Rundown (9/20/2026) We Don’t Need No Imagination!

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This Week’s Topics:

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
We Don’t Need No Imagination!

So, one of the more curious criticisms I’ve seen towards modern AAA gaming trends is how the fixation on fidelity, photorealism, and Graphic Lust has caused games to no longer require the use of one’s “imagination.” I understand what this argument is trying to say. If a game offers a world without much detail, if the characters are rendered in just a few thousand polygons, if grass is just a bitmap, you need to extrapolate information onto this abstraction. You need to figure out what you’re looking at. Meanwhile, modern AAA games with realistic or high fidelity aesthetics don’t require the same amount of imagination, as everything is rendered in detail, and you don’t need to think about what something is. You just look at it and can tell what it is.

I understand this argument. Games simply look different depending on their level of fidelity, duh. However, I take umbrage with this terminology due to the fact that, when I am looking at an older game, I am not really imagining anything. I am playing the game, as it is, extrapolating what things are supposed to be via context clues like the outline of polygons or the details of murky textures. I’ve been playing Donkey Kong 64 (1999) as of late, and despite being a highly creative game, I’m not imagining the hair textures of the Kong family, the grass, or the rocky surfaces. Because, one, that would require constant effort on my behalf, and two, I have the ability to accept that this is the world. This is what it looks like, this is how it works, Lanky Kong does not need to go toilet, and these floating barrels are just a part of this collective universe.

At most, I’m imagining navigational aids like a mental map, mental notes, and making connections between the mechanics the game taught me and what I am perceiving from the game. But that’s not what the argument that “games don’t inspire the imagination as much as they used to” is really discussing. I think the effective definition of imagination in this context is a mechanism to turn something abstract into something realistic. And if something is already realistic, then it requires less imagination.

This is something that runs contrary to how I conceptualize what I look at and understand it, as I find simpler designs easier to understand and process. I find it easier to understand what I’m looking at in a screenshot or video from Ocarina of Time (1998) versus its upcoming remake. I don’t need to unpack as much visual data or noise caused by the realistic texture or lighting when looking at an N64 game. The simpler something is, the easier it is to understand it, and so long as you can tell what it is, you do not need to imagine. If a room has just a single wood floor texture, some basic tables, and some dreary lighting, then you don’t need to imagine anything. What you’re seeing is just there in front of you, same with a big empty field with samey textures. I’m not replacing it with something better, I just see it for what it is.

Now, people can simply imagine things based on any visual or description they are provided. Could I imagine what a 20 pixel sprite tall would look like if they were a real flesh and blood person? Sure! You show me San Andreas, and I can imagine that but anime, easy. You show me a modern shooter, and I can imagine everybody being a colorfully dressed fruit person shooting credit cards from snakes in the art style of Katamari Damacy. I might not be the best at prompts, but get my mind going, and I like to think I can imagine anything and everything. But I only do so if I want to, and if I am engaging with a piece of art, why would I want to imagine over the canvas with something else?

I would NEVER want to paint over a canvas like this. You don’t need to IMPROVE on this!

I am of course strictly speaking about video games here, as different mediums encourage different levels of imagination. You’re generally expected to imagine persons, places, conversations, and actions when reading a novel. When reading a comic, sequential art is supposed to create an illusion of movement that your imagination is meant to fill in. But for as much imagination goes into video games, for as much mental engagement they often require in understanding systems and executing on them, how much imagination really goes into them when you are focusing on playing them? Because I’m normally too busy focusing on whatever my objectives are: going to the next place, finding this thing, defeating this enemy, solving this puzzle.

Perhaps I am going about this the wrong way and what people mean when bemoaning the lack of imagination in visuals, they are referring to the worlds of many modern titles and how they cultivate wonder. Or, rather, how they don’t. There are many common criticisms about “modern gaming” and how they send players throughout the world, especially compared to older games which were, simply put, smaller and quieter. Fewer trackers, less detailed maps, fewer HUD elements, reduced emphasis on menus, and a greater level of agency. If you’re thrown into a world with little direction other than a general direction, you are more likely to engage with the world as a world, rather than a stage for them to perform the role of player.

Though, this lack of engagement can be fulfilled through… too many means. The bloat of open worlds. The use of pace-breakers, unmovable objective markers, or “yellow paint” to guide the player. Characters bantering about objectives and solutions to challenges. A constant barrage of quests to accomplish. Or collectibles that are just there for the sake of giving the player stuff to grab. As we saw over the past week, following the release of Marvel’s Insomniac’s Wolverine, many people don’t like mandatory hand-holding that imposes on the game. They want to explore, do a variety of things, and see a vividly crafted world.

When this freedom is denied, when they are treated as if they would get lost down a corridor, then many feel as if gaming no longer inspired their imagination. Or, perhaps more accurately, a sense of wonder and exploration. Because if everything is the highest fidelity, if everything is clear, even the dirt, then what is there to wonder about when the real article is presented before you? The real world looks boring, because it is boring, so people want something to look different, even that means it looks worse!

…Yeah, that’s good enough for a preamble Ramble that I’ll forget about in a month. Moving on~!

The Roblox Infection Spreads
(And The Games Industry Declined…)

Roblox Everywhere? Is that a THREAT? (Of course it is!)

I have made my status as a Roblox hater well established, and for fairly simple reasons. Roblox has a history of abusing its contractors, is not a safe space for children due to the asset trading marketplaces, abundance of child predators, and abundance of games that encourage addictive design. It is not a good place for the millions of children who log onto it every day, it is not a good place for anyone of any age, and has also heavily limited the collective imagination of its players. People who play Roblox are not taught how to engage, find, or discover games outside of Roblox, increasing the chances they will only view video games as Roblox.

Roblox Corporation has too much influence, their terms are shit, and despite being a historically unprofitable company, Roblox Corporation is one of the only growth sectors in gaming outside of China. While I am certain there are hundreds of great games within Roblox, that does not warrant the social, emotional, and financial abuse rife on the platform. Accordingly, I do not believe Roblox should exist.

…So you can probably imagine my thoughts on Roblox Everywhere, a feature that allows game developers to release their games as standalone programs for PC, consoles, and mobile.

Now, you might initially think this is good, as it allows Roblox games to leave the Roblox platform and exist as their own thing. However, that perspective is too optimistic. While details have not been shared, Roblox Corporation is almost certainly going to take a cut on every sale or microtransaction within these games, profiting off of the work from others at its own egregious markup. (Unreal asks for 5% of all gross sales, most storefronts ask for 30%, Roblox Corp wants MOST of the money on every sale.)

Furthermore, this is not meant to encourage anybody to leave Roblox, and is instead a way to get dollars from people who don’t want to use Roblox. It’s to get new users, or console players, to try out a new game, potentially never realizing they are playing a Roblox game. How is that possible? Well, look at the popular military shooter on the platform, TTK, and tell me that it LOOKS like a Roblox game. Because it doesn’t, it just looks like another military shooter by former Call of Duty kids and branched out into harder edges of the genre before saying “let’s make our own military fetish game” and doing just that!

This is merely another way for Roblox Corporation to spread its influence and control throughout the industry, and I hate to see it.

Microsoft’s Blizzcon Happened
(StarCraft, Diablo V, Warcraft III, Oh Fie!)

As someone who did not use a PC for anything more than school work in the 2000s, you can probably suss out that I was never a big fan of Blizzard. Hell, I still have not touched a single one of their games. As such, I tend to view the acclaim, community, and renown they have developed over the years to be a bit… suspect. Their workplace was home to systematic abuse, even by the low standards of the games industry. They have opened the door for SO MANY terrible monetization systems in the gaming landscape. And while all their active IPs have their own superfans, they have all undergone their own bouts of nigh legendary drama.

I, of course, have nothing against the workers, who recently secured a historic win for unionization, ratifying a contract covering nearly 2,000 employees. However, as a studio, I feel they have routinely bit off more than they could chew, or had been lured into some terrible directions by incredulous men— because it is always men— like Willy P. KoKdiK.

Truly, every one of their major releases has undergone some flavor of controversy. World of Warcraft, as one of the longest-running live services, has undergone its on-again off-again measures of quality, getting to the point where they had to re-release a base version with some alterations. Warcraft III Reforged was a legendarily awful remaster that, despite years of attempted fixes, has remained a perceived lesser version due to the traumatic disaster that was the game at launch. StarCraft spent half a decade getting a full three-part campaign for its sequel before being undercut by a remaster of the first one.

Overwatch went from the biggest hero shooters, a genre trailblazer, to being EOS’d, replaced by a sequel sold on lies, before the sequel was retconned into being a new version of the first game. While Diablo went from this pillar of PC action RPGs, routinely imitated, never exceeded, before getting decade-long sequels that all had their own problems. Diablo III (2012) launched in a sorry always online state with a real money auction house, as part of a wave of controversies plaguing early 2010s PC gaming. Diablo IV (2023) was a prime example of a game designed for engagement, rather than fun, with a lot of nebulous math working to keep players numb yet engaged.

Decades of terrible press have mired their reputation, and that’s before remembering they are part of Microsoft. Accordingly, I don’t think you should support them. I shouldn’t need to highlight the BDS boycott against Microsoft and the egregious amount of waste and destruction Microsoft has wrought. They shut down studios, destroy livelihoods, and destroy projects years in the making. Everything they touch breaks, including fucking Windows.

I also hate how Microsoft announces these massive projects well in advance, have them wallow in public development for half a decade, and then come out after so many routine showings. Which is… likely true here.

At Blizzard’s convention, Blizzcon, they revealed a bunch of new projects and updates to existing titles. Heroes of the Storm, their MOBA, is finally getting a new character after six years. Overwatch is getting a sexy vampire man. Hearthstone is getting a new character class. Word about the next World of Warcraft expansion was mentioned, promising this and that. And, shockingly, a brand-new campaign was added to Warcraft III Reforged with Forsaken Kingdom. Because you can just DO THAT, I guess. Release a new campaign 6 years after the remaster and 23 years after the original.

However, the big three announcements were for two brand new games, and one… category TBD.

Despite being a one-game-a-decade franchise with expansions and always online systems, Blizzard is continuing the Diablo series with a new numbered entry slated to come out in 2029, Diablo V. This is peculiar to me given how they seemed pretty happy with Diablo IV (2023), which was effectively a live service. So, why release a sequel within a supposed six-year window, which is just normal for any sequel nowadays? I could not tell you. Diablo IV sold and reviewed well, was supported with two major expansions, so there should be little reason to want to jump over to something new. But for diehard fans of the series, I can’t see a reason to complain about the concept of a new game coming in maybe three years.

Now, support drying up for the current one? That may be more of a workable criticism.

A more curious, if not contentious, announcement was that of StarCraft, a story-driven open world shooter that happens to share the name with one of the most celebrated RTS games ever crafted, StarCraft (1998).

Okay, two things.

One, StarCraft has been a somewhat neglected child in Blizzard’s library. After the beloved 1998 original, the series was subject to a sequel released over the span of five years with StarCraft 2. While many loved this game, it did not capture the same longevity and appeal of the first game. It’s at the point where I don’t even know if fans truly want a new game after what happened, or if they accepted that they will still be playing the same game they’ve played for nearly 30 years.

Accordingly, it has to be irritating to see this important yet neglected IP get a continuation with an installment that’s not only bold enough to eschew a subtitle, but change the genre altogether. It reminds me of Xbox 360 era reboots of classic titles that discarded the original perspectives and systems to make a more marketable shooter. Syndicate (2012), The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (2013), Shadowrun (2007), stuff like that. Fans of the originals were always salty about that— cue that clip of Spoony screaming about the XCOM reboot being a betrayal. So I can only imagine how neglected StarCraft fans feel seeing their beloved series be turned into the most prominent flavor of AAA video game, rather than a niche genre that never gelled with the console folks.

Also, this trailer is just fascist bait. I’m sorry, but it is. The US Department of War could easily use a good minute of this trailer for a recruitment ad.

Two, seeing this all I could think about is StarCraft: Ghost, a canceled spin-off that was slated to be a best-of collection of systems and mechanics of the PS2 era of gaming. It was a bit Splinter Cell, a bit Metal Gear, a bit Halo, all with the world and wrappings of StarCraft. Ghost was of course canceled, and over the decades builds and unreleased footage of the game have been widely released across the internet. However, the game was hyped to hell for three years, which is a really long time for an 11-year-old.

If Microsoft instead brought Ghost back, the overwhelmingly millennial audience who cares about StarCraft would be losing their damn shit. However, we are getting what sounds like the most safe, most boring rendition of the world. …And it’s not coming out until 2030 at the earliest. Cool. So this trailer is just a thing to hold over fans to get them to buy your shit and a recruitment ad for job positions, right? …Well, recruitment for people outside of the US, surely.

One programmer in Irvine, California costs like $150,000 a year to employ, counting health insurance, 401(k), and other crap. But in… Indonesia, that same salary can fund four programming roles.

What is World of Warcraft Forever?
(No, Saying it’s “Classic+” Doesn’t Explain JACK!)

I can easily be cynical about this StarCraft 2030, but there was one new game announcement here that is quite interesting. World of Warcraft: Forever!

…So, World of Warcraft (2004) is a complicated game. While consistently successful and bringing in a lot of money, the title, as an MMO that tries to stay relevant in the grand stage, there are multiple distinct eras of the game. However, for my purposes, there is the modern ongoing era, where the game is very busy, full of tasks, structured play, dailies, weeklies, and the like, and there is the original era. When World of Warcraft came out, it was a juggernaut of a game, attracting millions, and many people who played it either left after the Wrath of the Lich King expansion or did not like the myriad changes introduced in the 2010 expansion, Cataclysm.

Cataclysm effectively brought WoW into a sequel state. Many areas were completely rebuilt into sequels of areas from the game’s original release, bringing the world to be in line with the latest expansion’s continuity. This was early on in online games being a thing, so this made some sense, but it also meant the original world was gone. You could not play the launch game again, and paired with myriad mechanical tweaks over the years… the game was objectively different.

Also, shout out to Dan Olson, whose coverage on World of Warcraft Classic is where I got most of this perspective.

This lead numerous fan servers to launch, hosting older versions of WoW, but Activision routinely squashed them out of existence, much to fan’s irritation. The desire to return to form eventually grew so large that, in 2019, Blizzard released a variant of World of Warcraft circa 2006, dubbed World of Warcraft: Classic. The release was a unanimous success, allowing people to enjoy the looser, quieter, and more wondrous world of the game as it was after the post-launch updates.

…Except Classic eventually stopped being a crystallized version one point whatever version of the game, and eventually got updates. Classic became The Burning Crusade Classic, then eventually Cataclysm Classic and currently Mists of Pandaria Classic. As it currently is, Classic is divided between five different flavors:

  • Classic Era, the game as it was circa 2006 with only minor changes, like an in-game clock.
  • Classic Progression Servers that go through the game’s life in roughly real-time, currently on Mists of Pandaria mode.
  • Classic Anniversary, which features various improvements and a staggered rollout of expansions, currently in Burning Crusade Anniversary mode.
  • Classic Hardcore, which is a Classic Era but if you die once, you die forever.
  • Season of Discovery, a seasonal extra mode that is it’s own expedited, quirky, experience.

…Do I need to remind you that Classic is still a subset of the main game that is World of Warcraft? Because if this seems like a lot, that’s because it is.

While this order has lasted for a decent while, there are fans who were clamoring for something more extensive than what Classic, or I guess Classic era, provided. They wanted a Classic that would grow with them, that felt a touch more modern, less of a 2002-looking-ass thing. They wanted something that, per my understanding, is a remaster of World of Warcraft circa 2006 but a whole bunch of new stuff. This is precisely what World of Warcraft Forever is offering. The game as it was originally designed, but continued following the same design ethos, rather than the design ethos with the expansion. Forever will include 1,000 new quests, a new race, new skills and talents, various new environments new visual effects and tweaks, and persistently added new content. None of which will push the character level past level 60, ensuring that power levels will be maintained.

I’ll be honest and say I’m out of my depth with this one. I don’t really know why fans wanted this, or much about WoW as a title. However, this seems like a curated list of desired based on what the community has harbored for some time. …And I think it is based in part by the branch of a series of private servers known as Turtle WoW, which offered a carefully expanded version of the original base game of World of Warcraft. However, Turtle WoW had to shut down for legal reasons— you can’t just make a private server for an ongoing MMO, guys— so Blizzard is making their own Turtle WoW, effective.

This all sounds crazy to me, but that’s what happens when you’re not in the loop on some particularly heated fan discourse.

World of Warcraft Forever will be released exclusively for PC on November 5, 2026. Because PC players need something to do while PlayStation fans are playing GTA 6 and Nintendorks are playing Ocarina.

IGN Announces New Wave of Layoffs
(The Games Press Continues to Crumble)

For as long as I have been following gaming news every day (since 2008), I have been a witness to countless layoffs, the loss of generational talent, the premature conclusion of careers, and the loss of professionalism. It’s always upsetting when this happens, but there’s nothing that can be done about this trend beyond moving on or trying making your own site or publication. Still, this should not happen anywhere, yet it happens all the time at IGN.

IGN is still an institution of the gaming press, a derided yet respected and well-known name for game news, previews, reviews, and even some announcements. IGN has a union with their Creator’s Guild, established to prevent this, yet all their bargaining power seems to have done nothing to prevent their owner, Ziff Davis, from laying off countless employees. Right before the busiest time of year, Ziff laid off several high profile people, but most shockingly Brian Altano, who has spent 17 years at IGN, becoming one of the main faces of the site.

The reason for these layoffs are attributable to a planned more from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Which, for my international readers, is over 500 kilometers away. Though, layoffs have been a plague at IGN since 2008, if not earlier, and I have to assume that Ziff Davis, likes to systematically cut senior staff with a lot of leverage to keep its employees desperate and confused, without leaders to turn to. It’s all a power game made by the executive class to covet the money while minimizing talent.

So, why does this sting so much to warrant a section? Mostly because Brian is a member of the retired troupe The Comedy Button. It was mostly just four to six dudes chatting, hanging out, trying to make each other laugh, telling stories, anecdotes, and just enjoying each other’s company. But sometimes, that’s the best thing, and it was where many of my Natalie-isms were crystallized. The humor, the way people talk, the myriad perspectives, insights, and turns of phrase, they all influenced me, and there’s a bit of Comedy Button in everything that I do. It runs so deep I don’t even know where it begins or ends. But I suppose that’s what happens when you invite a show into your life from the ages of 16 to 28.

Yes, the biggest boon of this show is the fact that it lasted for over a decade, giving long-term listeners a chance to see the hosts grow. We saw their lives be changed through deaths, career shifts, marriage, children, becoming homeowners, and more! It led listeners to appreciate them as people, and after everything they went through, I want what’s best for these guys. I want them to be happy, to thrive in their lives after all the loss and rejection they faced, and continue to face adversity with a strong outlook.

Since the end of The Comedy Button in 2023, everybody has continued their ventures, with Brian and his co-host Max Scoville continuing to of their “brotherly antics” with This Thing Rules, a more structured and upbeat podcast they’ve been running for a few years. While Max is still at IGN, as far as I can tell, I’m hoping that Brian can spin this into the start of something new, as when institutions put you down… that’s all one can do.

Game Freak Announces Ame no Chi Hare Onna
(A Magical Girl Weather-Based Laundry Game for Mobile)

…Game Freak, what the hell are you doing? I understand that the Gear Project is meant to foster creativity and various designs across the studio. The indie level stuff like Giga Wrecker made sense, as did Beast of Reincarnation, their attempt at making a AAA style action game, right down to the game being unfinished upon release! Pokopia should not even count in my mind, as that was a Koei Tecmo joint that directly expanded on what the Pokémon IP could be. But… what is this supposed to be?

Ame Nochi Hare Onna is… not at all related to Ame Nochi Hare by Bikke, a TSF manga that I covered three years ago. Instead, *Ame Nochi Hare Onna* is one of the more unusual pitches I’ve seen in a while. It’s a free-to-play mobile game about magical girls that is about weather and laundry. The title will link its gameplay with real-world weather data across Japan. Depending on the weather conditions in a given region, the player will be able to deploy one of their magical girls off to fight some monster, clean up garbage, or do something to brighten up the world. Combat takes the form of a turn-based RPG, you are encouraged to help your friends in their specific region, and whenever a character is deployed, their clothes will be soiled, meaning they must be washed and hung outside to dry. Because they don’t DO drying racks in Japan, I guess.

Premise aside, this seems reminiscent of any number of casual social RPGs that encourage players to log in daily to respond to current going-ons, help out their friends, and look at some cute girls. You patrol areas at your discretion, fight, do the laundry, help your friends with laundry, and build up whatever resource you need for more cute girls and cute clothes. It is interesting how the weather during a day can influence what types of skills you can use in combat, though with the language barrier, I could not suss out the details. However, the most important things to note are as follows: This is absolutely NOT going to leave Japan given how localized it is to the region, this is a bishoujo live service, and it’s not actually being developed by Game Freak. Or, at least, not fully.

Instead, Ame Nochi Hare Onna is primarily being made by Chronogate. Founded by Game Freak alumni Katsunori Suginaka in 2023, Chronogate has actually worked on quite a few projects in some capacity, including the ill-fated Tribe Nine and Pokémon Champions. After building up these relationships and capital, they now have the resources to head production on their own game, and are inheriting an idea directed by Pokémon director Shigeru Ohmori. Yes, from Scarlet and Violet to a destined to be niche live service game. What a trajectory…

I would like to make some sweeping statement about this, but I really cannot see this game making waves, or being much of a thing. People like Game Freak for Pokémon, and they don’t even like them for that nowadays!

Ame Nochi Hare Onna will be released in Japan sometime this winter for mobile devices

Doukyuusei 2: Winter Heat is Getting Localized!
(Time For Another REAL Dating Sim Remake!)

Well, this is a pleasant little story. Last summer, I went through Doukyuusei: Bangin’ Summer (2021), a modern remake of one of the earliest and most historically pertinent dating sims. I reviewed it, made a walkthrough for it, and generally had a good time with it. Well, narratively, it was a lot of fun. Figuring out how its opaque time management system and adapting a guide to make it more correct? That was the price of the ticket.

Still, I enjoyed the game enough to be interested in the remake of Doukyuusei 2 (1995), a winter-set successor that seemingly continues many of the ideas of the original, while lacking the same historical panache. Now, after over a year on the market, Shiravune announced a proper localization of the remake, renamed to Doukyuusei 2: Winter Heat. If that sounds like an oxymoron, that’s because you aren’t thinking of the right HEAT.

I only know what I do through untranslated Japanese gameplay footage I watched when researching the first game, but I would be interested in giving the sequel a look. …Especially if the newly added “Easy Mode” truly is as helpful as the PR blurb makes it out to be. Making the walkthrough was a neat project, but also kind of a total pain in the ass.

No release date for Doukyuusei 2: Winter Heat was given, but it will be released on various PC game platforms sometime soon. Hopefully while the winter is still HOT.

The Legend of Heroes III: The White Witch Remake Announced
(A Neowiz Joint!)

OH SNAP! Time to talk about Dragon Slayer again~!

Dragon Slayer refers to the lineage of early Falcom games that all did their part to advance the RPG genre and put Falcom on the map as a developer. It’s where Xanadu (1985), Legacy of the Wizard (1987), and Sorcerian (1987) come from, but it was also the origin of The Legend of Heroes (1989). Built as a party-based RPG taking inspiration from the obvious place, the title and its 1992 sequel, were quality adventurers that earned a following, mostly among PC-88 and PC Engine CD-ROM² enthusiasts. They are also currently slated to be re-released internationally by publisher Edia as part of an upcoming PC Engine collection, so you can soon legally play them if you so choose. (They actually re-confirmed this while I was editing this Rundown.)

However, these first two Legend of Heroes games tend to be overshadowed by what came afterward, and where the series started getting its identity. Falcom knew they could not compete with Square or Enix on visual bombast, especially as PC RPG developers. Though, they felt they could triumph in telling a story, and set off to do just that. The Legend of Heroes III, IV, and V are known as The Gagharv Trilogy and tell a lengthy narrative spanning a nations and eras years, featuring the world building and depth that Falcom became known for throughout the 90s, and are still known for to this day.

Originally developed from 1994 to 1999, the trilogy both paved the way for the Trails series and was actually brought over to North America through a series of PSP remasters localized by Bandai Namco. These were built off of the Windows versions, which ran the gamut in terms of production values, before being homogenized for a re-whatever on PSP, with 2.5D environments and new character art. You can easily play these games. …But you might not want to.

The releases were met with a more muted reception due to their ho-hum visuals, subpar localization, and the fact that Falcom’s brand wasn’t exactly understood in the west at the time. Oh, and they renumbered the second game to the first, the first game to the second, and the third game stayed the third, just to mess with folks. It was a swing and a miss here, but the The Legend of Heroes III re-whatever sold well in Japan at least, and this trilogy has a certain level of acclaim in other regions.

While it’s easy to forget this, Falcom has a long history of Chinese and Korean versions of their older games, and developed a certain reputation in the Korean games industry. Hell, there are Korean PC RPGs games that inspired Falcom themselves. Admittedly, piracy was running rampant in the late 90s, but that did not mean there was not a market for Japanese games, and that a lot of Korean game players were not playing them through their own means. One of these thriving games was the Korean DOS conversion of The Legend of Heroes III: The White Witch (1994) by Mantra. A version that evidently made enough of a splash to inspire Korean publisher Neowiz to reach out to Falcom to remake The Legend of Heroes III.

For those who don’t recognize the name, Neowiz is a multi-faceted Korean game publisher. They have a live service title with Brown Dust 2, made their name on the sicko rhythm series DJMax, and earned a good deal of acclaim for releasing Lies of P (2023), one of the most celebrated Soulslike of the generation. The publisher also does a lot of smaller indie-tier ventures like the cinematic pixel platformer Sanabi (2022) and the Diablo-style Roguelike Shape of Dreams (2025).

All of which makes them seem like a reasonable choice for doing a remake of The Legend of Heroes III, and presumably the other two in The Gagharv Trilogy. As for why anybody would even want to do that, I’m guessing this is a response to the rousing success of the Trails in the Sky remake. A remake that I was completely wrong about, and got oodles of new people invested in the series. It also sent Falcom’s financials to the moon. If part VI can do that, imagine what Part III can do!

However, while Falcom is ruthlessly efficient at what they do, they can only do so much, and the studio has been outsourcing projects since the 1980s. So, it makes sense that they would let someone else handle a The Legend of Heroes III remake.

This was announced via press release, so I would not expect to see anything for two years at a minimum, but it’s nice to know that this is coming.

Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back Announced
(It Looks Like Saudi AI Anti-DEI Shit)

One of the more frustrating remasters in the past few years was likely Dragami Games’s remaster of the cult classic Lollipop Chainsaw (2012). Dragami formed from the ashes of Kadokawa’s games division, and through some legal shenanigans I’m still not 100% on, became the owner of the original game. Viewing this as a prime asset to exploit, they remastered it in the form of Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP (2024), which was… a way to play the game.

The original Lollipop Chainsaw was an Unreal Engine 3 game that was trying to make the best of things. Its color balancing, lighting, and texture work were true signs of the time, and the game was given an inky finish to most character models to vaguely approximate a comic book. It was not the best looking game, but it was a deliberate style, aggressive vignetting and all.

The remaster did not understand this and instead tried to modernize the look, adjusting the shaders, lighting, coloring, and various little things to make the game look more modern and realistic. It looks cleaner in a sense, but it no longer looks like Lollipop Chainsaw, it just looks like a standard Unreal 5 game where they didn’t have a dedicated lighting guy on staff. Seriously, the lighting was not great in the original, feel free to blame Tim Rogers if you want, but it was clearly trying something other than “what if the sky was white.”

This is before getting to various minor elements that did not transfer over, the replaced soundtrack, or how this remaster was made without the involvement of the original team. Hell, Goichi Suda and James Gunn, the co-director and co-writer, didn’t even know this project existed until it was announced. Still, the game did… quite well compared to the original, moving over 400,000 copies, which at a $45 base price (yes, really), is probably close to $10 million in gross revenue, for a game that was already made.

Clearly, Dragami was happy with the performance, giving the game ports, updates, and trying to make it a key part of their brand, before announcing a sequel, Lollipop Chainsaw 2 Back2Back.

…But before getting into the game as a game, I need to acknowledge that Dragami… has not been making themselves look good as of late. In the PR statement “originally announcing” this game back in 2025, they made explicitly sure to say the following: “As with the original, the new title aims to recreate a world rich in dark humor. The development process will prioritize staying true to the distinctive tone and spirit of the original work, without imposing excessive creative restrictions in the name of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion).”

Meanwhile, the true owners of the IP, NADA Holdings, are big AI supporters. You don’t even need to scroll down on the front page of their website to see them gush about it. Digging further, they have a strategic investment with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Investment, meaning their ventures are funded with Saudi money.

…Shit, NADA also owns the IP for Ninja Baseball Bat Men? How? How do the leylines keep resonating in the worst way?

So, we have a sequel to an irreverent yet earnest game about a cheerleader killing zombies with a chainsaw that is anti-DEI, meaning anti-Black, anti-queer, and anti-women. And furthermore, rather than be the work of humans, this sequel will likely be leaving careless machines to create as much of the game as is financially salable… for the benefit of the Saudi Arabian royal family.

I hope that I do not need WORDS to describe how much this pisses me off, but let’s be fair, let’s ignore the context around this work and judge these 8 minutes of gameplay footage. This is based on the publicly available Tokyo Game Show demo, something meant to make the game look its best, and it is… an aggressively subpar showing. It lacks in both vision and polish, doing a horrible job of selling someone that this is much more than a load of trite.

The protagonist, Juliet, is in a gray, boring, and lifeless bombed out town, fighting waves of zombies. Minute one to three, it looks as uninteresting as a Lollipop Chainsaw game could. Though, the core gameplay… looks good. Enemies are fodder, the player on the controller performs some flashy moves, and the juxtaposition between girlypop glitter and zombies is preserved this time around. I even like the chainsaw dash and infusion of roller skates.

However, whatever promise this has goes out the window when Juliet flies into a boss fight in a pretty basic looking arena against a zombie Barbie, Zorbie, which really highlights the problems with the game’s colors. If you have seen Barbie (2023), which I have, surprisingly, you would know how aggressive the pinks are in that movie, how they pop, demand your attention. But here? There’s this soft blue overcast lighting to everything that dulls what should be a vibrant setting.

The boss fight itself is also just… bad. In Lollipop Chainsaw, bosses are supposed to have big personalities, make a show of their presence, and be events. But Zorbie here does not do anything. She does not speak, nobody does, she just sits on her thrown, gets up to play a canned tantrum animation, and takes whatever projectiles you throw at her. The initial narrative is that she is rejecting suitors, turning them into golden skulls that Juliet must smack back at Zorbie, who eventually gets mad and starts spawning in yellow gift boxes across the battlefield. Destroying them causes a zombie to spawn in, their body locked in a faux Superman pose, where they sputter up into the sky, not animating, before hitting Zorbie like a homing missile, their models unloading as they are replaced with blood, fire, and smoke effects. Zorbie then performs a damage taken animation, spawns more presents, and stands as Juliet sends zombies flying at her.

From a design perspective… this is pretty middling, competent at best, but not an interesting system mechanically. However, the presentation here is just unforgivably poor. It looks unfinished, like it’s from an internal alpha build, using unfinished lighting, placeholder missile assets, before dialogue has been added. This is something you present to convey an idea to a publisher and prove that the dev team is making process. Yet, Dragami felt confident enough to bring this to TGS as a playable demo.

Combine this footage with all the shady shit around this game’s development, and I think that we can safely write off this Back2Back as a mistake. I hope it bombs and the IP implodes in on itself, because some things should not be reanimated. If the folks at Dragami games played their own remaster, maybe they would have realized this.

Lightspeed Lina is A Sonic-Like For Good and For Ill
(Based on the Playtest Demo)

As I said in a preamble last month, I have a nasty habit of trying out various games and demos when I feel the need to play something requiring more engagement than a visual novel. (Especially one with as many food scenes as Fate, because holy moley.) One of these demos was for a 3D Sonic-like high-speed platformer by the name of Lightspeed Lina, currently up on Kickstarter. Why was I drawn to it? Because it’s basically a Sonic game with semi-open 3D environments where, instead of playing as a rodent, you play as a Black lady with big honking boobs. Like, they are so overt, so present, that I thought this might be an adult game, but nope, Lina’s just a fan of letting it all out. Kind of like Rouge the Bat in her A-Rank outfit from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (2001), rated E for Everyone!

This was novel enough to warrant a try, perhaps a mention at some point, but going through the playtest demo for about four hours… I have some thoughts that I need to get out somewhere, and here’s as good a spot as any.

So, the first thing to talk about here is, of course, the controls. Lina is manufactured as something of a best of collection of 3D Sonic elements, with a few new ones. She accumulates a fast, yet not overwhelming, velocity just by running in circles, as conveyed through a meter in the UI. Her jumps are accentuated with both a homing attack, a punch for additional horizontal control, and a Ys ANOFO like spinning jump attack for vertical and horizontal gains. While a stomp, spin dash, and Sonic Mania drop dash, all round out her move pool, but in lieu of a boost, she instead has a “roll” where she pulls roller-skates out of her heels. These understandably let her accumulate gains on descent, and somehow let her cruise through enemies and obstacles alike.

The core fundamentals of movement are very strong, and the world depicted in the playtest gives you plenty of opportunities and obstacles to play around with. The simple act of movement while collecting goodies in a collection of big isolated maps has an inherent joy behind it, and I am particularly fond of the design ethos behind these works. They’re just mid-sized 3D platformer playgrounds full of micro-challenges for doodads and goodies, scaled up to accommodate Lina’s high speeds. If you know what you’re doing, these can be breezed through relatively quickly, but you do need to contend with some less than wanted technical friction.

Some of the challenges can feel like fighting the game’s systems rather than using them. It’s something that I noticed fairly often when revisiting the 3D Sonic games a decade ago, and there are echoes of that here. Similarly, the source of the problem comes from the same three avenues of the games that inspired Lina. The camera, the tolerance for error, and the punishment for error.

While the camera can be freely controlled, you typically aren’t going to be moving it manually at all times, especially when zooming by. The player needs the camera to move with them while not obscuring what they’re trying to do, but it often does, especially when jumping. In a slower less momentum-driven game, your jump distance is generally fixed, so it’s fairly easy to guide yourself. However, Lina shoots off like a rocket, and it can be difficult to gauge where she is when flying through the air.

The game tries to work around this with a drop shadow, a wonderful and clear addition, but when you jump, Lina is typically so low on screen that you cannot see her drop shadow, at all. This makes any sort of precise jumps onto a floating platform difficult, and makes the bowl sections in the ice area a battle against the camera as you try to perform multi-button inputs to accumulate speed.

How does a developer work around this? Well, you could change the default camera system to make it easier to see where Lina is going to land to make jumps less perilous. Or you could try to minimize the tolerance of error. In this context, tolerance of error refers to how much leeway you have in a certain situation. How narrow is the window of time to perform the right inputs, how small is the target platform, how many times do you need to perform an action?

With Lightspeed Lina, this problem crops up with certain more finicky mechanics, such as wall running, which does not always work the way I expect, and is paired with a stamina meter. I’d ask why, but that’s because you can faux wall run vertically up a wall to get higher up, which I think is a brilliant feature. It’s like a Mega Man X wall kick, but feels like an exploit! Yet even if you can perform activities properly once, the game can often plant several micro challenges before you that need to be completed consecutively without any checkpoint. You fall once, and you are going back to the start, which is especially irksome after getting 90 seconds in a 2-minute-long section.

This punishment for error, needing to start over and try again, it encourages conservative play over flashy play, decidedly NOT using the mechanics to their advantage. Falling down a pit or going to the entrance of a level is not a great loss of time on its own. However, if this happens repeatedly, which it easily does, it can also breed a level of animosity with a design, rather than a desire to do better. I should not be saying “oh great, this fucking section” at any point in most games. Instead, I should want to push myself through these challenges without spending 30-some-odd minutes on a section that should be cleared in less than 3. I get it if it’s an endgame bonus challenge, but this is presented as a first hour of the game challenge.

The good news is that the game is still quite a ways away, that it is not coming out for over a year— knowing Kickstarter games, I’d guestimate three years in total. So I’m hoping that the developers can iron out theses issues, as I truly think the game has a good core it’s working with, and I let them know an abridged version of these criticisms via their feedback forms.

I am fairly confident that these quirks will be ironed out because so much else of this playtest demo is either solid or heading in the first directions. Character designs, while unabashed in the creators love of certain proportions (no shade), are pretty strong between the case and enemies alike. The worlds are colorful, clean, and have a good amount of personality to them, even if they can feel a bit empty in spots. The music is generally quite good at pushing the player to explore, with the ice level’s theme being a particular highlight to me. And what story is present here assigns a decent deal of personality and history to the cast, which is important to keeping the players invested.

It has more than just promise, and all it needs to be a great game is to avoid the sections that make too many 3D Sonic games frustrating. …Which is easier said than done. I have gripes with it in its current form, but did that stop me from pledging $75 for a Steam key, soundtrack, digital artbook, and the chance to put Abigale Quinlan in this game? HELL NO!

Basically A Metroid Review
(Because I was SHAMED)

So, this past week I got peer pressured into playing the original Metroid (1986) as part of a fussy little thread that embedded itself into my mind. Why? Well, because as a kid with a copy of its remake, Metroid: Zero Mission (2004), for Game Boy Advance, I never played the original Metroid for a significant amount of time. I just didn’t see the point! However, I felt I needed to in order to prove my credentials, bona fides, and that I’m not just some larper, as the neo definition of the term goes.

The first two Metroid games have earned a slightly odd place in the franchise, as while every successive game (that people care about) has been derived from Super Metroid (1994), the original two were a lot looser. No map, far fewer options and upgrades, and a focus on blind atmospheric exploration in dreary, black, alien worlds. I played Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991) way back in 2012, and thought it was good, a bit primitive, and a bit frustrating, but it held some charm in its specificity and linearity, definitely more approachable than the first game given some of its quirks, which I am now intimately familiar with.

While Metroid is an essential game in the Video Game Canon, it is also one that I always found to be full of little frustrations. Its design decisions make for an experience that can be justified through the context of the 1980s and as a slower, more intimate, challenging/repeatable burn than the chewy format that the 2D titles gradually adopted with Super. Many systems found in later games simply don’t exist here, and the ones that are unique to this game are generally more frustrating than they are endearing.

For example, one of the first things any player will notice upon playing the game is that their health, or energy, starts out at 30 out of 99, meaning they start the game without full health. Health can only be restored in two ways: Defeating enemies who drop health in increments of 5 and 20 and finding eight Energy Tanks scattered throughout the setting of planet Zebes. Even dying does not top Samus up, as whenever she comes back or you enter a password, in the international NES version, she comes back with only 30 energy, no matter what. Gee, and I thought the old “start with 50% of your hearts” system in old Zelda games was dumb. But in Metroid, if you get all the upgrades, you can start with less than 5% of your total health. Better find a pipe of respawning enemies and get to grinding for 10 minutes, bucko!

The other, more common, point of contention is the game’s lack of a map, but I would argue that in the modern day, where maps are prevalent and second screens are as well, this is something of a non-issue. Just find any of the dozens of online maps, follow it, and you’re good. Instead, my bigger issue is with the map design itself, as it feels haphazard in… most instances.

Most rooms in Metroid are not unique, but rather copies of a few room templates, repeated several times, in a manner that gives the game a surreal bent to it in the worst possible way. You will be going up or down vertical shafts with the same arrangement of five platforms and enemies dozens of times. You’ll go out one room and venture into one that looks like the start of an infinite loop à la Super Mario Bros. (1985) World 7-4 and World 8-4. And the game’s map just stretches on and on in either direction, going vertical, going horizontal, and sending you through shifting corridors that are designed to be disorientating.

Is it a unique flavor compared to all the successive games? Yes. Is it reminiscent of dungeon crawlers writ large and any Rogue derivative that uses randomized world designs? Yes. However, this is meant to be a fixed curated world, one full of bespoke secrets and alternate paths. So why is this game actually made from recycled rooms like this? This was an early Famicom Disk System game, sure, yet this came out six months after The Legend of Zelda (1986), which had several maps and did not resort to copying room layouts!

The end result of this is, simply, a world that I did not enjoy exploring, as the wonder of what comes next was dampened every time I saw the literal same room repeat itself verbatim. Yet, even if the rooms were distinct, I find the design of the map as a whole to be… frustrating. The designers did not exercise much consideration for backtracking, incentivizing exploration, or conveying secrets. Many routes in Metroid result in the player finding a single item at the end of a long corridor, a missile, or health upgrade, before tasking them to either die and return to the start of the area or take the long walk back, doing nothing, finding nothing, and getting nothing for their troubles.

The Energy Tank in Norfair is a pretty galling example of this, bit it’s far from the only 5 minute trek you need to take after getting an upgrade. That same area also clusters FIVE missile upgrades in one location, just lined up after one another. Meanwhile, Kraid, or Hideout 1, has an entire 14 room cluster that has 14 unique room designs and zero inventive to actually go there. The tight and considered level design from Super Metroid onwards is simply not present here, and the world is certainly not helped by its presentation.

Metroid (1986) is meant to be a lonely isolating, and alien experience, and while it can be all of those things, I mostly viewed it as being vacant. The black backgrounds emblematic of NES games of the early era, never felt evocative of anything due to the nature of black as blank space. While the color-coded tiles are inherently limited ways to depict an alien world. It feels more like a rough draft, one that would not be fully explored until, I don’t know, Axiom Verge (2015). Combined with the repeated room, it feels less like an achievement for the NES and more an example of how compromised the hardware actually was to game developers.

Oh, and the music really runs the gamut. The title and Brinstar themes are iconic and enjoyable to listen to, but others like the Ridley theme are pretty obnoxious rows of beeps that made me want to turn the game off. This is before getting into how the NES themes we all know are just crunchier conversions of the original Famicom Disk System audio, which was richer, because disks. I thought about playing that version instead, but forgot about it until I was an hour into my 4 hour playthrough.

Continuing down my punch list, the level design can be a spiteful little brat. There are single tile platforms with crawling enemies over lava or a pit that sends them FAR back to a prior state. Secrets can be overly coy and cute with no indication of what’s there unless you consult an external source or play the game like an ass. There are several devious jumps that made me feel utterly vindicated in my use of save states, especially that one near Ridley’s room for a goldarn missile expansion. Which is somehow worse than that godforsaken jumping puzzle after Kraid, where you need to carefully time your jumps as disappearing blocks threaten to throw you off.

Don’t even get me started on the raw dirt that is how they hide an Energy Tank in Kraid’s boss room. …Because I need to talk about slippery Samus, slowdown spikes, screwy jumping, beam bullcrap, and bothersome bosses.

As an early Famicom game (first five years counts as early), the controls in Metroid are not as tight as one may be accustomed to, with slippery being the best description I could come up with. It’s not bad, and you mostly feel it when jumping or getting knocked around, but it can be jarring compared to the later games, and gives movement in Metroid its own feel. A feeling that is amplified by the slowdown the game experiences during fairly common sections where enemies and projectiles liter the screen. It’s an accurate part of games of the era, with flickering and a choppy frame rate, but it simply makes the game harder to play and makes movement itself feel unreliable.

Shifting over to the upgrades, the Screw Attack is one of the more interesting additions to this game’s slim upgrade path. You get it and the Hi-Jump Boots surprisingly early on. Much of the game’s combat transforms from shooting enemies to working around erratic enemy movement and slowdown to take down enemies in one hit. It’s great, assuming you jump properly, and you can keep Samus in a rolling ball, because if she jumps straight up, she’s a duck. When it works, you feel like a goddess of the air, crashing through any and all foes. Sadly, without the Space Jump, and with so many areas full of acidic pits or enemies on small platforms, it’s just a tool this time around.

Speaking of tools, the multiple beams are an iconic element of the Metroid series, yet their implementation here is a bit suspect. Samus starts off with the arbitrary short beam before getting a longer upgrade, and then two alternate upgrades. The Ice Beam, essential for certain puzzles and defeating Metroids at the end of the game. Or the Wave Beam, which is not needed for anything and most notable for its ability to hit enemies on the ground. …Right, this was before Samus could duck, so good luck shooting prowling Zoomers.

Like in Metroid II, when you get one beam, you lose the other one. Beam combos weren’t a thing until Super Metroid. However, no matter which one you have, shooting things doesn’t feel great. The arc of the Wave Beam makes it easy to miss your target, while the Ice Beam constantly freezes its target, meaning you cannot defeat anything in one hit, and many enemies require five or more. Your beams are weak, don’t feel like straight damage upgrades, and generally feel ill-equipped for all the combat thrown throughout this game. Most enemies are best dispatched from a distance, just mashing the attack button to make them explode, and seeing these little teensy pellets drift across the screen lacks much of an impact. It does not feel particularly good to shoot things, though I guess that’s where the missiles come in.

While missiles can be used in routine combat, they really are best saved for doors, which eat five of the buggers, or boss battles, of which there are three, and I don’t like any of them. Kraid is a Samus-sized hedgehog thing in this game, a projectile spammer who can only be hurt if you attack him while his missile blocking projectiles are down. It is challenging to strategize around him, so it feels like you’re supposed to rush in and spam missiles wildly until he dies and drops an upgrade of 75 missiles. …Yes, the first two bosses both give you 75 missiles, meaning there are only 21 missile upgrades in this game. It’s wildly different from later incarnations of Kraid, and… just is not very fun. The pattern feels sporadic, the frame rate blows, and I simply do not see the vision here.

There’s Ridley, who’s an absolute CHUMP! First try, I froze his fireballs, jumped past them, and just started shooting my Ice Beam at him while standing on a block in front of him. He could not hit me, and the fight ended 30 seconds later. Worst. Ridley. Ever!

…Then there’s the final boss Mother Brain. I never liked this fight in Zero Mission, as you need to dodge an excess of random projectiles while shooting a stationary target, and in the original, it’s WAY worse! There’s too much crap to know where you should move or how to avoid damage. It’s painfully easy to fall into a pit of acidic lava. And you have little indication of how much damage Mother Brain can take before she finally croaks, hoping that your health reserves lasted long enough. Which they might not, as this game is a CHEAT with health!

Not only does it only give you 30 health upon starting or continuing the game, it does not let you increase your maximum health all the way. There are 8 Energy Tanks to find, finding one increases health by 100, but the game only allows Samus to hold a maximum of 699 health, meaning the last two don’t do anything beyond heal her, and that’s just a shitty decision. If I am going to put in the work to find and grab these things, in a game that HATES the idea of players accumulating health, the very least you could do is let me keep the extra health.

There are so many little design decisions about Metroid (1986) that I simply do not like. I can see how someone might enjoy it. It offers a distinct experience, unique from the sequels, and truly makes the player feel as if they are lost in a foreboding confusing world that, through trial, error, memorization and map-making, they can triumph over. In a world where time was abundant, games were limited, and replaying a game over and over was a common practice, I could see Metroid being a coveted experience that one would learn to love. It has a good length for the time, is plenty challenging, and has plenty of room for mastery.

However, standards, expectations, and player expectations are fussy little things that fussy little bitches like me just keep trying to raise, pivot, and remix to their liking. And for all the reasons I described above, after clearing the game in an evening, I can confidently say that I did not like Metroid (1986).

I have ample criticisms of it, but I do not think it’s bad. I don’t want to ever play through it again, but that does not mean it’s not important. I think it is a bad way for someone who isn’t a retro game salavator to be introduced to the series, optional for fans, but I am obligated to respect it regardless, as it’s the origin of where everything came from.

I would comment on how it would be so much better if it did this, that, or the other thing. However, the obligation to tradition, to history, means that such things will never be accepted, be wanted, or be seen as improvements. Because just giving the player full health when restarting the game would make it too easy, or not Metroid (1986), but rather a mutation that deviates from the original identity, immutably chiseled into circuit board. You cannot fix history, only the future, and that sucks!

Progress Report 2026-09-20

Something that drives me nuts nowadays is how hard it is to keep track of the day when games are coming out. When I was a kid, games came out on Tuesdays, sometimes Fridays, but now Thursday has taken the lead, except for when a game launches prematurely if you spend the Full Price of $100 on it. However, coverage of games kicks off a few days, or one day, before release, meaning you see all this buzz and hype about a game that is not even out yet, as the critics have made their stake and opinions known. Meanwhile, you have the indie scene, where with no retail presence to worry about, games just come out any day, any time, anywhere, anyway.

As someone who no longer pays mind to most new releases, this makes it very easy to mistake when a game is actually coming out unless you check store pages! Sure, Steam is trying to help out with its calendar feature, but not all games are on the same platform, and even when games come out the same day, they can debut at whatever time they see fit. Sure, the older model where games came out once a week was not the most stable, it meant releases were fighting for attention, it limited the number of games coming out. However, it made gaming feel more whole, more cohesive, and more like most other industries.

I know that you cannot downsize the games industry, or that you even want to limit the amount of games available. However, I constantly feel like things must be on the breaking point, that we need to be neat a point where all of this just stops working. Alas, I fear that there may not be a crash in the way that history says there was. The industry is too big, too mature, and its players are too powerful. The world of 1983 was smaller, this world is infinitely vast, and companies have greater means to sacrifice human capital to preserve executive capital.

2026-09-13: Played more Fate Stay Night, watched anime with friends, Dragon Maid and Date A Live Season 4, spent TOO MUCH time chatting with Missy.

2026-09-14: Long work day, got ragebaited into playing Metroid (1986) and I DID NOT LIKE IT. Like, at all. Wrote 1,000 words for Roblox and the new Game Freak laundry game.

2026-09-15: Uh, I think I wrote 4,200 words for the Metroid, Doukyuusei 2, Brian Altano, and White Witch bits. Also edited the preamble, Lina, Roblox, and first Blizzard bits.

2026-09-16: Edited the rest of the Rundown in the morning. Wrote Lollipop Chainsaw bit. Got back to Fate Stay Night, met bugman.

2026-09-17: Another hour of Fate Stay Night before getting bored and deciding to play three hours of that Dragon Quest Monsters demo. It’s not a very good RPG, as its battle system is far too simple, but its vibes are ON POINT.

2026-09-18: Work, some Fate Stay Night, some Donkey Kong 64. Nothing special, just chipping away.

2026-09-19: Chores, work, then Fate Stay Night. Kon!

Natalie.TF To Do List

  • 2026-10-21: Fate Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba & Rain Request)
  • 2026-10-28: Natalie Rambles About Donkey Kong 64 Recompiled
  • 2026-11-11: Ecstatica Review
  • 2026-11-18: TSF Series #020: Chateau del Bitz
  • 2026-12-09: Natalie Rambles About Delicious in Dungeon
  • 2026-12-30: Natalie Rambles About 2026
  • 2026-??-??: Coffee Buns Review (TSF Game)
  • 2026-??-??: re:Dreamer Review #6
  • 2027-??-??: TSF Showcase: Chronicstuss (Ouran Request)
  • 2027-??-??: Beast of Reincarnation Review
  • 2027-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review (TSF Game)
  • 2027-??-??: Thread – A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College Review (TSF Game)
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