The performances are great, seasoned by years of experience. The writing is punchy and funny, if a bit repetitive in how it draws out a justification for characters to engage in puzzle battle. Yet Puzzle Showdown lacks the scenario building and cultural commentary of prior games. The characters cannot, or do not, pursue any of the absurd ventures seen in prior games. They’re not working shitty retail jobs, trying to sell drugs, dealing with toxic relationships, or getting systematically pursued by pedophiles. (Because they’re majors now.) They’re just mulling around, getting into verbal spats, and throwing down.
It’s well-written for what it is, but it is inherently limited.
As for the gameplay, it is just Pokémon Puzzle League. The UX of the game is so heavily lifted from that one that it would be overly generous to call this a tribute or love letter. The mechanics, the game feel, are so clearly based on a pre-existing series that I could see someone dismiss it as a rip-off. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing, as it’s not like Nintendo is even acknowledging the series nowadays. We haven’t had a new Puzzle League game in 19 years, so go ahead, rip it off!
On the plus side, it’s Puzzle League. It’s a matching puzzle game where blocks rise from the bottom of the screen, if they hit the top, that’s game over, so you need to clear your playfield of blocks by matching three or more. You want to try to get combos of four or higher for additional bonuses depending on the game mode, and if you’re crafty, you will have one combo chain into another or match multiple pairs of blocks at once. It’s easy to learn, but hard to maser, requiring quick reflexes and short-term decision-making.
In Puzzle Showdown, gameplay comes in two main variations. The first is the main campaign where players fight against computer controlled opponents in a versus battle. Players not only need to keep their board clear as blocks rise, but they need to string together combos— other than the standard three block combo— to send junk blocks over to the other player. Junk blocks can be transformed into regular blocks if they touch a combo, where they can be a boon or a bane depending on how the player interacts with them. And junk blocks can also arrive in groups, swiftly turning the tides of battle as one player suddenly has a third of their board occupied by junk blocks they need to deal with ASAP.
The second gameplay mode is seen in Weekend At Emily’s, where the player must survive until they reach a clear line at the bottom of a pile of blocks, which should rarely take more than 90 seconds. There are no junk blocks of opponents to worry about, just you, the blocks, and the goal of surviving. It sounds simple, but as the speed of blocks rise, so does the tension of puzzle matching. And when they rise… they just rise too much.
I had not played a Puzzle League game in MANY years and have forgotten how aggressively difficult they can be. Enemy AI starts out barely able to play the game, but becomes a damn master of it near the end, spotting combos with mechanical precision and sending pillars of junk at the player. You need to move fast, react fast, and get lucky with the RNG of block placements right from the start. The moment you start going after basic three block matches and not prioritizing junk spam is the moment they will come in for a counterattack.
While the Weekend At Emily’s puzzles… are so difficult I was not able to complete the mode once, with the last five levels being so fast, so aggressive, and demanding a level of precision that I simply cannot provide. I would say that the difficulty speed should peak around level 40, which is tense yet manageable, but instead it goes up all the way to level 50. At this intensity, you don’t just need to make matches, you need to be constantly making matches of 4 and above as an errant second can be the difference between success and failure.
Battles that begin on 43 or higher speed, you have literally two seconds before you lose, and need to make a match within your first two moves. If you can’t find them, you die. If you have bad RNG, you die. And not only do you need to go through this about five times per run, bit if you want to get all eight endings, you need to do this eight times. Getting through one of these level 5 stages is hard enough, but asking me to go through all 5, a total of 8 times? Kindly piss off!
Yes, yes, the original games this entire gameplay system is lifted from imposed similar challenges, I get that— I confirmed that— but they were not designed as proper campaigns. They were designed as arcade-style challenges you’re expected to come back to, again and again, in order to master. By comparison Class of ’09: Puzzle Showdown is an explicitly story-driven experience that locks progression and learning these stories behind these puzzles. Nobody really cares about the story of Puzzle League in most instances, and if they do, they only need to go through it once.
I don’t want to say that this is a genuine barrier that makes the game inaccessible to a lot of players but… wait, no, I do want to say that, because it’s true. While I think there is something to enjoy here, the difficulty is just too cranked up for ME, let alone whatever the target audience of this visual novel spin-off is supposed to be. An easy mode would fix most of my issues with it, at least mechanically. Until that happens, and I simply doubt it will, I cannot recommend this to anyone except for the three dudes who are Puzzle League beasts and Class of ’09 enjoyers who weren’t burned by the footjob fiesta.
Xbox Backwards Compatibility Comes to PC!
(Play 4 Original Xbox Games on Your Windows Machine!)
Next up, onto the actual news, we have Microsoft who… Can I just go a month without talking about Microsoft? I HATE those lousy sons of bitches and their deliberate desire to destroy video games. They close studios, steal jobs, and cancel projects all the goldarn time, while doing their own part to decay the console market, the idea of game ownership, and the potential future of the medium. I want them GONE, I want them OUT, and I do not want to see their stupid Xbox name show up!
Akumako: “Uh, this time they’re actually doing something genuinely good though.”
How is that even POSSIBLE?
Akumako: “They’re bringing original Xbox games to PC!”
…What?
Akumako: “Yep!”
Why? How? I thought they fired everybody in charge with their backwards compatibility program! Did they develop an Xbox emulator before this?
Akumako: “Seemingly! Effective July 22nd, you can now play BLiNX: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy on your Windows PC and supposed Xbox-branded handhelds. If you already bought them, or are subscribed to the relevant Game Pass tier, you can download them, no extra charge. If you don’t have them, you can snag each for $10, which is a fair enough price, I’d say.”
…So, this is insane.
I have wanted Microsoft to bring over their classic console library for YEARS, pretty much ever since they announced their multiplatform approach eleven years ago. Original Xbox emulation, like most emulation, has gotten a boon in recent years, with Xbox emulator Xemu boasting an 87% playable rating for Xbox games, many of which were never re-released. So Microsoft, who makes Xbox and Windows, pretty much always had the knowhow needed to make this happen. They just waited nearly 25 years before doing something like this!
These four titles are meant to be the first of many, and come with various enhancements. Specifically graphical options letting you play these games in 4 times their original resolution and with additional antialiasing to make the picture sharp and good. More features are planned, such as achievements for original Xbox games, which really matter to some people.
I honestly have to wonder how many games will be supported by this, as Microsoft only brought back sixty-something original Xbox games out of nearly a thousand. And for as much as I would LOVE for Xbox 360 games to be included here, I’m not getting my hopes up. Yes, even after the datamines, cynicism makes the heart grow yonder.
However, discarding my stupid cynicism for a moment, this is a good thing. It is Microsoft making several games legally available for a brand new platform and announcing plans for them to keep up the pace. While I WILL NOT support Microsoft financially given their rampant disregard to their own workers, along with the many reasons BDS wants us to boycott them. Yet, this is exactly the type of thing I want to see them use their resources to achieve.
Akumako: “Do you think this is their low-key plan? To shift from dedicated hardware to Windows and bring backwards compatible Xbox and Xbox 360 titles to Windows as they phase out ‘Xbox’ as a unique operating system?”
I’m hope so! I REALLY do!
HUGE Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Development Details Just Dropped
(Thanks to Lewtwo and Friends!)
Back during the development of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, Game Freak produced a documentary describing the development of the title, showing the game’s development process in lavish detail. This was made for internal use only, not something to be sold, and was more a way for the developers to catalog this nearly-three-year-long process. This is apparently something known in the Pokémon archival fandom, yet I had never heard of it until this past week. …Because a DVD containing this documentary was found, uploaded to YouTube, the Internet Archive, and chronicled by PokéTuber Lewtwo.
The development details are themselves quite interesting. The documentary goes over how the devs tried to find the right angle for the fourth generation, plans to expand features, and the development difficulties in just making an online 3D game for the Nintendo DS. However, the most fascinating element is easily the fact the documentary contained dozens of early and scrapped Pokémon designs that were painstakingly reconstructed by Lewtwo.
Lewtwo prepared both a web page and hour-long video going over his findings in this documentary, and the results are captivating. The lead up to Pokémon Diamond and Pearl was the most invested I was in a Pokémon game before release— because I was literally 11. So seeing the iterations of Pokémon I remember seeing through blurry magazine scans and mockups is fascinating. Both in how the low quality and general design ethos matched leaks and “leaks” of the era, and how radically different the designs are in some instances. And don’t even get me started on the new evolutions/pre-evolutions. I love them and wish they were my friends.
Some design changes are subtle, others are radical, and the fact that we don’t always have a clear look at these Pokémon, as these were single frame captures included on a DVD, evokes a sense of wonder. It’s an amazing find, something that should be documented and shared given how these games touches tens of millions of people (thanks Arfoire!), and I look forward to how the fandom will process this information in the ensuing years.
…By that, I mostly mean artists redrawing these scrapped Pokémon and their designs being implemented into the fandom of fangames, not unlike the Space World 1997 demo Pokémon or any number of cut Pokémon from various leaks. I might not like Fakemon in my Pokémon fangames, but those? Those I like.
Thanks, Lewtwo. Between this and the big old art archive project, you really are the type of historian this community needs. Big ups!
Are Video Games A Millennial Medium?
(No, But Not For The Reasons You Think)
A lot of what I do in these Rundowns is react to something on my curated information feeds, taking in what is said there, what I see from others, and trying to develop my own thoughts. It’s an “intellectual exercise” that is just part of how I process information at this point, and this here is one such example.
The embedded, timestamped, video above was making the rounds on my usual spot, ResetEra, and spurred a bit of generational discourse about gaming. Specifically, if the core single-player fixed-purchase order that was known by the site’s users, and the broader Western Core Gamer, was a generational phenomenon and the next generation would be different. It’s a lot of hearsay, theorizing, anecdotes, and triggered from a subject that is only semi-related and focuses on 40-to-50-year-old dudes who got into Nintendo in the 1980s.
However, at its core, it raises an interesting discussion of whether the way of the single-player, fixed-purchase, franchise-based, video game will be a generational thing and if there will be a market for it once the 50-somethings stop gaming. Which, I mean, they shouldn’t, as retired people have spending money and free time, but nobody is making games for retired people.
Now, it feels intuitive to say that the audience will always be there, especially with gaming being so big, but the argument against this “history will progress as usual” perspective lies in a change in how people play games. Mobile is the dominant form of gaming by a significant margin, and for the past decade plus, it has been common for a child’s first gaming device to not be a console or handheld, but rather a smartphone. While seemingly insignificant, this change does a LOT to shift the types of games children play and how they play them.
Everybody has access to a phone, and everybody has access to games, which should mean that various kids would gravitate towards a wide spectrum of different games, and there should be a generation where truly everybody is a gamer. Is that true? To an extent, yes, but… when something is so readily available, the vast majority will be casual enjoyers. Not everybody with a Spotify account cares about music as a medium. Not everybody who goes to the movies is a film buff, and not all readers have hard thoughts about the publishing industry, making content for BookTok. The majority of people who engage in a thing do so at a casual level, and it would be weird if that was not the case.
This has also been true for console video games from, say, 1990 to 2015. There was ALWAYS been a far broader casual gaming audience that has been more fascinated in narrower experiences. They play games… with their friends. They might not play more than a handful of games a year, drifting between a bunch of familiar staples, and just view it as another form of entertainment. Us millennials, we had this with people who were only into sports games, GTA, CoD and Halo. To reappropriate a term stolen by a Nazi: Gramer shit.
Even in the 90s, many of the most popular games were sports games and fighting games, but not because they were into competitive multiplayer. Oh, no. Instead, they were things that people could play with their friends. I don’t know that there was is a direct through line to people who bought Madden ’94 for Genesis to people who made Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) a phenomenon. …But there probably was!
The core is an island in the sea of casuals, but as the sea grows bigger, the island should grow as more people who played games casually choose to get super nerdy and weird about things. However, it needs to be asked if that will happen as it did in the past, because of what gaming on a smartphone is.
Every kid has a smartphone and every kid can play games on it, but what games do they play? Well, phone games, and mostly the biggest phone games. Roblox is designed to limit the imagination of what a game will be and lock users into the app, discouraging exploration and engagement with art in general. Fortnite aspires to do the exact same. Minecraft is meant to be played endlessly with friends. And if you check the app store, you will find almost exclusively a series of live services.
These live services can range considerably in terms of genres, and it should not be discounted how diverse Roblox games are. Phone users do have access to games of many genres, and many traditional genres such as action adventure games, JRPGs, shooters, racing, RTS, and even platformers. All available at the cost of their time and… patience, I guess.
The sad truth is that all these games are designed around their monetization model and nature as live service. They are designed for constant engagement, routine scheduled play, social dependency, and extracting money via psychological manipulation tactics targeting the vulnerable. To someone weened on this, who ONLY sees this type of game, only plays it with glass, there isn’t a great off-ramp to consoles.
The idea of a game with a campaign, an end state, using physical buttons, analog sticks, and without monetization or social elements, is likely foreign to this group, and THAT is the problem. Consoles used to be easily available as a cheap alternative, cheaper than a phone in some instances. However, with this memory crisis, I doubt a lot of kids are getting game consoles if they have phones. Hell, it’s doubtful they will get computers that can play games. Chromebooks can’t do shit, based on what I heard, and for as much people LOVED that MacBook Neo, Mac is not really a gaming platform.
What children like and how they develop is unfortunately informed by what is available to them. Everybody is born with a set of individual values, exposed to things that give them different effort values. In order to get people to like something, become invested, curious, they need to know it exists, they need to be exposed to it.
There is basically no reason why a 25-year-old in 2030 who mostly played Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite on hand-me-down iPhones would really want a PlayStation 6. They did not grow up with console games, so why would they want a console, when the games they’ve always played are on their iPhone 20 or whatever. They don’t know about single-player cinematic games, as they probably never played one on their platform of choice. And when it comes to using a controller? We take it for granted, but there’s a serious learning curve there. With keyboard and mouse, you use those for computing, so there’s a muscle memory, but controllers take a decently long time to get comfortable with.
You don’t need to have started with Atari or Nintendo or Mega Drive or PlayStation 2 to like single-player games. But if someone never really touches them, and becomes an adult, then they kind of missed the bote (Cassie spelling), and I do think there is reason to be concerned about that. There is reason to be concerned to think that future generations will just see live services as the primary mode of video games, and the only one they want to engage with. Arguably, we are already seeing that, but I don’t have the precise demographic data, arranged over the span of a decade, to examine how the play habits of 15-year-olds in 2016 changed as of 2026, and what 15-year-olds of today are into.
All of this is on top of the business model and ease of use divide. If people grow up where games are free, available on their phone, and have social elements, it’s hard to accept an alternate, experience where games cost money upfront, are on a computer, and are largely isolated experiences. The industry never bothered to create an off-ramp for this… but that was kind of intentional. Off-ramping people off of phones was never the goal, and game publishers don’t want that. They want everybody locked into mobile live services, forever.
This is at the core of why I loathe live services so much and think they are the worst thing to happen to gaming, because this is the end goal. Massive publishers, lead by data-driven business people, want to END kill the side of gaming I grew up with, and the side I care infinitely more about than… just about anything.
The subject is not about kids being programmed different, or coming out of the womb running iOS ‘n’ shit. No. This is about the children being thrown into a climate where they are not given the opportunity to develop the same understanding and values as their parents. They are being thrown into a hostile world that wants to abuse them, hurt them, keep them dependent, keep them ignorant, and above all, keep them stupid. Because it’s WAY easier to extract money from stupid people.
I would like to say that the kids will be alright, that PC only friendslop will get them on Steam and busy checking out the latest single player indie hotness. Because that very well might be the case. Because I WANT that to be the case! But I will only believe that under two instances. I actually monitor the gaming activities of dozens of children in a way that confirms what I want to see. (Which will not happen because of that damn restraining order.) Or I am provided with data that confirms that tens of millions of children are migrating to single player gaming.
Simply put, I do not like the live service and multiplayer sector that dominates the medium and has dominated it for so many years, maybe even decades, at this point. Alas, as far as I can tell, with the memory crisis looking like a half-decade-plus event, I can’t help but be pessimistic about the future of the strand of games I care about.
Natalie Watched Eddington
(Politically Prescient in the Worst Way (Complimentary))
This past week, friend of the site, Ouran Nakagawa recommended that I watch Eddington (2025), a political neo-western that she enthusiastically called “the most important film of the 2020s.” This was intriguing to me, as I had never heard of it before, and after watching it… I completely understand what she was getting at. Because Eddington is a film that both captures nearly everything that has defined America since the start of the pandemic and is surprisingly prescient in certain instances.
It’s also a hard film to talk about without giving much away, as it covers so much in its 2.5 hour runtime that not talking about the latter half feels like not talking about the movie as a whole. Starting out, the movie is about small town troubles during the pandemic of May 2020 and a sheriff, Joe Cross, who doesn’t want to wear a mask even as everybody tells him to, with a datacenter project in the background. But as the movie goes on, it tells a story of the failures of America’s political, governmental, and general systems in the face of big tech as the old world is put on life support, if not outright killed. How it gets there is its own flavor of absurd, yet it manages to remain consistent and cohesive despite tackling so many unique elements.
As such, in order to talk about Eddington, get ready for some SPOILERS!
I could do a full-on showcase of this movie, but in the interest of time, I just want to talk about a few of the more important characters and plot points, what they represent, and how they tie into the movie’s messaging.
Let’s start with Joe Cross. I could just say he’s a cop who wears a cowboy hat, and you’d get the idea. He’s full of himself and believes he is entitled to power through his service as a protector of the people. (From what is my question.) Yet, he is incapable of doing what his job demands of him, and instead chooses to blame others. He presents himself as a strong man, but really he is just loud and full of himself, thinking he has the right to decide what it right or wrong. He spends most of the film decidedly not doing his job, preferring to offload duties on his two subordinates and turn his police station into a mayoral campaign office.
Dawn, Joe’s mother-in-law, is a conspiracy theorist nutjob who believes that the world is corrupt and led by a cabal of evil people who wish to harm children and innocents alike. Unfortunately, her conservative beliefs and general bigotry lead her unable to suspect the obvious suspects, leading her to fruitlessly try to find a way to make her chosen reality make sense. All of which was implicitly triggered by the sudden death of her husband, who they still have an effigy up of, despite the fact that he died seven years ago. Because people of her genre cannot let go of trauma, but covets it.
Lou, Joe’s wife, is broken, if not traumatized, plagued by untreated trauma and mental illness likely exasperated by her mother, loss of her father, and the stress of being a cop’s wife. Meaning there’s a 40% chance she’s subject to domestic abuse… but we don’t actually see that. Regardless, she’s pretty much the only thing grounding Joe, keeping him from going off the deep-end, and despite recognizing that, Joe obviously does not respect her, inventing a story where the current mayor raped her, just to boost his campaign. Why? Because Joe, the archetypical conservative lawman, ultimately views her as a tool for his own gains and satisfaction.
Speaking of which, Ted Garcia is the town’s Hispanic pro-business liberal mayor who is banking on solar (yay) and a datacenter (boo) to save the ailing economy of this dying town, suffering from economic stagnation. Though he espouses tangentially good policies, he is openly more interested in enriching the already wealthy than he is in helping people with their actual problems. In other words, he is the moderate Democrat, and is depicted as a man more interested in doing business, social engagements that go against his expressed policies, and personal drama.
The central cast is full of these flawed characters, but what’s arguably more interesting is its takes on other movements that were en vogue circa May 2020 and beyond, or before.
The Black Lives Matter protests are a major part of this movie, but they are presented in a rather cynical light. Not out of disrespect or racism, but based on the reality of what the less viral protests were. Many were just led by a bunch of ignorant White wannabe allies in a rural town who were driven by emotion and hype over any sort of actual vision. They recite definitions and phrases, and are enthusiastic about their protests, yet fail to understand what it actually takes to dismantle an institution, or recognize that 50 people blocking a street in a small town won’t do anything. It’s a protest born from outrage— performative— rather than actual political activism or organization.
While making a scene can spur along a change, it doesn’t mean anything if it’s in a place where nobody else cares. You need defined goals, objectives, ways to spread your message, and need the proper allyship of the people whose rights you are supposedly defending. Otherwise, it’s just a show for the sake of it, and will lack the true connection or organization necessary for any revolutionary action. We see that with the ending, where a young man who joined the protest for pussy winds up ditching his beliefs to become a Conservative Podcaster. Because, to him, this was all a way for him to get something, and he did not actually believe in any of the shit he was protesting for.
The film remains mum on the subject of actual political organization— because it ain’t happening in Eddington, NM— I find this to be a refreshingly cynical look at the state of protest movements, and how outrage is not a true vehicle for change. Millions marched for BML, yet the police just got bodycams and bigger guns. Phat dub!
The subject of pedophilic conspiracy cult grifters is all neatly rolled into one character by the name of Vernon, who is one of the worst types of dude. A self-help guru who manipulates people into thinking they were abused, blames everything on a cabal of pedophiles while ignoring the actual pedophiles, and peddling conservative guff to desperate people. Part religion, part political, all grift. While not a huge part of the film, he makes just enough of a presence to be known, and leads Lou to leaving Joe behind… which is also where he loses his marbles and the genre of the movie pivots.
Frustrated by everything going wrong in his life, marriage, career, and job, Joe loses any and all sense of professionalism. He lets his true colors show and is that of… not even an authoritarian or fascist. He’s not regimented enough for that fancy guise. Joe’s just a terrorist who believes he can do no wrong and who should have absolute authority, wearing two hats at once. He thinks himself to be a big shot, a main character, and pulls off a big tough guy act… before getting what he wanted.
In what is probably the most fantastical part of this film, the climax of the movie is built around a run-in with a false flag merc operation that brands themselves as a BLM/Antifa organization that goes around killing cops. They are NOT Antifa because Antifa isn’t an organization in both the world of this movie and our world. Spurred by comments made by Joe, and funded by, I don’t know, Peter Thiel or some shit, the group attacks Eddington in a hyper organized and showy attack that is… The Conservative Fantasy.
After asking for the “Antifa terrorists” to come to Eddington, Joe gets his wish and finally has an excuse to be a cool cop and kill some of those damn terrorists. Yet when this happens in the climax, Joe is not brave, bold, or heroic. He is scared shitless, crying and running as he scrambles away through sheer luck more than anything else before finally getting a BIG GUN that he uses to make a big mess. This man fires away like a child playing a video game, not a disciplined cop (oxymoron), destroying property, and killing a fellow cop. A Native American cop.
Following this demonstration of how farcical and unserious police officers truly are, the final terrorist just up and runs to Joe as he is unable to do anything about a guy with a knife, and gets stabbed in the brain. DEAD! …Or at least he should be.
Jumping ahead a year later, Joe is effectively brain dead, yet because he is a valuable prop for various parties— HEROCOPMAN— he is not only kept alive but allowed to run for the mayor of Eddington, and wins. The elected leader is a wheelchair bound lawman unable to do anything other than sporadically flail one arm around. He never asked for this, and cannot consent to this, yet he is still propped around and cared for by Dawn, who has blended her conspiratorial craziness with full on far right talking points. She blends conspiracy and policy together until there’s barely a distinction between the two. This is the new right-wing, one that is propping up the corpses of heroes, law, order, and better times as a means of legitimizing conspiratorial capitalist crap.
And what do they do with this power? They build green energy projects, yes, but mostly as a way to support the gluttonous power demands of AI companies.
That’s where we are in America.
Neoliberalism is dead, shot by power-hungry Republicans who no longer believe in rules, but merely power. Republicans themselves are, or will be, turned into half-dead props as the burgeoning technofeudalists strip America for parts, turning it into an economic zone where all the money goes to them.
All the shit I’ve been going crazy over, right there, succinctly told, in a movie made in 2024, yet feels like it was made tomorrow. The fake Antifa terrorists angle feels like an idea that someone came up with just days after Marco Rubio went on a scree about far left terrorists being as bad as Jihads, defining NONE of his terms. Joe being a brain dead politician is especially relevant after Mitch McConnell’s disappearance from Congress and how Lindsey Graham died, and his seat was handed to his sister, because that’s how democracy works. Hell, that one scene in the climax where a minor character is livestreaming on his phone as he shoots a merc? That’s how modern school shooters do it! If you’re gonna be terrorizing Ruskie bucks, you gotta do that shit LIVE! Fuck yo live streamers, we in the live shooter era, fucklo!
This movie is ahead of its time, in the worst way, and I am horrified to see how else it will predict the future.
Progress Report 2026-07-26
Japanese military propaganda is on a whole nother level… LOOK AT THIS THICC CATBOY! This is a symbol of death in 2026!
So, I recently read a Verge article about how CD and vinyl sales have been going up as of late, but not necessarily because people were using it. Rather, because people want “aesthetic ownership,” they want objects representing an album they like, rather than a thing to play it, and view a CD or vinyl are a thing to put in their living space for the looks and vibes. Which should not surprise me, as plenty of people buy books to look smart, but as someone who has never seen vinyl outside of my dad’s basement
Maybe I need to go into more people’s homes. Outside of family members, I have only been in someone else’s home… twice in the past decade. Once was Cassie’s father’s home and the other was an AirBNB I rented with Cassie. However, I also cannot help but find the need to express your interests physically to be… uncomfortable, personally. I am on some level afraid of expressing my interests and desires to others I need to interact with in meatspace. I don’t want to explain what I’m into to my mother. Neither her nor my boss of 8 years even knows about Natalie.TF, just that I write stuff online.
It’s an extension of my deep desire to not stand out, and to be ignored. I am one of the few people who do not want to be seen as attractive. I want to be seen as middling, uninteresting, and like I’m not worth giving the time of day. The idea of someone thinking I’m cute, sexy, or any of that gross shit. I don’t even like wearing anything but the blandest and most boring clothing, because I don’t want to be seen for my aesthetic. I don’t want an aesthetic. I want to be myself through my thoughts and actions, not how I look.
Akumako: “…How does someone like you have a body swap fetish? You don’t even WANT a body!”
People are still complaining about the PlayStation disc situation, and rightfully so, they are losing an option for ownership while getting nothing. While I do think it is good to highlight how immaterial sales can be in the US, a key market, as some people need to realize they are a stark minority, I don’t like how people report the countries where PSN is unavailable. PSN is available to roughly 5.7 billion people around the world, with 2.45 billion unable to create an account per Sony’s terms of service. This number is made up of MOST countries in the world, and that’s not too surprising. Some companies don’t want to bother with markets with less than a few million people, because how many of them would realistically buy your stuff?
However, it is absurd that Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Vietnam are excluded. All of these countries have a population of over a hundred million people! I get not supporting Iran or Iraq because of the sanctions and decades of political CRAP going on with them, as that makes foreign business hard. But Pakistan is the FIFTH largest country! Tanzania, Kenya, and Sudan also have larger populations than South Korea, but they aren’t given support? Is their money just no good?
And THIS is what I think should be the actual discussion point. You might not be able to get your discs back, but you can fight for better digital rights.
…Or you can accept that PlayStation only wants to cater to the top 20% of wealthy nations and does not give a FUCK about the poors.
OH SNAP! Members of the Lached Up Games community actually got started on a fan wiki after I said “this series really needs a wiki” in my review. HELL YEAH! I love it when I ask for something and then other people do it for me! That RARELY happens to me these days! I LOVE to see it!
…And they quote my reviews on the games’ wiki pages. …DOPE!
2026-07-19: Watched more Re:Zero season 4 with friends. Not crazy about the direction they are taking, but I’m still invested. Wrapped up the Natsumi Swap review with an extra 400 words. Played Maria Mania, wrote 1,000 words on it, made headers for both with a slightly new format. Then realized I had to edit a BUNCH of stuff, so I spend the rest of the day doing that. Monkey Man? EDITED! Student Transfer scenarios? EDITED! This shit? NO! Also, I noticed I was gaining a bit of weight (still under 150 though), so I decided to start adding five minutes of weights to my routine and crank up to level 9 cycling on the old Schwinn.
2026-07-20: Edited OVER 9,000 words for this week’s Rundown. Might offload the PC gaming segment somewhere, but prolly not. Read the first 30% of A Change of Heart by Claire Sylvia and William Novak for inspiration for TSF Series #019. Currently fighting two ideas against each other, assuming I have the BALLS to return to TSF Series with some F2M incest. (I do!) I also had to walk a bunch to get to the dentist, so I was SORE the following day, as I did not wear my good shoes and had to run to catch a bus.
2026-07-21: Spent more time reading A Change of Heart, getting to the 75% point. I got to the good stuff, feel it will be downhill from here, but it’s a surprisingly fun read. Had to stop to get some draft ideas out, and I think I have some HOT MILK in my system right now!
2026-07-22: Wrote 1,000 words for the Lewtwo and Xbox backcomp bit. Watched some RAW MID MMO anime with Cassie, as she was feeling lonesome. Realized that A Change of Heart and Girl in My Dream were closer than they should be, and finished A Change of Heart. It’s a bit long in the tooth and I don’t think I like the writer, but as a TF enthusiast, I thought it was COOL! I got started on the outline, but ran out of steam, and I think I accidentally got myself back into video game mode after prepping all those reviews. I want to PLAY something, but I also do not want to start something massive like Fate Stay Night or the other TSF games, as I know Coffee Buns is coming soon. Also, not sure if I WANT to play Beast of Reincarnation after Mega Dimension was a Mega Disappointment. Will need to wait for reviews. Ugh. Commitment issues SUCK! 2,700 words drafted for the TSF Series #019 outline.
2026-07-23: Wrote 1,700 words for the generational DRAMA bit, edited the last few segments. Wrote like 2,000 words for the next TSF Series. Wrote about 2,000 words for the TSF Series #019 outline. Started AITSF 1.5, about 2.5 hours.
2026-07-24: Wrote 4,200 for the TSF Series #019 outline, did some mapping for each chapter, but ran out of steam. Decided that was enough, as I did not want to bust all my creative juices. More AITSF 1.5. The puzzles in this game are pretty complicated, but I like that. Been a decade since I solved a Zero Escape puzzle.
2026-07-25: Finished the TSF Series #019 outline, played more AITSF 1.5.
Natalie.TF 2026 Progress Report
- 2026-07-28: Natsumi Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review – DONE
- 2026-07-31: Maria Mania Legacy Route – Student Transfer Scenario Review – DONE
- 2026-08-05: Natalie Rambles About Monkey Man – DONE
- 2026-08-??: Beast of Reincarnation Review – Maybe Canceled?
- 2026-08-??: TSF Series #019: An Exchange of Flesh – Outlining
- 2026-08-??: AI: The Somnium Files 1.5: No Sleep For Kaname Date
- 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