Yeah so I played stuff in September. It was an okay month as far as quantity… despite the quality overall being… questionable. Not really too much to say for an intro, so I guess let’s just get to it.

So this month the new games I played are: Visions of Mana, Gimmick 2!, the new Famicom Detective Club, Gori, Rugrats, The Plucky Squire, UFO 50, FF16 and Echoes of Wisdom… Oh and the Playstation State of Play happened so a quick moment to talk about how bad that was.

Let’s go!

Hey on the same day as the Nintendo Direct how about that!

Well I didn’t notice any “leaks” for this one that aren’t entirely stupid… So my expectation is simply that this will be shit. Like every State of Play. These things are always awful. My expectations? Shitty games that won’t be exclusive to PS5, making this whole presentation pointless and stupid.

My general expectation for every State of Play is the same: even the best ones don’t have anything interesting, so no, matter how good this may end up being, it will still have been a shitty waste of time.

So yeah, let’s go I guess. Again, like the Nintendo Direct, this is a live reaction.

Well I am actually writing this intro before a Direct was even announced (today is September 10). Because it’s pretty clear we’ll get a Direct this month at the same kind of time as every September in the last 8 years, and I assume 13 or 14 for the date of the Direct (*Edit: okay it was 14, let me update the title*).

There are rumors going for this one from Pyoro, one of the only “leakers” that has actually been somewhat trustworthy so far. Namely a DK game that SEEMS to be Mario vs DK-related… hopefully it’s not one of the Minis games and actually a return to the original MvD, which was a take on Donkey Kong 94. Then one for an F-Zero game, which he is heavily hinting at being F-Zero 99 (please no). And one that seems to be hinting at a remaster of the 2 Trace Memory games (the Wii one never came out in America), or at least a Wii game and a DS game that are linked somehow. And there’s no other leaker saying anything credible. Would be funny if this Direct was the one where Pyoro lost his credibility.

My true expectation is, of course, that even a bad Direct has one or two cool things, so in the end I’ll probably have some thing to be happy about here.

Well, let’s go and watch this Direct! These are live reactions as I’m watching the Direct.

So I’ve been a One Piece fan for the better part of 20 years. I started watching it in late high school/early college, as the anime was going through the Skypeia arc. I kept following the anime since, though at some point (maybe Impel Down? I don’t exactly remember) I switched from anime to manga. So yeah, I’ve been in this shit for a while.

When this was announced, I figured it was probably one of the worst candidates for a live action reimagining. And, having seen previous Netflix attempts (namely Death Note and Cowboy Bebop), it was clear they were very competent at completely fucking up anime adaptations. But I love One Piece, and figured I’d go against my better judgement and give it a chance anyways, even as trailers came out and it didn’t look good (legitimately the trailers were not solid).

So let’s go and see if I was right, or if, for once, an american live action adaptation that’s actually good actually happened.

When this movie was rumored and eventually properly announced, my excitement was basically at zero. We already had a perfect Mario movie back in the 90s that is unironically really fun even though it’s only a Mario movie in name, and this was being made by Illumination… who didn’t make very good things in my limited exposure to them (I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the Despicable Me movies, and those weren’t… very convincing).

But trailers happened and they were weirdly solid, the movie came out in theaters and the reception was wildly positive… so I picked it up when it came out on Blu-Ray.

So let’s see if it’s good why don’t we!

Here comes Nintendo to once again save the gaming industry from a tremendously shitty Not-E3 here in 2023. It’s actually crazy how subpar Not-E3 2023 has been, but here comes Nintendo flying in with what should be a great show because… I dunno, no one else was good, someone has to be.

I did actually watch this before writing any of this, because of reasons, and I even missed it live because of the same reasons, but let’s actually go through the show now. I do like going by Highlights and such, so I’m doing this here again. Highlights at different levels talking about my favorite parts of the show, down to the ones I liked least.

Let’s-a go!

Xbox had a presentation. It has things… So let’s talk about it! Sony’s may have sucked, but maybe Microsoft has the goods. I watched Summer Game Fest in part which was pretty lame (I mostly just skipped through it to see if any interesting announcements happened… they didn’t with a BIG maybe on Sonic), and the other presentations were so bad I didn’t even skip through them. This is why there’s no E3, because no one has shit to announce anyways, apparently. Can’t wait for Nintendo to also announce nothing. This is also why I didn’t post about anything else, but I kinda have to make an exception for the big 3, at minimum.

So let’s see if Xbox has anything at all to show. This time, I’m starting with the lowlights and slowly building up to what is certainly a ton of highlights… right? Let’s go! Oh and I guess I’ll mention Starfield in its own section since it goes it’s own section of the showcase, so it’s in none of the lowlight-highlight sections.

Let’s go?

It is E3 season! But with no E3! So there are presentations that will probably happen. We just got the Playstation Showcase which was… a thing… And there’s an Xbox one that will happen soon-ish, so I’ll comment on that one too, and we’ll see if anything else noteworthy happens, may it be some Nintendo thing (which there should be… something? Because Nintendo has nothing this year past Pikmin 4) or other summer game presentation thingies.

So usually when I do this I just react to everything as it happens and then post those live reactions, I’ll just post the highlights, lowlights, and a few “eh?” things, then rant about it a bit.

And first up is Sony being lame, so let’s go!

There’s the usual February Nintendo Direct. I am gonna react to it. Whoa! So yes I am writing this intro before actually watching the Direct. It could be the most hype Direct ever, it could… not be. I have no idea, and I have no real expectations.

The rumor mill was a bit dry, but got a bit better… 2 hours before the Direct. There’s the Advance Wars rumors which are kinda dumb (the SKU changed on the eshop so people think that means it’s coming out right away, the other is a random wal-mart employee saying he saw a standee with a February 10 release date for it but provided no proof)… possible, but not likely based on why Nintendo indefinitely delayed the game. There was a bit of an “oof” rumor from Exputer saying they saw video evidence of a remake of Baten Kaitos, though this rumor is weirdly contradicted by this image just popping out a bit before the Direct showing a remaster collection of Baten Kaitos 1 and 2 rather than a remake of the first (could be faked of course). So either way, that’s possible. And that’s about it as far as anything interesting and new. There’s a Syluxhunter thing from last year about some F-Zero related thing, though no timing or details were given for that so… eh. Oh and there’s the whole TotK 70$ price and Metroid Prime 4 appearing/disappearing from online stores kinda randomly, I don’t think that’s particularly useful info as far as content… but it WOULD be bullshit if Nintendo upped the price of their games.

As far as expectations, I’m expecting Tears of the Kingdom to be shown very briefly, I feel it will be a bit more of a tease, leading to a separate Direct just for that game closer to release. I’m expecting something about Pikmin. I’m expecting to not see Metroid Prime 4. And I’m expecting DLC stuff for Fire Emblem, Mario Kart and maybe Splatoon. So that’s a good 5-8 minutes of the 40 that was announced accounted for, which means there’s a lot of time which could just be anything. And also Samba de Amigo since that popped up just a bit before the Direct started, no excitement for that.

So as usual, I’ll be giving short comments about everything in the presentation, and finish it off with my overall thoughts.

Let’s go!

Well yesterday we got the announcement of both a new Nintendo Direct (the first big one since early February) and, a bit later, a new State of Play. Because both are on the same day, I figure… let’s make them fight.

So here I’m going to do my usual for gaming presentations. I’ll give a bit of an intro, then for each I will post my LIVE reactions with my overall thoughts afterwards… and then we’ll make them fight, see which one was better.

I’m writing this intro and the next segment before the Nintendo Direct starts, that way I currently have no idea how well either of them did.

So let’s go!
Skip to Nintendo Direct
Skip to State of Play