One of my favorite game experiences this year was the surprise of Hi-Fi Rush, a rhythm stylish action combat game that was as unexpectedly funny and charming as it was fun to play.

I’ve been working on a 2D game project for a little while now. You might say I have been working on this project since the early 90s. I have always been fascinated by video games. Since the time I was probably three and played a Space Wars arcade machine with my mom in the alcove between a bar and a restaurant, I have been amazed by them. That I can press a button or move a stick or wiggle a mouse or move my hands around in space with a screen strapped to my face, and something deep inside a computer will respond to that input, is pure magic.

I haven’t written about writing for a while. I tend to not want to, since, well, if I’m writing about writing I figure I should just be writing. The last time I did a writing update, I had a story out for submission and another one almost ready to go out. Both of those stories ended up getting rejected, but one of them was on hold for its third time (fourth maybe, but two of those times were at the same place).

Best Games - SubSpace In 1997 you would be lucky to get two computers to talk with one another long enough to play a short game of quake. It wasn’t impossible. Networked multiplayer games existed. Lots of people played them. I played them. But they weren’t exactly easy to get running. They weren’t exactly responsive. They weren’t exactly stable. The idea of running a single game that could accommodate over two hundred players on a single server, over a dial up modems, well that was sorcery.

About a half an hour ago I solved an issue I have been having with my 2D (but actually 3D) game project. It feels great. When I started this, I had an extremely specific aesthetic and feeling that I wanted to capture. A late 80’s to early 90’s arcade machine. The first part of the journey was creating a CRT effect. That came together fairly quickly. The next part was making properly looping animations and a system for making them either 3D or 2D rendered sprites. In the end I managed to make them 3D meshes that get rendered in a spritelike manner.

I have been playing some Atari 50. It’s part game, part documentary, part interactive museum highlighting some slices over the 50 year history of Atari. It is packed with high resolution scans of game manuals and marketing materials. Most of them are what you would expect. Flyers filled with details about cabinets for arcade owners to peruse when making purchasing decisions, complete with the requisite amount of hype. I find all of this historical miscellany fascinating. This is the sort of stuff that typically gets tossed, since it doesn’t offer much value to the company. Not much money to be made with a flyer for an arcade machine that isn’t being produced or sold anymore. It’s even more difficult for people to see any value in artifacts created for temporary commercial purposes within their own lifetimes. The first Coca Cola logo ever produced is historically interesting, some slight change to that logo produced in the last five months is not. Maybe it should be. Maybe we should celebrate these small artifacts. Small works.

Best Games - Retro Game Challenge (GameCenter CX: Arino no Chosenjo) For the last twenty years the show GameCenter CX has played on Fuji TV One in Japan. It’s a comedy show where Shinya Arino attempts to play, and beat, old video games. Arino is an affable man, usually quick with a joke, who suffers the task of playing these games at the behest of the CX company, a company that gleefully promotes and demotes him based on his performance in the games, but one that he also appears to run. His assistants will show up to alternately help or torment him, whichever is funnier in the moment.

I don’t really have a style. I have a way that I draw or model or design characters, but I don’t really have a style. I was watching an artist on YouTube, something I do quite a lot, and they were trying something a little outside of their ordinary, but they said that they were adapting it to their own style.

I had reason to think recently about the way that art is taught. I think there are a lot of art teachers, instructors, and professors out there that do a fantastic job. You can even find many of them on YouTube or various art instruction channels.

Best Games - Shatterhand (Tokkyū Shirei Solbrain) By 1991 the last nails were already being driven into the coffin of the NES. The console wouldn’t actually be discontinued for years, and in its home market of Japan, a full decade. Games would continue to trickle out during those years (there are still games being made for the old Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System), but releasing a game for that machine in 1991 was just asking for it to be forgotten.

I hope you have, or have had, a good Thanksgiving. If you are American, and you have your Thanksgiving one week before Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever, what are you doing. Spread your family holidays out a bit. That’s just wacky. ​

I’m fighting a battle against pixels and I’m losing. Maybe I’m winning. It’s hard to tell. My pixel art game project is sort of stuck, but the wheels are still spinning.

Best Games - Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Treasure of Tarmin The Intellivision video game console started development in 1977. The state of consumer processors in 1977 wasn’t really geared toward high fidelity gaming experiences. A lot of arcade machines of the time were still black and white and the most common video game that the public was familiar with was Pong. Pong isn’t a bad game, but no one would describe it as deep or dynamic.

Recently, I tried drawing on actual paper. I mean, this isn’t a new thing. I used to draw on paper. I still scratch things out on paper all the time. Just rough notepad sketches when I’m testing out an idea or figuring out a shape. But I never actually draw on paper anymore. Not proper drawing. Not something I want to finish. It feels a little strange.

An update from the writing front. I only have one story out for submission as I type this (though when you read this, it will probably be at least two). So that isn’t great. But I did enter a new story writing contest, so that’s a bit better. Story writing contests are a bit weird.