I was excited when Nintendo released the first special edition of a NES game for their online service, letting you play The Legend of Zelda from the start with a bunch of rupees and items. It was an acknowledgment that these classic titles have in fact aged and working to make them more approachable for a wider segment of modern audiences. That’s really cool! (Though of course it would have been even cooler to have a Game Genie or other mechanism for more cheats.)

But ever since then, all the special editions have focused on skipping content instead of making it more approachable. The worst is the one for Dr. Mario, which just puts you right before winning so you can watch a cinematic that you could just as easily watch on YouTube.

This feels like a really disappointing waste of potential. The special editions could make these classic and historically-interesting games more appealing to play by removing outdated punishment - even an infinite lives cheat would go a long way for many of these titles. I don’t understand who is served by SP editions that just skip most of the game.

I feel like there are two fundamentally different ways to play The Sims:

1. As an ant farm. You load it up with a bunch of people with varying personalities and goals and then watch them live their lives and bounce off each other.
2. As a dollhouse. You focus on specific individuals and families and have an idea of who they are and what their life should be like so you decide most or all of what they do.

These two approaches are contradictory because they require different levels of control over the game. Just as you might occasionally tap the glass of an actual ant farm or drop in some cookie crumbs or something to see how the ants react, an ant-farming Sims player might order one of their Sims to flirt with or insult someone to create some drama and keep things interesting. But by and large, this player wants their Sims to make autonomous decisions so the simulation keeps running.

Meanwhile, in actual dollhouses, nothing happens unless the person playing with the dolls says it happens. Similarly, dollhousing Sims players want complete control over their Sims so they can create exactly the story they’re trying to create. These players disable Sims' autonomy (called “free will” in earlier Sims games) so that Sims don’t make out-of-character decisions.

Now, I have to admit that I’m only inferring the existence of ant-farming players based on design decisions in more recent Sims games. I’m very much a dollhouser, I’ve never talked to an ant-farmer, and it didn’t even occur to me that they’d exist until I was trying to understand some of the changes that came in The Sims 3 and 4. But if they don’t exist, then a lot of those changes are completely baffling.

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For the completionists among us, trophy/achievement lists and other in-game checklists are basically the steps of a bizarre ritual to escape a curse.

It’s like, “Oh, you wish to be free of the grip of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate? First, you must clear all 615 spaces in adventure mode, collect all 1302 unique spirits, and defeat all 124 challenges! Only then will you release its hold over your mind!”

Just eighteen challenges to go until I can move on to Marvel’s Spider-Man…

Based on how much joy they brought me, not on objective greatness.

10. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017)
9. West of Loathing (2017)
8. Dust: An Elysian Tail (2012)
7. Stories: The Path of Destinies (2016)
6. Iconoclasts (2018)
5. Golf Story (2017)
4. Night in the Woods (2017)
3. I Am Setsuna (2016)
2. Fire Emblem Warriors (2017)
1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)

Honorable mentions to Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Finding Paradise, and Subsurface Circular.

Games that came out in 2018 that I haven’t played yet but suspect would have made the list if I had:

1. Dragon Quest XI
2. Marvel’s Spider-Man
3. Detroit: Become Human
4. Celeste

Most anticipated game for 2019:

Dragon Quest Builders 2

I want a game where you control one hero in 3D and one in 2D. The 3D hero’s motto is “Onward and upward!” while the 2D hero’s motto is “Up and to the right!”

The worst part of finally getting around to writing articles that I’ve wanted to write for several years are all the reference links I saved that have since broken - especially the ones that aren’t on the Wayback Machine. I am haunted by ghosts of knowledge.

Explorers never receive ironic comeuppance! …except for sometimes!

SPOILER WARNING: Shows one solution to a late-game platforming challenge.

An explorer never gives up! An explorer finds a way!

Every review I read of Miitopia makes me think - why on earth is this not a mobile title that integrates with Miitomo? Missed opportunity.

A good actor finds a way to make the scene work.