We did it, gamers. We played The Greatest Generation, just as Brokaw foretold in the latest Warframe update. We’ve got one last chapter saved for 2020, but shit is gonna get weird from here on out. Xbox is erasing generations. Sony is trimming their executive roster and moving further towards PS5 development for next holiday. Nintendo still can’t figure out how the fucking internet works, but they’ve always got that goofy shit like Tetris 99 and Ring Fit Adventure on lock.

It feels like our fully integrated synergized overflow gaming future is nigh. Microsoft has their talons in both Sony and Nintendo at this point, with their various publishing, cloud, and networking deals. Sony is publishing on PC. Nintendo is publishing on mobile. Apple is putting out good phone games. Google could fuck up a cup of coffee at this point, but everyone else is making love not war. Maybe it’s all family fun variety hour from here on out where we all game together because it unites us all and is good marketing. Or maybe not. I don’t know where it’s gonna go from here, but it’s exciting and scary. I say no more borders. Put it all on PC. Let Nintendo just crash on PS+’s couch for a while. Make Halo run on Switch. Put one of the guys from Nintendo’s Kung-Fu in Playstation Battle Royale All-Stars in a free update. BREAK THE WALLS DOWN.

But the future is for suckers. For now, let's talk about Outrun.

The New Age Outrunz

Outrun 2006

OUTRUN IS BACK, JACK! THE ARCADE CLASSIC HITS HOME THIS HOLIDAY SEASON FOR THE PLAYSTATION 2.

This game offers so many ways to play Outrun. It has the biggest soundtrack in the history of Outrun. It is rendered in full 3D, which is a major setback, but having never played this game before 2019, I can definitively say that it’s the most excited I’ve been about Outrun since Outrun.

SEGA AGES Virtua Racing (1992) /Outrun (1986)

2019 was quite a year for world renowned game developer Yu Suzuki. Both of these games hit Switch and absolutely nothing else happened. After years of sweaty anticipation, Sega finally gave the fans what they’ve been waiting for: Outrun and Virtua Racing, but for Switch. We won! The war is over. Our letter campaigns/ransom notes paid off. I never have to leave bed to play Outrun again. I’d like to thank the house that Shenmue built for reading my year end video game blogs and responding in kind to my demands.

Slipstream (2018)

Slipstream is a game that very much bites on Outrun’s speedy, scenic, arcade racer vibe, but throws in enough modern tweaks to keep it from feeling like a clone. The blocky pixels, branching paths, and sense of speed are all there, but it’s far more racing focused as opposed to Outrun’s “just drive” philosophy. There’s drifting, drafting, rivalries, and multiplayer. It loses some of that Sunday cruisin’ purity, but it adds more flavor. Aesthetically, it trades more in nightclub neon and synthwave instead of the tropical pastels and sunny calypso of that other game.

Slipstream does neat stuff. It makes good use of its backgrounds to give subtle visual hints on turns. The warm, synthwave sound over the blocky, bright 90s pixels goes really vibes well. It’s a pretty straightforward racer and never feels all that dynamic, but if there’s an Outrun sized hole in your life that cannot be filled by woman, god or beast, Slipstream might do the trick.

Good Bad Not Good Award

Detroit: Become Human (2018)

This is a bad video game. And that’s fine, you know? Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, a bad video game is a totally fine thing to be. There’s a shitload of ‘em. Hell, I’d consider a great deal of them dear friends. But this video game also thinks it’s an important video game which it is most definitely not. Now, as that guy from O*Town almost surely said on his episode of Cribs, “this is where the magic happens.”

I’ve always been a big fan of watching a work of moronic ambition fall off the tightrope it so desperately walks. Detroit: Become Human is a big old belly flop. But you know what? Fuck you anyway. Because David Cage doesn’t need your safety net, man. He’s out here to evoke emotion through storytelling, man. Are you ready for the truth through the power of video games, DUDE? Because David Cage has some shit to say about SOCIETY, MAN.

Quantic Dream squanders a pretty good cast and some impressive visual tech on a game that is basically trying to be Academy Award winning piece of shit Crash but a video game and with future robots. Remember: this is a video game from a man who watched Blade Runner and thought the replicants were the bad guys. This is a video game about ROBOTS in DETROIT that shows ZERO reverence for ROBOCOP. IT’S FUCKING CRIMINAL.

It’s all just so naïve and hackneyed and misses the mark so hard that I just absolutely loved watching anybody but me play it. That anybody happened to be a somebody named Arthur so it was a good time.

Old is New Again

Link’s Awakening (GB 1993, GBC 1998, Switch 2019)

Link's Awakening often carries unearned baggage of being Diet Zelda. It's certainly slighter than 1991's A Link to the Past, but it does many of the same things that game does just as well on much more limited hardware. While it lacks the scope of its console predecessor, it greatly streamlines the level design without hampering exploration. The overworld has such a nice flow to it and the dungeons are so tightly wound that this game is out the door before it wears out its welcome. I love its cameos and its secrets and its music and just how delightfully weird it is. I love this Zelda game.

This remake doesn't go as far as it could have, but the changes it makes are more than welcome. The new look and sound shines much brighter than what the Gameboy was capable of. The bounty of buttons the Switch has makes inventory management much easier. I would've liked to see a more ambitious remake that manages to pay homage to the original as well (a concept art museum might be nice), but this is still a good way to preserve a very good Zelda game for the next crop of fans.

Old Games

Hotline Miami (2012)

I don’t know how this game hid in plain sight from me for seven years. Crime. Violence. Grimy ass electronic music. Action/puzzler. These are a few of my favorite things. Planning out these hit-and-run killing spree symphonies with Wick-level precision to bangin’ ass murdersynth filled me with levels of delight unforeseen since The Guest or Crank 2. The mask mechanic was cool, the story was good, pulpy fun, and then they made a sequel. More later.

Warframe (2013)

Warframe’s sheer audacity is infectious. Warframe is a spaz on a sugar rush. Laser bullet space ninjas jump and fly around while fuzzy FMV Twi-lek Klingons prattle on about royal alien diamond mines or whatever the fuck this game is about. You shoot stuff. You get too fucked up too late at night and shoot your teammates too much and shamequit. I think you can build spaceships in it now. Warframe is now like some sort of Bizarro Star Citizen: it’s a video game that everyone can play right now on anything and it don’t cost nobody nothin. Also you can build spaceships. Maybe. That game is a lot.

Hyper Light Drifter (2016)

There’s a crackle and hiss to this game’s desolation that kept me on edge throughout. Every step felt new. Every screen drew me in. Hyper Light Drifter’s greatest asset is its minimalism. It has style for days, sure, but offers little to nothing with regards to narrative or sense of direction. When those big moments pop after a steady hum of quiet, empty beauty, they really pop.

Capcom vs SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium (2001)

Akuma vs. Terry Bogard is a main event anywhere in the country. In Capcom vs SNK 2, you can grease these hogs up and make ‘em wrassle. The PS2 era's polygonal fighters feel stiff and look worse, but this 2D bombshell still looks and sounds as crispy as ever.

Street Fighter x Tekken (2012)

In this game, you can team Akuma with King and absolutely wreck house. In Akuma’s ending, they show you about to fight this other, darker, more badass Dark Akuma. I think he’s Oni? Maybe Oni is Asura from Asura’s Wrath? Fuckin whatever, baby, KING AKUMA LIVES.

Sigil (Doom 1993 megawad)

John Romero made some new Doom in 2019 and it was some pretty good Doom. I played it and liked it.

Worst Old Sequels

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015)

I can’t believe this game was just the same damn thing as the first. Playing that first one for the first time (even years after release) felt so exciting. It was so stylish and novel and fun. For the second one to just be a repress of the first sucked all that excitement out.

Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017)

I can’t speak for the multiplayer, but this campaign was some good dumb fun for a little while. You get to play as this TIE fighter pilot and gun down a bunch of traitorous rebels and then turn coat yourself and gun down a bunch of Stormtroopers who were by all accounts just following orders. Also, it’s a Star Wars game from one of the industry’s biggest publishers (EA), so you can see every cent of the moon sized budget on the screen. It looks stunning and ungodly expensive.

But then they had to go all backdoor pilot on it and shoehorn the Skywalker clan into the main story and suddenly it got real low rent real fast. All these off-model, cut rate sound-alike, dead-eyed, royalty-free jobbers stroll in to ruin your good time. So then you play as Luke (but not Mark Hammil) and Han (but Harrison Ford’s third twin cousin’s babysitter, twice removed) and whoever the fuck else felt like leaping out of their respective Star Wars fanart blogs and do a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even control like the rest of the game.

So it’s not as good as Dark Forces and that really sucks.

Best Old Game of 2019

Tempest (1981)

“I have always been a storm” – Stevie Nicks

My shelter from the storm this year was the arcade. Video games really are better than they’ve ever been. Hitman. Hitman 2. Breath of the Wild. DOOM. TWO NEW TETRIS’Z. But that crystalline purity of a joystick and a button backed by the power of the Great American Token hits me like I owe it money. Of course, Tempest has a wheel instead of a joystick, but we’re all adults here. Just roll with me.

In my yearlong arcade pilgrimage, I kept coming back to Tempest. At Tapper’s in Indianapolis, they have a cocktail cabinet and free play all day. At Beercade in Omaha, a standup machine. Galloping Ghost in Brookfield, IL also has a standup machine. What’s most surprising about Tempest is how faithful it is to The Bard’s swan song. The wireframe tube-shooter and crunchy, glitchy explosions really capture Shakespeare’s famous tale of avoiding spikes and using the superzapper.

If there ever was a heaven, Galloping Ghost is it. It is the most comprehensive arcade I’ve found on this godforsaken planet. It has everything an arcade needs and most things you'd want. I hope that when I'm an old, gray dirty street person they'll let me hang around out front. Maybe they'll let me windowplay when the demons finally steal my brain and my only job is staying alive and shouting at random passersby and feverishly extolling the virtues of Robocop to anyone in earshot. It’ll be a lot like this but even less coherent.