Articles

Almost Famous – Dice, Scavengers, and Bastards

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The idea that publishers and platform-holders determine the games the vast majority of people are aware of through marketing, promotion, and their ensuing hype is appealing to a critic of consumerism such as myself. What appears to be freedom of choice is actually a heavily curated set of options presented by million and billion dollar corporations; our choice is largely an illusion. But at the back of my mind, I worry that this may be overly simplistic and the argument that quality games will be found by an audience seems compelling. And then I find a game like Circadian Dice, which reinforces the initial premise – an awesome, smartly designed game that never found the large audience it deserves.

This is the first post in a series on unpopular indies and will be driven by the pursuit of discovering more Circadian Dices – more games that should be much bigger than they are. →  Imagine all the gamers playing for today

Wednesdays with Andrew – Virtua Fighter 2 and Daytona USA

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Prior entries in this series: Introduction | NiGHTS into Dreams | Virtua Racing and more

Another day, another 1/7th closer to the day Andrew and I play Saturn games. Our playing is getting far ahead of these write-ups as sitting on the couch, controller in hand is moderately easier than telling chatGPT to write these things then performing deft copy/pastes, so let’s say this session took place in November of 1986.

Fighting never felt so virtual

The first time I remember playing Virtua Fighter was at Six Flags Great Adventure in the new Jersey. It may have been the visit I was finally tall enough to ride Lightnin’ Loops and Free Fall. My brother repeatedly told me in vivid detail about the woman who was scalped because her hair got caught in the gears at the top of the Free Fall cage before it dropped 30 trillion feet or so. →  The fuck does Cuno care about reading?

Arcade Planning for People without an Arcade

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Some time in 2005, I bought a Golden Axe arcade cabinet for maybe $200 or $300 from Craig’s List, which with inflation comes to about $36,000 today. My brother and I, mostly him though, got it up and working nicely with some replacement sticks and buttons from HAPP. This was back when they were good, apparently – the internet says they were acquired and then started putting out mediocre equipment. The machine followed me to a few different apartments before I finally convinced my sister to keep it at her house along with boxes of console games. 15 or so years passed, I accomplished little, and then out of the blue my sister tells me it is time to take Golden Axe back (I had already taken the other boxes to add to my Closet Full of Games™). →  WELCOMETOTHENEXTARTICLE

Committing to 2026 video game commitments

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Sometimes the videolamer staff always makes a commitment to play specific games in a new year and then fails to uphold that commitment. 2026 will be no different, in that it is a year in which we will or will not (in this case will) commit to playing some video games and then most of us will shirk the responsibility to play said games despite having sworn, hand on a Kid Klown in Night Mayor World manual, that we would in front of the entire internet. It is healthy to have aspirations, and it is even healthier to know your limits after initially not knowing them.

Jay

Calculating the exact proportion of new stuff, indie darlings, niche games, and retro titles to play in a given year is an exact science that I refuse to perform hastily or sloppily. →  Mrs. Article, you’re trying to seduce me.

Let’s keep working together

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It has recently come to my attention that a number of videolamer staff are trying to unionize. I am posting this open letter response here because I do not have all you greedy, backstabbing assholes’ email addresses. And because I care.

lame Team,

We write during this extraordinary time for our company, our site, our writers and our country to tell you we want you to love coming to work every day. We’re making progress and we will not stop trying to do our best for you. We love you.

Also, we want to share our thoughts related to the current barrage of union activity that has been directed at videolamer and other “non-union” websites during this difficult time we call the 21st century. →  Read or Alive 2: Hardcore

Dear lamer: Child rearing advice from a professional video game player

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In this exciting new series, our mascot answers letters readers have sent in with sage advice.

Dear lamer,

I am a real person who hacked their Genesis mini to add a bunch of regular and popular games, such as King Colossus, that Sega omitted from the product. My neighbor, who is not actually the neighbor of someone who writes for this website, saw this excellently decked out Genesis mini and asked to borrow my “Sega Genesis” sometime in 2023. Have you noticed an immediate tell that someone doesn’t have much or any experience with Sega consoles is the use of the word “Sega” before naming a system? It’s a Genesis, a Saturn, a Dreamcast. No one cool says Sega Genesis or Sega Dreamcast, just like anyone familiar with Nintendo doesn’t call the Super Nintendo the Nintendo Super Nintendo.  →  The review for ‘Shark Sandwich’ was merely a two word review which simply read ‘Read Sandwich.’

2025 in Virtual Postcards

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The only general addition to video game console controllers in several decades now is the share button. Now a relic itself as I think we’re kinda collectively done with the social-media- through-your-gaming-device experiment: the PlayStation’s janky native streaming seemingly never took off, Xbox arguably peaked with the 360 dashboard and avatars and you need to daisy chain a whole series of antiquated devices to get stuff off your Switch SD card.  

However, I’m interested in why it is we choose to capture those digital postcards. I use the snapshot button way, way more than I would have guessed and for the most part those images go nowhere. Part of my motivation, and I know this is going to age me one thousand human years by typing it out, is because I still remember a time where if you wanted to rewatch a cool cutscene that plays 34 hours into an RPG, the only way of doing so was creating save slots on physical memory cards (normally at a fixed save point) just before it played. →  Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing memory cards.

Wednesdays with Andrew – Virtua Racing and Panzer Dragoon

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Prior entries in this series: Introduction | NiGHTS into Dreams

Another arbitrary amount of time, another entry in the ‘guy makes another guy play Saturn games’ series. This time we played a little of a promising shmupper (this term is useful as it pleases neither the ‘shump’ nor ‘shooter’ crowds), and a little more of two absolute classics by Sega.

Layering Attack Rays in Sections of Galactic Force

Should Galactic Attack have music? Does Attack Galac have a second stage? Why is there so much audible rattling under the hood of my minivan while I drive? Until these questions are answered satisfactorily, we decided to put aside Galactic Attacktic for a future date. In the meantime I will find a new bin/cue file and not speak to a mechanic. →  Lords of the Read 2

Another Tragic Christmas

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The Christmas after I left my parents home for good I wrote out my list and mailed it to the North Pole, like I had every year. For the first time in my life, Santa Claus did not come. It took some time to make peace with this fact. While attending college I still went home for holidays and summers and Santa kept delivering. Apparently, once you graduate and fully move out of your parent’s home, Santa is made aware, likely via Christmas magic, and considers you an adult unqualified to receive gifts. I am mostly over this unpleasant reality, though it still stings a little. But what came next is simply wrong.

Since my child could speak, we have made a list of requested toys and sent it off to the NP. →  Readlevania

A Christmas Revelation

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Despite what the man wants you to believe, video games are fairly true to life. For example, people do drop money when you kill them, and while you have no literal meter filling up with points, you do gain experience that makes killing the next person easier. And, if Catharism is to be believed, and I can see no reason it shouldn’t, dying in real life simply results in respawning, much like in a game. This realism makes games a great tool for educating our children but there is the hidden danger that they learn unfactual things, or unlearn factual things from them. One of the widest spread misconceptions from video games, movies, and lithographs is the lie that skeletons can smile. →  Jesus: Readful Bio Monster