“Why isn’t *company* showing more of *game in development*” because right now the game is a bunch of grey boxes, T-posing, and placeholder models/textures that everyone working on it knows look like shit and don’t represent the final product

And if they show it people will say “it looks like shit”

To admit that the right harnesses such agency would be to also admit that the left fails to do the same.

Goes hand in hand with assuming that there's nothing they can do to either mobilize or drive away left-leaning voters from the Dem column and that triangulation is always the "smart" play.

It's almost as if the same things that radicalized us during GWB's presidency still make us mad when Democrats also do them.

The only phrases I remember verbatim from the 2024 convention are "most lethal military in the world" and "tirelessly working toward a ceasefire."

Meanwhile, playing Odyssey often feels like completing a list of chores.

Odyssey is at least self aware enough about this to lock its ultimate challenge behind a ~60% completion threshold rather than 100% like in other recent games, but it still doesn't prevent most moons from feeling meaningless.

I'm very critical of how modern Mario is encumbered by Checklist Gameplay.

Mario 3 gave you alternative thank you messages from the kings if you rescued them while wearing a suit. It was a cool acknowledgement of a difficult task that didn't lock you out of anything if you missed it.

For example, I'm forever grateful that somebody put "FOMO" to words because I became much more resistant to it once I could name and identify it.

Related: some of the most satisfying material I've watched/read aren't things than ran counter to my beliefs, but those that eloquently put words to things that I already understood at a subconscious level but wasn't yet thinking clearly about.

Same, but it's tempered by "look at all the money I'm saving."

Average 2026 web app experience.

And I think it was the right call. I've played NSMB2 from start to finish twice, and while I know for a fact that I enjoyed it both times, I would still struggle to describe anything memorable about it.

Everyone understandably groaned when NSMB2 and NSMBU were both announced at the same time. A collective "more of this? really?"

Even as a pretty big NSMB stan, I decided at the time that I'd just pick up NSMBU right away and hold off on NSMB2 for later because even I expected to be burnt out on it.

The Raging Demon Dutch Oven

I wish there was less writing on Hasan — obviously the de facto victor of the heart and soul of the terminally online millennial / zoomer left, the heir apparent of both BreadTube and Teen Vogue-style journalism — and instead more discussion about why the Democrats want to genocide Palestinians

The Neo Geo hardware being so prolific and standardized is a huge boost on that front, too.

Way easier to replicate that experience at home than the dozens of deluxe bespoke taikan machines that have faded from collective memory.

These types do not have the capacity for self-reflection.

Forever maddening that Vote Blue types will heckle you with "so you support Republicans???" spam whenever you take issue with Democratic Party tactics like this, but they never seem to direct that same energy to the Dem politicians who are out there literally laundering the Republicans' reputation.

People turn things like the Star Wars prequels into a key part of their identities and take offense to criticism about it in a way that someone my age would do for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

I enjoyed TMNTII, because I was seven, but I've never met a TMNTII stan.

Seeing talk about Sonic 2006 revisionists and am wondering why there's an age/year cutoff around Y2K for people stanning garbage media they grew up with.

I see this for '00s properties all the time but never for '90s, and I don't remember seeing this for '90s trash ten years ago either.

The Pragmata discourse is yet another perfect opportunity to implement the Sessler Index, but only if you are not a coward.

Sunshine's *normal* levels tend to have more platforming substance than the entirety of Galaxy 1 and a good chunk of Odyssey.

And I always thought that reflected really poorly on Galaxy when Sunshine is purported to be the more exploration-focused game and Galaxy the more platforming-focused one.

I don't trust people who dog on the NSMB series in general.

I'm not gonna say that art direction isn't important, but those games' biggest haters really prioritize it over game design, which is a weird set of priorities when talking about Super Mario specifically.

It's a testament to that game's design goals that I love it so much despite literally being unable to see stereoscopic 3D and thus only ever playing it with its system's one gimmick just turned off the whole time.

And the second quest is as close as we're ever going to get to "Lost Levels in 3D," and that personally means a lot to me.

That, and the game just narrows its focus to platforming challenge in general that's very appreciated. Running away from cosmic clones while constantly having to restock on time extensions in later levels fires a whole lot of neurons that I play these games for in the first place.

3D Land accomplishes the same thing, but with the super leaf. It focuses on raw platforming way more than other 3D games, and the floaty tail is a huge assist for getting through it all, so the leaf sort of takes on the same tension that the flower has in the original game.

SMB1 holds up to me because of the fire flower. It's a powerful tool for wiping out most obstacles in front of you, but one mistake puts you back at base Mario, and you have to work to climb out of that hole. It's a dual feeling of power plus vulnerability that gives the game meaningful tension.

It's easily my 2nd favorite 3D Mario. Only Mario 64 clears it.

It's the only 3D game in the series that squarely aims to capture NES Mario's strengths. And I don't mean "it uses SMB3's art style" or "it has a progressive power-up structure."

Sometimes I think of how early Cyberpunk 2077 streams had characters with their full on dongs flopping around and how even though people were joking about this they were also not making a big deal of it.

Then I think of how if a JP game allowed this then it would just be written off as "perv shit."

It's one part this and one part the usual anti-Japanese nonsense.

Other dad games didn't really get this same type of Discourse.

Famicom Disk System, Sega CD, and Turbo CD all have their strong points, but it still depends on what you mean by "well."