Mento

I've also watched an unusual amount of anime in 2022 it feels like, and as someone who came into Chainsaw Man completely fresh I did not anticipate that whole mid-season spring-cleaning session but enjoyed it nonetheless. It really does feel like a series with a huge budget and level of consideration behind it, even before you get to the amazing animation in the fight scenes; the way every episode caps with a unique ending theme/video is proof enough of how invested they are in creating that show. Feels like this year's big appointment viewing anime, for sure, with the delightful Spy X Family a close second (and MP100 always brings it, even if it felt like it concluded in a hurry). Gotta say I've been enjoying Isekai Ojisan and Skeleton Knight in Another World quite a bit too despite them being even more isekai shit, Ya Boy Kongming and Birdie Wing were fascinatingly strange, and I surprised myself by how much I liked Sono Bisque Doll once it got a little less thirsty and switched the protag focus to Marin. The January/Spring season sounds like it'll be packed too, so I'll no doubt find myself watching a few of those.

Anyway, good award choices here and I'm definitely going to have to check out Stranger of Paradise early next year (it was an Xmas present) given how many GB people are enthusiastically (?) repping what at first blush looked like a very dumb and very esoteric FF thing that should've appealed to no-one.

(Oh, and the TG16 Tower of Druaga's not so bad. Hopefully JeffRud's thing gets to that sooner rather than later if you need a second opinion.)

@infantpipoc: Well, I do come from the Dan Ryckert school of video game reviews. Gotta fit MGS in there somewhere.

@nodima:That's pretty interesting. I'm not exactly the cleanest person (mostly out of indolence) but I can definitely be fastidious when it comes to having the correct spots for things and therefore didn't have much of an issue following the logic of the game and its demands. You're right though that people have all sorts of systems that intuitively make the most sense to them and I guess there's only so much the game can do to account for that.

Playing Unpacking made me curious to try that A Little to the Left game that just came out where you're organizing items in the right order, and hearing folks talk about that it seems like there's multiple interpretations of "the right order" the game recognizes. I wonder if they faced a similar feedback issue and made it a bit more broadly accepting of how people organize differently?

Good luck. So you're doing all the Japan-only stuff too, then? This'll be quite the ordeal but hopefully still on the right side of manageable.

Last time I checked the Giant Bomb wiki remains one of the best resources for the HuCard era of the TG16/PCE if you want to lean on it a little too. (I'll admit to chickening out on getting pages for all the PCE CD games though; there's a lot.) There's always Chronturbo as well, of course.

Say hi to Bonk for me.

@jeffrud: Anything specific I want to look at is already in my pre-selection shortlist. If we're talking more generally, I was hoping it'd pick more random weird Japanese games like Photopi while continuing to avoid all the generic sports and racing games on there.

Of course, I've already rolled it for next week and it is indeed a generic sports game. Statistically probable, unfortunately.

I might concur with JeffRud, despite being a rival of sorts. The comprehensiveness of this round-up is impressive and the quality of your writing has steadily improved since you started. Of a similar tier as ZombiePie's equally loquacious examinations of the Final Fantasy franchise.

I'm also glad we have another fan of Dr. Sparkle on the site. So much of my wiki editing and wiki-related blogging was inspired by his work with the various Chron- series. I've heard the dude's been through a rough spot lately so I hope he bounces back.

Anyway, good luck with the Saturn. I've been batting around blogging ideas for that system too, but I should probably should finish up Mega Archive first. I'll be sure to check out your coverage for any highlights (it has a Japan-only Dungeon Master sequel that strikes me as intriguing, though it's sadly yet to be fan-translated).

@judaspete: I don't believe the N64 was graced with a Heavy Metal game, but there's a few others like Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. that seem pretty close. The (western) fighter genre definitely went through a phase for a while there.

@arbitrarywater: "Have to play" nothin'. Gex is staying well enough away from my pre-selection list, like it was a party at Harvey Weinstein's house (those are the kind of references he makes, right?), and the randomizer still has only a 2 in 330 chance of hitting one. Besides, if this and next week are any indication, the randomizer's far too busy finding the worst fighter games.

@borgmaster: Edgecringe wouldn't be a bad name for a villain from a Dickens novel. Sir Theodore Edgecringe. Maybe he gets visited in the night by three ghosts who try to convince him to sell off his No Fear T-shirt collection.

@chamurai: @borgmaster: We might have a real candidate for bottom of the list next week thanks to the randomizer. I still have to summon up the courage to play it.

Honestly, nothing has deeply irritated me the way BB2k has so far. Sub-Zero and Photopi were equally unplayable but still fascinating, and I was absolutely not the intended audience for that Elmo thing. There's like, bad games and then there's obnoxiously bad games, and I've managed to avoid most of the latter for now.

@arbitrarywater: The RGB sliders just about clinched it.

@borgmaster: I never did play the first one, so I couldn't say. Rayman 2 was a 2000 release for PS1, so I'm sure your series will get to it in about a hundred episodes or so. No sweat.

Considering what's looming ahead next week (I already did the drawing), I almost wish it were sports.

(Thanks for the support. And also to @manburger, since I know they comment on these regularly too.)