CW: Discussions of Transmisogyny

The common response to vulnerable niche play experiences like Video Game Feminization Hypnosis (2019), Cave Story Sex RPG 2007 (2021), and He Fucked The Girl Out of Me (2022), is mockery both for the boldness of name and of content. Video Game Feminization Hypnosis is a psychic-design-manifesto with lines like "i dont care about the "puzzles" i just wanna explore weird islands & mess with the machines" and "ive half-joked about my games being laced with estrogen but i wonder how powerful they could be. what if we could use video games to forcefem ppl all over the world" nested as hyperlinks throughout her vent towards a better girly gameworld. Written in lowercase text and using internet acronyms like 'ppl', she speaks with a casual concern for unfettered femme exploration games as a way to potentially rewrite the social code.

It has not been product tested for review, nor has either of the other 2 games mentioned. The problem here is that the culture of 'gaming' itself is unable to step beyond the bounds of product review. Franz inquires into this problem around Cave Story Sex RPG 2007

"Why do we seek to quantify something clearly very personal based on how much it resonates with us?

I think my problem is that I think people are looking at this game as they would a product. Like it needs to have some value to me, otherwise it's not "worth playing".

Nadia, Fewprime, Blood Machine, npckc, communistsister, bagenzo, and [pourpetine] (https://xrafstar.monster/games/). These are in my mind the most notable transfemme gamedevs and their relevant store pages for their work¹. It's obviously not a comprehensive list, but this is my notation for who is the most publicly notable and prolific within the scene. Notice that all of the games on these pages are free as are the 3 games I opened with at the start. That's because transfemme gamedevs more often have to make their corpus free just to get eyes. So what are gaming spaces assessing the 'worth' of a completely no strings attached free simulated experiences? I think its the fact we dare to make people uncomfortable and borrowing a modicum of their time (across all the devs I've mentioned I cant think of 1 that takes more than 3 hours to finish, usually only being around 20 minutes in length at most). My sisters have to cheapen themselves to 0 just to get your ear and its still just met with mockery, harassment, and belittlement².

Even when a transfemme game dev gets the chance of any success at all she is thrown down again. In pourpetine's Hot Allostatic Load (2015) she notes among a litany of pained observations that

"One of my abusers was sent a list of the nominees for the upcoming games festival Indiecade. Unfortunately, I was on the list. I ended up winning an award, ostensibly to recognize my feminine labor in the areas of marginalized game design—years of creating access for other people, publicizing their games, giving technical support, not to mention the games I had designed myself. Instead of solidarity from other marginalized people in my field, I was attacked."

Video Game Feminization Hypnosis beats to a much more Utopian drum. A belief that we can mesmerize people into a more pure goo out of this vindictive rut, create a games made out of love, show people feminine Exits.

I believe in all that. I also believe that my words and those of my sisters are constantly being cast a sidelong jeer of disposability. That I and my sisters are then to blame for when a mobbing happens and not the world's own biases and outrage. This world has made this all quite non-negotiable, no more playing along with the democratic cesspits and hateful comedy routines. Here's to reflecting on the play experience others treat as compost as if its the most meaningful urtexts in the world because to quote pourpetine again "Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain." trash art is my queendom.

I hope it suffocates society before it can flee to their patriarch Arks. As princess put it here 'flood the world and dilute the sludge'.

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1. 2 notable exceptions I know of with pay to play games by transfemme is princess/Girl Software's other games, and the cowriting of Aevee Bee on Worst Girl Games. Also key in on the fact here I'm making no judgements on individual pricing of games as a moral decision.

2. Does not remotely just happen On Backloggd³ if you think this is just a grievance I have with this site you're gravely misreading me and I urge you to slow down your social media outrage use for a bit qt~

3. Although I should not lie, social media sites are remarkably more unreliable habitats for trans people than they initially appear, this place has been a great learning experience of that in my case

One last turf war before the plug is pulled on my favourite era of videogames since the PS1.

Well, a few games, and several games which disconnected due to server instability. An all time classic. Memories of hot summer evenings in 2015 playing Squid Jump while waiting in the lobby. The lobby music sending me right back to the time.

My friend actually bought me this. I got home from work to find a parcel with my name changed to an ink related pun. I couldn't believe my luck. Iffy servers be damned, I spent hours upon hours on this game, and for a while it was never bettered. It took a lot of updates for the sequel to rival this one.

It may have been superseded and eventually bettered, but this will always be my favourite.

Stay fresh 🥲

I had a minor operation on my back and got seven stitches, and afterward the doctor told me not to do anything too strenuous. I decided to just game the rest of the day thinking that would be preferable to like working out or biking, but while I was finishing this game up I apparently leaned back in my desk chair so hard it made a bunch of blood squeeze out of my stitches and ruined the special disappearing bandages the doctor put on before. There was a huge stain on the back of my chair and I thought the stitches had straight up popped. I found out they were thankfully still intact when I went to urgent care but they had to do the special dressing all over again. I give this game four out of five stars.

To me, Jet Set Radio is like Star Fox 64. A short but sweet game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master, which allows me to replay this treasure over and over again without ever getting bored.

I'm glad I FINALLY got to this game as it's been in my to-play list since I was like 10 years old. Who knew it would be one of my new favorites.

JSR is pretty much Tony Hawk with skates and style. And when I say style I really don't mean that lightly. This is probably one of the first games to really bring the STYLE to videogames that inspired the style you see in Persona and later Sakurai games.

While the artsyle is obviously responsible for bringing the style to the looks of the game, the style is really boosted by it's soundtrack. Probably one of my favorite videogame soundtracks of all time. There is nothing but really catchy sample funk here and ALL the songs are so good. And I can't wait to play the Sequel and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk just to hear the other tracks.

The stages are full of life and soul. Everything feels so detailed and cluttered in this iteration of Tokyo. Everything exudes a certain vibrancy that just invokes a feeling of happiness.

As for the gameplay, rather than chasing score like the Tony Hawk games, there are objectives in each level you need to complete in order to be successful, rather than just pass a score threshold. I prefer this so much more.

The controls are so simple, you will only ever push 2 buttons in this game. Jump and Tag. But the fact that this game has so many mechanics using just these 2 buttons shows how deep it can get. The skill ceiling is high here as you can either sumble your way completing levels just in time, or gracefully grind your way getting the high score while completing objectives.

It really takes a playthrough or two really master this game, but once you do it becomes an addicting itch that you want to revisit over and over again. As mentioned before, only one other game has done this for me which is Star Fox 64.

(Part 4 of 4)

Y’all ever heard of this weird-ass thing called the Sega Channel? It was apparently this service that was around in the mid-90s that allowed owners of the Sega Genesis to play games on an online service for a monthly fee, which eliminated the need to go out and get the game for yourself if you don’t want to pay a full $60 for a game that was complete trash. It was a neat little idea, and it did last for a good while before shutting down, but while it did have plenty of benefits for owners of a Genesis, it also had plenty of costs as well. On one hand, you do get access to plenty of new Sega Genesis games and demos to play to your heart's content, but on the other hand, there were certain games that were made for the Sega Genesis that were released EXCLUSIVELY for the Sega Channel… for us Americans, anyway. This made it so that, once the Sega Channel was ultimately shut down in 1998, you could never play these games anymore, unless you wanted to go out of your way to buy a foreign copy of the game along with a Mega Drive, but who has the time, patience, and money for that? This meant that plenty of people would miss out on some truly great Genesis titles for the longest time, including today’s subject, Mega Man: The Wily Wars.

Nowadays, there have been several re-releases of this game to where you can easily play the game if you have access to it, but for the longest time, fans in America wouldn’t be able to officially play this game for the longest time, and I remember that this KILLED me inside back in the day. Knowing what this game was, I desperately wanted to get my hands on it for the longest time back then, but I couldn’t, seeing how it was only available in a completely different part of the world. It was only around when I was 15-16, I wanna say, and I went to a video game convention happening in my town where I found someone was selling bootleg cartridges of The Wily Wars that I finally managed to snag a copy for myself, and all was right with the world. It was worth it too, because even after so many years, The Wily Wars is still a pretty great game, one that gives plenty for fans of the series to play through and appreciate, while also providing new content and ideas that were great to see in action.

For those of you who are unaware, this game is pretty much the Mega Man equivalent of Super Mario All-Stars, where it takes the original trilogy of Mega Man games from the NES and completely remakes them for the Sega Genesis, featuring a new coat of 16-bit graphics and music right alongside it, as well as save points, which are not only pretty helpful, but they also make those dumbass grid passwords obsolete (and the whole world cheered). All of the games present here work pretty much exactly like they did back on the NES: they are all still 2D platformers where you run, jump, and shoot your way through plenty of different foes, obstacles, and bosses, gather plenty of different special weapons and upgrades to assist you on your journey, and question how this super-powered fighting robot is somehow unable to stop this crotchety old man from doing evil things. So, needless to say, if you enjoyed your time with any of the original NES versions of these games, then you will most likely enjoy these versions as well.

Really though, there’s not much else I can say in terms of the improvements between these versions of these games and the originals. Unlike with Mario All-Stars, The Wily Wars doesn’t really change anything too drastic about the games themselves in terms of save points, win conditions, or the content that is present, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but for those that are looking for more stuff to mess around with in these three original games, they aren’t going to get that here. They are just 16-bit versions of those original games, which, in my opinion, is still pretty great, because not only can I still enjoy these games in the way that they are supposed to be, but now they look much nicer than before, and looking at all the different sprites for all the characters, enemies, and bosses is nice to day the least, even if some… aren’t quite as good as others (Rock should really put sunscreen on before going out in the sun for that long).

However, despite how much I still enjoyed these renditions of the classic games, I can’t say they are perfect, as there are several issues that do hold them back from being the definitive version of these games, such as the music. Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say that a lot of the music remixed in this game is bad, and there are some pretty great tracks to be heard in this game, but since they are on the Genesis, most of them are accompanied by that good ol’ Genesis twang, so if you aren’t a fan of that, then you will hate listening to this game. Secondly, there is the issue with slowdown, which has been a recurring issue ever since the original Mega Man, to be fair, but here I think is where it is the absolute worst. There are plenty of sections in these remakes where it will slow down where it was never meant to, and while in some instances like with the Yellow Devil fight, it makes things easier, most of the time it isn’t pleasant to look at. Not to mention, there are also some little things that bug me as well, such as there being no difficulty option for Mega Man 2, and whenever you beat any boss, after the jingle plays, Mega Man stands there like an idiot for a good 10 seconds before teleporting out of the stage, almost as if he is waiting for his cue card.

Of course though, for those of you who know The Wily Wars by heart, then you would know that these remakes aren't all that this collection has to offer. Right alongside the remakes of Mega Man 1-3, there is also a new game mode known as Wily Tower, which can only be accessed after you have beaten the main three games. Let me tell you right now, THIS right here is the main reason why anyone should play this version of these games, as Wily Tower is the best part of the entire package. It is essentially a smaller Mega Man title bundled in with the other three, as it features its own entirely new story (and by that, I mean Wily is a dick, and you gotta stop him again), new stages, new challenges, and new bosses that you won’t find in any other game in the series. All on its own, it is really fun, not only because of all the different challenges you take on and the gameplay still being as tight as ever, but seeing all the different enemies and hazards of the main three games clashed together in this mode is pretty neat to see. Not to mention, since this mode was specifically made for the Genesis, the music doesn’t suffer from the same issues that the main games suffer from… at least, not by much, anyway.

But none of that even comes close to what is the main draw of this mode, and that would be how weapons and special items are handled. From the beginning of the mode, you are given access to all of the weapons and special items from Mega Man 1-3, but of course, since there are so many, you aren’t given the ability to carry all of them at once. Instead, before each stage, you are given the option to customize your loadout, choosing which weapons and special items that you can take into a stage, while also being able to swap out your options for whatever stage comes next. This, in my opinion, is a GENIUS mechanic, because not only does it give the player plenty of opportunities to experiment with the items they have access to, seeing what loadout is best for them, but it also allows for plenty of replayability, just to see what works best in what stages. It really does suck that this kind of feature never returns for any of the other games in the series, because it is that good, and I would say that I hope they bring this feature back for a future game in the series… but that would imply that Capcom would make another game in the series at all.

Overall, despite some issues with the music, some instances of slowdown getting in the way, and how I wouldn’t say these are the definitive versions of the classic three games, this is a fantastic collection of remakes of the original trilogy, one that any Mega Man fanatic like myself would love to play not just because of how well these games still hold up, but also because of the equally fantastic Wily Tower mode, not only providing a fresh, new experience for fans of the series, but also by doing things that the series had never done before and since this game. I would absolutely recommend it for those who are fans of the Mega Man series, or even for those who couldn’t really get into the original versions of these classic games, because while the games themselves remain mostly unchanged, the new 16-bit coat of paint and the inclusion of saving may just be all you need to give these games another proper shot. It’s just a shame though that this was initially locked into a subscription service for us Americans for so long… but hey, they at least brought it back!.... and locked it behind another subscription service……. but hey, it’s on the Sega Genesis Mini!...... that is only available in limited quantities…………………. I hate video games.

Collection #2/Game #536