#and I think a lot of that has to do with Nintendo's company mindset

[a-gameboy-pocket]

It absolutely sucks that everything’s getting more expensive and all that, and I don’t like the idea of paying $70 for Tears of the Kingdom especially since Nintendo is notorious for never lowering their prices but if $10 is the price to be paid for Nintendo developers having living wages, so be it

like, Nintendo sales have been going down but they’re still giving their devs a 10% raise. I’m happy spending $10 more if it means that the people who made the game I’m playing are taken care of, especially since burnout is so prevalent in the industry nowadays

This is my most anticipated game of the year as well, and I think a lot of people are in the same boat. I’m glad the people who made it are being treated well.

[styrmwb]

I Beat Games in 2024

At the start of the year, I started to write my thoughts down about games I beat starting with Chrono Trigger; I eventually got A Lot Better with it, and I stuck with it until the end! I'm quite proud of myself. Sure, the posts are usually long and rambly, but I feel like I've improved at putting down Why Exactly I Like And Don't Like Things. Perhaps I'll get better!

But similar to every company (Spotify, Nintendo, Youtube, McDonald's) doing years in review, I Also wanted to do one for myself! Behold: The List

Shoutouts Tiermaker for letting me be a coward and not do a strict numbered list (I wish it wasn't so low quality)

Lemme go up with a short little thought and how I think the game stuck with me to the end

The One I Didn't Beat

Baba is You - Game is Frustrating

I started playing Baba after I beat Persona 5, and before Dawntrail came out. I'd wanted to play this game for a good while. Very funny energy, and super cool concept. Change the rules to solve the puzzle. What I got was less a think about how to change the rules game, and more of a block pushing "how do I get the rule that I want" game. I got mad. Is it possible that I was just dumb? Yes, absolutely. But I couldn't get myself to finish it. Perhaps I will return.

C Tier - Liked, But There's Problems

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - Falling Prey to Stagnation

I still love FFXIV; and I do think that Dawntrail brought a lot of good things. Soundtrack is stellar, world design is awesome, and once they released the raids? Dude. The combat design this expac is STELLAR. PLUS I GOT TO SEE THE ARK ANGELS AND PRISHE AAAAAA. But alas, the FFXIV formula we've had since ShB still remains. The writing continues to leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm burnt out. I'm not... Excited to play the game right now. I really hope they fix that, I want the game I love to thrive.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII - Great Gameplay in a Weird Place

I think I played Lightning Returns at the perfect time. It really felt like XIII-2 Chapter 2. I'm super happy that I got to finish the XIII trilogy. I think the game is good, but I don't know if it's gonna Stick with me as much as some of the higher entries. Again, the soundtrack is phenomenal (FF games Can Not Miss I SWEAR TO GOD), and I stick by the fact that if I were to revisit it, I would get a whole different fun from optimizing time now that I know How Much Time it is.

B Tier - Solid Games All Around

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - Childhood Chapter Comes to a Close

Another game I'm really happy to have finally finished. Reliving the nostalgia of the past, as well as being able to approach it with an adult mindset. The game was addicting, the style of it still lives in my head; I honestly think it's one of the best artstyles in the entire series. Yeah, there were some problems like the laws and the nature of the grind + new units, but overall I really loved how the game stuck together.

Yakuza 3 Remastered - Closer and Closer to Catching Up

A classic Yakuza experience. It's a tried and true formula that fills my completionist wants and needs. It definitely has the best story of all the LaD games so far (0-3), and while I wish the remaining games were happy fun Sunflower times, I know poor Kiryu won't get to relax. I think the only reason this isn't higher is just cause it doesn't have too much special sauce differentiated from previous games (plus the combat stuff late game docks a point). Either way, still excited to continue on.

A Tier - The A is for Amazing

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth - 2024 (New) Game of the Year

Congratulations to VII Rebirth for being the only 2024 not-expansion game I played this year. This was pretty much the game I rooted for in the game awards (which don't really matter) but honestly I feel bad cause it feels like default. Regardless! None of that matters! Rebirth was such a good game. It made me love and appreciate VII's world and cast so much more than the original did. I loved the new additions of Queen's Blood and Gilgamesh, and I genuinely think that game is the template of what action FF should be. It just needed to not beef the ending to be S tier.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Best in the Trilogy

An honest to god surprise hit for me. I did not expect to like XIII-2 as much as I did. The organization and gameflow of it stuck with me so much more than XIII or LR, I loved the small cast: Noel was tragic, Serah got screentime and character, I got more Hope content, and Caius is absolutely one of my favorite FF villains now. The soundtrack fucked, the atmosphere was great; it just really stuck with me. Think what I really would have appreciated is a little more respect on the previous cast.

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer - awsome seekwel to my favorite indy

The thing about Slayers X, is that I Literally don't have any problems with it. The game is EXACTLY what is needed to be. I've never played a boomer shooter, but I had a lot of fun running around, shooting glass sharts, finding secrets, and listening to that 2000s nu metal grungy soundtrack (I'M STILL NOT GOOD WITH GENRES DON'T GET MAD AT ME). It does help that I have some personal bias in the matter, but I love games in this universe and I can't wait for more.

World of Warcraft: The War Within - PLEASE DON'T LET THIS AGE BADLY

This expansion is the direction I NEEDED WoW to go in. The art direction, the story, the characterization, the gameplay. I haven't felt a love this strong for this game since Legion. I haven't been able to check it out beyond the first part of the game due to Money, but I do hope that it's continuing to not suck. I hope that when the Worldsoul Saga completes, I can confidently say to people without feeling bad: "I love World of Warcraft."

Splatoon 3: Side Order - Final Course of Single Player Goodness

Similar to Slayers X; I don't really have any issues with Side Order! It's what I expected, it feels like what I was promised, a Splatoon roguelike. I had a good bit of fun with it, I loved the attention to detail they put in. The gameplay loop was really fun, and it made unlocking bits not a miserable experience. Plus more Off the Hook is always appreciated.

S Tier - Games of the Year, Games of All Time

Persona 5 Royal - Hoo Boy.

The inventor of jazz. The game that crosses over with everything. I understand the hype. I LOVE Persona 5. I think out of every game I played this year, Persona 5 stuck with me the most. It made TIME MANAGEMENT ADDICTING. It gave me a huge cast of charming characters, playable and not. The vibes were immaculate, the story felt cathartic. I loved the gameplay, the interactions of elements, the usage of real world mythology; and though some of the Royal bits could have been added on a little smoother, the quality they gave me clears any complaints I got. The fact that I still have such good memories even after playing plenty of other games tells me this isn't just some kind of recency bias (it might still be), Persona 5 is one of my favorite games ever.

Chrono Trigger - Absolutely Deserved Reputation

Finally. At long last. Chrono Trigger was a game that I NEEDED to play. It's a perfect RPG (well nothing is perfect and I could get some minor nitpicks but). The cast is amazing and well rounded, the battle system is still a classic RPG but takes its own spin, makes it unique feeling. It's not a guys to one side enemies to other random thing, it FEELS like a whole battlefield, the positioning mattering, the interactions between characters, GOD it's so good. For a time travel story, it all makes sense, it does what a time travel story SHOULD. The soundtrack is fucking legendary and I still listen to it to this day. What makes it really special is that I got to play this classic without knowing pretty much anything about it. Chrono Trigger was an absolute treat, and I think it's definitely one of my favorite games of all time.

Bonus

Of course, these weren't the only games I played this year, just the main ones. 2024 saw the return of my Final Fantasy XI phase, where I got to beat Wings of the Goddess and A Shantotto Ascension (as of writing this I'm still playing); and I have to plug it to make sure people realize that Wings of the Goddess is one of the best FF storylines they might never experience. I got the first Mario Party I ever enjoyed playing in Jamboree, which doesn't feel super mean spirited and rage inducing like previous entries, as well as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe somehow also creeping in. Theatrhythm continued to be a main stay as what I go to to fill my rhythm game need; and right at the start of the year, I finished the pokedex in Pokemon Violet.

Finally, my main replay of the year lied in Hypnospace Outlaw; my favorite indie game of all time. Going back to reexperience it, check out all the new content that got released after my first play, that game continues to remain truly special in my heart.

I wanna keep doing this in the future. It was really fun, it gives me a record, a snapshot of my thoughts; something to look back on. Who knows what'll happen in 2025? Maybe I'll branch out more. Maybe not. Maybe I'll only play Yakuza games all year, it's possible.

And the most maybe of all; maybe I'll play more Actual new releases instead of old games. We'll find out!

[sketchedboba]

I get some people raise an eyebrow on how you write Bowser in this au but can I just say hes gotta be one of my favorite Bowsers out there!! ❤

Like no shade to other Bowsers but he's such an interesting and complex character to me I want to learn more about him in this au!

Like it's strange & interesting to me how he can neglect to raise his own imperfect creations yet be willing to take in other imperfect & abandoned koopalings, It makes me wonder about whether it was him being naive to parenthood in his younger years as well as seeing his own imperfections in them.

I actually like him doing poorly at being a parent the first time around but doing great with most of the next set of kids since these things do happen in life and it makes me want to know more about his relationships with not only his kids but their relationships with each other and how it effects everyone, like I'm curious about Bowser's mindset and what he regrets in his life and if he ever considers trying to mend broken family relationships with his older kids, I'm also very curious about how Luigi handles this info and if he calls him out on some things later on when he kinda has the right to do so as a queen and step parent

Im a huge fan but also super shy so sorry for this being anon but your story leaves me with questions and cravings for more it's so good and not just black & white keep up the great work!❤

After reading all of this, thank you 💚

I don't dislike other Bowser interpretations (heck I envy how simple or even more complex others make his character). However thank you!

I've also shared a few times that just because I've written a morally grey or black character, doesn't mean they're terrible overall or stay that way. It gets frustrating having to explain this over and over again especially when the version in my au gets compared to someone's personal version of him or another au. I have nothing against either.

Anygays, what a rant- moving on 😭

I'll reveal more on the Koopa Kids in the next post and I'm excited to share more of their personalities. 🎉 Surprise 🎉 they were the ones the new animatic is going to be about. It'll flesh out their lives a bit more.

As for Luigi's response, there's a comic planned for the confrontation so I won't spoil much outside of that. Just know it gets pretty messy.

Also for anyone doing the math, yes, Bowser wanted an heir at the age of 16, he was royalty AND the only other large koopa species. Kamek is a nice father figure, but he wanted company he could tend to. He was also naive in thinking about how fatherhood worked and Kamek spoiled him, so no wasn't really an answer he would take.

I genuinely found canon Bowser's treatment of different types of the younger koopalings over the years interesting. He praises Junior a lot and most of the others are an after thought (just like how Nintendo treats them...)

I know 10 is a lot of children for him (I've been told this before), but he's 34 almost 35 in my au. He has most definitely will and has fucked up whether it be with his children or his relationships with others.

It's good to know that there are people invested in the au though and don't worry about being anon 😌 I appreciate the support n luv ♥️

Here are these two goofs eating spaghetti. 🧡

[p1ombo]

I'll be honest...

Even if it turns out that Pal World didn't use any stolen or AI-generated assets, I probably still won't end up playing it. The well has already been poisoned by fans who heard those accusations and essentially said,

"so, what?"

I've only ever had the courage to dip my toes into the art industry, but I've been fortunate enough to know a lot of people - some personally - who do art commissions for a living. They're wonderful people, and to hear someone respond so indifferently to a company potentially trying to undercut their industry for profit is honestly really disheartening.

And I'm not here to defend Nintendo either, but like..."the game is popular, so who cares?" and "the consumers don't care, so it doesn't matter" are ironically super corpo-brained takes from people who claim they're sticking it to the AAA games industry.

There's a bit I recall from the hbomberguy plagiarism video about how a lot of businesspeople don't respect art, and I feel like that kind of rings true here. And I don't mean that in like a beatnik "oh, you just don't get it, maaaan" kinda way. I mean they actively refuse to engage with art except as a product or investment - as a vehicle for capitalism, essentially. It's the same mindset that brought NFTs into existence, and frankly I think we could all do with less of that.

[everygame]

The Making of Karateka (Nintendo Switch)

Developed/Published by: Digital Eclipse Released: 29/08/2023 Completed: 04/10/2023 Completion: 100% of the museum, beat Karateka (Apple II) beat Karateka remake. Trophies / Achievements: n/a 

If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you’ll know I’ve been playing a ton of old games, and yet I never ever thought to make a point to play Karateka until this release (you can read my thoughts on it here.) Although it has pedigree–its creator Jordan Mechner would go on to make, I think most famously, Prince of Persia–it’s also an Apple II game from 1984, and I think a strange choice to launch a deluxe re-release line, Digital Eclipse’s new “Gold Series'' (outside of there just being a lot of historical material available to pull from.)

Using that material, The Making of Karateka is described by the company as an “interactive documentary” and while it is that, it’s also sort of a digital museum exhibit… and sort of like a Criterion edition of a classic movie if the blu-ray was designed in such a way that it directed you to watch Charlotte et son Jules and read Jean Luc Godard’s treatment before you actually got to watch Breathless.

So it’s kind of an odd sell, really, and the contradictory thing I have to say about it is that I think The Making of Karateka is absolutely brilliant, but I also don’t think it makes a ton of sense as a product (although I do think you should run about and buy it immediately so they make more.) The question that lingers, you see, is what actually makes someone who isn’t retro game-pilled like me pick this up? It’s “The Making Of” to express that there’s something more here than just a re-release of Karateka, but hang on, if you don’t care about Karateka, why do you care about the making of it?

I don’t think it’s something that Digital Eclipse manages to answer, exactly, although what they have produced is beautiful anyway. Clearly using the same front-end as Atari 50 (which could have done with being made a bit more fitting for Karateka? I mean the music sounds exactly the same? ["Though it's not the exact same piece of music"--Pedant Ed.] they’ve created a tour through Jordan Mechner’s life as he started developing video games, from the aborted project Deathbounce, through the release of Karateka and its sequels, and then with some postscript concerning a possible sequel that hints towards what eventually became Prince of Persia.

It is heavily curated (I sort of wanted to read more of Jordan Mechner's diaries than I got to...) and definitely some irrelevancies (sorry, I hate famous talking heads telling me why they like something. It’s not as insightful as you imagine!) and some bits feel a bit… ad-hoc. It also (and I noticed this about Atari 50, too) keeps quite a narrow focus and doesn’t widen context to deepen your understanding. Everything about Spartan X and the path from Prince of Persia to Tomb Raider and beyond that I wrote of in my Karateka write-up is my own, er, research [“*cough* Wikipedia *cough*”--Ed.] and I think that’s a line that’s missing and (honestly) needed to make players understand Karateka’s place in history.

That said, what’s there is still fascinating. It’s simply a matter of curatorial choice. It’s obviously challenging to try and make an Apple II game chime with audiences in 2023, and the choice here was made to not just release Karateka with a “museum” glued on and I’d agree it’s more likely than not in that situation new players don’t go into the game with the right mindset. But I’m not sure that going for the “museum” first angle is correct either. While, yes, you can absolutely click through to a menu and just play Karateka straight away, the experience is absolutely not framed like that, and if you play through the “interactive documentary” in order, you spend a long time playing prototypes of Deathbounce, a game that Jordan Mechner never actually manages to make any good!

It’s a strange priority, and I think it comes from locking the interactive documentary into a strictly chronological format. No one is asking for my advice, but I think there’s a middle-ground here, and I think it’s the Turner Classic Movies system. You know how you used to turn on TCM and then like, Robert Osborne would be there, and he’d explain how this random Humphrey Bogart movie was actually very interesting, and then suddenly you’re watching Sahara and really enjoying it?

I think that’s what I’m imagining. You load this up, you get a nice intro, an explainer, and then you’re playing Karateka. Then once you stop playing it (you don’t have to finish it or anything) it goes straight into the documentary, armed with knowledge of Karateka. Deathbounce makes more sense once you’ve played Karateka. You can actually see the evolution because you know how far he was able to go!

So, yes, my main complaint with The Making of Karateka is simply one of pacing and structure and awkward priorities, the last of which is most exemplified by another example: the inclusion of modern remakes of both Deathbounce and Karateka. Structured as it is, I have to question whether they were worth the time and expense?

(An immediate aside as I discuss this. Retro re-releases are getting wildly disparate in pricing now. Arcade Archives are putting out excellent stand-alone titles for $8, but you also have ININ putting out a bare-bones version of Cannon Dancer for an absurd $30, so it’s actually a bit hard to declare the correct value of a re-release, and how much extra value remakes or improvements offer in terms of how much you can charge versus how much it costs to produce…)

The Deathbounce remake doesn’t feel simply unnecessary, it feels counter-intuitive to the thrust of the documentary. It doesn’t succeed in making Deathbounds good, and the lesson I read from this section is that Mechner spends far too long trying to make a simple arcade game into something more rather than just releasing his first version quickly (which is probably the most fun version!) and just ends up with something that’s kind of a bloated mess, and seemingly far from his goals. The “what if” here is “what if a mess, but it’s 2023.”

The Karateka remake, however, is fantastic… it’s just that it is basically at the end of the entire museum and it wasn’t until I got there that I even knew it existed! Developer Mike Mika has done exactly what he set out to do, which is to make a hyper-smooth version of Karateka that feels like it was developed for an ideal VGA PC in the early 90s, and it includes a brilliant director’s commentary system (there’s an entire director’s commentary for the Apple II Karateka too, but it’s not particularly highlighted, which is a bit of a shame–although you just watch a playthrough for that one). 

It makes the game really accessible (perhaps too easy to play, even) but by the time I got to it it felt completely redundant! Sure it’s slow, but Apple II Karateka is perfectly playable, and the director’s commentary in the remake even just recounts a bunch of stuff you’ve already learned. So the whole thing feels like it’s working at cross purposes to the rest of the release–like they could have simply released a remake, but something changed their minds about doing that, and it ended up here as essentially bonus content.

If it really comes down to it, though, this is all just my classic “well, this isn’t exactly how I want it” complaints, and I sincerely hope the “Gold Series” can be sustainable enough to continue–perhaps this is as much a proof of concept as anything. I’m just not sure they actually need to put in this much effort, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. 

Will I ever play it again? From an educational standpoint, I sort of wish there was just a folder with all the materials in it to refer to rather than having to walk the halls of the digital museum each time, but there’s stuff here that I’ll return to, absolutely.

Final Thought: Actually, a (much needed!) re-release of MULE, for example, could benefit from an expansive museum and including a remake (which should be front and center if they do, the original is a much harder sell than even Karateka) but for many games–and I think in the end Karateka felt like this for me–a Turner Classic Movies-style release would be enough. Either way, I’m still going to show up every time.

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[yalek-lembine]

The reason why gamers and gaming companies are the reason why the gaming industry is at its last legs:

Let's start with the gamers:

Gamers:

After further observation of the way you people operate with your stupid political correctness in the form of a slang dictionary, you people give a bad rap to the gaming industry and community because you're also demanding with your 4K and 2K digital waste of resources. This also deals with streamers who are very very popular and waste their network resources on a single stream towards twitch or any other place that accepts that type of medium.

P2p/p2w? I would rather see that fed down your throats as freemium because that is the actual definition and the actual legitimate definition of your slang...

And trust me you don't like me telling you this because you know it's true but instead you act like it's false because you don't want yourselves exposed. Well that's my exposition for you guys because you're just as stupid as the companies which I'll explain about here momentarily.

The only video game that I have ever played was bejeweled and that was it.

But as a result of this, I was lucky enough to start developing a c++ game in popcaps original framework from 2008 called sci jewel. And yes the version number starts at 4.00. uh oh Yalek.... Spoiler alert...oh diiiiick... Yeah. this game will pretty much break all the necessary regulations that were put in place by companies and gamers themselves especially for the PC on Windows Linux and apple/mac OS. Mobile might take some time though...

Here's another thing for you gamers... You don't really understand the open source mindset with video games because you would rather make money with it. That's a problem in my eyes because as I see it video games are software and should be treated as entertainment, and should not hold ownership by a corporate entity. Even Indie / independent developers should have no right to own something unless they are trying to hold a leadership role for it..

Companies, such as EA, Nintendo, Activision, square enix, etc:

What I will never understand is why you think owning an entire genre of video game is the coolest thing that ever happened to you...

Well it's not. Once a genre has been made it can be remade either for the better or for the worse. Depends on the type of person who wants to develop it.

Also you enslave your programmers to do things that would seem disrespectful to their own identity. Well here's the thing okay... The programmer is the one that's writing the code and they can determine whether or not they can listen to you executives or not. They have every right to say no, and if you ignore this, is coercion in the first degree and is an actual federal crime. May not be rape, but coercion is close to it. Also shouldn't the programmer be determining solutions for the executives instead of the executives dictating what goes into what goes out of it? Because one of the executives don't know what the heck they're doing which a lot of them don't...? What are the game accidentally leaks code or crashes their whole system? And there's no way to get community input because you executives try to get your way by having your own system developers /debuggers debug the application instead having the community do it for you.

For both gamers and the companies: start cooperating with each other and start understanding that a piece of software is just a piece of software and should not be treated as a greedy means of existence.

I guess I'll add on to the streamers here too...

Y'all have no right to stream. Because you don't have any understanding of being able to realize that your network bills are going to be much more than what your stream income is going to be. Stream income is one of the worst forms of income to ever come by because there's no way that you guys are going to be able to afford, in today's age, the. necessary housing, water, and bills that the worldwide capitalisocioeconomy is trying to induce unto you all. And I personally believe your guys' popular ignorance will catch up with you in the end.