Parenting and Video Games Part 2: Engagement

 

Good morning.

This article is Part 2 in a two part series about parenting and video games.  Part 1 was published last Monday, August 18th and went into my own personal history growing up with video games and the involvement of various parents and parental figures during the 80's and 90's.  I wrote that to help add some context for today's article wherein I talk about the approach both Conklederp and I take with our five year old, The Squire, not only in regards to video games, but visual entertainment, aka "screens," and I'll also delve a bit into other forms of entertainment (audio, physical media, physical games, etc) as I attempt to create a cohesive article that y'all'll want to read to the end.

A quick disclaimer that I'm reiterating from Monday's article.  What I'm writing here isn't meant to be a How-To article about how to raise your or any child in regards to video games.  All kids are different, and I won't claim to have any expertise about raising kids in general, let alone my own kid.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to say that I'm an expert at being a parent, as I'm constantly growing, taking in everything I learn, especially from The Squire.  So with that in mind, let's get to it.

I genuinely don't know the first time we introduced "screens," primarily phone screens, to The Squire.  We have these expensive bricks of wires, microchips and plastics in our pockets nearly 24 hours a day, not only as a communication device, but also as a way to take pictures and relay them from other people.  He was born in the early months of the COVID-19 Pandemic, when communicating with our families via video call/FaceTime was our primary way of communicating.  Phone calls themselves seemed trivial when you could video call someone and talk to them face-to-face, when it was advised not to mix households or quarantine for 14 days before doing so.  It's perfectly normal for new parents to want to take pictures of their brand new child, and with today's technology, those photos and videos are instantly available, so rather than a baby looking a a large black box with a circular lens, they're essentially looking at a digital mirror.  They've grown up with these devices nearly everywhere.  I mean, I have a picture of The Squire resting against Conklederp literally 20 minutes after he was born.  There was no way I wasn't going to be taking pictures and videos of this child and not be sending them to our respective family members because his grandparents weren't able to physically meet him until two weeks and two months after he was born.  So we took pictures and videos.  A lot.  Which meant he became accustomed to these devices being out pretty frequently.  I have an adorable video of The Squire from June 19th, 2021, where he's looking at the screen of the phone I'm holding, facing us, and as he smiles, he starts emphatically waving at himself, and his smile increases tenfold.  I regret nothing.

The point is, The Squire knows what screens are.  What's also interesting is that because of his time spent with phones and Conklederp's iPad, he habitually thinks that most screens are touchscreens.  My non-touchscreen laptop, he'll frequently touch the screen to try and scroll or select things.  He'll sometimes try and touch our TV screen futilely.  We even bought him a phonics word tile game-thing because of how much he loved to play Words with Friends with Conklederp's parents.  He was less interested in the physical game than the digital one, likely because the physical game didn't have built-in sound effects and because there weren't any reactions to The Squire accidentally tapping on a button to pay money to Zynga in the app; this would often elict a reaction that he thought was hilarious and would then try to recreate it every couple of seconds.

In July 2022, I first introduced The Squire to games on my laptop because our TV and consoles are in the basement, and I didn't want to show him something where he might be inclined to try and walk down a flight of stairs on his own.  Games like the Peggle series, which he's named "Old Horse Game" and "New Horse Game," Plants vs. Zombies ("Zombie game"), and Boomerang F.U. ("Watermelon Game") were some early titles.  Basically, games that required a mouse to play, which is pretty funny because I have a picture from when he was two years old and he's sitting at our kitchen table holding a much-too-large mouse in his right hand (even though he's predominantly left-handed) and trying to click on my homescreen.  Over a year later, he really got into Crumble ("Silly Face Game"), being an early controller game, although it was another game that he wanted me to play.  He didn't so much play Crumble so much as enjoyed watching me play it.  "Watching" being the key verb there because it's hard to determine how much he was able to comprehend about video games, but that's perfectly fine, too, and a definite step up from just plunking him down in front of a screen and leaving him be.

I think I've come to the crux of my article.  In the early days of him sitting on my lap watching me play either Plants vs. Zombies or Icewind Dale, or Tears of the Kingdom, it was a visually stimulating activity for him (to some degree) and engaging for both of us.  Maybe?  I would try to explain to him what it was that I was playing and what I was doing and it was something that we were doing together.  The Squire would also like to watch Conklederp Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in handheld mode on the Switch for slightly the same reasons that he would sit on my lap, although I was significantly less animated than when Conklederp would get hit by the Blue Shell or get knocked off a track.  We were playing video games with The Squire.

I think if Conklederp and I used the Switch or our phones/computers as the only way to keep him occupied and didn't pay attention to anything he was doing on said screens, we would likely have a problem, but that's not how we've decided to raise our kid.

However, I have been guilty of using video games to help me out during certain circumstances.  On Friday morning (August 22nd, 2025), I booted up Super Mario Wonder in the basement on our TV because The Squire wanted to play, but I was upstairs making waffles for breakfast and getting his lunch ready for preschool and my own lunch to take to work.  He did frequently call up to me to see something that he had done, and I did go down to watch him every second waffle to still be somewhat engaged with him.  It's not something that I do all of the time, sometimes you just need to get something done that will take 10 minutes by yourself or 45 minutes with a kid running around underneath, wondering why Cull Obsidian doesn't have his own movie, and can I lightsaber battle with him, and if I can pull up the Lego Murder video (it's more innocent than it sounds), and can he have another popsicle?

Over the last year, since he's really been trying to read everything in existence, which is great, and I will foster that desire forever, he has asked about video games and movies to a lesser extent that are very inappropriate for him.  Games like Layers of Fear, or Conarium, or DOOM (2016), or movies like The Terminator, or The Exorcist, or Suicide Club.  Most of the time, we'll generally tell him that a game or a movie is "too intense" for him and that he could watch/play when he's older.  He's currently stuck on the response, "Oh, when I'm 20 I can watch Terminator," or "When I'm 20 I can play Skyrim"; this fascination with 20 is from a Lego YouTuber who points out that he's 20 years old on a slightly more than irregular basis.

Speaking of YouTube, let's briefly touch on that subject before we sign off.  There's a lot of crap on YouTube and YouTube Kids, but Conklederp and I have somewhat whittled down what the Squire watches on a semi-regular basis.  Everything that he watches has been pre-approved by Conklederp and me, and The Squire will frequently ask to "watch liked videos" rather than let YouTube's algorithm offer what they think is appropriate for a five-year-old, and I'll be damned if they try to suggest Cocomelon or Blippy.  Even stuff that he likes to watch that neither of us are a fan of, in that we don't see it as harmful but it's not something that we would ever watch, we will still watch those videos with him.

Showing him that we have interest in his interests by either actively or passively participating is really what I've been trying to get at these last 3,200+ words.  Lord knows I watched Chitty Bang Bang and nearly wore out our taped-from-TV-VHS copies of Return of the Jedi and Superman 2 as a kid and if The Squire wants to watch the same Lego YouTuber do silly self-imposed challenges for the third time in a row or wants me to play the "Jump! Jump! Jump!" stage in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, then sure, I can oblige him.  He's my kid and I want to show an interest in his interests.  And I know for sure that 10-year-old me would have been beyond psyched knowing that one day I would have a kid that asked him to play Donkey Kong, and not the recently released Donkey Kong Bananza, but the 1981 NES port of the original arcade classic Donkey Kong.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Parenting and Video Games Part I: My History

 

This article is not and will not be an attempt at how to tell parents how they should regulate video games with their respective kids.  Nor will it be a guide on telling parents how to decide which games are right for their children or appropriate for their respective age range.  This two part series (today, and the following Monday, August 25th) will comprise of a retrospective on my own upbringing around video games and Part 2 will cover how both Conklederp and I are approaching the same topic with The Squire, who is a bright and young 5 years-old who will be entering public elementary school in a few weeks where he'll be interacting with kids upwards of seven years older than he is on a semi-regular basis and thereby might be drawn into conversations about Roblocks, V-bucks, and why any game your parents decide you're allowed to play is totally cringe.  We'll all be entering a strange new world here, folks!

Let's start back at the beginning.

The first time I recall playing any kind of video game with either of my parents was sometime prior to 1987 before The Kid was born.  I think we were at Dr. Potts' house, and they might have recently gotten their Atari 2600 because I don't know why else the adults would've been playing it in the evening.  All I really remember was asking to play whatever game was being played and my Dad saying something like, "Not now," or "In a bit," or "You have to wait," or something to that effect.  Whatever it was, it made me upset enough that I remember crying in my bed later that night.  Typical 4-6 year-old stuff.  What's funny about this amusing little anecdote now is that my Dad is the most un-video-game person I know.  My Dad's always been of the mind that video games are something that other people do because they're apparently beyond his comprehension.  I recall trying with different games that I liked, like Tecmo Bowl, John Elway's Quarterback, Major League Baseball, and Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing, but why play a video game when you can watch the real thing?  He never said that specifically, but that was the feeling I got.  

All of that being said, he was responsible for our family getting the Nintendo Entertainment System Power Set for Christmas in 1988 because it was the biggest set that either Toys R Us or Price Club had and my Dad is definitely one of those, "Well, I'll just buy the biggest one because that must be the best one" kind of person.  I also remember that he had something to do with us renewing our Nintendo Power subscription in time so that we could get the copy of Dragon Warrior along with the November 1990 issue.  There's also a memory of him calling into Nintendo Power to renegotiate whatever our subscription was after we renewed, but didn't receive issue #26, the one with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on the cover.  He wasn't an active participant, joining us whenever us kids would play video games, but he also didn't tell us that "video games will rot your brains," or that we were only playing "those dumb video games."  For what it's worth, my Dad's also not a big reader, so we never heard anything like, "Why don't you read a book instead of playing those stupid video games?"

My Mom, on the other hand, actively played some of the games we got over the years.  I've mentioned several times the summer my Mom, Shramp (older sister), and I played Gauntlet, keeping track of our progress through several sheets of passwords, only to get stuck somewhere around the 70s (it might've only been the 50s for all I know, but it definitely felt like the 70s).  She also played a bit of The Legend of Zelda, along with Super Mario Bros.  After we got Tetris, that was where she found her niche.  Us kids would regularly ask her to beat Type B Level 9 Height 5 because we all knew we couldn't do it, and Mom could, sometimes taking a couple of tries if she got a poor selection of blocks at the start.  After Tetris, it was Dr. Mario that I think Shramp got for Christmas, but my Mom was able to beat all of us in vs. mode.  One year, we got her a used copy of Tetris Attack because it had "Tetris" in the title, and that was another game that she would handily destroy us at.  The same thing happened with Tetris vs. Dr. Mario on the SNES.  In the N64 era, she stuck with the SNES and the NES since they were both hooked up to the TV and would remain so until I moved out in 2000, and I took the SNES with me; eventually, the NES went out to the proverbial pasture in the garage.

I have Dr. Potts' Dad to passively thank for some of my early RPG purchases on the NES.  I bought Ultima: Exodus because of how much fun I had creating characters at Dr. Potts' house.  I remember being told by Dr. Potts when we were kids that I could play their copy of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but I wasn't allowed to save because it could ruin his Dad's save file.  I also remember Dr. Potts telling me that his Dad really liked a game called Final Fantasy, but that the instruction booklet gave away too much information, although I might already have gotten the Final Fantasy Player's Guide from Nintendo Power at that point.  I recall seeing the game somewhere, but nothing specific about it like Ultima: Exodus.  I do have a memory of wanting to buy and play Final Fantasy just to see if the instruction book gave away too much.  I don't have an answer to that 35-year-old thought.

Something important to point out is that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board) didn't exist for the majority of my childhood.  Formed in 1994 in building and direct response to specifically "violent" video games (the original arcade version of Mortal Kombat and the SEGA CD home console title Night Trap*), during the tail end of the SNES run.  So any NES or SNES games we bought with my parents' money, they had to rely on the word of kids, possibly Dr. Potts' parents, and their own research rather than a simple rating.  But that didn't stop my parents from being informed on at least some level.  When I bought the SNES for my birthday in 1993 (after the price had dropped to $99 and I had that amount saved up), my parents specifically told me that I could not borrow Street Fighter II from my neighbor Chuck with my Dad later saying that him and my Mom talked it over and they decided they didn't like the game because you could play as a man and hit women.  Yeah, I was pretty upset about that, although I did still play the game.  Sometime in 1996, I was able to convince them that I could buy Killer Instinct on the Game Boy because the graphics were severely reduced compared to both the arcade game and the SNES port.

By the time the Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, and I got the system sometime in 1997, every Nintendo game that came out had a rating emblazoned on the box.  I think if Goldeneye 007 had been rated M, they would have said something, but because it was rated T and I was playing the game out in the living room for everyone to see, I never heard anything from them about the amount of violence in the game.  The first M-rated game I played, I think, was Turok: Dinosaur Hunter at Dr. Potts' house, but that's because Delaños' Splatterhouse had already been out before the ESRB existed.  The first M-rated game I bought was Perfect Dark, which was released in 2000. Not that it mattered, but I was moving out a few months later to live with Dr. Potts and some high school friends who were also attending the same college.  In 2001, I would also buy Conker's Bad Fur Day, partly because it was an M-rated game, but also because of the history of the game and how it ended up as an M-rated game made it all the more desirable.

Looking back, what involvement there was from my parents, specifically my Mom, was primarily around the beginning when we got the NES.  I'm sure that they would sometimes ask what game I was playing and likely ask me to turn down the TV so that the noise wouldn't bother them.  With the exception of Street Fighter II and Killer Instinct, I don't recall us butting heads, and that could also have been likely from Nintendo's continued position as an entertainment system that put out family-friendly games.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

The following are tidbits both related to the article above, but also anecdotes that either didn't fit my attempted narrative above, or were simply edited out.

*I had played a little bit of Mortal Kombat in our local arcade, probably sometime around 1993, but usually only when other people weren't lining up to play because I didn't know any of the moves, so I would've regularly gotten my ass handed to me.  The same goes for other fighting games like Primal Rage and Killer Instinct.  I also watched a bit of Night Trap during a sleepover at a friend's house with a couple of other friends, where I also watched people play Sewer Shark.  The only game I played that entire night was one that I can't remember the title of, but was, I think, an FMV car chase game where I kept crashing into a large construction vehicle and eventually gave the controller back.

The first time I ever saw DOOM (1992) was either in 1994 or 1995, after tennis practice.  One of the players on the team took a bunch of us into a side office at the country club where we had our practices, and played the first couple of levels.

Adult Games, Pornography, Bank Regulations, and Performative Morality

I'm not really a purveyor of adult games, ie, games that are either rated "A" by the ESRB or games that have "Adult," "NSFW," "Nudity," or "Sexual Content" as descriptive tags.  I've played the demos for Butt Knight, Lust from Beyond: Demo, and Robin Morningwood Adventure - A gay RPG, and last year I played through Lust for Darkness.  I did play the free-to-play Radiator 2 nine years ago and had a blast.  I also recently purchased Tender Loving Care because it was less than a dollar, it has an interesting concept, and I like John Hurt's voice; I have yet to play it, though.  But don't tell Lieberman or Howard Lincoln that I also purchased Night Trap on the Switch a few years back.  It's not a genre that I actively seek out, so it was only once articles started cropping up a few weeks ago that I found out that many adult games on Steam and Itch.io were being delisted due to pressure from Visa/Mastercard.

When I first started hearing about payment processors essentially not wanting to be the middleman for NSFW games and Steam/Itch.io, it immediatly reminded me of the scene from Boogie Nights (because I wasn't born until the 1980s) when Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) and Jessie St. Vincent (Melora Walters) try to get a business loan from banks but are refused solely on the basis that they're both in the adult film industry.  It was possibly/probably also rooted in the fact that Buck Swope was Black and that he and Jessie were a mixed-race couple, but that not doing business with someone who was previously in pornographic films was the one thing they could legally hang their hat on without repercussions.  And it's not like the practice of turning down people who work in the adult entertainment industry has gone away since the '70s & '80s either, as there are articles to this point from every decade since.*  This time around, however, it's primarily from the actions of Collective Shout, a conservative Australian advocacy and anti-porn lobbying group.

These actions over the recent weeks are also reminiscent of banks and credit card processors threatening to stop all payment processing for OnlyFans if they continue to host sexually explicit content.  No, not all content on OnlyFans is NSFW, as there was an account for "Saucy Victorian Ankle Pics" (SFW YouTube Link), but people are also using is similar to Patreon as an alternative method of income.  I guess those are the businesses that Collective Shout and the payment processors' respective boards of directors what to help facilitate?  I mean, who hasn't thought of starting an OnlyFans account and posting only pictures of ceiling or floor fans?**  Or maybe furniture?

This feels like a pretty similar scene, except instead of adult games being delisted on the grounds of payment processors not wanting to have their services go to pay for games that involve things such as incest or rape, there are also reports of games that have LGBTQIA+ storylines and characters that have also been delisted under the pretense of the same umbrella.  That's not to say that I think that a game that features rape, incest, sex trafficking, underage depictions of sexual exploitation, etc (it actually kind of feels wrong to "et cetera" that list) should be considered entertainment, but a blanket ban because a topic is part of a checklist isn't the way to go either.  Just because a story might have a character who was raped, had incest forced upon them, was sex trafficked, was sexually exploited as a minor, etc (see above) doesn't immediately mean that the game should be delisted because of the content within the game.  Some of these could be avenues for people processing trauma.  Remember That Dragon, Cancer?  But to also target games that feature, include, or mention LGBTQIA+ storylines because of a supposed moral superiority is the same kind of culture war bull shit that we're seeing all over the United States by way of Project 2025.

Over the last week (as of Tuesday, July 29th, 2025), I've performed several searches on both Steam and Itch.io (I have accounts on both, so it's not a default setting-type search that's purposefully excluding adult-related content), and only on Itch.io have I experienced any kind of censorship in search results and seen a page for a delisted game.  I also haven't seen any of the aforementioned titles from Steam being delisted, and after doing an "NSFW" search on both sites, there are still a lot of "adult" games on Steam versus Itch.io.  Maybe the games that were pulled from Steam are just more hardcore than 3001: A MILF Odyssey - NSFW Sci-Fi Porn?  From what I've read from several articles, the delisting on Steam has affected only "several hundred" titles, while Itch.io has pulled nearly all tagged NSFW titles as Itch.io undergoes a review process of the content in the affected games.

I could literally talk myself in circles without getting anywhere or making more of a coherent argument, so I'm going to cut myself off here.  Maybe that's a copout instead of doing a longer and better researched thinkpiece on the topic (and better written for that matter), but even just bringing up the topic is something.  Maybe?  

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

*I was unable to find historical data about banks not allowing people involved in any facet of the sex work industry, only that it's been happening for decades through a combination of self-imposed moral high ground and because banks view any type of "sex work" as a "high-risk for fraud "industry, often citing sex trafficking as a catalyst.

**In the early days of Damon Lindelof's Instagram account (circa 2012), he was only posting pictures of sinks, so it's kind of similar.

PS.  Related, a Kotaku article about a statement from Mastercard claiming that they didn't pressure Steam to pull/delist games.

Monthly Update: August, 2025

 

I don't even know where to start with today's Monthly Update.  I'm coming off the heels of writing my article for Monday, August 4th, and getting into a jovial video game headspace is a little awkward, which might make more sense once y'all read that article.  There's so much shit going on, not just in the US, with the checklist execution of Trump's transition plan, aka Project 2025, along with the lesser-known Project Esther and the hijacking of real-world anti-semitism by conservative right-wing white Christian nationalist organizations (aka, the current Presidential Administration and the architects, The Heritage Foundation), and their desire to database healthcare records of US Citizens in the name of obesity and diabetes is utterly rediculous, that this would just be a run on sentence of humanitarian atrocities and ongoing war crimes.

And no one wants to read that here at 6:30 on a Friday morning.  That's what NPR, Reuters, and the Associated Press are for. 

As I write this, I'm currently sitting at a table in Victoria, BC. Like any good geriatric millennial, I brought along the Switch OLED and the Steam Deck, and obviously my computer, as there's no way I'm typing this out using the virtual keyboard on the Steam Deck. However, I do have a Bluetooth keyboard for the Steam Deck, but that's at home.  I bring this up because I sucessfully signed up for the current Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program, and while I was able to download it onto the Switch OLED, I wasn't able to access it due to the whole Switch virtual game card semi-minor-debacle.  The playtest runs from July 28th through August 10th, so I'll at least be able to play (and not report because of NDA requirements), but I'll probably have some general things to say in September's Monthly Update, just nothing that could get me perma-banned from using Nintendo's online services.

So instead of participating in the playtest, I've jumped back into Triangle Strategy, and I've likely chosen (again) the more difficult path because I didn't feel the persecution, imprisonment, and enslavement of a group of people just because they have rose colored hair by an authoritarian religious government overseen by an invisible oligarch was not the route I wanted to take.  I'd rather be the last ruler of a region in the long term than actively participate in a form of ethnic cleansing in the short term.  I don't know, call me naive, I guess.

There have actually been several announcements in the last couple of days, including those from the Nintendo Partners' Direct yesterday (July 31st).  There was the Final Fantasy Tactics announcement and subsequent semi-fallout a few weeks ago.  In short, content from the PSP The War of the Lions version is not all there.  There was the announcement of SOMA coming out on the Switch (also compatible with Switch 2).  There was the announcement of Octopath Traveler 0 and then the subsequent fallout about its Switch 2 release on a game card only, and the Switch 1 edition not having additional content that is on the Switch 2.  I finally watched something regarding Bloober Team's new game, Chronos: The New Dawn, during the direct, which surprised me that it's also being released at the same time on the Switch 2.  It looks like some kind of combination between >observer_ and what I imagine their work on the Silent Hill 2 remake was like; still need to play that game too.  I'm also super-hyped for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment because of how much fun I had with Age of Calamity and how much world-building that game did for me with the Breath of the Wild setting/timeline.  Interestingly, it's advertised as being "canonical events," a feature that was denied to Age of Calamity.  As with Chronos, I'll probably wait to see some kind of comparison between how Star Wars Outlaws runs on the Switch 2 compared to the three-year-old Steam Deck.  Lastly is the game that's quite a mouthful, The Adventures of Eliot: The Mellinium Tales.  And no, I'm not at all sick of Square Enix's HD-2D.

On the Steam Deck, I've been playing the usual, The Elder Scrolls Online.  But I've also been playing more frequently, Resident Evil 6.  I'm not sure if I'll write a First Impressions article, as the game consists of four separate stories, and I may end up writing separate Game EXP articles, followed by an all-encompassing one once I've finished everything.  I also finished Final Fantasy - Pixel Remaster, but just the first/original Final Fantasy.  I'd intended to use it as a cool-down game after Resident Evil 6, but I just got hooked and sank 23.5 hours into the game that introduced me to the JRPGs and Nobuo Uematsu.  So I started up Final Fantasy II - Pixel Remaster with the same intent.  It's been about 21 years since I last played Final Fantasy II on the Game Boy Advance, so I'm eager to replay this title (and really looking forward to Final Fantasy III, since I've only played the 3D DS remake from 2006).

I think that's it for now.  So I'll see you out there, or likely not.  Unless you're between my commutes to/from home and work.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

In the Joyous Days of Childhood

Atari and Intellivision

 

I was listening to the most recent episode of Chris Plante's newish podcast "Post Games" where he interviewed the current CEO of Atari, Wade Rosen, about the current direction and the future of the Atari name, the Atari brand, and the very concept of Atari by the greater non-video game playing public.  During the interview, Chris Plante mentioned the shirt that Wade was wearing and that it was available on Atari's website.  This led me to discover that Atari bought the Intellivision brand on May 23, 2024, just over a year ago.

The last I had heard about Intellivision was that the long (long being relative to retro game enthusiasts) awaited release of the Intellivision Amico, a modern designed retro console to play Intellivision games was more-or-less dead.  Originally announced in 2017, I was pretty excited about this console since the AtGames Flashback Intellivision console had ballooned from $90 to a price higher than I wanted to pay for a nostalgic novelty console; it's currently available for $249, so no.  But then the price of the console was announced, coincidentally also at a $249 price point.  There were several development delays due to product quality and then the supply chain issues brought about by the pandemic happened for the next couple of years.  All of this is to put into context my feelings when I went perusing on Atari's website to guess as which shirt Wade was wearing, only to be surprised to find a shirt with "Intellivision" emblazoned across the front.

Atari owns Intellivision now.

That got my mental gears going again because on their website, Atari offers a few relatively inexpensive ways to play Atari 50, their 2022 collection of 100+ atari games from Atari's 50 years in existence.  I then looked at Atari's public listing of what IP they currently own and obviously first looked to see if Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and Golf were listed, which they were.  Sadly though, Astrosmash wasn't listed, but at least Star Strike, which I recall never really being able to figure out, was also there.

So what if Atari were to do the same thing with Intellivision?  But therein lies the problem.

The highlight of the Intellivision system were the TV remote style controllers that had swappable plastic sheets that fit over the number pad, customized to the game you were playing.  You didn't technically need them and they would wear out after a few years of use, but they helped to extend the concept of the game past the screen.  Having this type of functionality would require something like an elongated smart phone, but even then, the screen would be almost too small to read say, a golf ball two by two pixels in size.

The other option would be to essentially do what Amico tried to do, but to actually release a functioning product.  Atari does have several retro consoles for sale, but they appear to be functioning consoles with backward compatibility between the "plus" iterations of the Atari 2600+ and Atari 7800+.  Both consoles include game(s), but any additional games would require a physical cartridge.  I really think that Amico had the right idea behind a digital controller that would change the screen based on the game, but the long delays in production completion and the internal problems with the company still give the $249 cost a significantly sour taste to the whole thing if it is ever released, even after the sale of the Intellivision IP to Atari.

What I really hope doesn't happen is for Atari to just sit on the Intellivision IP and not do anything with it without any future plans.  We're already a year in, specifically 421 days since the acquisition and all that I can find on Atari's webpage are two shirts announced at the time Atari purchased Intellivision, and a page about the Intellivision brand.  Now I'm not expecting anyting large and grand, but maybe something akin to the AtGames Flashback Intellivision console with 50 or so of the games that Atari has the IP for (specifically Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack and Golf) for the low-low price of $99.99 plus whatever Trump tariff increase seams reasonable to Atari's Board of Directors.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Wark!

Monthly Update: July 2025

 

I'm sure that I'll probably write more about the Switch 2 as a system in the coming weeks, although maybe I'll relegate it to Monthly Updates as I don't see myself having much of any kind of technical information regarding screen ghosting, 4K visuals, or how the Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077 compares to a liquid cooled RTX 5090 with 256 GB DDR5 RAM.  Right now, I'm only playing Mario Kart World as a Switch 2 exclusive and playing a couple of other digital releases (Car Quest) that I'm not playing on the Switch OLED (see Monday).

I did finish a couple of games and one DLC last month, specifically Fallout 4, Super Mario Wonder, and the Morrowind DLC for The Elder Scrolls Online.  I already wrote about Fallout 4 last week, and I'm not sure if I'll write about the other two in a typical Game EXP article.  And it's not from not enjoying either, but Super Mario Wonder was strange in that I played it a lot with The Squire, both in single player and couch co-op.  Sometimes he'll want me to play as Blue Yoshi in single player if he's having a hard time, because that's his favorite color and because Yoshi is nearly invulnerable.  At other times, when we play co-op, he'll want to play in a silly way that isn't really conducive to making progress, and he always wants to choose which level to play, which again doesn't always lead to progress.  For the Morrowind DLC, I spent probably around 150 hours in Vvardenfell, and while I loved returning to that inner island during the 2nd Era, I don't really know what I would write about.

Back on the Switch OLED, I'm jumping back into Triangle Strategy since I'm somewhat self-relegated to playing only physical game cartridges and Virtual Console titles (see Monday).  I was surprised and relieved that I hadn't left off where I thought I had, in a difficult story battle, but instead in the middle of a level-grinding battle.  I think when I finish this game, I'll look up a flow chart to see how the different paths and choices affect the game, because right now, our group is doing about as poorly story-wise as you could expect.  Our duchy has been framed and blackmailed, we've lost multiple attempts to sway a court in our favor, and our region has essentially been taken over by a hypocritical and morally corrupt official from an overly religious kingdom.  I'm really hoping there'll be some positive resolution, and I didn't just accidentally make ALL BAD CHOICES.

With the recent trailer release of Resident Evil: Requiem, I decided to jump back into my chronological Resident Evil journey and started the 3rd-person action shooter with some horror elements, Resident Evil 6, on the Steam Deck.  It doesn't quite replace Fallout 4 as an easy game to jump into and out of, as I found out that reaching checkpoints is not the same as saving, and saving is only done by the game at specific times.  As a winddown game, I'm also playing Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, as in the first Final Fantasy and the only two negative things I have to say about this game (and collection) at the moment are that I don't like that your character can move diagonally, that just feels weird.  And two, that the "soundtrack" that comes with the pixel remastered collection seems to only be three songs from the arranged soundtrack; mostly disappointed by this but I guess I shouldn't be surprised otherwise the collection would've been closer to $150.

So that's June going into July.

Oh, and I've got lots of words and thoughts about Trump's billionaire tax break and 12,000,000 less people on Medicaid bill, but I forgot my charger at home (I'm not currently at home) and I don't have to time to research, write, edit and publish a coherent rant about how dumb this bullshit is before my battery dies, so I'll just leave it at that, and you're welcome to further extrapolate at your leisure.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Да-ли смерть встречать уж пора

Nintendo Switch 2: Three Things

Well, I bought Nintendo Switch 2 on Friday.  Correction, I purchased it earlier in the week, and it was ready to be picked up on Friday.  I experienced my first bit of anxiety regarding this new system after opening and taking everything out of the box, but I was unable to locate what was understood to be a business card-sized redemption code for Mario Kart World.  I recalled that the box hadn't been taped and was hoping that someone at Best Buy hadn't snagged it out of the box earlier in the day.  The wording on the box even stated, "Full Game Download," and "To be downloaded on included system.  See inside panel for instructions," and I wasn't able to find any panel, inside or otherwise, that could direct me to anything to do with the download.  After a frantic Google search, I found out that all I had to do was to connect to the Nintendo eShop, and the game would be available to download, so the download code is directly tied to the console and not a specific code which would be then tied to the Nintendo account that used it.  I'm not sure how I feel about that, but there it is.

The second hiccupy thing I ran into was with the original Switch Pro Controller.  I'd read that the original Pro Controller was compatible with the Switch 2, and I've found that to be true.  The complication came when I realized that switching the Pro Controller between the Original Switch and the Switch 2 is cumbersome when having to pair it back and forth.  With the Original Switch, I can just plug the USB cable into the controller and the console dock and it almost immediately connects/pairs (as in fewer than 5 seconds), but when I tried this method with the Switch 2, nothing happened; yes, I went to the alternate pairing methods page/tab/section.  I don't know if this was an initial setup hiccup or if you just can't pair the Switch Pro Controller with the Switch 2 using only a cable, but the process of pairing between the Switch 2 and the Original Switch has made me now want a Switch 2 Pro Controller, but only after they're back in stock at Costco.

The biggest "Well, huh" moment came when The Squire wanted to play a game on our original Switch, but was unable to because of Nintendo's recently implemented game card sharing system.  All of this future confusion and complications are likely due to having my linked Nintendo profile connected to multiple Switch systems, including the Switch 2.  I feel like this is going to need a flow chart, otherwise I'm likely to talk myself in circles and still not come across as making any sense.

Okay, I guess it's less of a flow chart and more of some pictures with a bunch of confusing arrows and some descriptive non-descript text.

So we have the original switch that is, according to Nintendo, my primary switch, which is where digital games go when I purchase them.  So, any purchased digital games can be played by any account on the original Switch.  Then we have the OLED Switch, which I have also linked my Nintendo account, but other accounts on the OLED Switch cannot play digital games because they're not authorized accounts according to Nintendo; other accounts on the OLED Switch can't play the "Virtual Console" apps (NES, SNES, Game Boy, etc) because they're not part of our online family plan.  Then on Friday, when we got the Switch 2, I used the OLED Switch to perform the system/account transfer link, which I'm thinking might be part of my problem, and downloaded Mario Kart World.

My frustration came to a head when I opened up the Original Switch and The Squire tried to play Hatch Tales.  This is when I found out that you're only able to link your Nintendo account between two systems max, even with exclusive Switch 2 games like Mario Kart World.  What I've found out in the last couple of days is that if I want to play Mario Kart World, I need to have the Switch 2 linked to the Switch OLED.  If I want to play any digital games that I've purchased with my Nintendo account on the Switch OLED.  I need to have it linked to the Original Switch, which then means that I have to unlink the connection between the OLED and the Switch 2 and link it between the OLED and the Original Switch.  Did I just say that twice?  Maybe, but that's what the non-flow chart flow chart is supposed to be for.

I'm thinking that some of my problems might be alleviated if I reset the Switch 2 to factory settings and connect it as a primary link to the Original Switch.  Maybe having the Switch 2's primary link to the Switch OLED, which doesn't have my primary linked account.  My one hangup is I'm slightly afraid that if I do perform a factory reset on the Switch 2 that I won't be able to redownload Mario Kart World, because I've already downloaded it.  I'm 87.47% sure that that's not how this actually works since the game seems to be tied to the console, but there's that lizard-part of my brain that's telling me that doing a factory reset on the Switch 2 will somehow erase something to do with the eShop recognizing the "paid connection" between the console and Mario Kart World.  

Or maybe not, and I'm just conflagrating the situation?  I just returned from looking into doing everything in the last couple of paragraphs, and I was able to play both Mario Kart World on the Switch 2 and Hatch Tales on the Original Switch, which means that my Switch OLED is not currently linked to either system.  So maybe the Switch OLED will now just be a physical game card-only system for the sake of convenience?  I did run into an issue last night when The Squire was quickly clicking through the 'link to a different Switch' prompt and unlinked between the Switch 2 and the OLED and linked the Switch 2 to the Original Switch, which immediately kicked me out of the digital game I was currently playing (Car Quest).  Which is a terrifying prospect of playing a digital game if I'm away from the house (ie, work) and The Squire is home and wanting to play Hatch Tales or Flashback (he likes the title music).

If you've gotten this far in the article, or even if you've just skipped to the last paragraph, I want to emphasize that this article is not in response to buyer's remorse of any kind.  I think part of the inception for this article is that I've never had to deal with this level of backward compatibility across multiple console systems before.  It's also something that I hadn't anticipated with Nintendo's game sharing system, and something that I hadn't heard of in the 25 days since the console was first released.  I am having a lot of fun with Mario Kart World, and I'm sure I'll be able to work out a system regarding the Switch OLED, the Original Switch, and the Switch 2 that I'll eventually be happy with once all of this newness has worn off.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Know How To Keep A Woman Satisfied

P.S.  I also found this Reddit thread pretty useful in terms of the transfer process from the Switch to the Switch 2.  It answered some questions I didn't know I had, as well as a few "features" that I don't recall reading about before I started the account linkage.

P.P.S.  I have not played any online matches in Mario Kart World, so I have nothing to add regarding the apparent hate after a recent update modified the way random tracks are chosen.

Nintendo's Switch 2 Direct: Reaction, Thoughts, and Analysis

My original idea was to take notes during the Switch 2 Direct and then write it down into some semblance of an article, but that would really just be adding more words to what was already here, and let's be honest.  This is just a more distilled form of what the article could have been, and really that's all that we need.  There were a lot more games announced during this Direct, but the ones I listed were the ones that either caught my attention, or ones that I felt I was excited to eventually play, so please don't be (too) upset if I didn't list something that you yourself thought was more interesting than the Project 007 name-drop barest hint of a teaser.

Switch 2 Direct

• Mario Kart World
• Grand Prix
• Knockout Tour
• Free Roam
• 24 Racers
• Joy-Con Controllers
• Larger controller
• Larger joystick
• Hall effect joysticks?
• C Button
• GameChat
• Voice Chat
• Screen Sharing
• Looks very laggy on little screens
• Can display different games
• Switch 2 Camera
• Video Chat Functionality
• Online Membership Required
• Free Access through March 25, 2026
• GameShare
• Share compatible games with up to 3 other systems at one time
• Switch 2 System
• 7.9-inch screen
• 1080p Screen
• Up to 120 fps
• LCD & HDR Support
• Magnet Joy-Cons
• Larger SL/SR buttons
• Larger control sticks
• Mouse controls 
• Two USB-C Ports
• 256 GB Internal Storage
• Dock w/ 4K Support w/ Compatible Games
• Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
• Launches as a paid digital game
• Great concept, horrible idea to charge for it.
• Red Game Cards
• Only Micro SD Express Cards will function w/ NS2
• Can Transfer Data from Switch to Switch 2
• New Switch 2 Pro Controller w/ 2 additional GR/GL back buttons
• Launches on June 5, 2025
• Play 3 Types of Games
• NS2 Games
• Compatible NS Games
• Nintendo Switch 2 Edition
• Select Games will be upgraded
• Upgrade pack purchase required
• Smart Phone app compatibility with BotW & TotK
• Metroid Prime 4 can use mouse controls
• Drag x Drive
•  murderball  x basketball
• Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 & 4
• Project 007
• Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remastered
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment
• Probably the most excited I was as far as game announcements in this Direct.
• Doubly excited that the current word is that this game is considered canon.
• Nintendo Switch Online
• Same Membership Package between NS & NS2
• Nintendo GameCube exclusive to NS2
• Launch Titles
• LoZ: Wind Waker
• SoulCalibur II
• F-Zero GX
• Future Titles
• Super Mario Sunshine
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
• Super Mario Strikers
• Chibi-Robo
• Luigi's Mansion
• Pokemon Colosseum
• Dedicated GameCube Controller
• Will NYXI Wizard Controller be compatible?  Some signs are pointing to "yes?"
• CyberPunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
• Star Wars Outlaws
• Borderlands 4
• REANIMAL
• Professor Layton and the New World of Steam
• The Duskbloods (FromSoftware, NS2 exclusive)
• Wait, it's multiplayer!? =( As in Dark Souls type multiplayer, or Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventure type multiplayer?
• Prices
• Base Unit: $449
• Mario Kart World Bundle: $499
• Digital copy of Mario Kart World included, not a physical game.
• Preorder Starts April 9th
• As of Friday, April 4th, Nintendo has delayed the original pre-order date of April 9th to an as-yet-unknown future date as a direct result of the Trump administration's blanket tariffs, although the release date of June 5th is still predicted to be accurate.
• Receive notification of pre-order starting May 8th through Nintendo's website.
• Have to have:
• Nintendo Account
• Online Membership for at least 12 months
• Opted in to share gameplay data
• Have at least 50 hours of gameplay
• How will price be affected by the Trump administration's tariffs?

So that's it, really.  There'll probably be more information as we approach April 9th (that's my theory), and as more details and fallout from our embarrassment of a president's decision to further alienate the rank and file citizenry of the United States from the rest of the world becomes louder.  I don't want to say or speculate that people's displeasure at a potentially higher cost video game console and video games/consoles in general going forward for the foreseeable future is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but we can only hope that there'll be more than mere ripples.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
You Got Problems

Monthly Update: March, 2025

 

And somehow, we're already in March.  Or just 17% of the way through the year, or if we really want to get snarky, only 4.4% of the way until our current scenario either is upgraded to the non-shitty version, or we sink deeper into this experiment in white christian nationalism and fascist oligarchy we currently call the United States; I don't expect you to watch all 65 minutes right now, but I highly recommend it if you havne't already watched it.  And major kudos to Volodomyr Zelinsky for rebuking Russian State Media talking points that came out of the mouths of Trump and Vance.

And then there's the bullshit in the SAVE Act reintroduced as a proposed bill by Chip Joy which would bar people from voting and registering to vote if the name on their birth certificate differs from that of their "legal name" (e.g. the name on their driver's license, hunting licenses, passport, school ID, etc).  And while the wording in the current "wording" of the SAVE act allows people that this would affect to "provide additional documentation," there was no specific definition as to what that documentation would be.  This means if this travesty passes, it could be left up to the states/counties, which means a return to Jim Crow-era voting laws all over again.  One state/county could require that a woman who changed her name after getting married to only supply her current government-issued ID and a copy of her marriage certificate, while another state/county could require the following:

• Copy of Government Issued ID:
• Only passports, state driver's licenses, and hunting permits accepted.
• College IDs, High School IDs, not accepted.
• Copy of long-form birth certificate.
• Copy of marriage certificate.
• Signed affidavit from an official notary that all of the documents are legal and present at the time of signing.
• All of the above are required every time a ballot is requested.
• Likely forbidden from using mail in, or absentee ballots.

Yes, I'm getting into nothing but speculation here. The only people that's not good for are the same ass-hats who want to try and enact these kinds of laws, decrying that it's all part of a nationwide mandate when Trump was elected by an overwhelming majority; Trump received 49.8% of the popular vote, which if we're going to be pedantic, is not the definition of "majority" in the context of the voting population of the United States. Still, yes, Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral vote, so I don't think I'm trying to engage in election denialsim.

And Musk is trash, too, while we're at it, mainly because he's a nazi sympathizer, but less damaging and still related to his character is his acquisition of attempted gaming cred.

Now that we've successfully transitioned to gaming culture, we can now continue with our regularly scheduled program.

Unintentionally, despite the last 8 months or so, there've been a lot of Game EXP articles from games I've received.  I had thought this well was drying up, but then there was an uptick on the YouTube side of things, and that just makes me look more attractive to indie publishers.  Maybe.  There'll likely be a continued slough of Game EXP articles for the next coming weeks, at least through the middle of March and then I'm going to let things slow down a bit so I can play more of the games that I've actually paid money for: Fallout 4, Triangle Strategy, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein II: The New Collosus, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Dragon's Dogma, and that list of crowdfunded games I said I would get to back in my January 17th article.  And all of the games in my Ultimate Spreadsheet Database.

Movie-wise, nothing.  New TV show-wise, nothing.  I did start Hand of Fire, the final book in the Shandril's Saga trilogy by Ed Greenwood, which continues my chronological journey through the novels in the Forgotten Realms setting; which if you're just joining us, I began because the D&D module, Rime of the Frost Maiden said that it used several older D&D novels and source books as inspiration and reference materials for this and I hadn't read those yet, so now I'm in the middle of 1357DR, although several hard-to-find books happen earlier that I've yet to read.  And I'm still reading House of Leaves, and I couldn't tell you how many pages I've read in that book because of all of the jumping around in the text.

Lastly, all this week we'll be releasing a series of playthrough videos for an interesting visual novel and immersive typing sim, S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch, along with playlists for The Voidness, Goldenheart, Death Omen, and Ashen Arrows, so stay tuned for those as we progress/survive through this month of March.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Mistä voimme täällä elää?

 

Playing Those Crowdfunded Games

I'm not against pledging real-world money to a crowdfunding campaign, even if that pledge is essentially a pre-order for a game that doesn't have a release date.  Such is the case when you pledge on one of the many crowdfunding websites, which I have done for several games over the years, thankfully with a relatively high success rate of the game being released on time.  But the gamble of crowdfunding a video game isn't the reason we're here today, instead, we're here to talk about actually sitting down and playing those games once they're released. 

Going back to 2018, I've sponsored/helped fund six games that I thought looked like they'd be fun to play.  But then, why haven't I played them, or at the very least, why did I only start them up and not continue.  I don't think it was a lack of being fun because I did enjoy what I played of 9 Years of Shadows and Lords of Exile, but I've never started Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.  So for the remainder of our time here, I'm going to go into List Mode with a little bit of commentary.  I'll order games chronologically by the date that the crowdfunding ended along with when I finally received the game and the system I picked it up on, because additional context is always helpful.

Hatch Tales: A Heroic Hookshot Adventure (Formally Chicken Wiggle Workshop) - Campaign Ended: April 5, 2018 ; Rec'd: October 22, 2024 - Nintendo Switch

I'd been a fan of Atooi for several years and have played several of the games that Jools Watsham developed and released over the years.  I received a review copy of his last game, Chicken Wiggle and for the most part enjoyed that game, so when this Kickstarter came about for a revamped game with added features, I thought, "Sure, why not!?"  Well, by now you can read almost anywhere about people being upset at Atooi for the six years between the end of the campaign and when the game was finally released, later evolving from Chicken Wiggle Workshop into what is now Hatch Tales.

Now, I have played Hatch Tales a bit, more so than any of the other games listed below, but that is primarily because The Squire really likes to play it and wants there to be more playable levels on my Switch profile, so every once in a while, I'll boot it up and try to 100% a level or two.  It is a fun game that plays a lot like Chicken Wiggle so I'll give it that, and there'll likely be a Game EXP article later in the year.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened - Campaign Ended: 4/14/2022 ; Rec'd: March 29, 2023 - Steam

I had finished The Sinking City about a year-and-a-half before this campaign ended and I was pretty excited to play a Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes game.  I knew about the original game released in 2007 but had never played it, and I do have Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter which I had read nothing but good things, so I thought, "Why not?"  I like what Frogwares had done with The Sinking City and this seemed like another way that I could support this company.

I haven't yet played this, likely because I keep going back and forth about wether or not I should play the original 2008 game first, or just jump right into this one.  And if I didn't already have a copy of it through GOG, I would probably go and buy it right now (as it's on sale for $0.99).  Maybe I will play that one after all.

9 Years of Shadows - Campaign Ended: 4/21/2020 ; Rec'd: November 9, 2023 - Nintendo Switch

I can't remember how or where I first heard about 9 Years of Shadows, but I really liked the aesthetic and I think at the time I was really hankering for a solid Metroidvania that harkened back to Syphony of the Night and the DS era of Castlevania games.  I also loved that the playable character was a woman wielding a halberd.  That seemed pretty bad ass.  That was really it.

I did play the game for a bit after it was released, maybe less than an hour and I enjoyed what I played, but I think I got distracted by some other games at the time, likely still playing Tears of the Kingdom.  Yeah, we'll blame The Legend of Zelda on that one.

Lords of Exile - Campaign Ended: 5/19/2020 ; Rec'd: February 14, 2024 - Nintendo Switch

I first heard about Lords of Exile because the developer, Carlos Azuaga, kept popping up on my For You feed on Twitter (since bought out by right-wing racist-enabling billionaire and first gentleman Elon Musk) where he would ask for comments on various aspects of his game development.  Again, I loved the NES-era Castlevania look of the character sprites, but also that the look of the game wasn't hamstrung but the limits of the NES; similar to Curse of the Moon.

I played the first stage in the game to get a feel for it and was a little surprised that it wasn't quite what I was expecting.  Not just a Castlevania homage, there were mechanics I wasn't expecting that I will get to when we cover it in an upcoming Game EXP article later this year.

Chono Sword - Campaign Ended: 12/10/2020 ; Rec'd: December 9, 2024 - Steam

Just like Lords of Exile, I had been seeing posts by developer SpaceDuck cropping up a lot on my For You Twitter feed and I like the isometric view and the overall world aesthetic.  That was about it.  I watched several short videos showing in-game animations through development and I like it.  So I threw money at 21cDucks.

Being the most recent game I've received, I haven't yet played it.  I know I should, just like every game on this list and it was Chrono Sword that actually inspired me to make this list and in turn, this article.  I began wondering how many games I had pledged money towards and why I hadn't played m/any of them.

Meifumado - Campaign Ended: 03/21/2022 ; Rec'd: July 6, 2024 - Steam

Meifumado like the last two games I saw crop up a lot on Twitter and liked the look of something akin to Blasphemous, set in a post-apocalyptic world, but with a different regional feel.  Granted this wasn't a Japanese company, but one based in Belarus, which therein lies a lot of the issues with this game.  Their crowdfunding campaign started March 1, 2022, less than a week after Russia invaded and declared unofficial war on Ukraine.  As the campaign came to an end a few weeks later, the government of Belarus supported Vladimir Putin's war machine and so economic sanctions were placed on Russia and their supporters, including Belarus.  This meant that foreign money that had been pledged to Old Bit Studio was now being withheld, which is the short of it.  You can read their May 19, 2024 statement on Kickstarter here.

My reason for not playing Meifumado yet doesn't have anything to do with any of their troubles or being angry that this video game developer happened to be from a country that was supporting another country's hostile invasion of Ukraine.  I understand that the game released is not exactly what was promised or by some reviews on Steam simply call an unfinished game.  I just haven't gotten around to it.  And like I've said a lot about other games, you can look forward to a Game EXP later this year.

And that was kind of the whole point of this article, well one of two points.  The first was to put down in a list the games that I've pledged money to, and to say that this is the year that I play all of these games, and gods willing, will write about all of them too.  I haven't looked any of the games up on HowLongToBeat, but I don't imagine that they're any 50+ hour epics in there, maybe closer to 20+, depending on my skill and surviving an onslaught of enemies, especially in the last four games.

But that's my declaration this Friday, January 17th, 2025: I will play all of the games listed here and likely write about them, either in their own Game EXP article or en masse.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

In This Strange Illusion

P.S.  What do you mean the Switch 2 was announced yesterday morning!?  Great, this is going to eat into my crowdfunded game time now.

P.P.S.  And don't get me started on Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs box that I have sitting in my office after playing successfully through the first card once after two failed attempts.  That game ended up being more complicated than I had anticipated and not exactly what I thought I was getting into.  And did I mention that the rules were written in a classic 2015 fashion?  Whooboy and not for people who were not already familiar with Gloomhaven.