John E. Dynamite

Lotta games took me maybe two or three spins to figure out what they were actually asking of me. I bounced right off of Attactics like I do all tower defense until I realize the enemy couldn't shuffle their units and archers were OP, then I started blowing through it. The mechanics behind Devilition are pure chain-reaction and get thick once they click. Block Koala isn't nearly as obtuse as it looks. Party House is probably the most modern game in the compilation, again I took one look at it and ran away, took two looks and found out it's pure deckbuilder, super tight and straightforward once you get to the nuts and bolts, all about managing risk and keeping your rolodex manageable. And oh my God is Rail Heist revealing itself to be the most mechanically sound thing in here. Once you realize how line of sight triggers stuff, what you can do with objects, how to stay crouched and rolling, what you can punch holes in, how to drop motherfuckers right outta the bottom of the train... I don't even use the pistol. I just get in there and raise hell. My lungs are back after COVID and I'm gonna return to my obsessive DDR playing soon, and I need to peel myself off of UFO 50 because I started the original Dark Cloud on PS2 and actually really like it. But I haven't had anything burrow its way into my brain like this since... *maybe* Bloodborne when I played it 2 years ago. My only pro tips are 1) Don't play chronologically. You end up playing the most simple games first that way and it doesn't represent the spread as well. 2) Pilot Quest is an idle game. It plays itself when you're playing other stuff, so try to start it early. 3) The biggest and fairest knock on the game is that there maybe should have been instruction manuals. Most of the games are straightforward enough to pick up and play, some stuff like Barbuta and Mooncat are very much vague on purpose, but something like tabletop resource-and-warfare game Avianos is made a lot better by going online and looking up what the hell you're doing.

Yeah, Ojiro Fumoto (Downwell guy) is one of the core half-a-dozen designers. We don't know exactly who made what because all the credits are in-universe and part of a fictional game company, but he's listed on Wikipedia as also having worked on Pingolf (sort of explains itself) and the... sidescrolling Outrunner shmup. Half the list is incomplete and I'm curious what else he did.

I don't give a tastefully-choreographed fuck about how we're defining the mainstream these days, all I know is UFO 50 has an idle resource gatherer, a deckbuilder, multiple tower defense games, two avant-golf joints, a proper Metroidvania, and an at-least-over-ten hour RPG on top of a lot of other games that push the point home that the game design involved is much more modern and QoL driven than the aesthetic lets on. Maybe not across the board as there's some deliberate obtuseness and arcade-ism in the top third of the "chronology", but those have their own charms and feel a lot more fair than your standard 80's score attacks. The games want to be played. Ugh. The Rally-X/Splatoon thing. The reverse Downwell actually made by the Downwell guy with the Kid Icarus vibes. The grid based chain reaction demon blower upper. The one where you use your spent 1UPs as meat platforms. The art game with the dumbest controls. Golfball Zelda. Two very different and brilliant polarity shifter/VVVVVV/Gravity Man-likes. Subnautica as Metroid. The Elevator Action? train heister. The physicsy shuffleboard/carom Stratego. The rock-solid Pocky & Rockylike. The Disney-license-Capcomesque with the smartest shrink mechanics I've ever encountered. The joy in being this overwhelmed is kind of hard to turn into words but tbf my brain has been reduced to absolute mush.

If you're not on UFO 50 right now my heart cries for you. I don't know how it's mathematically possible for anything else to be GotY.

I'd say it's often the "default" gimmick in the way that a lot of redneck/cowboy/working man gimmicks are and thus wind up being the gimmicks of people who aren't particularly creative. But The Acclaimed are like, this very online modern rapper/Reddit troll/Attitude Era throwback/actually queer thing that for all its good and bad isn't anywhere near the standard "urban" gimmick. I will resist the urge to unpack further.

There's a completely legitimate case that wrestling should be an outlet for the most savage parts of the human heart, that the very foundation of the artform is built upon the tragic catharsis of retributive violence and its unending consequences. There's a completely legitimate case that wrestling should exist as live theater shonen anime, where magically strong buds struggle to beat the bad guys and then do because they learned a new move and their hair/pants changed color and they yelled real loud. I think an ideal version artform can and should have room for both.

The point of the violence is to shock the crowd and make them feel things. But every time you do that, a certain segment of the populace will take the trick the wrong way. Some inadvertently, some will be "performatively ignorant" and rail against it in a way that has become common in this weird, modern propaganda war that blights most forms of wrestling discussion across the lower rungs of social media. The last time I tried to express this, I worded it as poorly as I've worded anything on these boards. I haven't got my thoughts together on it, but... I don't know. Something about being mad at a magician for sawing a lady in half. Maybe it is sexist. Her intestines are fine, though.

Yeah I'd rather take the syringe spot than a superplex at this point in my life. I get my blood drawn just fine. Probably would as a teen, I'd take the bump better but the acne would hide the wound.

First half was an all timer. Second half was Mercedes *really really really doing a bad job trying to ad lib over a busted weave???* and some shock spots that I have seen too many times over the last 20 to 30 years. The bag callback, ok, Terry Funk fanboyism is fine. The syringe thing never grossed me out, I've just seen the same thing happen since buying Big Japan VHS when VHS was the only way to buy it.

I don't know when I'm going to be able to play it but I need Astrobot to sell every damn copy it can, and remind Sony that they are both still allowed to make fun single player games and use all the old franchises they are sitting on. Every version of a just universe has Astrobot paving the way for Ape Escape 4.

I could go on about WayForward. They were a small company that did a lot of cheap licensed games, but they usually managed to do a better job than anybody expected (Wendy the Witch as a gravity-flip platformer? I love it.). They made Shantae at the tail end of the GBC's life cycle, so it barely sold but it was so out-of-nowhere great that it instantly became a major "hidden gem" and has been one of the most expensive and sought-after physical games for collectors. When the series got revived the Shantae sequel became the defining DSiWare game. It is a legitimately great game of no small historical significance. They did Ducktales: Remastered, Contra 4, the Boy and His Blob reboot, Aliens: Infestation on DS, Mummy: Demastered, the Advance Wars remakes, Migty Switch Force, they did this real neat RPG/horizontal shmup hybrid on GBA called Sigma Star Saga that I guess is getting a remake next year? Even a lot of their "bad" games are pretty interesting and worthwhile, like the GBC WWF beat em up and the Silent Hill dungeon crawler. They're also making a brand-new GBA game, they're finishing a half-completed Shantae game from back when and it looks great. No chance in hell it beats Good Boy Galaxy as the best brand new GBA game (masterpiece~) but I really hope those two games can kickstart a modern GBA scene.

Shades of when the Styles Clash was breaking people's necks. This is a perfect example of the "wrestlers instinctively tuck their necks" problem that has led to less front bumps and flapjacks/back body drops.

The announcement of the Trails in the Sky remake is a pretty big deal. Trails has become thee story-driven traditional JRPG series of the last 20 years (the worldbuilding is frankly ridiculous), but there's always been the issue of their accessibility and which game to start with first. Before this, Sky First Chapter was only available on PSP and Steam and it looks and plays like a 20 year old game. Trails of Cold Steel 1 (sixth game in the series) was Trails' commercial breakthrough and is a decent introduction, but it 1) isn't on Switch 2) pushes the anime cringe + bloat boundaries. The Crossbell games ARE on Switch and they're great but they outright spoil the Sky trilogy. Add that to the daunting length and sheer amount of lore, they aren't exactly the easiest sell. A full 3D version of the relatively approachable first game, apparently using the good old translation and likely having English VA is exactly what the series needs. And I gather that the newest-to-the-US Trails Through Daybreak is both real good and doesn't deal too much with the other games' plots, so hopefully a lot of Switch nerds go Daybreak -> Sky FC.

Rest In Half The Peace That I Have It says something about modern wrestling that Sid's work and character is so resoundingly fresh to watch in 2024. I don't know *exactly* what it says, but I don't watch Sid for coherence. Maybe it's that we don't have anybody that gigantic, crazy and loud anymore but Sid set a high bar.

I'm of the opinion that Ronda is a decently fascinating psychological study, and that the hate against her is disproportionate to her transgressions and deeply grounded in sexism. But I started following her back before she was a champ in Strikeforce, so approaching it from the MMA side makes the patterns easier to see. I never intended to be a Ronda defender, but things kept popping up. Somebody somewhere was dogging her promo abilities and quipped that she "must have a speech impediment or something". And then I looked it up and found out that she was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and developed a speech impediment so severe that she couldn't complete a proper sentence until she was six. I remember somebody claiming that she had "daddy issues" because that's what we accuse all women we don't like of having, and then I looked up the circumstances around her family life and her biological father's accidental paralysis and eventual suicide. Even her transphobic comments of yesterdecade seem informed by her stories of being bullied for being a muscular child athlete and being called "Miss Man" by other kids, and all of the body image issues and eating disorders she talked about growing up with. And I'm not saying all of that makes her comments correct or makes her a wonderful human being, but it does paint a decently human portrait that can at least contextualize why she is the way she is. If you haven't seen it, this is a screenshot of Ronda's profile on a Pokemon Stadium 2 fansite from when she was 16 years old, very much using the cringey language of the 2003 internet. She's mentioned it in public discussion so it isn't some part of her past she's trying to keep buried. https://imgur.com/2AXpsSG And if that's our best snapshot of a pre-Olympics Ronda Rousey, then yeah, she seems like a 'normal' high school millennial geek girl. I think she had a really weird childhood as a judo prodigy, came out the other side of it not-so-well adjusted, and then wound up in the absolutely gross, amoral, alt-right clutches of MMA gym culture which led to her getting temporary Sandy Hook brain worms before shutting the hell up about it for eleven years. I think about the number of my favorite MMA fighters who have completely disappointed me as human beings and Ronda doesn't even come close to the top. That sport is not good for people. The toxicity she dealt with during the dying days of Vince's despotism probably doesn't come close.