I’ve been working through all the games my parents never let me play as a kid using emulators. The idea for this post was inspired by blitz: the league. A dark and gritty American football arcade style game. It features steroids, corruption, and to the modern audience disgusting emphasis on dirty hits and injury. The injuries are emphasized through rewarding the player and mortal kombat style xrays.
It is not without humor (sending sex workers to the away team’s hotel before a game is a feature in the sequel iirc). The gameplay is fun enough and it’s really funny how mad the nfl got because despite the deep flaws it correctly pointed out the corruption.
Final score: “hey dude sniff this milk”/10.
My two favorite recent Pokemon releases (not including spinoffs) are Let's Go Eevee and Pikachu and Legends Arcaeus precisely because both of them let you dodge random encounters if you want and change the way you catch the 'mon and what you do with them in interesting ways.
I played through a bit of Arceus on Ryujinx, but I didn't actually make it through the full tutorial (and to think some of us complained about the old man in Viridian City teaching us to catch a Weedle!). Maybe I'll pick it back up or check out Let's Go Pikachu for the nostalgia factor. Wonder if there's a mod to replace the new OST with the OG Game Boy OST, or how hard it would be to do myself...I just love those 8-bit bleeps and bloops.
Also, happy cakeday, Super Saiya-jin Marx! Hard to believe it's been over two years since we got booted from :reddit-logo:.