2023: A Year in Review
Last year, I wrote a comprehensive list of every game I had played in 2022. This is easy because forgetting things is not my strong suit. I failed to publish that list, however. Let's try again! No rules, Just my thoughts. It will be edited only- and exactly- ONCE. So please be forgiving- the pictures will be (mostly) pretty!
Before I get going, here are the 3 indie games (and best games I played this year) you should buy and play: (CLICK THESE LINKS)
BEFORE THE GREEN MOON: By Turnfollow (also steam link): The future of narrative expression in Video Games
24 KILLERS: By Happy Shabby Games: A deep meditation on what it means to be Home.
VOID STRANGER: By System Erasure (also steam link)
Death Stranding
Subtlety is for cowards. I got this game free for Christmas and had gotten those sweet 8bitdo ultimate controllers, so the timing was fresh- I had somehow gone the last few years completely unspoiled on Death Stranding other than that "you eventually get ziplines." I love incremental games: Succubox, a dark room, Cityinc, games that let you sit with them as more parts of itself slowly untangle. An exercise in progression and personalized investment- a touching story about letting others in- choosing to believe it isn't the end of the world.
My god! What a game! You pick up things with the triggers, and you have to keep holding them down to continue to hold them!!! Hand management in a AAA game!!! This was made for me!!!!!
It's a game that understands the joys of going on a walk!!!
My best friend in the whole wide world was watching me infrequently, at first guffawing at the brashness and boldness of the cutscenes. Soon, we were at the plot reveal involving Mads Mikkelsen, only for them to tell me "okay yeah this all works." IT SURE DOES.
Also I'm going to be mean here for only once: If your smile lines didn't immediately crease at the suggestion that your main character's name is Sam Porter Bridges and is a deliveryman, who comes to help build bridges- that's your problem! Fix that problem!!!!!
Elden Ring: Co-Op Mod
I had a lot of fun with Elden Ring in 2022, so I decided to play it with my best friend in the whole wide world. We had an absolute stupid idiot blast nearly the entire way through- until we didn't, at the exact point I knew we wouldn't (you probably know it too!!!!!!). We abandoned ship *literally* at Maliketh's door. It's a game that's exactly really really good for 80% of it.
I now feel confident enough to deliver my hot take: Mohg is straight up the best boss in the game. Cool secret weakness you have to go out to find? Check. Cool second other special defense for only his battle? Super Check. Just absolutely good phase allocation begging you to just keep trying until you get it? I wish they gave you a proper big dungeon, my literal blood brother: You deserved to be in that tree!
This was a proper 2 party RPG- please grab a friend and treat yourself to it soon. Even if it *is* a bit buggy at times.
Doom Eternal
I didn't like it!
DOOM
If I had played DOOM Instead of Half Life, my life would have turned out entirely different. I never thought a game could sell me on *not* having to aim vertically, but it turns out games can be WAY harder in an interesting way if you just let them aim up for you! I started to wonder if vertical aiming was a mistake! (it’s not.)
If I played Doom as a teenager, I would have immediately made some levels and become a 20x better a level designer than I am right now. Instead, I got addicted to design as functional place and opened up hammer editor once before I realized I needed to be 15 years older to understand literally anything.
DOOM II
I didn't finish it- I will! I think a lot of it is fun! Some of it is strange, what a kinder memoir would call "bold and experimental"- I think it's fine! Some of those new enemies are great! Please keep in mind I like Ms. Pac Man more than Pac Man, so I'm not a purity enthusiast by any means, but it does feel like they added some kind of 5th ghost that did a Whole New Thingâ„¢ but also gave Ms. Pacman a piece.
24 Killers
I have a lot more to say about this game, but know this: I loved this game to its bones and let its rain wash me over. It is rare that a game can truly instill a sense of place bereft of external conflict. It's a bouqet of flowers blooming in a long dead corpse. The World is a dead thing- it's why you need to live in it.
You should play it. RIGHT NOW. Anyone can! Do it! Do it now! BUY IT.
Okay, if you really need more selling:
24 Killers is a game that is a lot like Moon: Remix RPG Adventure- it’s systems are familiar, but instead of (according to Moon) justified hatred of the player, 24 Killers welcomes you to its world with warm arms. Please play it, or share with a friend- it’s a game that anyone can (and should!) play.
Super Metroid
I played through 2 different versions of Super Metroid: the vanilla version, and a popular map and physics modification called Project BASE. Super Metroid's map is famous for striking the right balance between labyrinthian and self guiding, and I'm working on a series of pieces that are secretly about path design in videogames. Project BASE is notable in that it's map edits mainly connect previously unconnected paths. These additions are often properly gated, allowing for slightly new (sometimes slightly nonlinear) paths through the game. The built-in randomizer features less bottlenecks compared to Vanilla Super Metroid Randomized as a result.
These were the most productive playthroughs of any video game I've ever played: I developed a really neat process for path analysis in videogames (and yes, it is entirely different and much better than Mark Brown's logic gate mapping (this is not a ding, Mark Brown is fine I just think his boss keys analysis falls short about the complexity of how Super Metroid uses space to guide the player, including players who don't "play along")), so look forward to seeing that in a string of reviews in either Late 2024 or early 2025! Definitely 2025.
TOTK
I attempted to write all of my thoughts on TOTK, and then it got too long (if you have read my other reviews you should know what kind of extreme, we're talking). Here is my better, condensed review of TOTK: it is like trying to eat and entire watermelon and succeeding.
Watermelon is my favorite fruit. When the season comes, I buy the best one at the market, fridge it, cut it in half, and serve it. I am able to eat 1/3rd of a watermelon in one sitting. I did so several times while playing Tears of the Kingdom. I always want to eat the whole damn thing.
You cannot, eat the whole damn thing. It would physically kill you. Because TOTK is one of those big modern games that has an ending best served in the early-middle of the experience, it does not have a point where you know to get off the bus. You finish the game with so much of the world untouched! How can you not reach for more?
I ate the whole melon. And I got sick.
I will say though, I do not think I am smart or dedicated enough to talk about this game though. I have grown tired of watching folks discuss this game that should have the same attitude about their own "observations" about the game. Talk to me about this game at your own peril.
The Adventures of Cookies and Cream
I am old enough to have rented games from Hollywood Video before switching over to Gamefly. Because the trash collector for my brain stopped showing up for me sometime in the 5th grade, I remember every game that I couldn't finish (because the weekend rentals were far cheaper) due to lack of skill.
This was not one of those games.
My dad grew up playing videogames, and my mom played many games with him. My brother was soon to play videogames, my sister had been the primary user of the N64, and my Bruncle's PlayStation was so coveted that he had it on lock in his often oddly situated room in the household. The odds were in my favor: someone was going to play this cute video game that definitely required two people right??? My dad was working graveyard shift, my Mom was into slower strategy, investment, or social games. My brother's gaming days were in his future but not yet his present, my sister was too busy attempting to get into college and my bruncle was momentarily absent in my family (and mostly liked games that used his PS1 Steering wheel controller).
Nobody wanted to play this stupid game with me, and I was too uncoordinated to believe for a second that "2 characters, one controller" was the intended experience. I never made it past the first world.
I have talked about this game as a regretful memory for 20 actual years. For 3 of those years, I inexplicably thought that this game was the origin of Sonic Team's Cream the Rabbit. I want to say my Dad told me this for some reason. He must have known better. When I played Elden Ring for the first time last year, I learned that apparently it was Fromsoft who made The Adventures of Cookies and Cream.
This year, in 2023, I realized that I now had someone who would willingly play this stupid game with me finally.
We made it up to the music level, the second world in the game. It was not a good time. The timing on some of the obstacles is extremely tight, and there just wasn't enough buy in for-us.
2 months later I would go on to write too many words about a game I had waited a decade twice over to play, and how my life had compressed that time into dust. It only now occurs to me that I waited litterally twenty years to play a game I didn't like.
Oh Well!
Pikmin 2 Co-op
We were tasty for some co-op, so we opted to try out a newer mod for pikmin 2 that allowed for splitscreen co-op. It was fun, but we did not finish. The real deal was soon to release, and Pikmin 2's dungeons were a stressful affair to navigate as a team. We did not return to Pikmin 2 as we both played through Pikmin 4, a game that I feel (in short) supercedes 2's goals.
PIKMIN 4
I wrote an extremely long review. You can read it here. I don't have much more to say, other than that Pikmin 4 is the first game to bring Pikmin to a broader audience without compromising any of the previous game's ambitions. I'm not even sure I would want more.
What I *WILL* discuss is a postmortem on my review:
Pikmin is an incredibly important game to me, and I made sure to set my expectations real low for Pikmin 4. Putting a dog in the game was not enough to sell me that they had lofty ambitions for Pikmin's carefully manicured complexity. I was so satisfyingly wrong that my head swelled with ambition- I had just recently failed to complete and exceedingly long and complex review, so I knew I needed a strong structure to guarantee success for myself. While I jokingly titled the first section of the review (I often use section titles as a way to outline my thoughts) the Impact Site, the gimmick of the piece fell into place: Write a review that structurally mirrors the 5 stages of the original Pikmin, a game whose structure to me is like if God operated a buffet that you could live in.
At this point, the review almost wrote itself. Pikmin 4 required discussing the historical and my personal context, as so much of itself builds upon the foundation of Pikmin 2 and 3's (sometimes misguided) attempts to build a sequel to Pikmin 1-s o I was lucky that Pikmin's second stage is more or less a meatier extrapolation of the tutorial in the first stage. It was clear that longest and most explicitly structured part of the review (the actual review of Pikmin 4's successes) would take place in the third section, mirroring the Forrest Navel, one of the best strategy puzzle maps to ever grace video games. The 4th section became a loose collection of thoughts to mirror that games 4th stage, and it is by far the most gleefully unstructured pieces of writing I've ever put out. It was fun! It turns out writing via collage is a fun sort of challenge in itself!
I have been told by a few select cool people that this review is "very good and cool" and I still get joy thinking about that. It's a really long and insular piece of writing about the passage of time and I never would have thought that would have appealed to others- I don't actually aim to write for others often. It is a joy to I find myself a wonderful small audience of folks to write for. Before I forget, thank you for reading any amount of what I put out. Just the fact that people read is enough to keep me making.
In other words, I'm really thankful for Pikmin 4- I would say I owe the first productive year creatively for myself because of it. Although I wish I was a better illustrater when I was writing this review. My later piece this year shows remarkable improvement in that department.
videoball
I like VideoBall! I wish more people played it so I could enjoy it exclusively as a team with someone. I don't know how to solve that sort of thing. The people who play it now are very nice and much better than me.
What I *WILL* say is that it has an extremely good arcade mode that acts as an amazing on ramp to the game if you have a friend, and that my taste in custom music is much better than anyone else who plays the game currently (that being said the original soundtrack for it is extremely good.)
Long Live the Queen
This was a game that was recommended to me by someone cool in a community I hang in (do not find me). I occasionally work on a project (that may or may not see the light of day) in the "raise 'em up" genre of games- the person I work with is vaguely familiar with the Princess Maker games, although we were attempting to frame the game differently with a focus on wellbeing. I asked the discord community I frequent for recommendations in the genre for research purposes when someone recommended me Long Live the Queen. She has saved me a lot of time and exposed me to a world I had not yet poked at. What a game!!!
I am nowhere near "done" with Long Live the Queen, and will continue to poke at it in my free time, but here is the short pitch for those of you curious: you plan the lessons and skills for a young queen to learn so she can rule her kingdom, uncover mysteries, and survive (sometimes literally) her tenure as ruler. You are quite often forced to make decisions that nearly always ripple effect into later decisions. The process becomes so natural that a truly radiant narrative about "your" queen happens: my first playthrough ended in death due to failing to prevent the assassination of a relative of someone I had put to death. Her trial was somewhat a consequence of my early inadvisable foreign policy and a growing harsh glee my ruler had taken on- she was trying to slow down the threat of looming espionage occurring within the castle walls. I had not even gotten far into the game, but I was experiencing a narrative that truly and verifiably was a unique outcome of my numerous decisions.
I will continue to poke at this game because I hope that someday I can speak comprehensively to the narrative triumphs it makes all the way back in 2012. For now I will say this: It is definitely a game putting your time in and seeing how far you get. Incredible lessons to be had in narrative design.
And yes, you can turn off the music in the options. You do hear those loops a LOT so I say that with no judgment: Its hard to make repeated music in this sort of context, I know from personal experience.
Katamari Damacy
This was originally a Gamefly rental. I had mistakenly thought I had never played it, but I soon realized that the short lived Iphone port I played in High School was, in fact, the same wonderful game I had picked up once from Gamefly. The reason for my confusion was my primary memory: the cutscenes involving the cubic girl and her family as you restored various constellations (it was this game that introduced me to the confusion that she was calling the crab constellation cancer, for some reason).
I don't have much to say about Katamari Damacy because I also played We Love Katamari this year, and that game is everything that Damacy might lack for some players (snappier controls, for one).
What I *will* say is that the best level is the one where they let you go full ham on the crater village map with the market in the center, which also is the best track on the OST.
Half Life Blue Shift
I wrote about my thoughts already here. I make it a habit to repay kindness with my full attention, and I truly enjoyed being able to finish the last bit of Half Life I had never played. Little did I know that a very special anniversary update of the original Half-Life would be released late 2023. In 2024, I will be sure to do a victory lap around Half Life's excellent campaign.
We Love Katamari
You should get this. I played the original version, but I'm sure the remake is equally fine. You wouldn't think a game as pure as Katamari Damacy would have *This* good of sequel, but it does! It's actually better! The OST is firing on full cylinders, the challenge levels are far more compelling, and I love being able to play as different little guys!
I'm serious, both games are good, but We Love Katamari will make it so you never want to play another Katamari game again.
Bombrush Cyberfunk
I haven't played Jet Set Radio Future, but something tells me I just did.
That being said, that is literally the last I would dare to compare this game to Jet Set Radio- it crafts its own identity and standard of quality that surpasses my time spent with Jet Grind Radio- and I love that game a lot.
BRC aims to provide a LOT less friction than JSR, and this may flavor your preemptive opinion on the game, but it DOES have its own joyous style and it's maps ARE a treat to fully explore and soak up your time to a really well put together soundtrack.
What I can say personally about it: This is a game that understands what its like to ride a bike as a way of getting around to exactly nowhere and everywhere. You ziptie a stereo to your handlebars and wind down the paths in your set in stone town until the sun sets- I never thought I would see that replicated in a game, let alone a goofy one with a decent amount of action, but here we are. It was worth my time, and its probably worth yours.
Cave Story
Cave story is good. I got it for free! Its a game that's good in a time that it was hard to independently make games that were good. I got bodied by the final boss yes, but it's clear that it's charming vibe would set it up in people's minds forever.
I would have maybe skipped over talking about it because I have little to add, but I really wanted to draw Balrog.
Silent Hill
I don't think I realized these were adventure games. Silent Hill is an extremely good adventure game. Effortlessly cinematic, while managing to achieve my favorite kind of horror: the funny kind.
Let me tell you: I laughed a lot playing this game. Their are so many good setups!!! And I love the sort of game that kicks you in the face for playing it right at the end. I really want to spoil the "bad" ending so bad because I think it is a perfect example of the kind of bravery this game exhudes, but just play it for yourself. It's so good!! Don't worry if you cant beat the final boss! Just have a good time!
Supermarket Woman
I loved this film. You can watch it on The Internet Archive with Subtitles.
I will hold off saying too much in depth as I am no familiar with Japan in general, let alone in this time period. However:
My dad was a grocer. Worked it as a career his whole life. He started in the 80’s, and for him he saw it as a respectable career. Society would come to disagree with him as corporate supermarkets would roll over the competition. With that context, this film meant a lot to me. In particular, it’s really smart about a key contradiction: Hanako fights to save the local supermarket from bargain hocking, hack-fraud bigger business supermarkets, but the film is keenly aware that supermarkets killed an entire way of life itself. In the film, the fish department head and the butcher clash heads with Hanako. The fish man used to own a fish store- a victim of the homogenization that supermarkets necessitated. The film acknowledges this, and the second half of the movie is (mostly) about this very subject!!!
It’s a good movie. It’s also funny and charming, so please watch it.
Before the Green Moon
Someday, soon, I will write a lot more about this game. It is my game of the year. You should buy it. Right now. Even if it isn't on sale.
This game was brought to my attention when I posed a favorite question of mine: to what extant can a videogame be biographical? I did not initially know how this game would answer my question, but it did. Before the Green Moon is a triumph of narrative expression in a video game- a champion unlike all others. You arrive at dying, thriving town at the foot of your one ticket out of a world we abandoned. The game understands the exact relationship we have with work- the way folks often come to incidentally live the rest of their lives. It *IS* a fantastical game, and you CAN fantastically bring folks together- who is to say that isn't life itself? The small miracle that any of us find each other?
I'm dodging around certain narrative elements. Before the Green Moon isn't a game with narrative twists and turns, and it returns exactly what you're willing to put into it. What I received was one of the most cathartic and exploratory meditations on what "home" really means. Stop reading. Play it. Form your opinions. Witness the future of narrative expression in videogames. It's execution of its moods, themes, and scenes is unmatched by anything I have ever played. I know I'm sort of rambling, but it's going to be another year before I have my thoughts out and organized about what is now one of my favorite games of all time.
FZero 99
I don't have much to say, other than that Big Blue is maybe a perfect piece of Videogame OST. I can loop it endlessly with nearly no abraision- and I sure do with FZero 99 had sound mixing that pushed the soundtrack to the front of the mix.
Outer Wilds
I managed to go spoiler-free until I had a chance to finally play, and I am so glad I did- if you have somehow done the same, please play Outer Wilds, right now.
Outer Wilds is perhaps the perfect game for the curious- it understands a good walk in a way that few games do, and the overarching setup of the game creates a structure that necessarily organizes the players thinking for them- which for a game with this many mysteries is a design achievement. I'll put it this way: In a game where going to other planets is as easy as playing a videogame, it is an amazing achievement that they managed to also instill a facsimile of the accomplishment involved in successfully landing on the moon. If you've played, you know exactly what I'm refferring to.
To speak to my own thoughts: my favorite moment in the game is discovering a lab, attempting to recreate the experiment without a complete set of notes, and getting the same documented result as the long gone researchers. That's it! That's your reward! It isn't a mechanical revelation either- it only serves as a setup to explain the exact workings of the sci-fi at play (and it is *extremely* funny what is happening).
And if you still aren't sold, I will spoil the elevator pitch of the game: On the last day of the Universe, you set out to discover the last unsolved mystery the universe holds.
Please play this game. There's a reason it made all this noise.
VOID STRANGER
I'm frustrated with how others discuss this game. The sentiment that it's "secretly a good game" digs into me deep- the game is just plainly genius! It's really good!
The soundtrack is good! The broader structure is good! The miles of extra content is good! The game has satisfactory off ramps for players with differing amounts of investment! I love the way the narrative unfolds! I feel like they push the envelope for games own developing sense of "gameatography," if you will!
What I see instead is folks screaming "come play the new Tower of Druaga while its hot!" And sure, it's totally that as well, but I would *NOT* say that is the selling point for the game. In fact, I've found that it encourages players to immediately grow suspsiscious of the designers, plotting to outsmart the developers rather than, you know, play the game! Void Stranger does not hold up if you don't simply play it. It doesn't! The thing that makes it's arcane box of secrets good is that there is plenty of cake for players like me to eat and leave the party feeling satisfied!
And it's true: if you do not like Sokoban style puzzles (it's not a lot of proper Sokoban block puzzles technically but it has its own specific kind of strict movement/consequences design loop) this game doesn't have much to offer you!
This is all to say: I love this game. If it wasn't for the fact that 24 Killers, Pikmin 4, and Before the Green Moon came out this year it would make it out on to my top 3. I think a LOT of people should play this game, and they should definitely return it if they don't like everything up to the end of chapter 2. I simply wish that others could step out of their own feverish love (which is good!) when reccomending and describing the game to others- but at the end of the day it IS a game that is worth your time, and a game I will pull out to my non-game-playing friends as an example of the ever continuing development of the artform.
Mario WONDER
When Mario Maker (and its sequel) released, the common dunk was "wow, Nintendo is now crowdsourcing their next Mario game!" I do not dare to go that far, but it is clear to me that Nintendo was taking notes. I'll do some gamer taxes and say: I liked Mario Wonder! A lot! I Like exactly 80%, and weirdly nearly all 80% happens linearly- I think Nintendo learned too many lessons from Mario Maker when it comes to "how to make a challenging level"- they used to be really good at that!
I will rattle off some bullet points, in no particular order about Mario Wonder. I am doing this because I have enough thoughts to fill a detailed analysis of the entire game, but I *REALLY* don't want to do that, not here, not now, not ever.
1. There is a lot of Mario Worlds DNA in it. As you already know (or will soon learn) I've loved Mario World longer than I could read. So what do I mean when I say when I say there is a lot of Mario World in Mario Wonder? To be quicker:
a. Levels the lean on chaotic interaction with bursts of speed and well thought out vignettes.
b. A willingness to experiment with level order and structure in the broader context of a map. In the desert world, you do nearly all levels in whatever order you discover them as you wander a literal desert, trying to break in to a palace that has only a few entrances into. That was a cool sentence to type!!! IF there was some weirder way to skip around to different worlds in different order (since you have to clear them all to beat the game anyways) it would have been a slam dunk.
c. A delicate approach to Mario's powerup states. They actually do this better than Mario World (yes people struggle to love the flower, but having yoshi balances the cape by disallowing the free flying, which is a really clever way to balance having 2 different powerup systems in the game). Mario Wonder's powerups feel properly transformative in how you interact with the world without leaving the fire flower in the dust. None of them give you chores either! I'm looking right at you, ice flower!!!!!
2. The shorter "break" levels are an amazing implementation. Mario is best when you're just sorta doing things, and boy do they give you space to do exactly that.
3. They have given up on thinking that bossess are fun in Mario- I generally agree! I like how sparing they are here with them (the bowser junior water boss is my favorite!).
4. A lot of enemies were crafted to have specific behaviors, often implementing long gone behaviors of Mario's past. The slugs that get kicked out of their shell replicating Mario World's koopa behavior comes to mind. I like this! There are a lot of unique little enemies that never get enough time to shine, and I can already feel people getting ready for a Mario Maker 3 featuring only Mario Wonder elements. If they made that: It's a shame it would have the worst soundtrack of any Mario game! Oops!
5. Of course I love all the dumb characters. They're great and they're so generous- I just love em.
This got me thinking of Mario. A dangerous amount of Mario, in fact. Stay tuned.
ZINE JAM: My Mall Memorial
On a complete whim, I ended up hosting a modest zine jam from the discord community I hang around in mostly. I guess if you made it this far, you DO get to find me.
I've always had a fascination for malls- in some places, they outnumber parks and walkable town centers. They're also dying by the droves, and I thought the idea of eulogizing this passing destructive cultural movement would be an interesting jumping off point to make stuff. Turns out others agreed! Link below, please read if you have the time- it is a better put together, cohesive final package than a lot of zines out there. That's not me dissing zines, they're great and I love them: what's inside is a step above and I'm super happy all of these talented people came together to share their work with me.
GET IT HERE! (click)
Surprisingly, there are folks still working on stories for issue 1.5 of My Mall Memorial (more or less a package for all those who were late to submit or were sad they missed the original). Don't be afraid to reach out if you also wanted to participate- the more the merrier! I am drowning in the talent of my friends and I am Loving it.
Super Mario World
I wrote an article about Mario World. You might have read it. I spent a rough total of 220 working hours making this story happen (it's my impetus for logging my hours) and I will admit: I totally started working on it while I was doing the zine jam, and it's totally why my comic submission was only 2 pages long. While I do dramatically touch on what drove me to dedicate so many hours in such a short time to this story, the truth is simple: It was a good story. It was truthful and personal, and it was one of those "go the distance" stories I was capable of doing. I loved it, and I knew I wouldn't get a story this good for a good while.
A brief postmortem:
The article itslef speaks enough to the process of researching and learning the assembly skills required, so I will let that be.
I will say: I did not mean to be so mean to the Mario World Rom-Hacking Community (lol), but I do think they have a couple of omnipresent bastions of information who are so burnt out from smaller annoyances that they have developed an itchy trigger finger for blasting question-havers. This sucks! I've continued to watch the community from afar and totally innocent people get blasted for just not knowing as much as the people who wrote the guides- one of which written by someone who gleefully tells you they're not going to walk you through examples because "that's for you to do." If you don't immediately get what I mean, I would have to explain the complexities of education, skill floors, barrier to entries, and inclusion. I could!!! But It exhausts me and is worth a write up that examines the issue seriously and isn't written by me. Just know this: Lots of people learn, people struggle with different things, and unless you plan, accept, and cushion correction to misunderstandings, you are discriminating against who is "worth" learning from you whether you know it or not.
I litterally worked on the final hours of this article feverishly. I worked on it until the exact moment the article felt like a bad problem to get off my back- in which I posted it, went to bed, and then woke up delerious from sudden bout of COVID. Covid is one of the few things that cuases me not to be lucid, so the extremely warm reception I received upon posting from my loyalest of readers meant a lot to me in a literal, metaphysical sense. It feels unreal. It's not "stupid success" sure, but I really don't want that. 100 people clicked on it! That's nuts!!! I know of like 10 people who finished it and liked it!!! That's crazy! I only ever wanted like 2!
I'm still mostly proud of it. Nothing particularly got cut, as much as I wanted to explain memory addresses and the fun way the SNES is split up (the first values in the ROM are essentially pointers to matching Ram numbers like $700000 addresses away so they can just call like 2 digit numbers for ram addresses- it's pretty neat!!) but ultimately explaining binary and hexadecimal for a hypothetical general reader was already a large task.
I'm going to post the screenshot of my fixed credits screen in game:
This is the most unreal part of it for me. Rarely do I get to have a solid answer to questions from my childhood. I know it seems like such a minor change, but it's just nutty to me- this game, this world was present at the pouring of my brains foundation, and here I am at my current age with enough knowledge to reach in and change it.
When I wrote the 2022 version of this piece last year (and decided last minute to not publish) I wrote the words "I don't feel like I'm smart enough to talk about Mario World." I don't feel like that's the case anymore! Expect to hear something from me about Mario World sometime... late 2024/early 2025? The worth will be wait it, I promise.
As some of you may know, I play Mario World every year of my life. In my adulthood I vary my playthroughs to learn something new. When I finished the article, I thought "surely, this counts. I've learned a lot about Mario World. There's no way I could stomach more Mario."
JUMP 1/2 (and other Mario Rom Hacks)
Okay, I got the Mario Hacking Bug. You may (AND THAT'S A BIG MAY) see some levels from me in the future, because let me tell you: I do not think a lot of people understand what makes Mario World special. In fact, I think a lot of people wish Mario World played a lot more like Mario 3, and IN FACT, I think a lot of people ALSO don't understand what makes Mario 3 briskly fun!
I played a lot of small hacks, which I will not name, that all suffered from a short list of common level design problems:
1. Too cramped.
2. Setpieces and vignettes have no breathing room.
3. Levels overstay their welcome.
4. Difficulty is true, rather than a fun illusion.(I did not play Kaizo or hard hacks)
5. Level geometry lacks proper runways- Mario World's favorite trick is to give you just enough runway to gain speed, only to hit you with an obstacle that demands you slow down. This presents a choice: be responsible, or make the irresponsible choice of having fun tyring to keep your speed. Slow mode Mario World is not fun prolonged.
6. Everyone is afraid to put the cape and Yoshi in levels. You cowards! They're fun! Balance your level around flyers! Mario World does this for levels! You're really going to make more Mario World and *not* put in everyone's favorite parts of Mario World???? Do you really think videogames are about dying???? You can make it a lot harder if you give me a dinosaur!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I did, however, play a very interesting hack: Jump 1/2 , a collaborative hack featuring a mix of levels both odd, traditional, themed, gimmicky, plain, and difficult. It's mostly good, and I played it mostly to completion! Some bullet point notes:
-Some levels were extremely good, but about a quarter of the levels ran into the problems listed above
-Some levels do not understand difficulty.
-half of the levels should have been split into two levels. I get that this is a large collaboration and so you can't do that, but too many levels overstay their welcome. In a smaller hack with only a quarter of the ideas, you could have afforded to break up level concepts into more discrete levels. In fact, this was some of my most common Mario Maker advice back when folks used to hit me up for tips: youre level is too long, if you really want to keep that last part, put it in a sequel and see how you feel. That goal should mean "you did it, good job!" and nearly never "It's over..."
Use a rewind function and you could have a good time with a lot of the ideas however- some of the folks in this hack understand what makes Mario World special, and it was worth me sifting through the rest to see that. Surely, this counts as my annual Mario World, right?
Super Mario world from Memory
I thought this would be something that felt closer to Mario World enough to learn something. Unfortunately, all I learned was that people don't know Mario World! Apparently, all the little gag details about where enemies are placed based on the timing of your jumps just isn't what's remembered!
I did not finish. I'll spoil you: I did end up just playing Mario World soon enough.
Godzilla Minus One
Really I just wanted to share this nice drawing of Godzilla I made. This is maybe my favroite Godzilla Movie of all time. You should see it! It's really good. It's like a proper good movie! Okay, back to looking at this nice drawing of a big Godzilla again.
Mario World (no secret exits)
I ended up having a bad day, and for some cozy comfort I decided to play Vanilla Mario World (with my credits fix patch) with a typical annual alteration: no secret exits! I don't do this sort of thing out of a boredom- I just like to learn new things about one of my favorite games! Previously, I had done No Switches, No Yoshi, and No Cape. All 3 of those years were extremely fruitful explorations, and this year was sort of the same: It turns out when you willfully refuse to engage with the game structure's core conceit, you miss out on some of the best content in Mario World. Choco Island is outright an irredeemable mess if you don't take the alternate route through, and Vanilla dome BEGS you to find the secret way out, even if you don't find yourself stuck behind the difficulty walls that are Vanilla Dome 4 and Lemmy's castle.
What WAS fun was that I streamed this playthrough to the discord server I hang out in! It was a lot of fun- I think I'm going to take up streaming more in what I consider a cozy space. Having 2-5 folks chatting up a storm while I get to talk about my favorite game was definitely something for the books.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
I am a Klonoa 2 die hard. I rented it several times as a kid and played it to its bones, but I had yet to play the original title for the Playstation. I *did* make it all the way to the penultimate final boss in the wii remake, but I found that it failed to charm me in a variety of ways.
Turns out, the Playstation version is a crowning achievement!
There's a lot of movement in the stages themselves, and the game's trademark excellence in quietly tutorialising the player in increasingly harder tasks is on full display. The music is excellent, and every time I have picked up a Klonoa game I arrive closer to a day where "munyah" becomes a natural and accepted interjection for misery.
Speaking of Misery: I am struck by how bizarrely cruel the game's narrative is. I always knew some great sadness was suffered as the backdrop of Klonoa 2's uniquely moody narrative, but the original title put's Klonoa through literally fictional pain that almost feels senselessly cruel. There's a part of me that wonders if they always knew they wanted a deep pain and betrayal in the main characters heart for a sequel to expand upon- never did I think that I could loathe someone as handcraftedly adorable as Huepow. Huepow!
I think the game looks fine on playstation, and that's the version you should play. For Klonoa 2, I am truly split down the middle, so it's dealers choice- but emulation is still the way to go for enjoying the original. And yes, Wahoo's tacos *is* real- when I went to college, it was an odd experience to see Wahoo's signage enter my cornea as proof that it wasn't a bizarre stunt-ad fiction.
Going forward
2023 was a year that I truly came into my own. I'm secure in my job finally, I have enough time to work on creative projects like a second job now, I have put out things I am proud of, I can stand to look at my own ink work, and I have finally begun to open up in communities both online and IRL. I share thoughts with ease, sure, but emotions I often fail to put in to words. I am very happy, and I am not used to being happy. It is a nice feeling.
Before I tell you some of the things I want to do in 2024, I want to say thank you for reading. This piece espescially is a bit more for me than it is for you, but I like that people do actually read what I put out. It brings me immense joy.
The following list does NOT contain resolutions- they are merely things I would like to do/start on. In no Particular Order
GAMES:
-Finish KH: Chain of Memories (GBA)
-Play Ham Ham Heartbreak
-Finish Klonoa 2 (i am playing it right now!)
-Play Norco
-Play Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix on the hard difficulty
COMICS/INK ILLUSTRATION
-Finish an issue of my Floigan Bros. Comic (the mario world article and zine jam took priority!!!)
-Get Commisions going. I will do yours perhaps free right now! Get in touch!
-Write and finish a few chapters of A Very Literal Biography: a very personal and exciting comics project I've been working on.
WRITINGS:
-Finish an exciting piece I've been sitting on about the first McDonalds
-Maybe sell it locally? It started out as a zine as I've been trying to do more there, but It's looking to be quite large. We'll see when its done! I will in fact post it here, however- I like to share too much.
-Host another Zine Jam. It's happening- probably around this February. I'll figure out the details.
MUSIC:
-Become more mechanically versed in Piano. I let it fall to the wayside this year, and I need to catch back up.
-Become comfortable enough in ableton or FL Studio to make rough tracks for my games- I dont know why i've dreaded this last step, but I truly have avoided it for too long. I feel confident in my compositional abilities, I just need to put to paper now.
Reviews:
-You might. MIGHT: see a single video review from me, and a video adaptation of my own article as a sort of video production practice. It will be good, I promise.
GAMES:
- I will release one game that is based on a prototype I made 9 years ago. It's all comming together now. Stay tuned- it's pretty fun, pretty small, and it's going to happen.
And with that, the year is put to past. Thank you for reading. Just having anyone enjoy my work means a heck of a lot to me, I'm humbled constantly. I hope I can be more open with others- in the real world, I do not struggle with this but online in chat spaces I am a stone cold wall. I hope to change this a bit, and I thank you all for your patience with me, even if I am distant at times.
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I used to think everything matters, and that nobody could quite see that. As I got older, it was proved to me: everyone forgot what I could never. "Why is this so important to you?" became a dreadful question. I love everyone. I wish nothing more than everyone to be okay, despite knowing there is unwritable sadness at the core of their very being. I have felt this way since I was in high school, but it wouldn't be until 2022 that I read an entirely different person from me write this exact sentiment, and following their career lead me to a community I couldn't be more thankful for. I feel just a bit more connected to really cool folks in a space that I can just exist in- and while I do not know the person who wrote those words stolen from the hearth of my soul, knowing I am not alone in the exactitude of a particular feeling has allowed for a necessary healing to take place. This was the first year of my life where I did not endlessly search the archives of my memories for the answers of "what the hell is wrong with me?" I knew. I finally knew, and I was at peace with it. I still go digging through the shelves of my past selves and will not be able to stop, and the culprit of my missing piece is not something I feel the need to share (at least not in the exact community I hang out in- lol), but know this: I can type the following mistranslation of a Scottish poem with absolute certainty:
Would old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should once beginings be forgot, And the days of a long gone time? For us and old times sake, my dear for the olden days gone by, we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet, for the days of auld lang syne.
Thank you for reading.