In Light Of The Bluesky Rebrand, I Have Updated My Links Page With A Fancy New Animation For It

in light of the bluesky rebrand, i have updated my links page with a fancy new animation for it

ironically, without gif support, bluesky is the one place i can't post this gif to...

and my VERY favorite game that i played in 2023 is...!

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Booster Course Pass

i'm still in shock that they made more courses for this game. i genuinely never thought this day would come! when the game first released on switch, i figured the Deluxe moniker meant it was a one-and-done "GOTY Edition" complete package that would never get major updates, and each year that passed cemented my suspicions further. but then, out of the blue, they announced new courses! for my favorite mario kart game ever!!

"sky why is this on the list—"

god i'm really happy with the course selection they brought in from previous games. lots of love for the wii, and it hits all the right notes of my nostalgia. plus i love the way they brought in courses from Tour with all the routes mixed in as one long course! i never played Tour so it's an excellent way for me to sample the course design, and some of them are surprisingly great.

"come on sky, seriously—"

and the characters?? i know they didn't originally plan to add new characters but it just feels so complete with them there. plus they added 8 new characters when i thought there was only room for 6 and—

"SKY this game's been out for almost TEN YEARS and you've been playing it nonstop ever since it came out. how does this count???"

…listen.

when i look back at any given year, the games i play are some of the fondest memories i have. so when i sent an ask to all my friends, asking them what their favorite game they played this year is… that's my way of asking them to reflect on the good times! because that's how it works for me too. it helps me look past the bad shit that happened and toward the memories i made, the fun i had.

and you know what the most fun i had all year was? it was playing Mario Kart with my friends.

each time a new wave came out, i would first play it with my partner. just me and her playing together on local wireless, touring the new courses and gushing about how well updated the old ones are and how cool the new ones are. a chance for me and her to explore a digital space together and share in that delight.

then i would stream it! and as most of y'all know, streaming each wave of DLC made for some of the best streams of the year. not for content, not for competition, but just because we could sit down and play together. a game we could all bond over!

and the dlc was the reason we kept coming back. would this have happened if there weren't new courses? maybe, maybe not! it doesn't matter. the dlc was the perfect excuse, and the quality of both the game and the courses made the return trip feel worth it.

it doesn't have to end there, either! they've effectively doubled the size of this game now. do you know how many times i'm gonna get to jump into other friends' game nights and play with them? it's already happened several times! not only do i have all these new memories, but i have even more to look forward to.

i could endlessly pore over the quality of the courses, but really, none of that matters in the long run. what matters is that they extended one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time. what matters is that i got to share it with my friends! when i think back to this period of my life, these will be some of the first memories i turn to.

so fuck the rules! fuck the idea that a game had to come out in 2023, or even that i had to first experience it in 2023. the Mario Kart DLC was the highlight of my year, and no amount of "it doesn't count" will change that.

"and then you'll take a break right?" you fool. i have 10 more posts written for entire series that are unfinished. i will never take a break for as long as i am accosted by my dreams

(this is a joke i'm gonna take it easy in january)

most of my remaining blog posts for the year are written – all the "favorite games of 2023" reviews are done, and two of the remaining four blog posts *after* that are written too. i just need to write the other two, add images for two of them, and then i'm DONE writing for 2023

y'know people always ask what you're favorite game is

but nobody ever asks what your least favorite game is

truth be told, that's a much harder question to answer! i'm usually able to wring some enjoyment out of the worst games, if only to laugh at them, explore them in a historical context, or find lessons on what not to do when making a game. even the time i streamed "Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade" – the lowest rated game currently on Metacritic – i got some enjoyment out of laughing at the game with my friend, and i still think of it as one of my favorite early streams!

that means that, generally, my least favorite games sit somewhere in the middle; they're competent enough to not have laughable flaws, but boring enough that i have no desire to finish them. unsurprisingly, i remember very few of these, because they don't leave any impression on me!

so discarding that angle... in the vein of my favorite games of the year being ranked by my favorite memories, the most fun i had – i need to dig through my memories for something so horrifyingly bad that it left a lasting impression on me. and i might just know the answer. so without further ado, here's the story of:

My Least Favorite Game Ever

i like to brag that my first console was a sega dreamcast at any opportunity i can get – it's worth bragging about! that cute little console was way ahead of its time, and i was proud of the library i had built up. sonic adventure 1 and 2, daytona usa 2001, chu chu rocket, rayman 2…

every saturday my friends from the area would come over, and we would all take turns racing each other at sa2 or daytona. my parents would provide us with snacks and drinks – one time they even hosted a daytona tournament! those saturdays are why i love streaming so much, why i love playing mario kart with friends… they were essential to my growth as a kid, and i cherish the memories dearly.

one day, though, we had to move away from my friends in the area, because my dad was graduating and we could no longer live in the apartments on campus. it was a time of great change for many reasons: right before we left, mom found a big gaming deal – we could trade up my dreamcast for a gamecube with a memory card and a free game! so mom managed to drag me to e.b. games and jump on the deal, even though i didn't understand why… my dreamcast works perfectly fine, right?

but it was 2003, and nobody told me that the dreamcast had been dead for two years. few stores carried dreamcast games anymore, and frankly, it was a miracle that e.b. games was offering a trade-up deal this late.

i nervously brought my dreamcast and my precious library of games to the counter. they handed me a list to choose my free game from – just a simple printed list of names, with no covers or gameplay details, no way to look at the back of the box.

i did not recognize a single game on the list.

i nervously tried to back out of the deal, but we were already here, and mom was growing impatient. so i chose the one franchise i recognized – a game called Shrek: Extra Large – and took my new gamecube home.

i HATED it.

the game was dull, short, and crude; it had no life in it whatsoever. i remember 100%ing the game in just the short week between trading everything in and the time we moved. i hated the story, hated the gameplay, hated the music, hated the humor.

i wished i could play anything else… but i had no other games anymore. the dreamcast was my only console, and i sold it all. for this.

worse still, the game had no multiplayer. on my last saturday there, i had to tearfully explain to my friends that i no longer had my beloved dreamcast, so we could not play sonic adventure 2 anymore, and we couldn't even play the one game i did have together.

it stung all the harder when we moved, and i no longer had my dreamcast… or my friends.

as soon as we finished moving, the first thing i did was sell that accursed game. i got a couple bucks back, which was just enough to afford a used copy of Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly – a game that, these days, has a reputation for being glitchy and repetitive.

…and i had WAY more fun with it! the gamecube wasn't a total wash after all!!

before long, i gathered a library of new games i was actually happy with: sonic heroes, crash bandicoot: wrath of cortex… games that most people these days would call "mid." it didn't matter. i was too young to care, too broken myself to notice how broken the games were. i made do.

and then, one day, i finally found Sonic Adventure 2: Battle in the store – and i begged my parents to buy it for me. the void in my heart was finally filled, and the gamecube would go on to become my childhood favorite console.

was Shrek: Extra Large actually that bad? honestly, i don't remember enough about the game itself to speak from experience. wikipedia suggests that it was heavily panned by critics, so it probably was that bad. one day i want to revisit the game on stream and find out for myself…

but does it matter whether it was good or bad? the game is associated with some of my worst childhood memories – trading my familiar dreamcast away, moving away from my friends without getting to play one last game with them, losing everything i held dear as a kid. the game could be an underrated gem, and it would still be tarnished enough that i could never engage with it in good faith.

if that doesn't qualify for "least favorite game," i don't know what does.

————————————

one last footnote… i've always been curious about which other games i passed up on when i traded in my dreamcast for a gamecube. what other games were on the list? a broken fragment of a memory says that Luigi's Mansion might've been on there… which makes sense, because i wouldn't have recognized it as a mario game from the name alone! but given that shrek was even on the list, it was probably just a bunch of other underselling tripe.

so if you know of any way to dig back through time for that info, let me know! it would've been in December 2003 at e.b. ɡames (or possibly gamestop?), and i imagine it was a nationwide deal rather than a local one. i would love to go dig through some old promo paper scans or press releases…

*robotnik voice* I ATE THAT EGGNOG

new stream archive – in which we visit some of the prettiest worlds that the Kirby series has to offer 💖