Sundays are for washing your headphone earcups. Before you rinse thoroughly, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things).
For PC Gamer, Morgan Park wrote about the new worst gaming trend. The worst gaming trend being killing our favourite games and replacing them with sequels.
But so what? We didn’t used to have to ask that the games we love not be shut down once they got slightly old. If billion-dollar companies like Activision Blizzard and Valve really wanted to keep Overwatch 1 and CS:GO around in their proper forms, they absolutely could. Whatever it’d take—establishing a cutoff point for updates, running fewer official servers, or moving entirely to community servers—it’s all possible, it’s just not convenient or perhaps profitable work. By hacking off CS:GO’s matchmaking and making it unintuitive to access, Valve has done worse by its community than ever before in this regard, and Blizzard hasn’t even tried with Overwatch.
Carolyn Petit wrote about The Making Of Karateka being one of this year’s best games for Kotaku. Digital Eclipse latest game-umentary release gets a look from a film history perspective.
Karateka remains supremely playable today. It’s a game that teaches you how to play it, a game whose exacting challenge makes it all the more rewarding to eventually emerge victorious. But I’m not naive. I know those who have no nostalgic connection to the original game will have a hard time seeing Karateka’s greatness. At this point, so many games have built on what Karateka does that it can be almost impossible to even recognize what it’s doing.
Danielle Lucas wrote about the time she roleplayed as Pedro Pascal and went to nightclubs in Final Fantasy XIV, for VG247. A fun post not only about being Pedro, but also the pleasant chance encounters you can have in this MMO.
A small crowd of people stand infront a trio of bards knocking out a mix of classic Final Fantasy tracks, all whilst waving neon glowsticks. A few people not-so-discreetly check out Pedro during the performance, but no one approaches. Maybe they’re shy. At one point, I spot a meat slab of a Roegydan wearing nothing but a pope hat and golden undies, brazenly standing in the middle of the plaza. But even he wasn’t turning heads – it’s no wonder that no one was interested in Pedro, either, then.
Robert Purchese spoke to Giles Goddard about being inside Nintendo in the 1990s. Goddard talks about his experience as one of the first Western employees at Nintendo and it’s cool to read about a company that doesn’t open its doors often.
Japan, 1993, in the city of Kyoto, and two young men are on a bike. They’re on the busiest crossing in the city and clearly, they’re drunk. Westerners. Inside their bags, they have papers they probably shouldn’t have – confidential papers. Confidential Nintendo papers. And in a few hazy post-pub moments, these papers are about to be all over the floor for everyone to see. One look at them and you’d see the game Nintendo was making next. One look at them and you’d see the 3D chip Nintendo had designed for it. One look, and you would see Star Fox.
Music this week is a DJ set by IPeiqi. Here’s
the YouTube link, no Spotify for this one. Lovely summer vibe.
That’s it for this week folks, take care of yourselves and see you next week!
