#and a gaming controller. or the means to hook up one of my existing gamecube controllers

[neganium]

I'd like a new keyboard someday. There wasn't even anything that really wrong with the one that this one replaced, other than an issue with a couple of the keys that were required to play certain games. This one has a much shorter cord that required it to be plugged into the front, which causes problems whenever I accidentally bump into it with my elbow or something. It's kind of wound up a little, too; all my cords have to be some level of twisted in order to best fit the limited spaces that they occupy. I want a fuckoff huge desk someday, in a fuckoff huge (single-story) house, so that I don't have to deal with this shit anymore.

[bltngames]

Review: Super Mario Sunshine

Super Mario Sunshine is a weird game for a lot of different reasons. It was among some of the first game reviews I ever wrote for the internet, for one, all the way back in 2005. I was proud enough of that review that when it came time to relaunch TSSZ News in 2008, it was one of five archived reviews I transplanted on to the site. It was also a strange case where I became convinced it was a game I’d never play, originally. I was 23 years old, with no job, no money, and no prospects. I was desperate to play the game that was being sold as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but I could not envision a future where that would ever be possible.

Eventually, I reached my breaking point. Earlier that same year, somebody had linked me to something called “Quake Done Quick.” It was attached to a relatively new site, called the “Speed Demos Archive”, a hub for videos of people finishing games as fast as possible. The site was small, updated manually, and featured a list of roughly 100 games -- maybe less. This was before Youtube, so these were downloadable video files, usually in AVI or MPG format. And it was here that they had a Super Mario Sunshine speedrun. Even on my fledgling broadband internet, it took a considerable amount of time to download. But, with nothing more than two hours of raw, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage, I watched a user named “Dragorn” play through the entire game (his old run is still viewable on the Internet Archive). Watching a speedrunner flip, spin, and trick his way across levels, I became convinced that Sunshine was incredible.

A few months later, I was surprised by my brother with $200 for Christmas, stuffed inside a greeting card. He said it was for “all the Christmases he missed” since moving out, years ago. Combined with other money I’d received in gifts, I headed to a Gamestop and purchased a Gamecube with my own (used) copy of Super Mario Sunshine. In my mind, it did not matter that I had spoiled the entire game for myself only three months earlier with the speedrun video. Watching someone else play is no substitute for a controller in your own hands. I needed to play it for myself.

In the modern context, Super Mario Sunshine is one of the games attached to the recently released Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection. Full disclosure: I will not be buying this collection, and I have not played the version of Super Mario Sunshine it includes. It’s not that these games are bad, but even from the outside looking in, the collection looks underwhelming. It’s full of basic, bare-bones ports of games that deserve more. But it does mean that these games have been on my mind, particularly Super Mario Sunshine, which I finished replaying, separately, a little more than one year ago. It was the first time I’d finished the game since that fateful Christmas of 2004, and it provided a refresh in perspective.

The truth of the matter is, brushing aside everything else about it, Super Mario Sunshine is an easy game to hate. Nintendo was trying a lot of new things with the Gamecube, struggling to figure out what could be done with the leap in horsepower over the Nintendo 64. Their pitch was a Mario that was subtly more serious and realistic. Sunshine is a game with a surprisingly large number of cinematics, and a considerable amount of narrative setup. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true: the game opens with Mario taking a long-deserved vacation on a tropical island, only to be arrested and wrongfully accused of crimes he did not commit. He is sentenced to community service, forced to clean the island of a paint-like substance its residents claim he has used to vandalize their resort town. This is accomplished with the F.L.U.D.D., a backpack-mounted squirt gun perfect for washing down walls and floors. It was the first manual labor he’d been shown doing since the NES version of Wrecking Crew in 1985.

It’s odd territory for Mario, but it leads to the game’s first real problem: Plot. Sunshine is not a game that’s packed with story -- there aren’t a lot of named characters, and there aren’t a lot of genuine story arcs to get hooked in to, but it’s way more than you got in most Mario games. Regardless, the influence of a narrative structure is definitely felt within its levels. One of the benefits of Super Mario 64 is that there was no set order to anything; you might drop in to a level with a specific goal in mind, only to accidentally stumble on to something else. You were encouraged to follow your curiosity, collecting stars more through natural exploration. Even though it’s not always obvious on the surface, the objectives in Super Mario Sunshine are following a specific plotline, which means flat, rigid linearity.

So you might reach an amusement park area, but you can’t go inside until you finish the mission where you open the front gates. Even once you re-enter the level for the next mission inside the amusement park, exploring its various rides will be a moot point, as the game will want you to focus on a specific goal instead. Want to ride the rollercoaster? Too bad, the story dictates it’s not available yet. Though you still have that go-anywhere, do-anything world design from Super Mario 64, the current mission is the only thing that’s ever active. Another example: at the beginning of the game, you open up the first stage -- Bianco Hills. Even though you have a whole village and a sizable lake area to explore, there’s little to do out there, because your mission is about reaching the bottom of the windmill. The second mission, again, doesn’t involve the village or the lake, but now asks you to reach the top of the same windmill in order to fight the game’s first boss, Petey Piranha. And so it goes: big zones to explore, but most of it useless as Sunshine slowly trickles out objectives one at a time, following a barely-visible narrative that drags everything down.

Nintendo had other intentions for the game, too. The company was known for taking its time with game releases -- Super Mario World released in 1990, and it took six years for Super Mario 64 to follow it up. Even once a game was announced, there were often months or even years of delays as the game got pushed back, and back, and back, as with Ocarina of Time. Similarly long waits happened for many of Nintendo’s other flagship franchises (Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, etc.), and the peanut gallery was getting restless. With the release of the Gamecube, Nintendo made a vow to explore other avenues to release more games, more quickly.

The problem was, all of those delays are exactly what lead to Nintendo’s extremely high bar of quality. Rushing these games out the door meant cutting corners and finding easy ways to tack on extra play time, skipping necessary fine tuning. In The Wind Waker, this notoriously led to the last fourth of the game, wherein you must find and decode maps to dredge up half a dozen pieces of the magical Triforce. For most, this meant hours of sailing out to random, completely featureless areas in the middle of the open ocean hoping to find a single golden tortilla chip. “Tedious” is putting it kindly, but it saved Nintendo from having to delay the game too many times in order to add more in-depth content.

In Super Mario Sunshine, this manifested in a degree of repetition that is difficult to ignore. In both Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, most mission objectives are unique. There are occasional repeated missions, like finding 8 red coins, but by and large it's things like rescuing a baby penguin, opening a pyramid, assaulting an airship, or finding your way through a gravity-bending maze. There's enough variety that you don't notice as much when you're asked to do yet another one of Galaxy's purple coin comets.

Sunshine still has unique goals like that, but they are much fewer and farther between. Instead, the bulk of the game is filled with doing the same four or five missions over, and over, and over again. Finding fruit to hatch Yoshi or hunting red coins can be fun occasionally, but Sunshine often makes you do this stuff multiple times per level. Most bosses also must be faced at least twice, sometimes up to three times, and very little changes from fight to fight. And then there are the races -- a man named Piantissimo is waiting for you in most stages, looking to race you to an arbitrary landmark, and every single level has one penultimate mission where you must chase down the hero's evil doppelganger, Shadow Mario. It’s padding, basically, and thanks to a tenuous grip on narrative, there’s few ways to skip the things you don’t want to do.

This isn't even touching on the game's blue coins. They're one of Sunshine's rarer collectibles, and ten blue coins can be traded at the shop for a single Shine Sprite (the main item central to the story). The majority of blue coins can be found by hosing down graffiti found around the island. Spray a circle-shaped pattern on one wall, and a blue coin pops out of another circle-shaped pattern on the opposite side of the level, which you must run to and collect before it disappears. Then, the opposite: spray down the second pattern, and another blue coin will appear back where the first graffiti used to be. In a game full of rerun objectives, this is the worst offender. Rarely are these blue coin graffiti spots interesting or challenging; they primarily exist to fill space and fluff up the Shine counter.

The level concepts themselves also suffer from this repetition. In any other Mario game, “tropical island” would be one theme among many other level types, like deserts, volcanoes and frozen lakes. Sunshine tries to stretch its one theme out to last an entire game, and in practical terms, this means that even after 18 years and two complete playthroughs (three, if you count the speedrun video), I still can’t remember most areas in any kind of specific detail. I remember a couple stage names, maybe a few environmental traits (like the hotel at sunset or the amusement park), but anything beyond that and it all starts blurring into homogeneous beaches, docks, and villages. Even the music -- beyond the iconic acoustic guitar of the Delfino Plaza hub world song, absolutely nothing about Super Mario Sunshine’s soundtrack stands out as memorable in the slightest. Every part of this game plays, looks and sounds like every other part in the worst way possible.

And yet, through some miracle, Super Mario Sunshine does not come out the other end being a bad game. It’s not necessarily good, either, mind you. But when I finally managed to get my hands on this game back in 2004, it made me angry. Super Mario 64 was a tough act to follow, and rather than build on those concepts, Sunshine felt like a massive regression. Nowadays, it’s easier to see the bigger picture. Super Mario Sunshine was a stop-gap as Nintendo slowly pushed Mario back to a more linear, level-based structure. Super Mario Galaxy was another step in this direction, doing away with the open worlds in favor of traditional, straight-forward level design, something that would later be perfected in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World.

That makes Sunshine more of a curious black sheep than anything else. It’s definitely not a game worth hating -- its biggest offense is simply being dull, and there are worse fates. For my replay, it became the sort of game I chipped away at, bit by bit, over the course of nearly three years. As it turns out, the best cure for repetition is to forget everything you were doing the last time you played. It’s even fitting on some level that a game about Mario taking a vacation is best served in lazy, slow, indifferent chunks. Make no mistake -- there are better, more polished, and more engaging platformers out there for you to play. It is in no way a stretch to call Super Mario Sunshine the worst 3D Mario game, but it speaks to the franchise’s high bar of quality that even the worst 3D Mario game really isn’t so bad.

[lacquerware]

Resident Evil 2 reflections

One crisp winter evening in early 1998, my friend “Kyle” sat me down on the floor of his room, which was twice the size of my room, and fired up his Sony PlayStation. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he said.

He’d said that a lot over the past several months, usually in regards to something happening on the Sony PlayStation, and usually he was right. He’d shown me Resident Evilfirst, always calling it “Res Eve,” and it had shaken my very idea of what a video game was. Real actors? Real voices? Real emotions? Indeed I could not believe that something as juvenile and recreational as a video game had actually scared me. But the efficacy of that first zombie head-turn was undeniable.

In the following months Kyle had shown me a Top Gun game with live-action cutscenes featuring the bald principal from Back to the Future; the original Dynasty Warriors, which was a 3D fighting game; Mortal Kombat Trilogy; and the Sephiroth fight from Final Fantasy VII where he destroys the entire solar system as a canned attack animation. It’s amusing in hindsight that these titles could ever have been lumped together in any capacity, but each of them was such a fundamental upset of my existing notion of video games* that it was initially impossible for me to discern any gradient in quality. With the exception of the live-action bits, I couldn’t even discern FMVs from in-game cutscenes, because neither concept had existed in my head at all. It was like if you’d gone back in time to the dawn of the industrial age and shown someone The Godfather and an episode of Married with Children back-to-back. However briefly, there’d be a moment where their reaction would be roughly the same to each: “THE PICTURES ARE MOVING AND TALKING.”

*Okay, MK Trilogy didn't exactly break new ground, but it made me realize my kopy of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on the Genesis wasn't very ultimate at all.

↑↓ Keep in mind I saw these two things on the same day, prior to which the most visually impressive thing I'd ever seen a game do was accurately render comic strip characters (Garfield: Caught in the Act, I'm looking at you).

On this crisp, winter evening in 1998, Kyle showed me Resident Evil 2, which had only just released. We sat and watched the Leon intro in silence. There’s a very special stillness, an eerie electricity to the original RE2 intros that reminds me of the ominous feeling of the air and the sky before a big thunderstorm. It’s the same feeling I get when I watch the closing moments of the Who Shot Mr. Burns? Episode of The Simpsons, that sparse tension that is equal parts quieting and disquieting.

I watched, transfixed. Finally, the game relinquished control to Kyle, and he ran through a fiery city street teeming with zombies. Their numbers seemed to fill every shot. Everything was wrecked and burning and overrun, a fruition of the thing the first Resident Evil only hinted at while locking you inside that mansion.

Kyle ducked into an apparent safehouse and was immediately—seamlessly!—halted by a suspicious shopkeep with a shotgun. A dramatic, fully voiced conversation ensued, the shopkeep backed off, and Kyle was given freedom to explore the room until suddenly—seamlessly!—the horde crashed through the false security of the shop’s window glass and ate the screaming shopkeep alive, blood fountaining from his red-stained neck and torso. You know the rest.

I walked home for dinner at dusk, looking back over my shoulder every few feet, and marveled that a video game could generate such real-life fear.

I got my own Sony PlayStation about half a year later and devoured both RE2campaigns within three days. By the end I was as much a survivor as a player, and didn’t entirely know how to reconcile the good time I’d had with the immense feeling of relief that it was over. To survive a prolonged immersion in terror is an emotionally complicated experience, and not one I’d been accustomed to associating with “play.” It struck me how much scarier RE2 was than even RE1. RE1 put danger in the obvious place—a big, creepy mansion; in RE2, the evil had spilled out into the streets and overrun society’s most guarded spaces—a gun shop, a police station. The voice acting, graphics, and environmental design were also significantly better than before. The point is that Resident Evil 2 was a special game, in large part because it did things early, but also because it did things well. It was the sweet spot of the original RE trilogy—it did things better than RE1, at a riper time than RE3.

I might’ve thought any attempt to recapture that magic would be futile, had Capcom not already proven the potential for such a thing in 2002 with the GameCube remake of the original Resident Evil, which was where much of the demand for an RE2 remake came from in the first place. The RE1 remake had very cleverly used the players’ nostalgia against them, subverting our expectations in all the most notorious moments. It also made modest but smart improvements to the game’s systems and drastic improvements to its audiovisual elements, and threw in a few meatier surprises. Basically it succeeded in an impossible aim: to make fans feel like they were replaying their favorite game for the first time.

For the most part, RE2’s remake is just as much of a triumph as RE1’s, combining state-of-the-art tech and thoughtful self-reflection to make the old feel brand new again. The police station is significantly altered from its original layout, and yet similar enough that you feel like you know it. The more rote, later sections of the original game have been given new personality and contour—the greenhouse and sewer sections both stood out as impressively reimagined. The characters, too, have been smartly rewritten to feel more like interacting humans than archetypal action figures. Each one of them bore impressive nuance rarely seen in a Capcom title but crucial for good horror, in my opinion.

The action seems to lean heavily toward the “survival” side of things, with even plain-jane zombies sometimes taking an obscene number of bullets before they stay down. I appreciate how this adds to the “dangerous” feel of the game, but I sometimes felt like it had lost a little bit of the fun factor I associate with the shooting action of the entire series. Still, I see this as a stylistic choice rather than a flaw, and they also give you a handful of unlockable infinite ammo rewards in the post-game so you can go for a more action-packed “victory lap.” (Note: @jbsargent taught me that term :D)

Mr. X is worth his own essay, but I’ll just say he was always one of my favorite things about RE2 and he’s absolutely my favorite thing about the RE2remake. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Shortcomings

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the remake’s glaring mistreatment of the A/B campaign structure. The whole point of this game’s dual-protagonist hook is to show the unfolding of events from two separate but concurrent perspectives. Here’s what happened to Claire. Now here’s what happened to Leon. The remake sometimes gives us this—Leon deals with Ada while Claire handles Sherry and the police chief—but sometimes inexplicably puts Leon and Claire through the same events, implying that only one of these campaigns is happening. How else can you explain that both Leon and Claire witness, for example, Mr. X lifting the chopper wreckage to make his chilling debut? What point is there to an A/B campaign if they nullify each other? They may as well have done away with the “2nd Run” concept altogether and just let you pick the Leon story or the Claire story. This is one of those things that bothers me the more I think about it. It didn’t affect me very much in the moment, but looking back I don’t know what to make of the story at all. Who did what? The 2nd Run is slightly shorter than the first, but I would have been content with something even shorter if it meant a more coherent narrative.

They’ve also cut at least a couple of the moments from the original game in which Leon and Claire check in with one another, which I found to be enough to greatly hurt the sense of connection between the two characters. The moments when they do interact are great, but I wished there’d been a few more. They also speed through the intro movie on 2nd Run, employing a “Last time on 24”-like highlight reel instead of giving it the space it needs to establish the crucial atmosphere and character dynamics. I didn’t like that.

Camera placement is a debate that will probably never die in the Resident Evil community, and it’s hard for me to even decide where I stand on the matter. The use of fixed camera angles in the classic games was a stroke of genius that allowed the games to mimic the tried-and-tested techniques of horror film, but occasionally the shifting angles caused player inputs to get tangled, resulting in unintended frustration. The over-the-shoulder cam used in the RE2 remake and most other recent RE titles gives the player complete control over what they see. This is a much friendlier interface for the action sequences, but it also means the game can’t force you to look at anything. On my first playthrough, I missed four or five classic moments including the first appearance of Mr. X because I happened to be looking elsewhere when they occurred. I see this as emblematic of the sometimes conflicting aims of game design, where a game is both a plaything and a cinematic experience targeting specific emotions. I’m not sure there’s a perfect solution to this, but I appreciate that the game essentially operates like an autonomous ecosystem. If you miss the action it’s your own fault, but it’s true to life in that sense.

↑ This is actually one rare moment where camera control is taken away and you have to look. Gah.

I don’t think there’s any fair way to conclude that the remake is better or worse than its predecessor, but I’ll happily submit that Resident Evil 2 is the best game ever announced via T-shirt. I think Capcom can look back with pride and say, "WE DID IT."

[fm-towns]

I think it's kinda funny how prepared I am to hold a big video game tournament of some kind.

I have like 8 CRT's, 8 GameCube's and Wii's, 8 copies of SSBM, and well over 16 GameCube controllers ready for a Melee tournament.

I also have 4 GameBoy Advances and 2 (or maybe 3? idk) GameBoy Players to have some Generations 1, 2, and 3 competitive Pokemon Battles. tbh I might need a 2nd N64 just so I can enforce Smogon's standard ruleset more easily with Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2.

I also got an original DS and a New 2DSXL with capture cards, and an NDSTV mod to play a DS Lite with the top screen's video being sent out to a CRT, and more than enough Generation 4, 5, 6, and 7 games to have some competition there, as well.

Probably the only downside is how I only have one stream setup, that being my HDMI capture card and my composite cable capture card hooked up to my Steam Deck lol

I mean, finding a venue will also be an issue. The library I want to host at will only accept events from town residents, and the one that's actually in my town is so tiny that I probably can't fit everything in the event room. The alternative would be actually renting out a venue, but that shit costs money, so nah.

also covid still exists so I have no qualms waiting for that to actually blow over

[game-boy-pocket]

It’s time for another one of My Nintendo Wishes. And this is one of two posts that actually caused me to stop doing Nintendo Wishes for a while, because I couldn’t figure out how to word it... At first it was just about phasing out the 3DS, but I think what I have in mind is a little bigger and makes more sense... at least to me.

I want all my Nintendo experiences in one place.

When I heard the Switch would be a handheld home console hybrid, I was beyond stoked. All those games that you only ever saw on handhelds, like 2D Zelda, Pokemon, Mario & Luigi RPGs, ect. They’d all be able to be played on my TV in glorious HD, and I wouldn’t have to feel bummed out when a game that looks good is on the handheld instead of the console, like I felt oh so many times with the Wii U...  

Well fast forward to today, and they’re still making 3DS games. Some of them are genuinely upsetting to me. Luigi’s Mansion 3DS breaks my heart. it doesn’t even look as good as the gamecube original...

I digress.  There’s also the matter of the huge library of DS, 3DS, Wii, and Wii U title thats I no longer want to play because that would mean hooking up those old consoles again. ( Not to mention virtual console )

So here’s my proposal.   Put it all on the E-shop. All of it. From the Arcades all the way to the Switch, the full library of Nintendo should be available to purchase if so desired.

“But what about the DS/3DS/Wii U and their two screens?” you say.  I say, sell a little controller with a screen in the middle as an add on to the Switch or whatever the modern console is at the time. It’s not that Far Fetched, Nintendo loves their peripherals.  It doesn’t seem much different than selling a really expensive classic controller. People who don’t want it, don’t have to buy it.  And maybe Nintendo could sweeten the pot a little, and include download codes for a Wii U, DS, or 3DS game.

“But what about the 3D??”  Can you honestly tell me that the 3D has ever added anything meaningful to any 3DS game?  Even so, 3D TVs exist.  Not everyone has one, but you don’t need one to play 3DS games.

“And Motion Controls?”   The Joycons already have that. Try playing Breath of the Wild without your joycons attached to anything, it feels just like holding the Wii Remote and Nunchuck imo.  

About the only thing I don’t have a solutiuon for is games that require ROB, or the Power Pad, but I’m sure something could be worked out.

Look, if Nintendo does continue to shut down emulation websites, the very least they could do is make even readily available for those who want to play their games. I have absolutely no qualms with buying official re-releases, but they have to actually happen for that to work. 

[thomcoldman-blog]

My 10 Favourite Games Of 2017

This list was originally posted on the forum Resetera, but I felt like putting it up here too, with a little more insight into why I liked these games so much, and so they don’t get lost in the muddle of forum posts. Enjoy!

10. Snake Pass (Sumo Digital; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Sumo Digital has been a developer I've admired for years, particularly for their work on the Nintendo-tier kart racer Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Snake Pass is their first independently-produced title, and it has a great hook - the player controls a snake in much the same manner as a real snake might move. There's no jump button, no Earthworm Jim spacesuit, just the power to raise one's head and the strength to grip tightly to any object you've coiled around. There's no timer or enemies; Snake Pass is content to let you explore its levels at your own pace, letting you getting used to its unique feeling and take in the calming David Wise soundtrack. It's a game that feels like learning to ride a bike again, and the progression in ability over time is such a pleasing sensation that it earns it its place on this list by itself. The good use of collectables and generous helping of levels is icing on the cake.

9. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus (MachineGames; PS4, Xbox One, PC)

B.J. Blazkowicz returns and he's lost all meaning of subtlety whilst he's been out of action. Wolfenstein 2 shoots all of its shots - the action is bloody, explosive carnage, and the subject matter isn't satisfied with just skewering Nazi idiocy and narcissism, taking time to shine a light on White America's love affair with sitting back and reaping the rewards of compliance under fascist rule. Whether it's exploring B.J.'s broken psyche, giving Wyatt a crash course on hallucinogenics or putting you under the spotlight in a terrifying audition, MachineGames refuse to pull their punches, each great moment coming swinging like B.J.'s Nazi-reprimanding fireaxe. The combat encounters are far from polished, with stealth being heavily nerfed from The New Order and the half-way shift in tone from borderline-satirical diatribe on mortality and American race relations to comic-book capers is incredibly stodgy, but Wolfenstein 2 leaves a hell of an impression all the same. Shame about that credits music.

8. Gorogoa (Jason Roberts; PC, iOS, Nintendo Switch)

A good puzzle game can make a really strong impression, guiding you subtly by the hand to make you feel like a member of MENSA just for pressing a few buttons or prodding at a screen. With Gorogoa, I can't even begin to describe how the puzzles actually work. Imagine a window segmented with 4 panes of glass, and now imagine you can drag elements out of those panes and into other panes, or over where there isn't a pane to create a new pane... See, it’s hard! In as simple terms as I can muster, it’s a game about taking the world apart and putting it back together again to create paths and progress for your anonymous young hero. It’s intensely abstract, yet the South Asian aesthetic feels like a living locale, an exploration of a boy's days-to-come. It's a short experience, but with each puzzle solved making me feeling smarter than Albert god damn Einstein, it's one that will stick with me for a long time.

7. Splatoon 2 (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

Like pretty much everyone, I didn't own a Wii U, but the sting of that decision never really happened until the arrival of Splatoon - Nintendo's first proper new "core" universe since what felt like Pikmin. It instantly looked like sheer fun - and as a big fan of both Jet Set Radio and The World Ends With You, it was clear as day Nintendo's younger designers were picking up the Shibuya fashion torch those games dropped behind them. Put simply, it's totally my shit. Splatoon 2 confirms my suspicions and then some, being the first multiplayer title I've enjoyed online in forever. I can't get enough of the soundtrack, the sound effects, the amazingly catty banter between Pearl and Marina, and just the feeling of dropping into ink, strafing around a sucker and blasting them straight between the eyeballs with my N-ZAP '85. 20% of Switch owners in the US can't be wrong.

6. Yakuza 0 (SEGA; PS4)

The only games I've played previously by SEGA's Toshihiro Nagoshi are the brilliant arcade/Gamecube bangers F-Zero GX and Super Monkey Ball 2, plus his one-off PS3 sci-fi shooter Binary Domain. Loving those 3 wacky games, I always felt a little put-off by his regular gig nowadays being a series about Japan's most decorated crime organisation, and a bare-knuckle brawler at that. Yakuza 0, the 80s-set series prequel that serves as a perfect entry point for series newcomers, proved my suspicions ill-founded. It's a game which instantly casts the majority of the yakuza as control freaks and bullies, pits its protagonists Kiryu and Majima as their unfounded targets and pawns... and then lets you fight your way out of hell via brutal finishing moves, bizarrely complex business management sidequests and, if you're so inclined, a gun shaped like a giant fish. It's that kind of game that always keeps you guessing whether or not you should take it seriously, and so it wins you over with its best-in-class action choreography, astonishingly good direction and a never-ending deluge of sidequests, minigames and challenges. Don't sleep on Kamurocho.

5. Sonic Mania (SEGA/Christian Whitehead/Headcannon/PagodaWest Games; Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

If you’re reading this, you probably know I'm a Sonic apologist. I don't really stand by the 3D entries - bar Sonic Generations, which I genuinely love - but the narrative that "Sonic was never good" is some ridiculous meme that I can't stand. They were genuinely fun games, albeit far from perfect; every game can use some improvement. Sonic Mania is that improvement, spinning the level themes and gimmicks from the original Mega Drive (and Mega CD) games into vast new forms, with myraid routes, tons of secrets, an astonishing sense of speed from beginning to end and fairer, more agreeable, more exciting level design. Old locales, new levels - oh, and some new locales as well, one of which (Studiopolis Zone) is an instant classic. 16:9 presentation, all new animations and crazy levels of animation detail, and a mind-blowing soundtrack by Tee Lopes - Sonic Mania is the perfect Sonic game.

4. NieR: Automata (Square Enix/PlatinumGames; PS4, PC)

For my first foray into the sunken mind of Yoko Taro, he couldn't have left a better impression. NieR: Automata uses Platinum's engaging-at-worst, thrilling-at-best melee combat as the language to tell his new story of how pointless it is for anyone to even bother throwing themselves after ideals of society or humanity, and why it's worth trying all the same. Every inch of this game feels crusted in Taro’s sensibilities, with the no-bullshit 2B and her curious whiny partner 9S running into robots waving white flags, avenging fallen comrades, establishing monarchies, throwing themselves to their deaths, and coming to terms with their crumbling existence in apocalypse.  It's crushing, it's raw, it's often dull, but its uniquely bleak vision of AIs breaking free of their programming has a grip as powerful as a Terminator's. And when it’s ready to let you go, it has you send it off with the most memorable credits sequence in history. Glory to Yoko Taro, glory to PlatinumGames - glory to mankind.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch, Wii U)

Standing in the centre of a bridge connecting Hyrule’s broad, emerald green fields to the desert mountain approach, a bridge overlooking the still Lake Hylia, I fire an arrow into a lizard bastard’s head, or at least I try to. He dodges it and rushes me, forcing me to jump away and retaliate with my claymore. Out for the count, I resume looking for the lost Zora wife I’ve been asked to seek out, who apparently washed all the way downstream in a recent downpour. I can’t see any wife - my entire view is dominated by the giant green dragon snaking across the night sky above me. The wind picks up, but I am too awestruck by its presence to take note that I could glide up to it and shoot off a valuable scale. Instead, I just stand and stare, this utterly unexpected moment happening before my eyes. Friend or foe? A boss monster, perhaps? A vital story element later on? The answer ended up being none of the above: in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there be dragons, and that fact in and of itself speaks volumes about what this game is about. After 30 years, Hyrule finally feels alive.

2. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall; PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

Very few games instil a genuine emotional response within me, but the story of Mae Borowski's no-fanfare return from college to suburban gloom resonates hard with me. It's an expert at the little touches - the needless-yet-fun triple jump, the not-so-starcrossed rooftop musicians, the impulsive reaction to poke a severed arm with a stick - and woefully precise with its big swings, like an upsetting cross-town party, a wave of violent frustration amongst the townspeople, and the inability to just lay it all on the table with friends and family when you need to most. In the cosmic dreams of shitty teens, Night in the Woods finds an ugly beauty in depression. 

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo EPD; Nintendo Switch)

It’s impossible to deny 2017 has been the year of Nintendo. There’s plenty of celebrate elsewhere, but the Switch’s rise to prominence as the machine to be playing ideally everything on, and the amount of absolute smash hits Nintendo has producing this year makes it hard for the narrative to focus elsewhere. The epitome of all this is their final killer game of 2017: Super Mario Odyssey, the grand return of a more open-ended style of Mario platformer. A true blue achievement in joyous freedom, it brings together everything from Mario's history of 3D platforming - 64's freedom, Sunshine's other-worldliness and sky-high skill ceiling, Galaxy's spectacle, 3D World's razor-sharp platforming challenge - and throws into one big pot, creating a Mario where both the journey and the destination are one and the same, and exciting to the very end. In a year of amazing games that hit upon horrid, upsetting themes with delicate, pinpoint accuracy for tremendous success, I’m not sure whether it’s a shame or an inevitability that such an unapologetically surprising, happy game made the biggest mark on me this year, but either way, I’m welcome to have Mario be truly Super once more.

[thinkingaboutgames]

WHAT’S YOUR FOREVER GAME: or, that...THIS new game is really THAT old game, and I’m cool with that...game.

(random thoughts and video that kinda really sums up five hundred percent what I end up loving so much about a “game” / archetype / franchise I’ve been playing and enjoying for 10 years plus)

So, for whatever reason I’ve decided to write / ramble about something that keeps coming back for my brother and I every few years in our respective / mutual gaming cycles...

That...going / crawling on your knees back to your…“forever game”…

Which, the more I think about it…I’m mostly curious about defining / dissecting the idea of this kind of game…

As well, because we’re in this golden age of video games as “video games as a service”...so I get the feeling that people WANT these games to exist for us…and I kind of think they already do, but...what are they? Are they made, born, or just effectively “sold” to us?

And what has me wondering the most on this topic...most surprisingly...is how the game I’m thinking of for all this...isn’t what I would’ve originally put on my “must play” or “desert island” games lists...

If anything, it would probably be on the “games I keeeeep playing and would never tell anyone about BECAUSE I keeeeeep playing IT!” game list…now that I really think about it…

Which brings me to Everybody’s Golf…

(which is the 7th? I think? Game in the Hot Shots Golf Franchise...but, really, is just the newest in a long line of golf sim off shoots of, what was really FIRST for me personally, (despite 1990s Golf on the game boy technically being the first I played and did love) 1999’s Mario Golf for the N64 (which really had its hooks in me for years, and with every new incarnation, to come…))

Which is a brand new MMO (wooo, the chance to play a live round with my brother...where we can chat and watch shots and shoot the shit while we drink a beer ALMOST like real golf!) with microtransactions…

(...has there ever been a ship you actually helped make float?)

BUT...at it’s core...this, in part, “forever game” of mine, is ALSO the most bloated version of the simplest thing I love...

(and what’s funny to me when I really break down what the “game” is, and how this “game”, through all it’s versions, has been able to feel / be the same “game” because it’s ALSO felt so...formulaicly similar?)

Which is just...hit A to “start swing”….hit A to stop “top swing” (power guage)...hit A again for follow through contact (to stop “accuracy guage”)...

Which is so mechanically simple that it was able to be made on the game boy...and, as well, because it’s part one of what only has to be a two part system of game mechanics who’s formula add up to “re-creating” / making a simulation of what “golf” is.

“aim” mini game + “club swing” mini game = golf

(though, to be fair, the new MMO lets me drive a cart around, explore a little...fish...all on a live course with other players...and it’s all sooo seamless and lag free that I can do other things AND this OR play my own round and fly through it while completely forgetting everyone else and the entire world is there if I wanted to (...until the crazy created characters / bear suit people show up and start spinning around and I can’t forget them...))

the way that...

player controlled “paddle” + player controlled “paddle” + computer controller “ball” = table tennis (Pong)

So, really, my earliest thoughts on this were of me marveling at how a game that...when it stays simple...gets to also feel easy and familiar over the long haul…

(...and how and why I think people jump from top / newest competitive shooter to the next...chasing the technological edge, latest philosophy on “feel”, AND the competition...perhaps more than other genres, while games like madden or fifa can do nothing different until the end of time and will always have a strong player base)

But that’s what brought me to my next thoughts on what makes this possible…

Feeeeel...

Which is easy enough to understand in the close up and most immediate sense with…

How do my hands think and feel about this game?

(...and how do they get to remember...to build up and into being a part of this game?)

(...am I learning to move, then punch, then combo, and fight...adding things up over incarnations until I’m dancing...)(...or seeing an initially arbitrary, but, later on, very important, score climb as my bare bones understanding of a few simple arcade game concepts turn into muscle memory and late game meta strategies?)(...do new game plus runs give me just a little more to see and explore as meters get higher and my hands get more confident, like in shadow of the colossus, or just darker dungeons and toughter fights, like in final fantasty remakes on 3DS / mobile?)(or am I just getting more chicken dinners and or seeing better KD ratios?)

...but, this always becomes interesting, over time, because video games are also, in part, technology...so what we play on can change out from under us...from handheld, to 64 controller, to the gamecube’s cushy cloud (in the case of me playing Golf, then Mario Golf, then Mario Golf Toadstool tour)…

So the game itself (or it’s goals (goal line) and objectives (touchdowns)) can feel familiar…

But how we play...what we play for, and why…can change, add up and be wholly re-interpreted out from under us too...with us learning, borrowing, and abandoning a lot at times even...

(the easiest and quickest example to tie up all those esoteric questions about “what’s it all about”, can be made out of...skateboarding games...and how it’s main contributor / trunk game of the genre, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, evolved from high scores and timed runs on a controller...to a plastic skateboard peripheral (for a second)...and, in a different but still similar sense, from the arcadey, combo chain, game style of Tony Hawk to the trick specificity, unique goal, flow and feel approach to skating that was EA’s Skate franchise)

But that “feel” of everything...as a whole experience, despite some reuse of more simple “parts”...is really about the entirety of that equation adding up into something that can be remembered as “different”…and it’s what makes a game, potentially, infinitely replayable (because it’s worth is always there for it being / feeling so unique).

As another example...there are all kinds of snow boarding games to play (technically, not necessarily within the newest generation of consoles), but, really what that means is that, snowboarding games as a genre, only saw so many incarnations over the years (surfing games has it worse), but...to name a few...

1080 snowboarding (N64), Snowboard kids (N64), Cool boarders (PS), SSX (PS2), Amped (Xbox), Shaun White Snowboarding (PS3), Steep (PS4)...

But each, is wildly different in terms of single player / multiplayer objectives / intent, story mode or competitive replayability, and, yes, though each sees a swell of content, console power and so, depth, breadth, and newness all it’s own, really, they each, ultimately “feel” unique, I feel, and warrant their own specific attention because each is such a different “game”, in terms of what you play for, on, and how...

And each of those games “feels” different because each tries something different for specific reasons…

It’s not quite like golf games, who’s simple idea has been more or less repeated, and kept similar, yet slowly built up and stacked upon with bells and whistles until we swell into a crescendo (like with Everybody’s Golf)…

Sooo...maybe each of those snowboarding games could be seen as having their own “forever game” potential, or any from the genre itself BECAUSE the genre, from game to game, can end up with so much variation in “feel”?

...it all makes me think and ramble in a bunch of different directions lol.

But I’ve only really looked at things from within the realm of sports games, more or less, so far...as well because they are games who’s controls, or “hand feel” (to be most? Specific), are at the forefront of their core experience...

BUT...is this similar to how and where match three games like candy crush, or light and simple puzzle games, number games, or physics games can offer simplicity and immediate return, consistently and conveniently?

OR even beautiful giants like “Threes” can offer a streamlined, brain heavy mountain to climb?

OR the way that real Donkey Kong folks need a standing arcade cabinet to really complete the experience, AND be serious about a record?

Is that how people end up begrudgingly jumping on board with the most modern fighter, and yet...

Some will always end up back at the arcades that are closing down, and hunting down gamecube controller parts, even if no one else is?

Is it allllllll…

What makes a forever game…

“feel”? And NOTHING else, maybe?

...rhythm...pattern...flow of “feelings” and “rewards” to a game?

Why chess, Tekken, and poker are always going to exist in some form, somewhere?

It all makes me wonder...and feel kinda sad and embarrassed for “games” too, because...

Everybody’s golf is a game that ALSO...FAILS...SO much at what it’s ALSO trying to do…

Which is...make itself into THAT game that gets me to hand out more money, but...honestly, they’re in a bind because...why would I?

They’re throwing new clothes, purchasable with COINS, and club upgrades, purchasable with GEMS and TICKETS, at me like nobodies business, but...

(quick aside...I hate microtransactions...it’s why I can’t and don’t wanna play Overwatch anymore...because I don’t have enough friends to enjoy it competitively, and it’s too miserable to end up actually “wanting” anything in the game...because, then, once I do, I have to be miserable and sad and only, on a timed grind to get it...OR, I waste money on slot machine boxes and end up skipping meals and over-drinking to deal with my sadness...in part, because I feel hurt and let down for letting myself depend on / trust a game for some enjoyment...which was a place I used to think was safe for wanting things...)

FINALLY – WHY I POSTED THE VIDEO

THIS, what this video shows, ultimately, maybe...is what ends up being the MOST magical of moments in these mostly “the same” slogs through a very samey kind of game, like these golf franchises...

Wild moments of physics-made chance that turn into something I can send my brother a replay of via my phone, just so we can laugh together, and get excited to send another one back because NOW we have a machine for MAKING these moments between us…

It’s not a scripted event, an achievement, an unlockable…

It’s not a well written plot or bit of story that connected to me more to my soul…

...it’s just...a surreal, or silly...emergent...moment from playing hundreds and hundreds of holes WITHOUT skipping a beat, until…

...I absolutely HAVE to pull the car over from this smoooooth ride to marvel at something that’s spectacular...

It’s something that feels mine...and, sadly, MAYBE couldn’t even be pre-programmed to mean more, or even as much...

And that, really, is I think what’s magical for these games…and what makes a “forever” game different than the games you put on display, in your library, on your desert island...

These are the games who’s moments you don’t brag to everyone about…

Just your closest family, who might have the same itch, and get the same enjoyment out of this little slice of...hundreds of hours…

For those thirty second clips, and two minute laughs...

...it’s JUST a game that let’s me just “play” it, and enjoy the play of it, until I MYSELF make something happen?

And, again, what’s sad, I feel...is that they could add a hundred courses over time, and ask me to buy each one, or season pass, or something, but I don’t know if I’d shell out a time, because...can’t I just keep playing the old ones? Wouldn’t I be fine with it, because, as well, maybe I could afford the DLC this month, but, if my brother can’t...why would I want to send him a clip or something he can’t enjoy, as much, too?

(This led me to another thought / example...Shadow of the collossus...one of my favorite games with FEEL to it...but...if they added monsters and different story scenarios...on and on, forever...I’d probably never touch any of it past the main story because...how and WHY it ends is really one of the most beautiful things about it...same with metal gear solid 3, and other games I could probably think of…

but, the truth is...adding more of that “in between” isn’t gonna help an already great game be better, or even good forever…

and, MAYBE they could keep coming up with meaningful ways to show new / different stories in / through that same original world / game / vessel…

like, I’m sure someone could turn out fantastic dead pan comedy arc using the shadow of the colossus’ game engine, but… just make a new tv show!

...why are they trying to turn each new game (or new tv series), INTO the NEW television set?? as if THIS will be the new vessel through which all stories can / SHOULD flow...)

So...I really don’t know how to help “games” as an industry, with doing the impossible (being both worthwhile, finite AND infinite money machines)…

Because the game I’m currently expecting to play forever...probably won’t get any more money out of me any time soon...

But I’m curious about thinking about it…

Those games you’ll always jump back on board with…

You might not tell EVERYONE to get on that horse with you…

But you’ll ALWAYS put a quarter into the Galaga machine when you’re waiting for your slice of pizza…

...and maybe you’re gonna get the new Red Dead game just to enjoy more horse with your nature...

THOSE forever slices of something...be it a whole, or little bit of who knows what or why, that becomes your “forever game”…

Maybe it’s all feel…

...but is it? I don’t know...but, whatever it is, it’s perfect…

So…once again, and always and forever…

Games...thank you

Love, me

(...rant over...for now...)