Articles

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. →  Ys: The Article of Napishtim

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. We did play enough to realize the game is good and for Andrew to compose his requisite haiku, luckily for you. Only time will tell if I demand he write another after we play more of the game. →  Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Authors, Nine Articles

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. And since we started this tradition, my kid has received exactly zero gifts from Santa. Every Christmas is full of dashed hope and fresh tears as we realize we have been snubbed yet again by Saint Nick. →  Lords of the Read 2

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. (Technically, skulls smile in media and not skeletons but if you smiled at me wearing all of your muscles and skin I would say something normal like “Your body has a nice smile,” and not something weird like, “Your face has a nice smile.”) →  One must imagine video games happy.

videolamer to Add Air of Authenticity to Bluesky

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In a decisive, if not fatal blow to Elon Musk’s evil empire, videolamer.com has moved its significant online presence off of Twitter. Starting last week, videolamer can now only be found not posting anything on the Bluesky platform and are no longer not posting on Twitter. The 46 bots following us on the right wing cesspool will now need to find our official account in cyaner pastures.

Why move and why now, you demand to know. We are always quick to be the millionth in line to take a strong stand that requires very little sacrifice, especially when it sends a powerful signal about just what our values are. We considered moving for ages but Musk claimed to be a socialist 7 years ago so it seemed only fair to give him nearly a decade to prove he was perhaps exaggerating; it turns out he is a national socialist, which completely blindsided everyone who pays no attention to anything. Now that the world is descending into what can only be described as end times, we feel it behooves us to be on the right side of the little history that remains to be written. →  Games are the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

Thinking about the Master System library

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This post is unlikely to exist. If you’re reading it then it must, but just barely. I originally began writing about Saturn games that needed to be better than they were. That will still be written, I think. Then I decided I’d need to dig into the Genesis’ games to really figure out what happened between Sega’s most successful console and their first publically named planet console. But then it would be important to understand the Sega CD and even 32X. I still want to write about all these things 47 other people care about, all of them with strong opinions that contradict my own.

Moving back to the Master System seemed inevitable, but only after I decided I would write about it. I suppose inevitable things are always evitable at first and then something happens to make them into things that were always going to happen even though up until then they weren’t going to happen. I was doomed to write this, but was happier when that doom was pending. →  Postlanser: Heritage of Read

Wednesdays with Andrew – NiGHTS into Dreams

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(For context, see the introduction to this series here.)

We’ve all seen movies, read stories, and played games where if you die in the game you die in real life. But where are the games that if you die in real life you die in the game? Sure there are some games where if you stop playing an enemy may kill you or, if for some reason you play multiplayer games, another human. But it’s not really the same. I propose a game that detects a lack of player input and then sends pop up boxes in game every four minutes asking if you are still alive. If you take more than ten seconds to confirm your existence, you die in game. This ensures that dying in real life does in fact kill you in game. Maybe you think this is a harsh mechanic and you shouldn’t lose a video game just because you died, but I see it as respectful. →  Read Danger!

Ads from Loser Companies

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The early days of EGM (Electrical Gamers Magazine) were resplendent with ads from companies of ill repute, often advertising games that are remembered poorly if they are remembered at all. Perhaps ad buys were a few dollars because the magazine had just gotten started and had a readerbase as low as videolamer at its 2008 peak, or perhaps these companies were somehow flush from the bubble days of Famicom games selling well regardless of quality. I refuse to believe it could be both, so please do not consider it.

Our first ad is from a company called SETA. No, not SEGA, SERA. I mean SETA. This (SETA) Corporation developed the hits you know and love, like Magic Darts for NES and Strongest Habu Shogi on the GameCube. They did publish one or two interesting games, such as the following ad’s Musya. If any readers joined the SETA Club, please send me your pin.

American Softworks is up next, the publisher who brought us Sküljagger: Revolt of the Westicans, Power Punch II, and Treasure Master. →  I only ask one thing. Don’t read in my way.

EGM Previews for Bad Games

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In a recent post, I mentioned that EGM spent a good deal of time talking up obviously shitty games. Here is a short, mostly visual, follow up to that thesis. At least this first game made a great movie… to ridicule. But please don’t do that, I’ve copyrighted both ironic enjoyment and hipster condescension.

What a sweet follow up ad to the Hudson Hawk preview. The next preview is for a game I actually owned and played a lot of. It was bad but I was young so it was good. Street Smart had some mild RPG mechanics – if I recall, you gained a stat point or two after winning fights. Numbers (or, in this case, boxes) going up was and is human-nip for me.

Here is another Genesis game I played as a childish child. It is also bad but has a weirdness about it that is offputting and cool. I can’t think of many other games that let you turn into a centaur or merman, though I have always wanted to play the PS1’s Meremanoid. →  Start your journey now, my Lord.

Politics, previews, and poppycock

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Video game previews have always seemed primarily a marketing tool. I remember complaining about IGN previews in the aughts when the site, clearly a detached arm of publishers, would post sometimes a dozen preview articles on a big upcoming game. (Correction, I complained about a bunch of sites.)

Old issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly had previews of games that range in tone from neutral to PR. The previews that read like marketing are interesting when contrasted with the constant bloviating the magazine did about being the only true, tell it like it is, in your face, no holds barred, Carlos-Mencia-style magazine on the market. If you’re over the age of 15 AND are not a fucking moron, you know that when people tell your their traits directly, they’re lying. The more EGM claimed to be objective, the more apparent their rave reviews of Bubsy were paid for. I know this because I am both smart and funny.

Come with me on a political tangent with no jokes and also opinions you don’t agree with that applies grandiose theories to video game magazines. →  Videolamer does what IGNotDoes.