E3 was a massive part of my life when I was old enough to care. In the early to mid 2010s, I lived vicariously through IGN employees on Twitter who attended. It felt like the pinnacle of life to be a NeoGAF user who represented their public facing persona with a funny image of Vince McMahon and posted the below E3 Soup $30 Italian meal meme every year.  A baseball player up until I graduated high school, I remember taking E3 excitement with me to early June games here and there if I had to play in a game while the show happening. The taste in my mouth resembled G4 programs, 2000s sitcoms, 2000s PS2 Michael Mann feeling ads and images. I used to look at these other kids doing whatever it may have been be it chatting in the dugout, having to inhabit a space where they cared or pretended to care to some extent about whatever random ‘elite’ and expensive youth summer league we were playing in, ready steps one two on the infield and wonder how they made it through without the excitement of E3. I remember walking to lunch with my friends trying to get them to care about how Sony gave Microsoft the “hack down smack down” over and over. I’m aware of how pathetic that all sounds. What’s more pathetic, is the intersection of the final E3 being the last one that school was blocking my attendance of, something I plotted since I was small. Geoff Keighley begs me to believe that hope still springs eternal, that I’ve no reason to be sad that I never made it to E3, and every year I want to hear him out, and Nintendo honors that feeling by holding a general Nintendo Direct right in and around that window. Every now and then when I sit for one of them, I tap into that excitement and keep the embarrassing part of it to myself. 

What Excited Me the Most:

Rhythm Heaven Groove

The Rhythm Heaven developers could do this all day man. Give them a short notice m and they could show you the setup to a mini game with the Wario Ware weirdness, the just comforting enough visual style to make you feel good, and music that does this “why does this actually go hard” thing. This is probably my personal winner of the day, and the fact that there’s only a couple of mere weeks until I get to play it? Pretty sick.

Orbitals

Perhaps Cuphead deserves credit for starting this trend of trying a game in every specific nostalgic art style, and what was shown of this here looked like a pretty enjoyable game. The old anime art style seemed to not lose charm as you traverse through the world, and moving through it seemed open, flowy and fun enough for the brief periods that gameplay of this was playing. Believe this is a co-op based experience, looked very Hazelight in function.

One Piece Grand Gourmet

There was a micro trend in this Direct of putting popular IP in a slightly outdated charming retro format. This is the one that worked for me. This writer has watched approximately three(3) episodes of One Piece, however this is still extremely my shit. Who doesn’t want a DS looking game with tasty looking pixel food and hundreds of different colorful anime restaurant patrons? Yeah fuck yeah dude sure. I don’t usually do well or last very long at restaurant management sims, but this is one I would try out so I can live in the world for a bit and cosplay myself as a One Piece fan until it eventually becomes true maybe.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort

I’ll take what I can get with this. I wouldn’t have minded if you just did Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort remakes or what have you on the Switch ecosystem. You still use Miis in Tomodachi Life and such(and here as well, I just don’t like the fake sports guys!) That said Wuhu Island still looks cozy, desirable and open and the water is still shiny. I am not dying to play this but the scar tissue of Wii Sports Resort is still there in its visual/audio language and setting, and that is what I am attracted to. October 22 launch, the addition of Skateboarding as the newest Wii Sport looked real fun.

PikuNiku 2

I really liked PikuNiku and this looks like an extension of its successful aesthetic. Now 3D, this one was giving heavily obscure Chibi-Robo adjacent mini game situation with a less linear, more funky quality to it. You can sign me up for that 9/10 times.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

A cinematic teaser trailer for the most telegraphed big drop in recent Nintendo Direct history. Originally, I really didn’t want any part of this, but something about how this preview was crafted made me remember that Ocarina is probably a top 3 Zelda game. Likely will buy this!

Other Notable Entries:

StarFox

There seems to be a referendum out on the whole series because of this game. The instant reveal of the Fox character model did a really big hit on the state amongst hyper online circles. But this more or less looks like a StarFox experience with modern Nintendo Switch 2 graphics. I could see myself signing up for that too, you should know, I am really easy when it comes to Nintendo First Party. I’m one of those guys, but I like to think not fully.

Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave

Fire Emblem continues to look wonderful, slick, and I’m guessing it still feels and plays wonderfully, and somehow, I can’t re ignite my interest in the series. I haven’t fully played a Fire Emblem title since Awakening. Every time we get back to this place I wonder “man why can’t I bring myself to get back into these games” because Fire Emblem is a proven, known quantity that doesn’t tend to deviate off of what it does well. I am very happy for all of my friends who were looking forward to this. This felt like it would be a Summer Game but is out on September 17.

The Duskbloods

Feels like we have seen something from this game for the past like 3 Nintendo presentations and every time it is a different slideshow of FromSoft-Like creatures and statues. Extrapolating, I would imagine this will have an audience on a Nintendo machine, will it play acceptably? Guess we’ll see.

Kingdom Hearts 4

Pretty much nothing I could say about Kingdom Hearts would sound informed or in touch, so I’ll let my friends who like this series I talked to speak for me who said essentially: “this looked a lot like the gameplay for Kingdom Hearts 3 what took so long” and also “I lost my mind” so choose your fighter.

Xenoblade

Xenoblade is getting a Switch 2 edition for each of it’s mainline games. It’s also getting a sequel, Genesis, coming out next year. I can’t wrap my arms around Xenoblade, how can I. I am struggling to conceive of the correct age where this series was for me. Perhaps it was just in the eighth grade, when Xenoblade Chronicles 2012 first released where I experienced the game in bits in pieces over the course of a year watching/experiencing it second hand through friends playthroughs and attempting my own.

Super Mario Titans

LOL!!!!!!

When it comes to overarching, general takeaways about Nintendo’s slate, the consensus seems to stay with many around me to hold off on buying a Switch 2. There was a lot I looked forward to here, but there does seem to be a lack of one heavy hitter in the Holiday window to jolt excitement into the online, 2-3 video game purchases a year group that can take a games sales into the most remarkable bracket, think a Smash Brothers, an Animal Crossing, perhaps a 3D Mario. That surely will be Ocarina of Time’s window, and that certainly can do some good business and build up excitement for the movie in the Spring, but for a remake I remain slightly skeptical. This was a week of flawless Geoff Keighley victory and redemption, and yet while I thiiiiink Nintendo just barely landed that plane for me, I am not as confident it will be as big of a holiday season as they might be hoping for.

Valle Verde starts like every great story does: a man wandering in the forest uncovers an old VHS tape and decides to display his findings, footage of an unknown PlayStation 1 game called Valle Verde.

The first part functions as standalone YouTube horror fare. What starts as a normal seeming, very nicely crafted recreation of late nineties cozy but “something feels off” chibi Japanese animation gameplay eventually becomes demonic at face value. Environments fade out and give way to red, biblical hellish floors and walls. If this does nothing for you, that’s fine. You’ve heard the haunted video games story before.

Part 2 is where things get really fun for me. The first thing I come back to is the broken, dark monologue featuring a demon hundreds of miles away from Valle Verde itself after the player character asks an NPC about a painting in the town hall.

See, the conceit of Valle Verde is as follows: a long time ago, a device called a THBrain was being tested on certain video games. Humans used the device on their head to seemingly insert themselves into the game and play it subconsciously. Five children were set out to test Valle Verde from different parts of the world. Would you believe it, but those kids never came out. The THBrain read and scanned all of their brain, including all of the religious scripture and background some of them were supposedly into, the depths of bible being read by code turned Valle Verde into a hell of human sacrifice, slave labor, and suffering beyond belief. Who knew.

The seed that was spawned in Valle Verde spreads across the game library of the system in this video. The most impressive part of Alluvium’s work is the craft put in recreating old PS1 games in Blender beyond Valle Verde’s Animal Crossing, Chulip adjacent style. In Part 2, we watch a cutscene and gameplay from “Tharsis” which many folks when they first watched just assumed was a real game until the demonic corruptions and glitches began.

To stop myself from explaining everything that happens in this series so you go watch it, I will just highlight some of the little touches in these videos that just slide real nice into my orifices so you can experience it too.

This is lovely. This error message is the perfect balance of normal and unsettling. This is the kind of thing I dreamt about as a small. Did it have to be scary when there was a disc cannot be read screen, did the music have to stop playing? Did the text have to be worded like that, did there have to be a loud thump when it appeared? I keep seeing my decades old nightmares manifested in media more and more. I don’t know if that’s good or not?

Whenever characters are talking, this gear appears along with red, backwards text boxes I feel aptly informed that this game is being bent to accommodate presences of things inside of it. How uncanny it feels whenever something like that unfolds is again nightmares manifest, video game structures operating outside their prescribed functions because of something that is wrong. I’ve seen it a lot, but this level of detail as I comb through these videos over and over again is sublime.

These are all the fruits of a visionary brain. Alluvium has the Kane Parsons quirk of being able to to spring out of the mind that weird little thing we were all unnerved by as kids and slot it into a more jarring scenario. The room in the Backrooms with the uncanny, weird ramp that collides into a small window comes to mind.

This above image might’ve been the part of Valle Verde that resonated the most. I remember the first time I saw “PlayStation Online” on a copy of a wrestling game at a friends house. The notion of being able to play with a random person somewhere else in the world was life changing for me, I did not drop that topic for the rest of the night, I wanted to experience PlayStation Online. Original readers might remember that my history with video game nightmares started with direct messages to me, the player. As a viewer of this, being directed to do one of my things, have a collective experience in a video game and make that spooky really hit for me. This is almost a feeling I’m familiar with, come experience Animal Crossing coated terrors together, a screen saying everybody tune it to see something terrible, and Alluvium brewed it into a perfect image.

It was in the final sequence of the most recently released Part 4 where it became clear that my guy Alluvium was just showing off. This one ends with a sequence from an all too familiar car-play flavored game with some of that 90s pop British aesthetic. The taste of rubber and car bodies being clear somehow through the craftsmanship. Of course, this was short lived until the player characters clipped through the edge of the environment into a never ending landscape of grey creatures in cages and bloody flying stone angels.

If there was one complaint to be had about Valle Verde, it would be that there hasn’t been any sort of plot progression or new revelations for the last couple years. Perhaps I missed some stuff but I don’t know much more than the system has been turned into a biblical hellscape. That’s also allowed to not matter, because this is a visual marvel and like described, works as something to tune into every year just to see what trick of nostalgia and satisfying pattern he’s able to groove out into this language he’s created. Alluvium is showing no sign of slowing down cranking out one of these a year, so it’s not unsafe to assume that he will tie this up eventually. But until then, much like the Backrooms, I hope he plays around and experiments in this way he excels at as much as he can before trying to make pointed narrative strokes.

I’m a sucker for a Discord. It’s been a minute. I haven’t been in a Discord Server since 2020. Not one with Stakes, that is. Folks that only exist to you online, stories of love and loss, the taste in the air of a person’s real life with no squishy, crunchy meaty evidence of it. Real tears. The realest ones. A guy who you talked to once who had his life ruined by a girl who he talked to in VC a single time. A girl with a high school boyfriend of 7 years risking and leaving it all for a man courageous enough to send moaning audios. All without leaving #general.

That considered I was ready for a group of late teens to twenty somethings who used League of Legends terms that made me feel like a 2010s Gawker millennial and called every night over squads and McDonalds, a tight knit friend group situation looking to add some spice. I could picture the heat the laptop left on their blankets or how many Hatsune Miku figures lined their PC setup, who would be crying at the 4am group rewatch of Frieren. A few couples with matching avatars, the air of esex between 22 year old girlfailure gf and 24 year old chud bf echoing sadly into Turtle Beach headphones.

Not quite what I got.

bpd sluts is unlike any discord server that exists. Upon joining, the role tree choices are as follows.

“dada: looking for kitten”

“kitten: looking for dada”

“trans-male”, “trans female”, and “fluid/nobinary”

Into an age range, a color, and a pretty specific set of rules with egirl copy.

To me, a zillennial, this is all pretty standard stuff. Like I said, I lived through the Discord of 2020-2021, I spent time watching Sykkuno (lol) play Among Us with DisguisedToast and Hasan Piker, I pattered around the HealthyGamerGG Discord server watching despair flow in from afar. Though I think I did miss the shift from daddy to “dada” over the past couple years, but I can stomach that. That’s fine. Foid on the other hand.

The most active channels in bpd sluts are “looking for kitten” “looking for dada” and of course, “general.” Well, four general chats. Let’s take a gander eh?

Hey okay fuck!!! Jesus Christ.

This was not some random community looking to goof around. This was a herding. The first day of the post bpd sluts blowup Tweet was an absolute nightmare. The fastest I’ve ever seen a discord chat move. Gifs of huge penises, slurs, Swastikas, any and all of the worst language imagineable (feel like we should chat about how kids are talking about rape right now, I dunno) anti-semitism, Jesus the anti-semitism (vivid memory of some edgelord guy trying to pull a debate me bro situation on how ‘the painter did nothing wrong’ in the middle of a nonstop stream of porn.) The mods were either overwhelmed, didn’t care or both. Anyone could take one glance at this scroll and immediately see why nobody in this demographic is well. I’d have to think a day spent in bpd sluts looks on you like a really bad drug addiction. You feel tired, the rest of the world feels like a fuzzy background, your eyes dart across from screen to screen, carpal tunnel pain for the first time of your life at 21. Some individual clicks of the keyboard and 20 people are ready to talk to you, who that is and why is between you and dada. Thanks for calling mom, today after class I had 20 dates with 20 people in 10 minutes, and no I don’t know the names of any of them. I cannot imagine what this experience of nonstop comparison/jealousy and sexuality would do to a younger more vulnerable mind, and I say that as someone who definitely has had similar things affect me. I am picturing many year long slow burn and sexual tensions unraveling in a day in voice chats and getting scared.

After a few days, it slowed down. I stopped checking after a little bit but the Tweets of what was going down in there continued to pop up. I saw a few people realizing how easy it was to catfish as an egirl in the server and make money. Like an above screenshot, folks weren’t even using photos and getting money out of people. Then, I saw this ping by one of the server mods:

What’s that? You’re a gamer looking for his egirl to sleep call with in “bpd sluts” and have infinite time and no money. Wow man no way, boy do we have something for you!

/pay is currently hiring for two positions. “Recruiter” and “Chatter.” I started the Chatter application. A typing test, a questionnaire, and eventually, a scenario I need to act in. The first one is a “classic brokie scenario” where I, speaking as a ‘model,’ had to bully what looked like an OnlyFans customer into buying my PPV content.

Unfortunately folks, this is where I dropped out (although I feel I might have been good at it. But it is at this point where an NDA and a banking app for international money orders also became invovled, and in situations like these a bank account is where you stop the experiment.) I felt I knew what I needed to know and after talking to some folks on The Everything App, had formed my theory on this. The gig is “legal” ghost chatting as “models” to gaslight, flirt, and convince people to give money through sexting. It was at this time images of all of the men throwing money at pictures of egirl succubi and guys starting side hustle collecting and selling boywhimpers in bpd sluts popped back into my head.

I don’t have any definitive conclusions about this because I don’t want to get into an Xbox Live flavored war with these Discord people if anyone reads this, but could bpd sluts be a funnel to get half of it’s userbase to funnel the money to the other half to enrich the server owners? Maybe I am just far too jaded by what feels like a progressively dead internet to be normal about this. Perhaps the Geese Substack and Wired saga has me paranoid about the people in the comments and the servers. But doesn’t it make sense? There are too many similarly looking and talking people in there… Would dada actually do that to kitten though, seriously? A gag on it’s members, cultivating moaning competitions in voice call, all of these kind of glib aforementioned horrors of discord culture, while stealing the money of a quieter, more desperate sect of the server members? It’s hardly surprising considering the world we’re familiar with, but there was something jarring about this hellground where the only confident, chiseled 20 year old males exchanged nudes with girls with throne pages at alarming rates, all existing so a couple of guys can make money. Who’s to say, slightly shocked that less people are talking about this.

One might say if you tried to embody this concept of a person into a character model it would be Pokopia’s shapeshifting Ditto-Human. What first felt like a weird work-around to have a human avatar in this game becomes much more complicated experience when you start taking on the abilities of other Pokémon. That Pokémon spirit I talked about was especially striking to me when I realized Pokopia was a Climate Change Game. You wake up in a cave, in a post life world besides a scholarly Tangrowth. You tend to a community by taking on Pokemon abilities and reviving parts of the ecosystem, bringing different species back with it. Nice without being as corny as it might sound!

Pokopia is really sweet but not the kind of game that clicks with this writer, and the aesthetic edge does no mesh with me like I would like it to. This might be the most childish thing about me, but I have always been bad at the “here, go make stuff” games. That said, the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s Demo makes it feel like this might be talked like a game of the year for not just me.

I’m thrilled to report that the small device that quietly emanates joy’ Nintendo thing is here with this iteration of Tomodachi Life. While creating and settling in my Mii , the series of carefully crafted songs and sound effects had me feeling like this woman. They’re doing the thing with this game. It looks and sounds clean, we’re not in a Wii game anymore where it’s a bit clunky and that’s part of what makes the look, but it’s still smooth and comfortingly Wii-ish in a way you don’t quite get as much. The small chunk we were all dropped is an attention demanding, cute somersault of Nintendo video game work. Those Miis we made 20 years ago, this is what we always wanted to do with them! This aptly feels like what they were for. Of course, Wii Sports is endlessly valid. But there is a level of quirk here that feels like a natural progression, like the door in that liminal gymnasium they called the Mii Plaza opens into this and is prettier, more open and desirable as I’ve ever seen that hypothetical world.

It’s perhaps too early to tell, but Tomodachi Life Living the Dream feels like it is going to do a hell of a job filling in what was left to be desired in the 3DS game in terms of character interaction. As soon as our second Mii was created, it immediately felt like our two Miis were interacting on a new kind of plane compared to what we were used to seeing. You can now designate Miis as family members or partners saving any awkward confusion. It’s a demo obviously, but the total lack of any sort of filter on spoken text combined with how silly some of these voices sound has made for a lot of Post-Able instances as well. Really could have filtered a few things there man, this is the ‘Santorum’ folks after all.

The character creation is made fun and engaging, in a way that elates the kind of giggles you’d do with your siblings when you made Miis for the first time, transcendent. Within a few days of this demo being out I saw near perfect Mii recreations of Pim of Smiling Friends, Chappell Roan, Richard Nixon, and Tung Tung Tung Sahur on the timeline, thanks in part to new drawing and surface design features now available to the player that allows for a deeper kind of Mii realism. The fun is apparent, but I can only imagine the level of horrors the timeline is going to bare when this full game releases. Between how flawlessly the mechanics here have translated to social media fuss and excitement, I don’t know when the last time a Nintendo title has telegraphed this hard that it was going to be a hit.

I’m reminded of how the post Animal Crossing: New Leaf launch had Twitter looking in 2013. What seemed to start as community wide energy in the IGN office spread to pretty much everyone my 14 year old self was following then, (thousands of game industry adjacent people, could that have played a part in my development?) I didn’t think this sort of collective experience with a game was possible anymore. These writers aren’t on there anymore, it’s hoards of 19 year old’s to twenty somethings who can turn the tide of something’s coolness with a big snarky tweet because they’re feeling insecure that day.

With that in mind, these offerings in 2026 could feel stale and out of touch. Threading the needle and satisfying the terminally online only gets harder by the day, but Nintendo impresses here. The place this all comes from feels very understood, in touch and smart. Giving your kids the newest, perfected, polished tools to let them do what they’ve always done best. There’s nothing to be edgy about but the sense of humor of the people posting their in game creations. We’re a few days overdue for a salty tweet grilling the Smiling Friends, Living the Dream overlap(likely has been and I haven’t seen!). We already all have the game, we all want the game. They’re not over indexing on nostalgia, their hand that sets you into these worlds feels trustworthy as ever, and here I am, ready to circle back to Pokopia and chomping at the bit for April 16. No longer can you count out Touchdown Tomodachi.

2008: Animal Crossing: City Folk

2009: New Super Mario Brothers Wii

2010: Fishing Resort(Wii Sports Resort was on someone’s list and we got this instead, and honestly, bless Prope, inject this shit into my veins. Watching my younger brothers still get excited over this cause it was Christmas but also have no idea what this was was very funny, as I remember.)

2011: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

2012: Epic Mickey 2

2013: The Last of Us

2014: Mario 3D World

2015: Minecraft: Story Mode

2016: Tecmo Bowl(NES mini)

2017: Danganronpa V3

2018: Pokémon: Let’s Go Eevee

2019: Death Stranding

2020: A Short Hike

2021: Mario Golf: Super Rush

2022: Mario Strikers Battle League

2023: Super Mario 3D Land

2024: Mario Superstar Baseball

While it is likely not advisable to inorganically create the moments that feel like this, I still cannot imagine going out of your way to create these scenarios and it not still not feeling good. The small video game experiences in bedrooms at holidays with the loud sounds of parents on the main floor are why you try to talk about games for a living. You should try it also. (these are tailored with my personal experiences in mind but these specifically are not my experiences. If I’m going to be one of these nostalgia guys without being racist I need to be a tiny bit aware.)

Game: Animal Crossing (Population: Growing!)

Platform: Nintendo GameCube

Release: 12/14/2001

Place: Your dark basement

When: After the first day of elementary school

Why: I forced the issue my whole life on trying to make my favorite game of all time a Fall/Holiday game, but it just didn’t happen. Animal Crossing is spiritually Summer. It lives through cicada screams, fishing, the twangy bumpy music that simply goes with the new beginnings of June and the sweaty heavy burden of August. The series was born out of the loneliness that came with taking the long train to and from work every Summer day in realsies, solving the problem way too many people have, the feeling of living life like everyone else is in a group chat without you. This feeling is enhanced being surrounded by Summer, vacations, parties, nights out. Whether they’re happening or not, they feel like they are, and luckily Animal Crossing is it’s own world without this. As far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been many other advancements on this matter besides this series.

Animal Crossing works as an after school endeavor not just because of the aesthetics of calmly playing it in the gorgeous Summer to Fall in between, but can quickly calm those childlike stresses and commiserations of having a full school year in front of you. Doing kinda menial video game tasks on your own time, in an unbeatably chill environment, you would think would strongly help a child with a full school year in front of them. The least embarassing game your mom can call you up to finish your homework from. I remember 2nd grade, my teacher taking us on a “virtual tour” of the classroom. Clicking in my head that we were preparing for 100+ days of this, an unimaginable amount. I can live in that feeling, and then a snap and I’m thoroughly 27 years of age.

Game: Wii Sports Resort

Platform: Nintendo Wii

North American Release: July 26, 2009

When: Post Christmas Dinner 2009-2012, for a couple short hours

Where: Upstairs bedroom

Why: Perhaps the game of the Wii, one that the older cousins can successfully buy into while the younger cousins can watch/hop in if they so please. You’re 12, of course you love Wii Sports Resort!

The candy landscapes of Wuhu Island look really good on a grandma TV, the game in general I can imagine very nostalgic and warm feeling in one of those small guest rooms with a bed puffy white bed and not enough seating, everyone way too hot still in Christmas adjacent sweaters. Making a Mii of the zoned out uncle who doesn’t talk look like an insect will get a good laugh. Make a Mii for everyone playing before while you’re at it, speed through it.

I say this one largely in part because of swordplay. That’s a good time with the little kids, who can just shake the fuck out of the Wiimote and participate. Table Tennis will make the kids in the middle age group lock in, and once you get called down for dessert towards the end you can get a peaceful run of cycling in as the rest of the cousins file back downstairs. If this isn’t hitting, try a Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games title, similar mold, fun to have a clunky weird feeling thing feel special in a context like this, a game, like Fishing Resort in 2010, you may just play one time ever.

Game: Super Smash Brothers: Melee

Platform: Nintendo GameCube

North American Release: 12/3/2001

When: After school

Where: Your friend who has all the games’ house, while you, you do not have any games

Why: When you will become In First Grade, a neighbor will invite you over to come hang out. There’s no reason why not to say yes.

You may play outside for a small amount of time, and that will be nice and dandy. But go inside and you’ll play this video game surrounded by a pattern of bellowing child silhouettes and your neighbor’s kid. Play intently and absorb each social behavior around you.

The characters on the screen hinted at worlds you could become lost in. The competitivity clicks perfectly in your brain, getting you to care extremely fast, even if you’re learning how to play on the fly. This is not only a new experience, but an almost dreamlike glimpse into something otherworldly you won’t experience too often in your life. You will shortly find yourself walking over the shadows and under the landscape back home. You’ll never go back there but you will always want to.

Smash 64 also works.

Game: Halo Reach

Platform: Xbox 360, etc

North American Release: September 14, 2010

When: Somewhere in between the Doritos Pope image of Geoff Keighley, eternally a few hours before any years “VGAs on Spike”, right after a snack trip to the super market or gas station

Where: Basement, lingering in the airspace that X-Play aired on

Why: If the When on this one doesn’t sell you, not sure what to tell you

Game: Fortnite

Platform: All of them

North American Release: July 25, 2017

When: Now

Where: On your deathbed

Why: Fortnite now exists stoically at the end of all video games, the end of a trail paved with Nyan Cats, 2012 Let’s Play intros and arrows to the knee. At some point in 2020 Animal Crossing New Horizons brought us all to our game death. “I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you were a child & fell asleep on the couch during a family party. I hope you can hear the laughter from the next room.” We all quaintly were carried to our bedrooms by that game and soothed in purgatory by Fortnite and what else you can call what’s currently happening in this industry. Personally, this writer felt like he sat through years of fun press conferences and exclusive reveal trailers to end with Fortnite as the last game, unsure how to feel about that, hoping to get out of that rut someday.

Despite that all, Fortnite is legitimately a good game, and a winning “friendslop” experience. In 2025, there is just as much in this game for the mid twenties couple who live together with their two PCs together, one bedroom and a cat in like Massachusetts than there is for orange justice kid. I’m imagining this stereotype for a softcore zillennial TikTok couple, small TikTok account/streamer/romantasy Cottage Core! I’m Ophelia and Venus/Dropout/Critical Role girlfriend, whatever a 2025 PC gamer guy boyfriend looks like now, aspiring fitness influencer or e-commerce website guy. You can come home from work, eat dinner, and play this game with your S/O and friends every night and run in circles and shoot some guys while you catch up on the nothing new you all did, coming in let’s say 3rd place most times.

The game’s fun! Fortnite controls really well, is just as complex and simple enough now to feel satisfying. But it doesn’t really matter. 9/10 game nights, you eat these battle royale runs like little ghosts. They taste of nothing, floating in out and through you. Your life continues, spending days yearning for an old day of looking at an older screen with outdated digital artifice.

Reader, however, you know it’s not over. You know you can yearn and feel so deeply that you can’t have that deeper, special kind of fun any longer. Unfortunately, sometimes you let your guard down and it just happens again. That’s something I learned as I was aged. I was on my phone posting about how I miss playing Animal Crossing City Folk when I was 13, meanwhile, an unforgettable game of Life the Board Game unfolded right under my own two nostrils. I know a lot of people are adamant that it’s gone, The Polar Express bell no longer rings, but I’m fairly certain that it does. I think I had an Arc Raiders night this week I can count here alone. I urge you not to keep note of it, not to remember the time or place. Be more normal than me, carry it with you, keep it in you, live your days accumulating these moments and shut up about it, don’t bathe in nostalgia YouTube mixes or write things like this. Maybe this is vapid and naive, but I really think that feeling is still there for those who want to find it.

Nintendo song for this post: Up Shuttlethread Pass - Yoshi's Woolly World - 06/15/15 North American Release

And as a Christmas treat, I will now show you a great Letterboxd review from one comrade_yui on one of the best that’s been because I can’t stop staring at it with awe

If you’ve read anything on this blog this year as I try and figure this all out, I thank you, and I hope to send out more of this kind of content, however it may look, as time goes on.

I would love for the Game Awards to not prop up so many of the harmful forces that have intruded and fucked with in so many ways our beautiful beautiful games and the people who make them, and I question the unstoppable urge for there to be an event-ized award show for this industry at all, but the desire for that spectacle in my heart still exists. Maybe it’s just me being nostalgic again yikes, maybe Hideo Kojima just really knows how to cut trailers, but having a shared experience with people online still means a lot to me, and even if now’s edition of it is ruined scar tissue on top of Boogie2988 and Wii Fit demos, I still feel it there. So yeah, I’m torn. I love this shit still, sentimentally I really like that Geoff Keighley wants to be hosting a Spike TV style show forever, Evanescence headlining and all, but I wonder if this is serving who it’s supposed to at the end of the day and I sympathize we the detractors.

I’ve been dealing with a concept posed to me by a self help content creator recently who I can’t recall the name of and Austin Butler on SubwayTakes. Who both said something along the lines of “everything you want is on the other side of doing extremely embarrassing and vulnerable shit.” Scaling “Cringe Mountain”, if you would, good sir. Do you think Geoff Keighley ever faced this gambit/still is? I think of the countless E3 show floor interviewees and press conference hosts who would dish out the dreaded “one things for sure, it’s a good time to be a gamer.” The shame has been weeded out of our society quite thoroughly, to the point where folks are wondering how much of it they needed to begin with. If that’s the case, I say go all the way for it dog. I wanna see Geoff out there in a sponsored suit. Bring back Attack of the Show somewhere I can watch it with no changes, “Babe Ruth if he played today” style.

I think the feeling that niche to big influencer-ism is an escape hatch from the orphan killing machine is an uncommon feeling right now, that you can’t even get trapped in a man on the street interview without the pervading thought of “If i say something funny enough I can quit my job.” I think this idea of “cringe mountain” is in a way true and in a way flawed. I think some people’s dreams are a lot bigger than others and a lot of people don’t want what they think they want. Sometimes you climb cringe mountain and fall onto your destination of podcasting about medical supplies to a dedicated audience of 50, I don’t fuckin know. I think I could delete all these Substacks in a month and realize there was never anything for me here after 10 years and figure out that Account Manager at some vague media company in the city was my white whale. You and I see so much Shit Eating in the service of One Thousand Views on screens it’s almost hard to fathom. I just saw an AI generated Kalshi ad during “Wake up Barstool” on a screen at my job.

On this weeks episode of Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV show, our main character Carol, now surrounded by human husks who have been “Joined” under the control of one signal virus/pathogen situation, finally ditches the ratchet and broken police car she’d be using to drive everywhere. This is a character who has chosen to eat shit where she didn’t need to, where acquiring any car would be at no cost to anyone, where in an eerily Gen AI fashion she could manifest any human reality around herself, not using the populace of ChatGPT people who will now do what she tells them to. There is something to be said about the taught shit eating, I’d think, to be the shit eater instead of forcing someone else to do it for you(even if that someone else is an unhuman network of a single cell or hey let’s say, the environment.)

Fine, yeah I think Cringe Mountain is real. But is it yours? Are The Game Awards you or me or any of us, or would we make something totally different if we could? How much Shit Eating TM does it take to climb it for you? Am I just not built different enough? Let me know by liking commenting and subscribing while making a TikTok shilling for some new derivative piece of unnecessary plastic. Don’t worry, when Miss Piggy and Rowlf the dog were up there cooking, it all felt fuckin worth it.

The Mastermind_ Kelly Reichardt: It’s comforting to know that the middle class, domestic dissatisfaction, the family sneers degrading needle of American life persist in an idyllic, windy Massachusetts town, all the way back in the 1970s. You would think it would right, but it’s another thing to see that specific phenomenon so vividly portrayed in THE MASTERMIND. Somewhere you’d drive through for a road trip, peek through into briefly on Zillow, houses Josh O’Connor’s Mooney, who realizes nobody would notice if he just takes a thing from a museum. I did a lot of digging for the “everything makes more sense when you keep in mind that everyone’s just twelve years old now.” Bluesky skeet: “Why shouldn’t I ___” “Sure, you’re 12 buddy, great idea!"" (if you’re a person reading this and you have this skeet at hand please send it to me <3.) That is to say, this movie made me think of that. Maybe everyone was always just twelve, and it’s true what they say about adults just being big children. “Why can’t I take painting for free?” “Go ahead buddy, you’re 12!” When it feels like some people get to be 12 forever and thrive, and you have to be 36 living with your parents (Bill Camp dad eesh) with a family of your own you’re failing, why wouldn’t you just try to take thing from museum?

When this eventually takes it’s turn, it’s novel-ish, quiet, and more sad than brutal. O’Connor’s performance is really well realized, while really silly, makes you pine about if such a simple, depressing impulse truly means you should clown on him for his fate that lies beyond the screen. Kelly will probably just eternally be cooking here as she continues to grow her scope even if I think what she captured with SHOWING UP is the best she’s done, I will continue to be sat for her.

No Other Choice_ Park chan-wook: The tightest, smoothest movie Park’s made. This thing kind of goes and doesn’t stop, opening like the glossiest most throwaway billboard ad and crashing down in dark hilarity. Honestly impressed with how we’re able to balance a comic vaudeville timing with some of that similarly tasting deep, cultural/social rot. Look how bad folks in The Mastermind seemed trying to job the system, now look how even worse buddy here looks as a guy who is using his only existence in devotion to it? Our guy, You-man Soo, also failing his family unemployed, dehumanized and cucked by the labor market, in the saddest and funniest ways possible decides he has “no other choice” but to kill his competition for the job he wants. Come for the depressing yet farcical late stage capitalist proposition, stay for some crazy slapstick set pieces and assassination attempts.

This movie is one of the last toughies in a boss rush of anti-capitalist cinema. In an avoidance to compare it to PARASITE as it most likely is already being compared to, I’ll say it’s post Parasite. This one is bleaker, but stomping on top of that with crowd pleasing humor and well tinkered side characters. The ending here was abrupt, none of the other press folks seemed ready for it. It felt like where we’re at now, sitting around, thinking this can’t actually be what things are now, unable to do much about it. Automation, killing each other to supervise robots. That’s what this was all for huh. Awesome.

Jay Kelly_ Noah Baumbach: My relationship with media, movies, and festival-going in 2025 can’t possibly be any more unhealthy than it currently is. My phone is a window to people who look like they have lives I want. I’m talking fictional characters, in actual fiction or the fiction of Instagram and TikTok and LinkedIn and Spotify messages. It’s not normal, I can’t scroll or tap without a little tinge of “why isn’t that me?” Well, Jay Kelly is here to tell you that at the highest of highs of fame, you are still going to be looking at other lives and wondering why that that’s not you.

There’s not much like being in that beautiful California house with Clooney’s Jay Kelly, aging movie star and pastiche of Clooney himself, lamenting on his life through melting orange sunsets and pickle tomato sandwiches, opining through years of success and adoration for a better relationship with family. Everything about our world makes the experience of being here, sad and regretting everything despite it all kind of nice. All of the characters in Jay Kelly are constantly chasing something that makes them miserable. Whether it be fame, work, literally Jay Kelly, or whatever the opposite of fame is. The screen begs me to stay out, and I’m eaten alive by my desire to run full speed into them.

What feels like it was plotted to be Baumbach’s magnum opus, has a magic opening, the construction and plotting walking through a fictional film set had me levitating out of Walter Reade in how it was crafted, but once we leave California here this thing becomes more classic messy mom movie, less tight and admirable to me.

It feels like half our media in this moment is late stage capitalism doomerism and the other is about old rich famous people who are depressed that their wealth and fame didn’t allow them to also have a real life on the side(binged Hacks during NYFF), but I really think regardless this works. I think a sect of people are going to be really turned off by “rich guy is sad he’s so rich and famous” because it’s hard to live our lives and have time for the complaints of people like that, and I mean understandable, so good to keep in mind if you tend to be that kind of Guy. Lure yourself in with that sincere Baumbach humanity, stay for what’s really a beautiful looking movie, performances by Clooney and Sandler you’ll probably love if those two are among your Guys(Clooney is perhaps the most sincere of These Guys to me), and probably one or two emotional beats that will work on any individual person. Something tells me strikes effected this one and there was a chance for a 5 star job in certain timelines that ends up in the 3-4 range in reality in my opinion.

Him_ Justin Tipping: not an NYFF joint! A movie I just saw in the timeframe but wanted to talk about.

Thinking about this movie makes you feel good. Oh hell yeah, a cool different sports thing and Jordan Peele’s name is even there. It’s a good layout here- isn’t it a little weird that football is a CTE cult that players happily thrust into to set their families up for generations? Isn’t it weird that there’s a glossy marketing Nike “greatness” aesthetic on top of that? (Remember the Under Armor “Protect this House” 2000s? Is Under Armor not prominent or have I just not stepped in a Dicks Sporting Goods in ten years?) Enough people have said it by now(and I thought there was more here than most did), but it presents these ideas only to not really do anything with them as the thing unfolds, maybe glistening over some of the weirder and punishing trappings that are just accepted in sports culture, training and such. Overall, Him delivers the bluntness and depth of pretty much everything in and surrounding American football in 2025. I’m even more sad to report it’s Tim Heidecker’s first movie L. A general lack of polish and feel in the staging of these sports scenes struck me and could’ve done the movie a lot of good for me in grounding the world and deepening the payoff, although I can say this movie features a 2000s Madden/NCAA ass scorebug very briefly that scratched something in my brain. Second half of this is profoundly messy. Overall we’re just not really threading the needle when it comes to the touches that would make it work and the ideas, payoffs and beats do not gel like they need to. If this movie was doing the QB skills challenge it would be throwing a football that was too big with a needle on it and clanking and deflating the tire target on most of the throws. Not a great year for Jordan Peele. Feels bad.

If I had Legs I’d Kick You_ Mary Bronstein: a new Safdie adjacent entry into the new “you don’t understand how rough motherhood is” canon. And after this, I’m gonna be real with you. I don’t think I do. This one is Safdie adjacent because:

• it’s a stylized 3 hour panic attack

  and

• features A list celebrities Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky convincingly as normal ass people. They were both quite good at it honestly.

• Features eternal A list celebrity Ivy Wolk who’s spiritually in every Safdie movie

• Actually just produced by Josh Safdie

Bronstein uses the Safdie A24 anxiety inducing trauma glazed filmmaking base and successfully puts herself on top of it here. I have to wonder if A24 seriously has had some thoughts about prioritizing this one as their horse this fall over Smashing Machine and Marty Supreme, although it may not be entirely accessible enough, and it will probably just be Marty. Really really insane job by Rose Byrne. I can’t quite replicate the feeling I had as this throws you into the last scene here, I’ve never had the impulse to pause a movie like a video game and get out of my seat and my body just not letting me, best leave it at that. To that I say A+ work!

It Was Just an Accident_ Jafar Panahi: this movie opens on a dirt road and takes place on top of a lot of crunchy gravel and smooth sand. Very quickly into this movie I decided this was a crunchy movie, it cared a lot about little annoying crunches and squeaks and I think that matters. The logistics are always fraught, where we are going and how with who, on some small bumpy road, all of this chaos of how things happen give the movie a rich texture. Someone sitting near me had a very specific and good perfume scent that I decided this movie smelled like. It was kind of a muted white woman Urban Outfitters thing, very Fall, I could imagine certain people and rooms in the movie smelling like it. It cropped back up for a little bit in If I Had Legs but it was not as sticky.

This is the best movie I saw at NYFF 63. It had appropriate levity while being devastating and expertly plotted. The way information drips out of it gives it breathing room to be funny and hit it’s tension build-up points in stride. Watching this group of people, normal people who aren’t bloodthirsty but hurt by the crushing and torment of the system trying to figure out what to do with that feeling, drag their tormentor around in an attempt to negotiate, morally and logistically, what to do with him, was honestly riveting and incredibly human. It was perhaps the most honest and spot on relevant thing I’ve seen on a good screen all year. There is a moment towards the end, where Mariam Afshari beautifully portraying Shiva and Ebrahim Azizi as Eghbal share an emotionally pained striking expression, and the hit of director Jafar Panahi lending a voice on screen to the pain he has, once kept as political prisoner, but also to countless number of people in a countless number of ways wrought by our world and our institutions in similar ways was deeply felt.

Vibe based buzz analysis(I didn’t see it): BOUCHRA feels like this year’s EEPHUS, in the sense of something with niche festival buzz that could find a bigger niche with release. A supposedly really sharp, quirky little thing that I heard really good things about. Didn’t get to see it and write something obnoxious and Five Nights at Freddy’s related on letterboxd, but it’s high on my list of stuff to catch (that and the run of ANGEL’S EGG.)

If you want a more condensed quicker version of this, feel free to check it out here

Random Nintendo job: No one's sure, but it's believed that this is "Kitchen Samba" from Kenkou Ouen Recipe 1000. Released in Japan, 2006

The Goblin’s Cavern - Danbury, CT

It’s really important to me that I find out what’s going on with this whole thing. How did these places manage to stay around? Danbury Road in Danbury was a quick favorite. One shot of path, vaguely sandy, jetting through nothing forever. Tractor Supply, malls, 4 gas stations on each side of a road. Abandoned businesses, sadder, businesses currently attempting at businessing. Small individual doomed passion projects. I play my midwest emo driving through these areas and my brain reaches through what Marietta and Joyce Manor have to say, grabbing around an empty space of farmland where the populace of this “Danbury” are, hoping that they’re on my wavelength in how we’re feeling on this issue. In what’s really the suburban/bleak setting of a Jane Schoenbrun movie, the Edge of Eternities prerelease at Cavern actually brings me some people to live alongside. Every time I attend another Magic event, the attendees get closer and closer to resembling the attendance of a depressing college night class. A nerd with glasses and a wolf cut. The like 3 token olds. A hot couch guy or two. I grew up with the same school district class of 100 for 13 years of my life and one day you just don’t see them anymore. Sometimes the world will spit at you another sitcom cast for like 20 minutes of your day again, I think I’m just depraved/immature enough to notice and enjoy that.

Goblin’s Cavern is divided into two little half circle storefronts. One side is the oft person-less comic collection. The collection is vast, alphabetical, and overwhelming. Like every game store, it is uncomfortable to navigate. My backpack clings glass displays and if one other guy gets up to walk in my direction it’s over. I don’t even know what you’d do. The universe tears. The other side, where the concentration of people sit, is the play area. This is where I stood for about 30 minutes sorting through a box of Pokémon cards a neighbor gave me to trade into the Cavern. I was greeted by a fella with the ragged Jesus look who barely spoke as I apologized for granting him with the burden of buying a box of Pokémon cards. The box had Pokemon cards in it, but it also had:

• Magic Cards

• Old Christmas cards addressed from “Grandad” to “Leo”

• Stray Nerf bullets

• Small yellow balls of something

• Pencils

• Pens

  I threw it all out!

Cavern notably purchases bulk, and as a result houses shelves, tomes of Magic and Pokémon by set. The Jesus guy and his buddy, a tall disproportionate dude sitting on a folding chair on a whirring gaming laptop, were surrounded by these shelves, which gave sticky and dusty. I took this time to watch the prerelease matches in the corner of my eye. No duo matched up knew each other aesthetically. No single player is totally socially primed. Lots of texting during oppo’s turn. Wolf cut beat hot couch in 2. A small motherish lady seemed sad to lose to a person with a Pokeball hat.

The Rift - Peekskill, NY

(The Rift has moved locations since this author last visited)

Taking a sharp turn into Peekskill, a Westchester town square that fashions itself a suburban New York Athleta mom hub but like it’s buddy Danbury, has nothing really here. It has the illusion of a setup for retired golem faced boomers to slither out and spend their compounding retirement funds on an overly expensive, Authentic Italian dinner, but no such establishments really existed. There was an inconveniently placed Subway, and that concludes the list of food options I had while hanging at The Rift. I went to The Rift for it’s Sunday night Commander approximately 3 times in 2023 and spent a day earlier in that year in Peekskill partaking in some free play in the back with friends. The Rift had cosmic brownies, Sour Patch Kids, and Japanese Kit Kats at the front. This and a random smattering of retro games made me think truly even I can do a store, why not, I have items. Rift did the play area in the back shop in the front thing Cavern did with a comfier back area, here we had a little spaceship of an enclosed room with that garbage piggies like me droll over, Air Conditioning.

The Rift is where I started to wonder how many coming of age stories I never intended to cross over with but did in these places. I can hear you laughing at me, you pinched fuck. Bro main character syndromed too close to the sun. Bro’s generation is so isolated that bro comes away with these kinds of takeaways of totally normal events and experiences. Brother, keep laughing at me when I say consider every quiet bedroom of each random 25 year old you face. A laptop, a nice lamp giving it that fall lighting with a summer orange on the walls. A tv in the corner and a desk, a discord call you leave to embark on a friend adventure or a Magic tournament. Every bedroom you’re too big for and are stuck in but are really afraid of leaving. Situated in a comfortable, despairing suburb, kids sneak out in the distance, fires crackle, you smell barbecue every now and then, and that’s about as deep that community runs… wow!

That all is to say, the people of The Rift were perhaps the most notable to me, albeit not a ultimately different sampling, without going into too much detail. Peekskill feels like it’s in Smells County New York, driving from my work at the time through ‘Bear Mountain’ (come on) to get there, but it’s really still Westchester. Centering each barely verbal big boy I met here that played Slivers within that experience of mine made it win for me I suppose. The Rift as I knew it is gone now, but I plan on going back soon, and I have a really hard time imagining them zagging hard with the interior on their move…

Unnamed Store - Nyack, NY (2021-2022)

For about a year in the time in between existing as a Disney Store and some real life dropshipping hub for Poppy’s Playtime plushes, cans of slime, and dinosaur egg mystery boxes, the Palisades Mall had a local game store on it’s second(?) floor. The Palisades Mall in Nyack is one of those grandfathered in third places that stands in spite of the Burger Apocalypse, nothing really stays there but people still go, and it persists!

Unnamed Store truly felt like a couple of buddies who wanted something to do for a year or two. The first time I walked in there, whether it was intended or not, the store had this laid back, “we’re just here to exist for as long as we can” air. The layout here was questionable at best- in the most Palisades way possible(PICTURE: YOU ENTER A STORE SELLING AIRBRUSHED T-SHIRTS. CASHIER GUY MADE OF CIGARETTES STARES AT YOU WHILE 100GECS BOUNCES OFF EVERY SURFACE IN THE ROOM), the store was mostly empty space, a few play tables on the side, some board games and recent Magic product hung up on the walls. I cannot really recall what much else you could buy there if anything. Unnamed Store had the most empty space of any game store I’ve ever been inside.

I did a really bang up job trying my hardest to recall what this store was called. Any and all traces of it seemed to have been removed from memory. I played Magic here once with the owner, one random guy, and a few of my friends while my girlfriend’s great grandfather had a life threatening surgery. My memory of it is really cloudy and weird. I can remember:

-trying to feign interest in what the Manifest ability did, and still not understanding how it works to this day. Nervously my phone between every card placement.

- the owner saying something along these lines: “Disney left us all kinds of weird stuff. All kinds of stuff up in the vents. We had to sign a thing saying not to disclose.”

They closed shortly after.

New York Hardcore Comics - Dobbs Ferry NY (2017(?)-2024)

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to write about NYHC without sounding trite and getting too bloated and personal, but it felt like the only way for us to end this tour.

“In the heart of Dobbs Ferry, NYHC COMICS has become more than just a comic book store; it is a sanctuary for fans of superheroes, hardcore punk rock, and the vibrant culture of New York City. The walls are adorned with graffiti art, vintage concert posters, and bold logos that screamed rebellion and community. Every corner of the store told a story, from the worn-out shelves filled with rare comics to the stage where local bands performed during special events.”

NYHC lived in downtown Dobbs Ferry across from the fire station. Dobbs Ferry is where I spent 25 years of my life. On it’s right was a hole in the wall ‘Diner’ that I think made food that you can eat, and on it’s left one of many storefronts in downtown Dobbs Ferry that had something different living in it seemingly every month. (Reader, if this in anyway becomes a vaguely Dobbs Ferry project beyond this portion of this entry I will be shutting it down, no questions asked.)

I can tell you this much, there’s a lot ingrained in my memory. “Griselbrand” being spoken many times with a pinched nose and throat full of vape smoke. The front door hitting the back of a chair trying to walk in on Kaldheim pre-release night(NYHC whipped out tables in the maze of their main area for events, often taking up all of the empty space.) Learning to play Magic the Gathering at 1am in January of 2020 with an uncomfortable jacket I never stopped to think to take off, staring at Commons and Uncommons from Commander 2019 like they were a window to a world and eternally unique in mechanics and ideation.

My learned experiences put me in a spot that in every waking moment I either have it or I don’t. It’s a tough way to live, to always be either winning or losing.

“…As time went on, the challenges began to mount. Rising rents, the shifts from company to company, and the impact of a changing economy started to take their toll. Despite the loyal customer base and the tireless efforts of the families who own it, the financial strain has become too much to bear.” Something I don’t really share with people is how much I hate the end to things. I don’t listen to podcasts fade to the outro for this reason. I needed the sleepover to never end.

In the far reaches of widespread decay, these game stores are one of the few remaining spaces that allow me to look said decay in deep into the eyes and beyond. The awkwardness is pretty palpable, but a third space revolving around an in person hobby that requires communication is a revelation. I think the most fun thing someone can do in their middle twenties is pretend. “Go to the Danbury Fair Mall. Try the Disgusting Burger from ‘Terra Nossa Brazilian Grill.’ Get a negroni. See the latest Marvel. You are 26 and your friend just quoted Pink Guy. It smells great, all my friends are here.” This is Summer Death.

These actions represent the main gameplay mechanics of Sassy Chap’s Date Everything, released June 17. After a series of expositional maneuvers, you find yourself with a pair of glasses that lets you imagine inanimate objects around your house materialized as people, or more accurately exaggerated 2025 Dating Sim Anime-Tumblr ‘commissions closed’ beings, and you have the ability to “date” really anything you want and unravel them in what feels like a social link-y way.

The game resides somewhere cloudily between Game Grumps world and their Dream Daddy: a Dad Dating Simulator, tastes a bit like Dropout/CollegeHumor LA world, featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan in the voice cast(that I’ll talk about some more in a second) with some 2025 Twitch sphere feel baked in due to it’s appeal and where we’re at with that stuff, all to say, somewhere I’d enjoy hanging out, sure. A cocktail of Critical Role and CollegeHumor and your favorite LA online comedy guys in the form of a memey dating sim. A voice cast that, as previously mentioned, features (in no particular order of least to most prominent) Troy Baker, Ashley Johnson, Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, Ashly Burch, Dante Basco, SungWon Cho, Ben Starr, and a smattering more of miscellaneous voice actors and internet guys.

Sassy Chap, without a game before this one to it’s name, seems to have formed this perfectly conceived concept and cast in part due to Robbie Daymond(voice actor social media guy and one of the founding members of the company) placement already in that world. I say this all because, Date Everything, to me, is the perfect postmodern, post COVID Twitch dating sim, and is evident as such in the game’s popularity and TikTok fandom. I recall weeks ago learning about this all in a single stride, putting on a Vanilla Mace video, seeing the game, putting together the concept, seeing the cast and immediately knowing how hard they were frying, regardless if I’d enjoy the game or not. It’s striking the level of on the pulse this whole thing is. I continue to worry that thinking about the places knowing How To Do the Social Media can get you.

That said, however, this writer did find watching this game unfurl to be a pretty joyful experience, despite my somewhat jaded take on it’s inception. The aforementioned character portraits are varied, fun, and serve face and grab you with a similar Persona portrait/Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door character design detail. Some of the dateables are more fun than others, and some definitely don’t land, but on balance the taste left in your mouth is one that leads you to keep playing this game. A conversation with Doug, embodied existential dread, sticks out to me as not too “lol millennial dark humor” but lands a more awkward note reminiscent of the goofy video game villain-ish weirdness seen in Mario &Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, which was a welcome turn for me.

Where we go from here with this: furthering each character’s dating storyline will eventually lead you to ‘realize’ them, so is to say they will permanently take on their human form and leave your house for good. These social link adjacent journeys ended up being less Tumblr dating sim and more actual social link than I expected, and weirdly emotional? Aleks Le’s Shadowlord’s(don’t wanna mess up the actual name here, but he’s a household shadow), real form is a lonely gamer kid who grew apart from his friends. The way these bits hit is clearly at least a little Persona inspired, and the overall mish-mosh here of Let’s Play bait with some real emotional pieces is welcome to me.

It would be really easy for me to bemoan the place Date Everything resides as I’ve described, but if I’m being totally honest, guys, it’s time to just chill out and enjoy shit like this. Alright let’s do this: when I watch Date Everything happen, I’m at a PAX convention that doesn’t exist, that’s not overwhelming and impossibly financially draining, I roll out of bed and hug ProZD, acquire 5 bits for my game collection and go back to sleep. It’s a buffet of people, experiences, memories baked live by QTCinderella and Vanilla Mace on Twitch talking to chat into a big sweet roll. I had a great time!

Archer Score: You should play this game!

A Random Nintendo Clanger:

Face Training DS(Released in Japan: June 7, 2007 and Europe: September 24, 2010) Lecture Theme

It ends, as the best and most beautiful things do, with a rumor from a Nintendo YouTuber called Beatemups. Beatemups whispers of a Nintendo Direct next month that ends with an Isabelle teaser for the next Animal Crossing title. This would be great! As well of course, expected, the previous iteration launching literally during The COVID week and catapulting to 50 million units sold(probably saving many lives, like briefly alluded to.) We then find ourselves at the next step of this ritual, sitting in the Twitch chats of the ends of Nintendo Directs “no AC???.” In this specific space, I’m quick to remember one of my ten most embarrassing traits, my propulsion to literally dream up future Animal Crossing titles. Before it was living in an extended universe where I forgot I had a class in high school up until halfway through the year, it was the video games of my life, existent now, never, or in the future that ruled my dreams.

It starts, as the even better and even more beautiful things do….

To me, the GameCube days are oft defined by seeds of the post-ironic, post creepypasta SCP foundation trees that we now maintain (already withering?) 20 years later. There had to have been something unnerving that caused my peers to build that whole thing up, right? An oddly rendered face of polygons in a shadowy corner, an unexpectedly loud sound cue. A look at something darker, scarier than the bad guys of an E rated video game. At the time, I didn’t know much. I knew my basement could get really dark if I wasn’t careful and I was often alone down there. Me and the mechanic whirring and spinning from the box in the corner, my mom’s nightly phone calls in the living room above, recapping the day, getting sparse and quiet, disappearing. I didn’t know how my video games ended, and often didn’t know how to play them, so to say, as an approximate 6-10 year old, I had no idea what I was about to be staring at on my screen in any given moment. I didn’t know what Nintendo was or what they wanted to do to me, something slightly unnerving or new would feel like the end of my world. I’ll stop waxing in a circle for a second to say I wrote that last one specifically with Master Hand in mind, you tomfool.

One day, I’m stumbling around what would be the first of double-digit lifetime Animal Crossing: GameCube towns. A week later, I’m sitting on the carpet with my father, crying and scrambling through the game’s manual booklet, and eventually my grandmother. Who would make something like this, who would make something like this for kids, they said. There was one thing that was now clear to me, subconsciously at least. The screens could talk to me, they can see me, and they’re not always nice. There’s stuff out there that’s not always good. My encounter with Mr. Resetti is the first interaction with a malevolent outside force I can remember (my parents did a good job!)

The first one happened not long after. I was in my basement, normal spot, kneeling forward in front of my screen with posture that’s hard for me to think about now that I know what back pain is like. Big TV, black void, circular spotlight, Waluigi materializes from dust. Tells me I’ve done something wrong, and to fix it. I unplug the system, run upstairs. I hear a voice on the TV as I stare downstairs, and then I wake up.

I don’t make too much of it. The funny string bean man from Nintendo scolding me is kind of awesome, heck, I wish I could still dream like that. I have a goofy anecdote for life and I was traversing the digital world in my free time. To be frank I miss him.

Waluigi stayed there, in the Animal Crossing ‘Save Your Game’ screen of my brain for a while until I got older. The message never changed, nor did the setting or the feeling. I grew up, learned more about the world and vaguely how to live in it, and he eventually dis apparated into Mario Tennis sequels and Smash Bros assist trophies.

As I mentioned, in my game dreams, I used to imagine myself outside of the game world playing them as opposed to my mind conjuring up an image of a screen and nothing else. I existed disembodied, watching, in my own brain. My earlier, floating disembodied ideas of dream memories consist of imagining a large “Sesame Street” adjacent bird woman on a PC staring at me. I have a vivid fever dream of being half asleep, half panicked, with the opening of A Serious Man playing on my TV. I did some reading about “the Tetris effect”, or gameplay loops having the same rhythm of everyday life, registering as such and showing up in our dreams. Whenever a game is able to peel back my built-up experiences and defenses and poke the kid who was letting Waluigi live rent free in his dome, it wins. When I first met Luke Carder in Inscryption, even if I don’t think it totally stuck the landing there, I marked out a bit.

Which brings us back to, of course, to our Animal Crossing dream here, occurring somewhere in between City Folk and New Leaf. It’s not clear if it was a dream of a Nintendo Direct (talk about tetris effect damn) or hands on with the system, but a simple player character, wandering through mist, Wild World view. Scary, ominous, but now slightly older, all I woke up feeling was ready to buy the next Nintendo product.

I’m not going to circle it all back this time. I just, to be blunt, would like to not know everything. Now that I’ve seen everything there is to be seen, I’m ready to see something I’m not ready for. Waluigi left my squishy head to get a pack of cigarettes and didn’t return. Mr. Beatemups’ rumor includes the potential launch date for a Switch 2 Animal Crossing of July 2026. When I’m sitting in front of that sizzling screen, starting my new life for the 6th(but really more) time, I maintain hope they can make it happen again.

The impression of Nintendo’s systems and built in channels on mainly the Wii(but also the DS, 3DS and Wii U.) left a mark that you glaze over daily. You rarely used any of it, I bet, their pre-loaded “experience” channels with a specific Japanese coziness and weirdness new to you that was the best thing you ever tasted. But you loved to just EXIST in Nintendo. I remembering opening up my Wii at an age I shouldn’t have been feeling nostalgia at, popping on Animal Crossing City Folk just to walk around. I think that’s the worst game in the series to be clear, but ack. To a 12 year old in his brothers room on a lonely Summer day, it felt like being at the Christmas Eve gathering. Today, without knowing it, you could scroll past a TikTok backed with the music from the Wii’s Photo Channel on a video of a cat being a goof, or the Mii Maker song over some TikTok girlie spilling sick ass tea. Thinking about the staying power a two minute techno-zen song from an extremely tiny part of the experience of the system is not only kind of brain breaking, briefly had me deconstructing the ingredients of each thing we intake and says a lot about the sometimes backwards and groundbreaking way Nintendo operates and succeeds.

Now we have the man(if Disney is the mouse, Nintendo is the man unfortunately) slowly but surely sucking this aspect out of their console experience. The Nintendo Switch had one sound effect it made on the main menu. Following the reveal of the Switch 2, it was confirmed that the Nintendo eShop would no longer have music on it either, pretty much declaring that Nintendo consoles are now a music-less experience until you get to the game. If you’re not quite understanding why Nintendo didn’t decide to capitalize on this bit of random cultural cache they backed their way into for the past 20 or so years, dear reader you wouldn’t be alone. I may be talking about this like it’s a niche thing, but yearn for this on TikTok or Reddit and you’ll get like 5-50 upvotes/likes! So it’s not like nobody cares.

Pile this on top of the pricing outrage, and you get a company that generally seems to have brought down more of the barrier obfuscating that this is first a money-making operation and it does not care as much if at all about charming or making it fun for you or your family/friends anymore. So yeah, Nintendo accidentally created emotional texture for a generation, flattened it, and this is a microcosm of what’s occurred in so much of what you stare at now. So man shut up, I didn’t just grow up, everything got churned to hell. We’re all sterile and Whole Foods and shit now. We have no time for the Check Mii Out Channel of it all.

As I write this, it’s June 2025. Nintendo just launched their Switch 2, and people are feeling, well. I don’t need to tell you about the climate of the world we received the Switch 2 in. Think back to Animal Crossing: New Horizons possibly being one of the most important games of all time due to its launch date and nature, except it’s a snappy new Nintendo console that feels like what I imagined a ROG Ally would with one launch title. Yet through it all, Nintendo got their sales. The guys with the TikTok haul accounts and their Facebook groups gathered up their AdSenseTM and got their bundles and SD Cards and pro controllers after weeks of promises of a boycott. I see these guys in front of their bookshelves with a CRT TV playing Banjo Kazooie and a PC setup open to Discord supplanted by vertical monitors, and can’t help but wonder what feelings and insecurities deep down that’s all built on.

Every time I open an algorithm app, the switch 2 hauls stack up higher and wider, the comments more bitter. The money decreases and the desperation to become that person you promised yourself and the world, digital and real, you’d become increases as time runs out. The price to pay to become that, is by design, a black hole.