Having proposed this for GotW on a whim, I was shocked at how effective I found this miniature slice of Millennium Kitchen's ethos. It isn't as if the tangible parts of the game are particularly fun or engaging, but I think that's kind of the point. The mechanics of the little card game don't matter, it's almost impossible to lose with a modicum of thought or strategy, but it is in keeping with unbalanced weird games for kids. This game is ultimately One Small Favour from RuneScape, simply proceeding to the next flag for the story to progress, but it works so well with its warmth and lackadaisical pace. And it's got a smidge of magical realism to it, how could you not be utterly charmed by this?


The world is wondrous and enchanting, it's up to us to find the magic in it.

No I haven't finished it yet, no I don't know when I will. I don't think people had to be so rude to myself and others for not loving this unequivocally. How will games get better if we turn a blind eye to genuine problems, if we refuse to acknowledge the possibility that representation for some of a group does not necessarily mean representation for all. The mal-adaptation of 5E to the digital realm is dreadful, the gear systems preposterous, the multiplayer aspects tacked on and stifling. And it didn't have to be this way. A game with less (none?) combat where your party actually engages with the world as a party? That would be great. But as it stands, Gale and I are on a double date with my boyfriend and Shadowheart, sitting at the same booth but barely acknowledging the other half of those in attendance.


Go against the grain, but be prepared for pushback.

This year I started going hard into the multimedia sauce, gobbling up every bit of poly-carbonate detritus that crossed my path. Somehow this shit is intensely entertaining (at least to me), whether it's a training video, a hotel directory, some screensavers, porn, it doesn't matter. Without this foray, I wouldn't be doing the amateur archival work I'm doing now, I wouldn't be volunteering at a museum as I am now, I wouldn't have a portfolio that should get me into grad school for Library and Information Science. This vanishing yet ubiquitous part of tech history deserves to be preserved and appreciated. That's why I'm collecting shit like Hustler Hard Drive.


By the way, check out my scans!


Preserve the ephemeral.

The closest a game has come to delivering those aha! moments that Return of the Obra Dinn gave in abundance. The unconventional art is a delight, the score a joy, the narrative intriguing. When everything clicks into place, it is an unparalleled feeling, and the nature of approaching its logical challenges means your own playthrough comes to the same conclusions in a different way to others. (Re)playing this vicariously through someone else is a treat, and moving on to tackle the DLC together feels like actual forensic work, connecting thoughts with red string until that web makes sense.


From inference comes inspiration.

It is fascinating to see Keita Takahashi make a game that is, in many ways, the polar opposite of his previous works. There is little wiggle room for messing about as levels are more stringent in their demands than even the Cow/Bear levels from Katamari Damacy. It is as linear as can be. It is difficult. It requires dexterity and precision. Yet it synthesises into something that still feels like it came from Takahashi's mind, and remains one of the best uses of the Playdate's crank that I've experienced. That the simple 2D playfield can be complicated through doubling back, performing laps, non-specific pathing, it all makes for something enchanting. And to have the hardest challenge of beating the required times on all dates for true 100% to give the player no real reward? That's perfect!


That with which we interface is but an extension of the self.

It wasn't until after playing this that I went to Hiroshima, despite what my poetic waxing might suggest. But as Dear Future brought a remembrance of Vilmouth's Cafe Little Boy, and Nolan's Oppenheimer rocked me to my core (twice), my visit was marked by the looming ghost of destruction, self-centred as it is. But being there, seeing the Atomic Dome, reflecting in front of a collective of children praying near Sadako Sasaki's memorial, staring at the stillness of the reflection pool, walking through the Peace Memorial Museum, it strikes one profoundly. One bears witness to how so many lives were disrupted and ended, but also how their memory persists while life continues on. I suppose it proved in many ways that we can live our lives, we can be forgotten, but we can also be remembered. Maybe that's for only a sliver of time, maybe it's for time immemorial.


Maybe I'll be remembered, maybe I won't. All I can do is try to leave my mark, and hope it carries on my memory.

Just some damn good showmanship of the care that went into crafting a representation of the past before Odyssey and Valhalla decided to do away with that. I can't stand the AAA open world formula so being free of that as I go on my own little tour of Egypt is just what the doctor ordered. Sure, I'd like to see sources, and maybe the opportunity for further reading, but this gives me hope for what future endeavours might (but probably won't) look like.


History is iterative.

You aren't being a spoilers baby, going in blind really is worth it.

With how hard I bounced off of this five years ago, no one is as surprised as I that this resonated so well with me. Every aspect of this experience is a little dumb, a little undercooked, a little offbeat, and yet it works! It's just comfy to vibe with the boys and exist in a world filled with ideas that could never be fully realised. Resplendent in flashes of inspiration that disappear as quickly as that of a camera, but just as with a photograph I am left with something where the memory brings me back to that specific moment, those specific joys.


It doesn't matter if one succeeds, only that one tries.

Listen. The game is bad. The narrative makes no sense. The characters are awful. The mocap is heinous. The gameplay is atrocious. David Cage's head is so far up his own ass his eyes are peeking out of his mouth.


BUT


No game has ever left me so dumbstruck. I genuinely could not have seen a single goddamn thing coming. I've never been so invested in finding out where things could possibly go. This is maybe the funniest game in the world, and it is an inspiration.


At least you'll never make anything as embarrassing as this.

Ten years after trying it for the first time, I finally got past the halfway point of JSR and completed the whole thing (bar getting all the Graffiti Souls. It's rigid, it's unintuitive, it's harsh, it's hard, it's amazing. Learning the throughlines and spots for infinite combos helps make everything click into place. Tagging becomes second nature. The characters are expressive and vibrant, the world well implemented, the soul bursts from every orifice. JSRF might be a disappointment to me in many regards, but maybe that's because the highs of JSR are simply that prominent. The Dreamcast rules, SEGA rules, video games rule. We lost so much when we started sanding down our rough edges.


Let it click, and all falls into place.

Having now received numerous comments, jabs, and genuine bewilderment at my enjoyment and proselytising of this, I have come to understand Kazoe Meshi and Ramen Oil Pecking Simulator as ideal anti-games. Though Kazoe Meshi still has a goal, perhaps to its detriment, the insurmountability of its task feels Sisyphean. It gives minimal satisfaction save for the act itself. It is tedious. It stands in stark contrast to the contemporary gaming landscape which demands validation of the player at every turn, and is in many ways a return to the dawn of games wherein the joy was derived from play. The digitisation of counting grains of rice is as mundane as can be, but it allows a focus on the immediate present, be it spatial or temporal. Rice becomes all. Hoping for an update with infinite rice that is counted over a set period of time.


Live for the task and find joy in all.

After preparing myself for the 3DO library via erotic 'games' and interactive films, this came as a genuine surprise for how affecting it was. I love origami, I think Keroppi is cute, and maybe it just came into my life at a time when hormones were running rampant. There's just such a dedication to the craft here, a genuine desire to impart the art of origami onto a younger audience, the conveying of how fun paper toys are through multimedia. Maybe it ain't perfect, but it came at a perfect time for me.


All is impermanent, but we can make it last a little longer, just as we can embrace that change.

I wish I could accurately convey how mad this TheSAMMIES shit makes me. How much this bozo has tainted research avenues, ruined perceptions of so many underdocumented games. And people have eaten that shit up because they didn't know any better. I don't blame those people, but I blame this moron who wilfully twisted the truth at every turn knowing full well it would be nigh on impossible to correct them. But anyhow

This was a fun little jaunt trying to disprove the claims made by the aforementioned, and it's a delight(?) to see games controversies that predate the 1993-1994 Congressional Hearings on Video Game Violence, and don't take place in Japan or the United States! I hope I uncover more in the future!


Correct the mistakes of the past when you can so that they aren't repeated.

A showcase for the power of emulation and infinitely large databases of material. It always feels like you'll see something new, and the joy of realising every piece isn't a minigame, but a miniature part of a full-fledged game is delightful. It is a testament to how much stuff is out there, and how much is left to discover even after decades of being embedded in the game-o-sphere. The possibility of a single-player variant of this with an even greater scope is a tantalising prospect, but for the time being, partaking of this with someone else is a treat.


There's always more to uncover, more to share.

Honourable mention to Puzzmo & Lingo.

Puzzles are just so fun!! Be it a crossword or chess moves that don't ruin a meticulous password or a single player board game or some wordplay shenanigans. That's pretty much all I have to say! I liked the puzzles I played this year!


Puzzles are fun :)

Perhaps a more brilliant realisation of the same ennui Kazoe Meshi attempts to render concrete. With absolutely zero goal, end state, or context outside of the singular screen, Ramen Oil Pecking Simulator brings the Magnavox Odyssey card 6 into the now. The narrative is implied, perhaps, but completely freeform, as is the purpose of play itself. Some players bemoan the lack of oil combining, but opting for oil droplets adhering and gravitating to one another allows the game to ambiently play out without player intervention, and assures that the game board itself is unchanging. Satisfaction, consequently, cannot be derived from some unifying of pieces into a singular whole (unless one counts a singular patch of oil beads), and the situation can rendered entropic again in a single stroke. A perfect tool for self-reflection and imagination.


The only moment is this one.

Transcendental. I can only imagine how much better this will be when I get my hands on a Trance Vibrator. This is a playable album, set to a slideshow of futures forgotten. Cut from the same cloth as PlayOnline. Warm but chilling. Will we end up with our own Eden, an AI stuck in the role of Omelas' child?


The future may be lost, but it can also be returned to.

This is about as far as Jumping Flash could reasonably go. A departure from the previous entries, this mission oriented gameplay loop results in levels that are often singular in their purpose, but are expansive in their realisation. The set dressing becomes entirely superfluous and makes it that much easier to lose yourself within a space. Most of my time was spent wandering around, framing vignettes. If Jumping Flash is about the simple joy of platforming, Robbit Mon Dieu is about the bliss of existence.


Enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

My time with Sakuna is far from over -- I've barely progressed really. But it nonetheless left a mark on me. Lackluster platforming and combat aside, the dedication to rice is inspiring. So much care is put into every bit of the craft here that when I unlock a new skill that makes the task easier, I'm tempted to disable it straight away so I can luxuriate in every facet of inasaku. Were I to have things my way, the game would only be about rice, but as it stands I can put up with the labours that keep me from my labour. We need more games like this, love letters to specific craft.


Exude passion for the specific.

SDVX has ascended to become perhaps my favourite rhythm game I've ever played. It has the unenviable task of making a turntable's FX rack into a game, and pulls it off flawlessly. SDVX doesn't feel good to play, it feels cool to play it. Twiddling my knobs at 10000mph to IOSYS is an incredible feeling that simply can't be replicated by other titles in its genre. In other rhythm games, hitting the buttons lets the song continue, but outside of the tactile response of buttons and sliders the player has no effect on the music itself. Here? It genuinely feels as if I am fucking around with the original tracks, perverting them for da worst DJ set of all time.


Embrace the cringe of back to back to back doujin tracks, enjoy your Live2D waifu bouncing about, pick the mixes with feet and tits in their art, because baby when you're in the groove there ain't nothing else.

Pure gunk junk injected into my bloodstream. This is proof that a terminally online narrative can work, just as Amygdalatropolis does, but it has to come from within a community, and it's even better if everything is brimming with hate and pity for said community. It feels precision engineered for those fucked up kids like me who grew up on imageboard culture, who grew up too fast while still being emotionally immature into adulthood. You see this trashfire and you can't help but laugh at the absurdity of this fucked up netlife we live, how far we've fallen. This is the dystopic parallel to Hypnospace Outlaw.


Laugh at yourself and with yourself.

Don't get me wrong, this is largely Mario in name only. It is incredibly rough to play, it's bad to look at, it isn't some hidden gem. Yet I adore it because of and despite its departures from sensible Mario/platforming conventions. Engaged with on its own terms, in its own time, in its own context, it begins to make sense. It is the litmus test for how one might partake in the past, and one's experience is thus a reflection of their own willingness to meet a game halfway.


Art should be understood within its context.

Playable Trapper Keeper art. Something about this alien landscape resonates deep within me, despite much of it being rather labourious to play. That these places are so non-accommodating, so organically machinesque works wonders. And the weight of the ball is a marvel, imparting a sense of gravity and scale that makes it impossible to discern just how large one is, how much of an impact they are having on the worlds.


Even that which isn't made for us can become for us.

It's no exaggeration to say that Yakyuuken gave me renewed purpose. Having been rejected by the grad schools I applied to due to a lack of experience in the field, seeking out this little obscurity helped me avoid listlessly whiling away the days. Collaborating with others for its preservation and scrounging for every shred of information I could was a journey in and of itself, and getting to synthesise it in a way that was engaging and useful can't be beat. Seeing a video come out a few months before I finished my article that got the facts wrong left me distraught yet invigorated. Seeing it spread throughout games history Twitter lit the fire in my belly. Having it penetrate into the Japanese side of the conversation? Insane to me. That the president of the Games Preservation Society in Tokyo told me directly that my work was great and was helping them right the wrongs of Wikipedia's eroge entries? Boggling. I've been hit by waves of imposter syndrome, and I think (read: fear) I will never top this or produce any work on this level, but maybe I can. After all, I said as much about my writing on Morimiya Middle School Shooting and on 177. I'm excited to make a video about this eventually! Just as I've been excited looking for other oddities that just don't exist online, like cybersex magazines and short-lived mooks. I'm closer to fulfilling my dream career and will continue moving onto bigger and better things I hope! Oh my god, and getting fan art?! Even if it was just a few pieces, even if some of it I had to commission myself? That's so cool!


Don't give up.