it is really particularly exhausting discourse and i don't blame you. i think it's wise to choose happinessSengoku Strider wrote:I find it kind of dreary to be honest, which is why I'm not involved in it
anyway - a lot of preservation work, published books, donations, and sway become the foundation for a lot of significant, if sometimes abstracted influence. the oakland scene has a lot of twisting paths of nepotism and trust fund kids and privilege, it's no coincidence that's where cifaldi's "video game history foundation" is established (which gets donations from a lot of these youtuber people you mentioned, whose materials are likely cited in papers or will be, whose institution is "friends" with a lot of people in these places). some of my friends and acquaintances were future teachers, people writing extensive papers, those down in the dirt in zines, and many of the *actually* disadvantaged people having sex with them and trying to make something out of themselves by climbing the ladder. they all knew and had opinions about your parishes, sheffields, and cifaldis and several had direct interactions with them at conferences (a few got boosted by them).
i use words referring to structure i don't like too liberally and interchangeably because of how much affluence and privilege bind them together, and maybe gesturing vaguely to academia, intellectuals, etc., has obfuscated the breadth of what i'm beckoning at. i worry if i keep trying to clarify this one, we're going to talk past each other and get into political theory - but what i'm saying is that parish does have money, authority, and connections and does use them. and that he isn't there off just his labor, but because he occupies a position in a vacuum that many would be eager to have.
i hear about him absolutely all of the time anywhere i talk about video games, whether it's with obscure queer twine auteurs (who absolutely don't talk about any of those youtubers) or on here or when i'm abstractly reminded of him as i buy a game on limited run games and they ask me to throw a dollar into the "video game history foundation." i know way too much about this guy (despite never listening to retronauts, maybe only directly reading one or two of articles despite all the constant regurgitating of his opinions i've seen) and i think he knows way too little about how to properly play a video game for someone who puts "media curator" as the first thing in his twitter bio (forgetting everything else!). fucking more than 15 fucking years i've been hearing about this "toasty frog" mother fucker every week or two i've spent talking about games online.
one of my favorite things in the world is to drop into one of my favorite mom & pop shops and start chatting up the owner or talking too loudly with my partner - and getting one or two people surrounding me like i'm some sort of traveling folk storyteller with mysterious wisdom. i know that's vain as hell, but i always tirelessly try to recommend things to the people i talk to and they seem to really love it. i get appreciated and thanked repeatedly and with absurd consistency and it warms my heart. i live in the south and even the nerds are congenial. but even then, i still hear jeremy's name drop. "you heard of retronauts?" i kindly try to change the subject off of that very quickly and get back to hearing about their personal experiences and opinions, because that pitfall of talking about personalities and "influencers" begins dominating conversation if you don't hard cut it off - people will start just repeating opinions they've heard and get far away from what is cool about themselves or what they want to do.
again, i am less mad at him, i agree he is "a guy," and more mad at the conditions that create these vacuums. i think, really, i'd like to not think of him at all, but it's nearly impossible to participate in games discussion anywhere outside of hermetically sealed bubble and not start griping about the pernicious nature of "influencers" and for someone to disagree and say they're not so bad (or vice versa), etc., etc. it's maddening ;A; i mean, we're doing it right now :[ it's less a profession and more like a throne or something.
)
Screenshots suggest Bubble Bobble Zero, but it recalls Pac-Man and Bomberman just as much. Has BB's nefarious monsters (literally, Monsta and Mighta getting early appearances in) amidst Pac's dense mazes, the player armed with Bomberman's deliberately harrowing self-lethal explosives... the real twist is, it still plays like a side-viewed, gravity-bound platformer, and unlike the free-floating enemies, Mr. Chackn' (a flightless bird?) can't leave the ground.
No outlandish triple-digit air combos, etc... I'm talking opening six bastards' throats and booting the seventh into a burn pit with one deadly-accurate riposte before the boss rolls up for a 3HKO clash. 
