I've been playing so much Pokémon Champions. Working on a Mega Greninja team. I think it's an underutilized, extremely powerful Pokémon, but I still need to crack exactly how it should work. I think it might also involve Alolan Ninetales and Farigiraf.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna start calling game teams "kei" and "midi" and not "iii" or "indie" and you're gonna hate it but I'm right to do it, until we have better terms, sorry bro, this is not discourse, this is praxis

newsletter.hushcrasher.com/p/taxonomy-o...

Archipelago and Garden are the only two patterns you can get in Champions? I wonder why those two

Trump has very literally threatened genocide today, in no uncertain terms. No gray area. "An entire civilization will die tonight."

It is time. It's *been* time, but it's even more time now. He has to go. He has to be taken out of the office. No kings. No fascist presidents. No genocide.

It was one of those roughly twice-in-a-decade magical times. A surreal jump from the previously felt Lowest Dearth in DKU history, overnight.

The Switch 2 has been unhacked for nine months so far and I'm starting to feel pretty impressed by that. Without an obvious way in, S2 may be secure for a long time.

This is such an important point that gets increasingly ignored in this industry. The reason, potentially the ONLY reason as far as we know, that video games have grown from a kids' hobby to an adults' one is because of the mark they made on now-adults as kids.

If we lose that, we're a non-factor.

It's true.

The physical Xbox One version of Undertale looks like a thing you would see in a dream to clue you in on this reality not being real.

Is that new box art?

Refreshing to see an entirely non-AI related artistic retouch completely fumbling the originally intended tone of a work.

It's definitely appreciated in my evaluation little by little every time I've thought about it after I finished it, and it started pretty high anyway.

I thought about it in BIG WAYS every day for the first four or five months after it came out. Now it's more like weekly. But, I'm listening to its OST literally right now as I write this. I don't think it's quite cracked my top 9 games, like everyone was sharing on here, but maybe it will someday.

And Bananza capitalizes off of that in a huge way. It is big and loud and fast and furry and dancing and considered and bursting and eerie and melodic and hang-out-y and adventurous and well-defined and superfluous in giving the player tons of completely unnecessary area and interactions to explore.

But come on, mang. The game is exquisite. It's Nintendo EPD on top of their game in a way that we only see once every five years or so these days. I probably wouldn't say EPD is literally the best game studio in the world, but I'd sign off on them being the world best at *game production execution*.

Oh, and the Racing Layer level is pretty much a complete miss, unfortunately. I love Rambi riding, but I think it just didn't quite come together. Needed a 2nd draft.

There are absolutely things about it that I don't like.

- The VO direction could have used another listen.
- The postgame is grindy unless you buy the divisive DLC.
- The levels could use more named characters w/ personalities instead of homogenous animal species.
- Q3 of the playthrough is weak.

And then, for all but two, maybe three, games per year, it dries away and the prevailing opinion becomes "It's good, but we blew it out of proportion. Silly us! Silly fandom!"

I feel like this can be just as reactionary (if not more) than the original praise, and I just want to double-down for DKB.

It's old news now, but there's something that happens with like 90% of the big, popular games where the attitude at first is

"Wow, this is one of the new big, incredible, games. It has early onset all-timer's disease. It's a once in a decade moment for gaming, which is only a few decades old."

Donkey Kong Bananza is one of The Greats. It is one of the most generous games I've ever played that isn't some massive open-world. Gorgeous style. Fantastic sound and soundtrack. IMPECCABLE feeling on the sticks. Perfect balance between old and new in terms of furthering the DK series. Beautiful.

I don't know why we don't get the Japanese Tooie boxart on this website, but WW's Japanese art is always nice to see.

I wondered if any of the incredible games from 2025, especially Donkey Kong Bananza, would disrupt my top nine, and apparently: barely no. But it was close!

Telling the Tale is the name of the podcast and it's searchable in any podcasting app.

(Telling the Tale is also available wherever you listen to podcasts.)

This may be in contention for my favorite episode @theflyingdustman.bsky.social and I have ever done. Jake and Emily were so great to speak with and it felt like a fitting way to nurse the podcast to sleep for a while.

We got an opportunity to speak with @skunkapegames.com about their remake of Poker Night at the Inventory (which comes out tomorrow!). We also go deep into the history of the original game's development and Telltale as a whole. Check it out!
open.spotify.com/episode/0XXu...

Life is getting so hard

It's not even the only movie I've ever seen.

I think the most millennial thing about me is that I don't know how to not think that the "Holding Out for a Hero" scene in Shrek 2 is the best action scene in all of cinema.

This rules so hard

They love the circle!