Blogger Archive: slackur 
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Insert obvious Nintendon't and Genesisn't joke here
The Switch keeps taking my attention. I play other systems, I really do! Yes, there are other fantastic games not on the Switch to play right now, such as Persona 5 Royal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Doom Eternal. Our current situation requires a person to sit inside with a lot of free time, and this is a pretty great gaming season to do so! There are some epic (and incredibly time consuming) titles out right now, but personally I've found myself drawn to the Sega properties on Nintendo's excellent machine. As a gamer who fondly remembers the "console wars" between Nintendo and Sega, I still shake my head at being able to both write that sentence and mean it. It didn't even occur to me until this week that most of what I've played lately on my Switch were originally from Sega, but sure enough here we are:
Continue reading Nobody does SEGA like Nintendo
[img width=550 height=677]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-005/gs/U-005-S-04655-A.jpg[/img]
Should have suspected survival in the future requires extensive use of Imperial Shuttles.
By now you have probably read quite a few gaming articles (including on here) about how folks are doing during these tough times. In light of this moment, there were a handful of topics I tossed about when considering what to expand into a full write-up, and ultimately it seemed best just to take a few ideas and breathe them out a bit. While this may read more like a journal entry, or really a series of rambling and disjointed thoughts instead of a concentrated article, it is my hope that constructively sharing thoughts right now may be more useful and connecting than one of my gaming lists or reviews. Well, more helpful to me at least. 
Continue reading Thoughts On Gaming, Mental Health, And The COVID 19 Moment
[img width=421 height=237]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Plague_Inc_loading_screen.png[/img]
Image from Wikipedia
Well gang, it looks like many if not most of us will be hanging out at home a lot more for the foreseeable future. I'll have you know I did warn my Beloved about all of that Plague, Inc. she was playing last year. In all seriousness, I do hope everyone stays safe and calm and healthy. Since much of the world is in some form of lock-down and many of us are looking at more screen time than expected, I wanted to share some suggestions on how our family is planning to ride out the upcoming season (and how gaming helps.)
Continue reading Tips On Keeping Calm And Gaming On
[img width=700 height=393]https://www.nintendo.com/content/dam/noa/en_US/games/switch/t/the-liar-princess-and-the-blind-prince-switch/screenshot-gallery/Switch_TheLiarPrincess_03.jpg[/img]
-All images from Nintendo.com-
I have a few friends, including my own Beloved, who enjoy watching certain (usually story-focused) games while I play. I figured I'd pick one to highlight for Valentine's Day, and it turns out I just finished Liar Princess and the Blind Prince. While the game does fit into such a mold and might make a great experience for a couple (although the game is not necessarily romantic in theme) there are a handful of caveats that should be highlighted that keep this game from being a perfectly polished hidden gem.
Continue reading A Valentine Suggestion: The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince
 It is the 20's and there is time for Kla- er, couch cooperative gaming!
Hi gang, and welcome to 2020! Wow, it is so weird (when you are my age) to realize we are finally here, and it looks very little like what all those books, movies, and games told us the future would be like. Some stuff, like VR and autonomous cars, aren't quite where we thought they would be, but we do all pretty much carry around a Star Trek Tricorder in our pockets that we use to look at cat pictures, so there is that.
For my first write-up of the year (or decade, depending on how you decide to measure it, I know the "official" start is next year but we are all going to hear that we are in the 20s now) I figured I'd make a fun little update list of the excellent couch-cooperative Switch games we recently enjoyed. The Christmas/New Year break gave us some great gaming opportunities and couch-coop is a perfect way to get various skill levels able to play simultaneously.
This list is laughably by no means comprehensive, but does reflect games we play at our place and can personally vouch for.
Continue reading Nintendo Switch Couch Co-Op Update
[img width=298 height=484]https://tetris99.nintendo.com/assets/images/boxart-lrg.png[/img]
2019 has been an excellent year for great game releases. Death Stranding, Control, A Plague Tale, Bloodstained, Super Mario Maker 2, Tetris Effect, The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors, Gears 5, River City Girls, and lots of other titles made their way into our collection this year and were greatly enjoyed. But as the title gives away, the game I give highest kudos too this year is definitely Tetris 99.
Continue reading My GOTY for 2019 is... Tetris 99
[img width=500 height=769]http://www.kojimaproductions.jp/sp/assets/images/works_ds_main_visual_en.jpg[/img]
I'm not interested in reviewing Death Stranding for various reasons, but I would like to share some thoughts about it.
Some creative works are impossible to separate from their creators, being indelibly linked by distinctive fingerprints. Steven Spielberg, the Beatles, Neal Gaiman, Shigeru Myamoto. Hideo Kojima will always be known as the respected creator of the Metal Gear series, but he has many less popular works that clearly bear his unique mark.
If you are interested in Death Stranding, the best way to judge if it is for you is not likely to be found in typical review numbers. Rather, I'd start with the question, "Do you like Hideo Kojima's other work?" And not simply Metal Gear, but the tone and exploration of his work more broadly. What are your reactions to Snatcher, Zone of the Enders, Boktai, and even P.T.?
That would be the best way to know if his new, ambitious project is something worth your time.
Continue reading Non-Spoilery Thoughts On Death Stranding
[img width=616 height=353]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/MessengerHeader.png[/img]
image from wikipedia
I'm stuck on a boss in The Messenger. This little bit of information is unlikely to sway any political elections, and on my own scale of importance from one to five it gets a solid "meh" and a shrug.
What this irreverent trivia represents, however, is a mite bit deeper.
Continue reading Time, Age, Gaming, Difficulty. Sadly Not A Multiple Choice Question.
[img width=550 height=779]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-115/bf/U-115-S-00720-A.jpg[/img]
Somehow they misspelled slackur as C-a-b-e-l-a. Easy to do.
Summer has been quite the whirlwind for my family. Two retro game conventions (one debuting a testing table), family vacations, and various projects kept us quite busy. But the beginning of August held the best event we planned; an Alaska trip for my Beloved and I's 20th wedding anniversary! What does that have to do with video games? Surely the frozen north holds little for us gamers, right?
Continue reading When In Alaska...
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I promised an update about how the Cleveland Classic Console and Arcade Gaming Show (CCAG) inaugural Test Station went.
Continue reading The Test Was A Success
[img width=550 height=760]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-132/bf/U-132-S-05320-A.jpg[/img]
From the beginning, the conceptual design behind many if not the majority of video games involves some form of simulation. The original sports game of Tennis for Two and Pong led to our annual Madden and FIFA releases, each reflecting some abstract interpretation of an "IRL" game. It is this facet of virtual gameplay that brought some critics to declare games like Battlezone and Death Race as kid-targeted military training and violent "murder simulators" long before yellow-pajama-wearing ninjas were permanently curing back pain exclusively on Sega consoles.
Continue reading Simulating Simulations
[img width=700 height=422]https://corgs-con.webs.com/CORGS%202019.jpg[/img]
The year is now past the 50% mark. For our family, we have one annual retro game convention down (CORGS) and one to go (CCAG). E3 is still fresh on the news, and prep-work is in full swing for the Autism and Gaming Convention. Our South Korean foreign exchange student has gone from a non-gamer to finishing Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III (quite a few times) before returning home soon. "Free" time has been spent battling both household illnesses and the massive pile of test systems, cords, and accessories for our CCAG table. I think it's time to grab a breather and take stock of the situation.
Continue reading State of Play 2019 and a Half: Thoughts on CORGS, E3, and Beyond
If you've never been to a video game convention, I can't recommend it enough. My Beloved and I have been attending a few on an annual basis for about fifteen years, and every time has been exciting and fun. It is more than coming across some great collection finds; over the years we have forged great friendships, shared fascinating stories, competed (poorly) in competitive tournaments, seen some great cosplay, realized we weren't alone in our passion for gaming, and overall had great experiences unique to every year. Now, my family has finally decided to plunge into the other side and give back.
Continue reading Giving Back To The Community Via Conventions
[img width=700 height=533]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-231/bb/U-231-S-00840-A.jpg[/img]
I've said before and still proclaim that Nintendo is, at heart, a toy company. What makes Nintendo different, and I daresay special, is that they make their toys into video games. Oh, there are a ton of physical toys made from Nintendo properties and characters. Yet Nintendo's specialty is making video games that are built first as toys, as devices made more for the sake of being playful, as a first priority over narrative, graphics, or complexity. There are exceptions, but as a general principal Nintendo games are made first as a chase for that elusive 'fun for the sake of fun' ethos. This best explains Nintendo's decisions that baffle others in the video game industry.
Continue reading Thoughts On Labo And The Nintendo Ethos
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Recently I got a call from a good friend asking me to write about how much anger and negativity pervades gaming in our modern era. I reflected the challenge therein, as many of the factoring instigators of such are outside the purview of our humble and relatively focused collector/gaming site. Also, I've spilled much digital ink in various articles over the years championing virtues against such negativity. It is not that more can't or shouldn't be said about the topic, just that there are times and places better suited for conversations that dig deeper into the myriad of problems that are the origin of said negativity.
And yet there are lots of angles about modern gamer anger that can be more readily addressed, if not overcome, by way of analysis and discussion on neutral grounds such as ours. In fact one angle of discussion in particular came to mind by way of my recent reflections playing Fallout 76 and Anthem. These two titles, in their design philosophy, problematic constructions, and correlating critical and commercial reception, pretty much embody the various threads into a cohesive strand of something larger, a specific anger-inducing phenomena inherent to our current-gen gaming.
Continue reading Thoughts On Games As Service, Anger, And Modern Gaming
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