This part lasts about two seconds. UP OR DOWN? OMG! I can’t deci.. it’s over. Back to running in a straight line.
It wasn’t until after I hit publish on the review of the Super Contra coin-op that I stopped and thought “did platforming even matter?” In the side-scrolling stages, you’re mostly running along the ground. Sure, you might go up a hill or two, and later in the game the path zig zags a little. But, you’re mostly just jogging. Since the jumping is ineffective towards dodging most bullets (nowhere near as effective as ducking), Super Contra feels like a game of just brute force and nothing more.
So, what AM I playing?
The Super C NES review hits later today. Let’s face it: the coin-op side of the Contra equation was never going to be the highlights of the marathon. The best thing I can say about both is that I’m happy with how the reviews turned out, and I’m happy I never have to play either ever again. Well, assuming Konami doesn’t get it together and realize they’re in a position to do a prestige collection of their classic games. Which, in fairness, Contra Anniversary Collection sort of was. It offered US, European, and Japanese ROMs and a “bonus book” that really isn’t that interesting. There’s also two games I’d consider to be “missing.” Did the MSX game belong in the set? Yes. Does the set hurt for its absence? Not really. Contra NES alone is worth the $20 asking price, in my opinion. It’s not just any game. It’s one of the greatest games ever made, and I suspect you’ll get enjoyment out of other games in the set. Hell, I’ve still got the 16-bit Contra games left, and the Game Boy games, the second of which (1) was made by Factor 5 (2) uses the Super Game Boy and (3) also isn’t in Contra Anniversary Collection. That’s the other missing game, and it makes even less logical sense to skip it. Game Boy was a global platform, unlike the MSX. It’s critically acclaimed, too. Some decisions I will never understand.
I think my first post-Twitter week is going swimmingly. I’m pretty happy with the Contra reviews. They’re tougher to write-up than you’d think. Legendary games, bad or good, are tricky reviews. You don’t want to state the obvious too much. I assume people read me because they want to hear someone else’s perspective on games, and that’s why I try to at least look for little things that stand out that my readers might not have thought about. Like with Contra on the NES, the gap between weapons pick-ups might be the game’s secret sauce. Everyone loves the variety of guns. That’s the self-evident part. Nobody needs to hear that from me. My job is to figure out “why is it that way?” And after playing through it, I came to the conclusion that if the game wasn’t generous with them, I don’t think people would talk about Contra today. I think it’s the amount of opportunities for upgrades that made the game what it is. For all its flaws, even the coin-op is generous with guns, a semi-rarity in arcades.
Smash TV has some of the weirdest item drop pacing in gaming. Actually, change that. Smash TV is more stingy with its usage and not the drop rate itself. Speaking of which, I’m holding out on doing a Midway Arcade Treasures review. I really did think we’d have a release for current platforms by now. I was almost certain it was going to happen, and it hasn’t yet. The only one currently for sale is a previous-gen version called Midway Arcade Origins, which I found to have mediocre emulation and options. I’m really crossing my fingers for Atari and Digital Eclipse to secure the rights for a Midway version of the Gold Master Series. Digital Eclipse has worked on these licenses in the past and presumably has the contacts to do it again on the grandest scale of all. I think it’ll happen in 2025. I hope so. It would be one of the greatest collections of games in history.
This is something indie developers making action games should consider. In almost any arcade-like action game, the first level and/or the first life will always have upgrades early. That’s the hook of the game, not all that different from how slot machines are rigged to make players think they came close to winning. Even bad games tend to drop good power-ups early. But, once the player is hooked, a lot of games scale back the opportunities for those upgrades. Some do it far too much. Darius II had this problem (read Taito Milestones II: The Definitive Review for my full review on Darius II). And Darius II is a very good game. It’s also one of the rare novelty coin-ops that withstands the test of time (if you consider ultra-widescreen to be a novelty, which it certainly was in 1989). But Darius II was so stingy with power-ups that it’s practically miserly. That’s literally the only thing that held it back from all-timer status. Why are games like Gradius or Life Force/Salamander all-time classics but Darius is on the fringe as a very good and very popular B-lister? Item drops. I really think that’s all. Action movies don’t front-load all the action scenes at the start of the film, then do all the boring parts for the rest of the run time. When making your games, bring the goods early, and keep bringing ’em. Fun matters more than challenge, and if you need to be Scrooge-like with your items, you’re doing challenge wrong anyway.
So, what AM I playing?
Super Contra is coming later today or early Thursday, and the NES version will follow soon after. I have no clue why Super Contra’s reputation is buried to the degree it is. Actually, I do. No UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT B A START for it. What if they had done that? Would Super C on the NES have been as big, or bigger, than Contra? Do you think anyone at Konami stares at the ceiling at night thinking “we could have been Call of Duty big if we hadn’t taken that code away?” Hell, it has a lives code. Just not THAT lives code. The famous one. The one that rolls off the tip of your tongue, and I think it hurt Super C. You can’t rule it out, because nobody really thinks Super Contra/Super C suck. If replacing the memorable third person stuff with top-down stuff isn’t the reason it slipped into oblivion, maybe it’s because gaming’s most famous code isn’t there. What a horrible thought.
Hey everybody! Well, this IS a blog and I’m going to start treating it like such. That means more updates. So, what AM I playing?
In a time before patches..
Xena: Warrior Princess is the next review coming to IGC Wednesday. What a turnaround this table has made. Upon release, it was unplayable, with some of the most mind boggling rejections in Pinball FX. Now, if you play Xena today in the standard physics mode, we’d still consider that build to be OUT OF ORDER. Don’t play it. Don’t base your opinion of Xena on it. It still has nonsense rejections where a flush shot right on line will still reject. Check to make sure you’re playing with realistic physics. Because, with those physics, Xena is saved. It’s not perfect yet. They should continue to patch it. But, following a patch, Xena’s excellence has been revealed. This is a FANTASTIC table by Anna Lengyel, who is getting her first ever MASTERPIECEratings with this pin from Oscar and me. Yep, I went there. Angela, Jordi, and Sasha think we’ve lost our mind. They think it’s REALLY good, but not upper-echelon good. Xena is going to win an award. The only question is what’s the margin? That post is coming to Indie Gamer Chick and The Pinball Chick shortly.
Yo uh Adrian, where’s uh, you know, my royalty check?
It’s Super Contra time, and this time around, I’m starting with the coin-op, THEN doing the NES game. Even though I’ve played through both versions once, when Contra Anniversary Collection came out, I really don’t remember much about them. That’s an ominous sign. I’m not going to do any other version of Super C besides the arcade and NES. I also have this:
That’s Contra Force. It’s not even a real Contra game (it started life as a non-Contra game called Arc Hound) and it never came out in Japan. That’s ominous, but I’m reviewing it. And, I have a weird NES Super Contra bootleg that James Rolfe fans might recognize (and I only say that because he’s listed on the Wikipedia page for Super Contra) that I’ve had a few people ask me to look at it. It’s called Super Contra.. 8? WTF? Needless to say, I’m not close to finished with Contra. Oh, and what about the SNES game? One of the downsides to taking down my Twitter was all my #IGCvSNES stuff is gone. But, the big games I will redo as proper IGC reviews. Contra III will be part of this marathon. Don’t worry, Sega fans. Hard Corps will be too.
And this will go last, if at all. Seriously WTF? (Contra “8”)
I’m enjoying this so far. And thanks to everyone who’s been leaving comments. I’m on Facebook too. So, what am I playing?
This.
Well, I teased on Facebook a few surprises with this Contra streak I’m on. Indeed, before I move onto Super Contra, I wanted to give the MSX2 build of Contra a shot. I really need to do more MSX games at IGC. Then again, isn’t it time that Konami and everyone else who programmed games for this wonderful platform pull the sticks out of their butt and celebrate it? As an American born in 1989, I didn’t know crap about the MSX until recent years. I first learned about it via Metal Gear. When I looked into the NES version, I found out that a lot of people consider it vastly inferior to the MSX game. That and its version of Castlevania is “the weird one. No, not the arcade game. The other weird one.”
It’s called “Vampire Killer” and it is, indeed, weird. Single screens. Keys. I’ll be doing this one sometime soon.
I’ve played enough games for it now to know it deserves to be known in the United States as more than a curiosity from across the ocean. This thing is a bonafide gaming juggernaut, with a seriously loyal fanbase, so I’m not sure why everyone who made games for it has allowed it to fade into oblivion. In the late 90s, there were a whopping three 10-game compilations for MSX on the PlayStation and Saturn, plus an all-in-one collection of those three collections (30 total games) exclusively on Saturn. Sadly, those were Japanese exclusives. It had the best name ever for a collection too: Konami Antiques MSX Collection. Antiques! Come on, that’s precious! Also, MSX got Virtual Console releases on Nintendo Wii and Wii U, but again, only in Japan.
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I think with retro collections as scorching hot as they are right now, the time has come for MSX to be celebrated globally. I think Americans would be chomping at the bit to play these, and from what I’ve played so far, the games of MSX stand out. Take Contra. It’s NOT Contra like you or I know it. It has 19 levels, among other things. Oh, and no scrolling. I’m pretty sure MSX doesn’t really do scrolling in most action games. So far, I’ve only reviewed four MSX games. The first came in February with Parodius, which I didn’t love. Then there were three in Pac Man Museum: The Games They Couldn’t (or Wouldn’t) Include. I didn’t love the MSX builds of Pac-Man and especially Pac-Land (one of the worst games I’ve ever played), but the MSX Pac-Mania was genuinely fun and scored the first YES! for an MSX game. I suspect the second YES! will happen later today. And it won’t be the last MSX game of 2024 that I review. Oh no. Tetris for MSX will be a bonus review in Tetris Forever: The Definitive Review. Much like with Making of Karateka, I’m tacking-on some games not included in the collection as “just for funsies” reviews at the end that have no effect at all on the main reviews. It’s 2024 and I’m most excited for a Tetris game. Party like it’s 1985! Let’s all drink New Coke and sing We Are the World!
Rotating is down? Buttons are instadrops? Yea, I’m going to need to remap.
Hey everyone! Contra did pretty good, and THANK YOU for that! The first review after the shut-down was always going to be the toughest, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. I suspect more Contra is coming today. Wait, I can’t tease this. It’s literally called “What I’m Playing Right Now.”
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So, yea, I’m playing the arcade version of Contra. I think I’m probably going to marathon a few of the early Contras. At the very least, I’ll be doing Super C (NES), Super Contra (arcade), and Contra Force (NES). The one thing I didn’t bring up about Contra on the NES is the arcade situation. That it was one of the first home games that outshines the coin-op. Which it did. Easily, handily, and embarrassingly. The review of the arcade game will talk about all the ways how, and why. The Contra arcade review should hit later today.
New York Liberty, huh? About f*cking time. The 2024 WNBA Finals will go down as the best five game series in sports history, male or female. All but game two was absolutely riveting. TWO overtime games, including the deciding game that looked like the Liberty started the game remembering they’re the New York Liberty and incapable of winning anything of substance. The Lynx were making them look foolish. And then suddenly, the Lynx were the ones that threw away both the game and the championship. In fact, they did it multiple times in a single game. So awkward watching because you know the Minnesota players will be staring at their ceilings thinking of ALL those opportunities they gave up, and hopefully they know that it wasn’t the refs. Do I think the officiating was straight down the line? Nah. 25 to 8 on free throw attempts? Jesus, that’s horrendous. Even if Minnesota was making dumb mistakes.. and they WERE.. this was one of those “one team gets all the ticky-tack foul call” games that feels like it gives the losing team an out to avoid reflecting on anything. But, refs can’t make a difference unless you do your part, and Lynx were bricking wide-open shots all night, including a wide-open trey that would have been the greatest shot in WNBA history to end regulation. In overtime, Minnesota got 2 points. And the.. I can’t believe I’m typing this.. WNBA Champion New York Liberty, got 7. And the coach blamed the ref and not the fact that her team of shooters forgot how to shoot.
Next year, they’re bumping the WNBA Finals to seven games. I really wish they wouldn’t. Maybe the popularity is going up because the amount of games isn’t overwhelming to fans. Do you know what the best part of watching the WNBA is? Nobody has to say “clear my schedule for the next two weeks. The finals are on!” Sigh. Go Valkyries.
Dodgers/Yankees, huh? Hasn’t happened since 1981, but as the 12th Yankees-Dodgers World Series, it’s still the most played World Series even after a 43 year gap. That really tells you how dominant the two teams used to be, huh? I don’t think this will be as good as the WNBA Finals. I’ll take the Dodgers in a gentleman’s sweep. 4 to 1.
I did it. I deactivated my Twitter. Here’s the explanation in case you missed it. And I think it’s a safe bet that I shouldn’t be doing reviews while I’m both sick to my stomach and emotionally devastated. I played through Contra three times, and I was a complete zombie. Contra! One of the greatest games of all time, but the lights were on and nobody was home. I wrote a review with all the emotional punch of a turnip. So, what am I playing? Nothing. I think it’ll probably be a couple days before I feel.. anything.
A few months ago I started LCD Games XI, and I never finished it. So, here’s a thing from it.
CUPHEAD!! “Homebrew” by Itizso Gameplay Type: Spinning Plate
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Cuphead is an original creation by recreation master Itizso. While it’s a typical six-channel spinning plate game disguised as a gallery shooter, there’s a big twist to this one: you’re not scoring points. Instead, you’re just trying to survive for as long as you can, with scoring measured in minutes and seconds. Unfortunately, there’s no auto-fire here. You actually do have to mash the shooting button. This isn’t a game I could put extended playtime into without annihilating my hands. I suppose the question is “does it feel like Cuphead?” And the answer is “not even a little bit.” The pea shooter’s noise, that now apparently iconic clicking sound, is here for the LCD, but otherwise, nah. I think most fans of the franchise would be disappointed that the LCD is themed more after one of the platforming segments instead of an encounter with one of the humongous, transforming bosses. But, while I don’t think this necessarily works as a Cuphead game, the addition of leaderboards makes this a one-off spinning plate experience that I enjoyed, in small doses. Verdict: YES!
So, I’m not going to be posting updates to the former Twitter. I’ve decided to keep my account open for at least for a couple days so that my followers can see my parting message. I might just keep it open so that the plethora (great word) of indie developers who I’ve already connected with can still reach out to me and so nobody else can claim my handle there. But I’m ceasing updates to it, effective immediately with the link to this post. And it’s not really a politics thing, whether anyone believes it or not. I’ve quit following politics. It’s because social media is worse for you than cigarettes. Hey, I’ve quit smoking already. I quit opiates before that. I’ve been sober for years and years now. I’ve quit every addiction in my life, except that stupid Twitter account, and for what? Because I didn’t want to lose my followers? Actually, I trust the followers who want to read my reviews that they know where to find them, and it’s not on Twitter. The reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I ain’t going anywhere. I had good times there, but it’s not like it was all positive. I’ve been wiping tears all day, and I imagine I will for a while to come, but I’ll have no shortage of bad memories to look back on and know that this is what I should have done years ago. I wanted to, but I have over 18,000 followers, and that’s tough to give up. So, why do it?
UPDATE: The Contra Review is up! And I shut down the Twitter. Like pulling off a band-aid. I don’t know why they say that. I don’t remember a band-aid ever hurting. But, I’ve had my legs waxed. That’s a better metaphor. I leg-waxed my Twitter.
A few years back, some person who had, only five minutes earlier, discovered that, yea, epilepsy in gaming is a problem tried to whip-up a mob to cancel me, because this person decided I was an enemy of gaming accessibility. Me. As in the person who has been writing about epilepsy for a long, long time. She was having a tantrum and acting like developers were deliberately hurting people with flashing visuals in their games, which helps not at all. She literally didn’t know what she was even mad about. She didn’t know the science. She didn’t know the history. She didn’t know the particulars. She didn’t have a f*cking clue what she was talking about, and she didn’t care. It was just the latest thing to cross the path of a person who is perpetually raging. If this woman had done more than read half a tweet and a quarter of an article and actually did research, she would have understood that epilepsy is among the most misunderstood medical conditions in the world. When I started Indie Gamer Chick, in my experience, most developers during my early years (2011 – 2013) thought that people with epilepsy just didn’t play games. It made perfect sense to believe that, too. I believed it when I was diagnosed in 2005. My literal first thought was “oh no, I think I just lost video games forever.” Thankfully, it’s not that simple. Medical stuff rarely is. A lot of people think most or all epileptic people are photosensitive. They’re not. Take a random sample of 100 epileptic people and try to guess how many of them will be photosensitive enough to have seizures. Half? Two-thirds? Twenty? Twenty-five? Forty?
Three. Only 3. That’s 30 for every 1,000 people who live with epilepsy.
So, why is it such a common belief? The media, mostly. I’m sure every Nintendo fan has heard of the episode of the Pokemon anime that gave hundreds of kids seizures. Actually, most probably didn’t have tonic–clonic seizures (that’s what they call grand mal seizures now), or seizures at all. That’s because you don’t have to be epileptic to be photosensitive. You, the person reading this, could be photosensitive. Ever get blurred vision from a flashing light that lasts longer than it takes for your eyes to normally focus? How about a headache? Ever get a headache from a strobe light? Even a little one? YOU’RE PHOTOSENSITIVE. Welcome to the club. It’s a big club, too. The things that can give ME a seizure can give a SIGNIFICANTLY greater portion of the population what were the most widely reported effects of that Pokemon episode. Headaches. Dizziness. Nausea. Loss of balance. Confusion. Blurred vision.
There’s also a lot of myths about “triggers.” It’s best to think of it as a range. Even in the days where I wasn’t taking care of myself and seizures were more common, I had moments where I accidentally saw a strobe in full view and didn’t have a seizure or feel any consequence at all. But, there’s the time that it’s suspected I had a seizure from looking at a lamp, looking away from it, then looking back at it. Isn’t that scary? But that’s not an anomaly. That’s how it works. The scariest part by far of having epilepsy is how unpredictable it is. There’s no on-off switch that’s activated by something specific. It’s a scale, and an epileptic person only knows a moderately certain range. If you’re lucky (or maybe it’s unlucky, given the circumstances) you might get a feel for when you’re more sensitive than normal. I’ve had intuitions like that before, but really, it’s just a range where you don’t know where you’re at on any given day. It’s like the Range Game from Price is Right, only I play it with a strobe light and instead of winning a new refrigerator, I have a seizure.
“Ms. Vice is so excited to have won that she’s shaking. Hey, wait a second.. uh, medics?!”
That’s epilepsy. A series of dice rolls where you only get a vague set of rules. I don’t have “photosensitive epilepsy.” I have epilepsy AND I have photosensitivity which can result in a seizure. And I don’t even always have a seizure if the trigger “hits.” All those symptoms I listed above are far more likely to happen than a seizure. In fact, these days I rarely have seizures at all. I had a LOT when I started IGC. As many as one every three to four days. But, that was because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I felt sorry for myself, so I took drugs, but not the drugs I should have been taking. Robin Williams had a joke where he said a doctor told him “Robin, if you keep taking drugs, you’ll die” then later in life it became “Robin, take these drugs or you’ll die!” That’s my life these days. The “fun” drugs are out and the good ones are in, and seizures are very rare. In 2024, I’ve had two verified seizures and two suspected ones. So the betting favorite isn’t “death by seizure” anymore (who am I kidding? Overdosing was the favorite!) I think “crushed by a pinball table following a fit of rage” is the new favorite. Sh*t, I’ll take $10 on that.
So photosensitivity is a lot more complicated than people might think. Hell, you’re probably thinking of strobes only, aren’t you? While that is the most common trigger, it doesn’t even get you two-thirds the way there. What if I told you repetitive patterns can trigger some people? Shifting colors can too. And, by the way, there’s no such thing as “epilepsy safe.” Neither epilepsy nor photosensitivity work that way. Game developers need to discontinue using medical language in their option menus. You’re not a doctor, and calling your well-meaning toggle “epilepsy mode” or “photosensitive mode” implies safe for epilepsy. It’s just not, no matter how many things you change, because there’s no safety from it. Gaming will always be a risk for me and people like me. I’ve decided that it’s an acceptable risk, but make no mistake: it could kill me. That’s not off the table and WILL NEVER be off the table, so the best I can do is build a very big table for myself. What you’re doing might be “safer” but you don’t know who’s playing your game, their medical history, or their triggers. I prefer the term “effects intensity” for those toggles. It’s not medical jargon, so it implies no safety. Also, most photosensitivity goes undiagnosed, but “effects intensity” is neutral to that and invites more people. By the way, I’ve been doing this for over 13 years, and I’ve never met a single developer who was anything short of horrified to learn their game might be potentially dangerous for me to play. They’re not idiots or willfully ignorant. Our culture has led many people to believe that people like me don’t play games at all or can’t play games at all. It’s a stigma that makes logical sense if you only know this stuff from watching TV. People like Karen.
So, Karen, like, chill the f*ck out. People aren’t born smart to everything. Stuff gets stigmatized, and medical stigmas are not overcome by screaming at people. This is a complicated topic that the adults are handling. I love video games, so I’ve participated in this topic. This woman was “outraged” (really faking outrage) because I actually do not care if I ultimately can’t play a game because of my condition. A condition she hadn’t thought twice about in her entire miserable life, but one that I once genuinely believed would likely kill me someday. Not from a “trigger.” I have epilepsy. Seizures JUST HAPPEN, no trigger needed. I’ll be minding my own business when ZAP and then I wake up with no memory of what the f*ck happened, feel like I’ve pulled muscles all through my body, and glance around the room to see worried faces and people asking “are you okay?” That’s what it’s like. The most common question I get is “do they hurt?” I dunno. I don’t remember any of them. Some people say they’re alert during their seizures and remember everything. For me, it’s like it happens to someone else, and even if I’m up and at ’em an hour or two later, that doesn’t mean I’m all there. That could take a while. Maybe 12 hours before my short term memory is working again. The most common side effects are severe body aches, usually a headache, and my body’s internal clock is well off track. “It’s not 3am Saturday! It’s only 1pm Friday!” is what it’s genuinely like. It’s not hard for me to imagine that at least one of those people who think they’re abducted by aliens and cite the lost time as their proof might actually have epilepsy and not know it. It’s a heartbreaking thing to think about, but I figure it has to be true for at least one of them.
With the photosensitivity, I just really have to take caution with games. This is the part where I say “this is not medical advice. If you have photosensitivity, talk to your doctor. What works for me WORKS FOR ME.” The big two precautions are distance from the screen and lighting in the room. Gaming in the dark is not an option. ANY use of televisions in a room with the lights turned off isn’t. I don’t even get in cars at night if I can help it. Any pinball fan knows that the best pinball is played with the lighting turned down and the table lights turned up. I can’t do it. It’s super dangerous. The risks I take with gaming are calculated risks. Trust me, I have the capability to be stupid. We went to Disneyland recently and I opened my eyes on Space Mountain. I snuck away from my family and rode an indoor, flashy rollercoaster with the intent of keeping my eyes shut the whole time like it was the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But, I just wanted just a f’n glimpse of what had once been my favorite Disney ride. A glimpse I hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, and now that I’m sober, properly medicated, and mostly seizure-free, it was too tempting to resist. They’d updated the effects since I’d last seen them! So, I opened my eyes for a few seconds and ended up with a ripper of a headache that almost ruined the day for everyone, especially since they knew what I’d done and that I was messed up. Stupid and childish, and I’ll never do anything like it again. It doesn’t affect my gaming as much as you’d think. I’ve had ONE instance in the last few years where I was like “HOLY HELL” with a strobe light. Of all the things, it was the Jetsons NES game that had my family asking “what the hell is wrong with you?” until they realized I honestly didn’t know it was coming. The entire last boss and the aftermath have strobe lights going non-stop. EPILEPSY WARNING FOR THIS VIDEO.
That’s an extreme outlier. There was a single boss in the game Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon that went overboard on the strobe lights. The Pinball Arcade version of the pinball machine Sorcerer got me TWICE. And, that’s really all I can remember from games I actually played since 2019, which is around the time my epilepsy became “manageable” thanks to me growing the f*ck up and acting like I actually cared about my health. I let my friends and family make final decisions on what is and isn’t safe and I respect their decision as final and absolute. If they veto a game, that’s it. I don’t play it. The most recent was the NES Zapper game Gumshoe. We bought a relatively expensive light gun so I could do some light gun game reviews, but Gumshoe was vetoed because of how much shooting is involved: constant, non-stop shooting. That’s a problem because of the bright, white, screen-wide pulse the technology of the NES Zapper causes. I think the world can live without my Gumshoe opinion. But, that really is the extent of my recent epilepsy in gaming experience. What does any of this have to do with the Karen mentioned above? I don’t need to play any one specific game. I can play so many other games. In my experience, even the biggest advocates for the epilepsy options will say “if the game can’t work without the flashing lights, then people with epilepsy have other options for games they can play. Make the game you want to make. It’s YOUR game, not ours.” By the way, that’s a hypothetical situation that I have LITERALLY NEVER HEARD OF ACTUALLY HAPPENING, but just saying it lets the developers know that, hey, we respect your vision as a creator.
This was taken by someone at a conference on accessibility given by my friend Ian Hamilton, one of the world’s foremost experts on game accessibility. This was LONG before the scary lady read half a tweet and was suddenly down with fixing epilepsy. There’s a LOT of epileptic gamers out there, and the greatest honor of my entire life is doing my small part to make gaming truly for everyone. Having my parents, who I gave many sleepless nights to in my youth, tell me they’re proud of me, when I had really not given them a lot to be proud of.. let’s just say, I’m biting my lip right now or else I’d burst into tears.
And that’s what she was raging about. That sentiment above was insufficient for Karen, who didn’t even know there was any problem at all just minutes earlier. She was literally looking at my followers list and directly demanding the ones with the most followers publicly denounce me and join the mob against me. Do you know how many of those big names said anything to the effect of “wait, you’re mad at Indie Gamer Chick over an epilepsy thing? Are you f*cking kidding me?” None. They were too scared they would become the next target of this monster, who was known for turning on people on a dime. I got a lot of private well wishes from people she tagged demanding to cancel me, including some pretty big names in gaming, some who acknowledged they were scared to be targeted, but no big names had the courage to defend me against a woman who clearly didn’t who didn’t give two sh*ts about epilepsy. Her timeline was a series of big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day, and she had enough followers to make someone feel her wrath. That just happened to be the day her big bullsh*t fake outrage of the day was epilepsy, because she had just found out about it.
Do you know what *I* found out that day? I found out that I didn’t really have as many friends as I thought I had. To be clear, a lot of people did come to my defense. Friends did. Total strangers did. One of them didn’t even follow me, but they knew me as a person associated with epilepsy awareness in gaming. That meant a lot to me, and I’m not trying to say that those who did stand up for me meant nothing. It meant EVERYTHING that day. I found out who truly cared. But so many others were sending their well wishes instead of saying “you’re wrong” to this woman while I was puking my guts out, sick to my stomach that I was being attacked for not being supportive enough of something I poured my life into supporting.
That’s not why I’m leaving Twitter, obviously. It happened a long time ago. I blocked Karen. I find that it’s better for your blood pressure to block people who attempt to cancel you because they’re furious you got to a good cause before them. Let’s be real: that’s what she was REALLY mad about. What a f*cking child. But, now, I can’t block her. Twitter, or X or whatever it’s called, is doing away with blocking. People can still see what you’re doing now. It’d be like a judge saying “here’s your restraining order, but your ex can still stare creepily through your window and make throat-slashing gestures.” I don’t take blocking lightly. I recently blocked someone after many, many months of him being just plain annoying, and the final straw was he preemptively raged against a developer about how artwork better not be AI generated. No basis for it at all. Just a kid puffing up his chest and putting a developer on the spot, based on nothing. It wasn’t AI art. He could have asked “is this AI art?” instead of figuratively shaking his fist like some kind of big shot. That was not the only instance of preemptive outrage over an imagined slight towards a studio or developer from this individual, either. I don’t want this person seeing my timeline, because they didn’t use it respectfully. I don’t have that option anymore. But, I do have the option to leave.
One of the reasons I’ve stayed is because I didn’t want anyone taking my Twitter handle. I’ve had issues with people either claiming to work with me or collaborate with me to score review codes. I had a whole group of people try to score free copies of a major indie game by saying they worked with me, when they didn’t. I have the emails between the owner and the developer. The developer, by the way, who respected me so much that he put my f’n mascot, Sweetie, in his game. Of all the people to try to pass off a working relationship that doesn’t exist, you did it to a developer who essentially put me in their game? Wow. When I confronted the owner who sent the email to the dev (which I have) he told me I was wasting time he could be using to promote indies. The owner of that group later told one of the few male content creators he had (he mostly recruited women) that he would spit on me if he could. The guy he told that to quit because, yea, that’s major league f*cked and this person actually had integrity. The audacity of saying you would spit on someone whose clout he was trying to use to score games FOR HIM AND HIS PEOPLE. Good f*cking god. By the way, only two people out of close to twenty, if not more, quit over this.
A lot of the people who worked for this group acknowledged it, verified it, and stuck with them to keep the review copy gravy train going. I never called them out in public because I’d already tried that, and I was told I was wrong for it. Even though it was obvious what they were doing, apparently I came across like I was insufficiently grateful for my position of being a semi-popular game critic. To understand what happened, imagine the audacity it would take to make a group called “Indie Game Nation” so your content creators can call themselves “IGN” or say “you’re with IGN.” Well, I’m not IGN big, so I, a small content creator when you get down to it, was fair game. This group even recruited a content creator who had “Chick” in the name and a round yellow mascot. She probably doesn’t even know about this. I tried telling her, but never got a reply. And that almost by itself kept me at Twitter. After 30 days, your handle becomes available for someone else. I could post a million billion things here at this blog saying “that’s not me anymore” but developers would probably still send codes to the person who got my handle. That whole episode messed me up. It feels so awful to have someone who doesn’t respect you get caught trying to use your name to get games for themselves, but then to brag to someone on your team “I will spit on her, any day, any time” (that’s an exact quote, I have the transcript) is such a nasty, hateful thing. To get caught trying to get codes using my name THEN say you would spit on me if you could? Yea, this guy is totally down with female empowerment. I was sick to my stomach over that whole thing, and that kept me around longer than I wanted.
Not that I have the market cornered on yellow round mascots. She’s basically a smiley with a bow at this point, but dammit, she’s MY smiley with a bow. Thanks Scott for all the Sweeties over the years.
By the way, the good times outnumbered the bad, easily. My followers were always up for donating to charities like the Epilepsy Foundation and Direct Relief. They helped me to discover so many games I never would have found without them, and I hope I did the same for them. I went through a time where I was handing out more games than I was playing. All I wanted was for people to spread the word of the games. Even that had a lot of negativity, so much that I had to quit doing it for my own sanity. People tried to use duplicate accounts to grab double the copies. People didn’t do the work. Some people agreed to the terms, then thought I was being unreasonable to say “can you just play for like twenty minutes and show it off to people? That’s sort of the point of this whole thing.” But, last Halloween, I did it one last time, and there was no drama. It went great. I wish I had quit THAT NIGHT, going out on one of the happiest days of my adult life. Not even a special night, but just a night where it was like “yea, this is what gaming should be.” And hey, I made a lot of friends along the way. I met my best friend through Twitter. I met most of my friends through it. One of my closest friends had a little girl going to kindergarten when I started IGC, and now she’s started college. What? “Where did the time go?” I’ve been around long enough that I’ve fallen out of touch with more friends than I can keep up with. I’ve even had friends who’ve since died. People drift apart. That’s life. This feels like it’s just a larger scale drifting apart.
From a personal point of view, the biggest thrills were always when the people who made the games I played growing up were telling people to read my reviews. I wish everyone could know what that feels like. I wish I could go back in time and tell the little girl who didn’t have a lot of friends that, some day not far from now, the people who made this game you’re playing will be your friends. I wouldn’t have believed it. But, sure enough, even that became a downer. On January 7, 2023. Ed Boon, the mastermind behind Mortal Kombat, told people that he thought my review of Nintendo’s coin-op Popeye was good. “Nice work @IndieGamerChick”
That’s the guy who created Mortal god damned Kombat telling people he liked MY work. That’s not supposed to happen. I do game reviews with lame jokes. You have no idea what that meant to me, and that came during a rough time for me. But, almost none of the replies in that endorsement were about my review. It was almost entirely people demanding he announce the next Mortal Kombat right f*cking now. Still a career highlight, but it’s also like how I imagine everyone who won an Oscar after Chris Rock got smacked by Will Smith felt. It’s not the same, but man, I felt like a complete piece of sh*t reading that thread. And, I probably shouldn’t have, because damn, that was a great day at this blog. But, I have feelings, like anyone else. So, no, it’s not a politics thing. It’s a “what am I even doing here?” thing. Years ago, it wasn’t rare for me to get a few hundred clicks off Twitter from links I’d post throughout the week. Even though the Ed Boon thing was soured, I got over 900 clicks through Twitter that day alone. But, these days, I only get maybe a dozen clicks a day off Twitter on a day that a new review goes up, if I’m lucky. Engagement is way down. And yet, my blog has never been more popular. My reviews have been finding an audience without Twitter. I’ll miss interacting with followers, but it’s time.
Why not jump to another social media? Bluesky or whatever? I think I just want to play games with my family. I wasn’t joking earlier about social media being an addiction. It totally is, at least for me. It’s my last addiction, and I’m ready to drop it. I’m on the patch for it and everything! To everyone who followed me there over the years, thank you! I’m sad, but I’m also excited. God knows my family has been wanting me to do this for years. I’ll miss you, but it doesn’t have to be goodbye. On the sidebar you can put down your email to get updates of my posts. I don’t think there’s spam associated with it. It’s just an email alert of when a new review or feature is up. I’ll miss Twitter, but my reviews are here, at Indie Gamer Chick, and I’m not quitting. (cracks knuckles) I’m just getting started.
SO, WHAT AM I PLAYING?
Is that building puckering up to kiss me?
Some fun reviews coming to IGC. Contra is coming later today. I need some comfort food, and there’s no better comfort food than one of the greatest NES games of all-time. I discovered that autofire and a spread gun make that game almost trivial. At least one new Pinball FX review is dropping this weekend. Speaking of pinball, you might want to take a look at this pool of games, because it might matter in the coming weeks.
Super Pinball II: The Amazing Odyssey (Super Famicom)
Galactic Pinball (Virtual Boy)
Getaway: High Speed II (Super Game Boy)
Pokémon Pinball (Game Boy Color)
Little Mermaid II: Pinball Frenzy (Game Boy Color)
3D Ultra Pinball – Thrillride (Game Boy Color)
Microsoft Pinball Arcade (Game Boy Color)
Muppet Pinball Mayhem (Game Boy Advance)
Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
The Pinball of the Dead (Game Boy Advance)
Pinball Tycoon (Game Boy Advance)
Sonic Pinball Party (Game Boy Advance)
Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire (Game Boy Advance)
Pac-Man Pinball Advance (Game Boy Advance)
I don’t know what I’ll be doing with that list, but I’ve started knocking those games out already. So, I’ll leave you with this, my brand spanking new review of Video Pinball for the Atari 2600, which will be part of whatever feature this ends up being. I’m going to use “What Am I Playing” to post a lot of content from projects that went unfinished. I love you all! Thank you for 13 awesome years on Twitter. This isn’t goodbye. It’s “let’s stay at home for dinner today.”
Video Pinball
aka Arcade Pinball (Sears Label) Platform: Atari 2600 Released in 1980 Designed by Bob Smith Developed by Atari
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Video Pinball is probably one of the most famous video pinball games ever. That’s particularly weird because it never actually feels like pinball. The ball is practically made of Flubber with how much it bounces around. It’s actually not out of the question that you could end up going several minutes without having to touch the flippers or nudge. Not seconds. Minutes! We used a stopwatch and everything! In a game where we never once activated the flippers, one ball lasted 1 minute, 7 seconds AND it returned to the plunger instead of draining. The total time was 3 minutes, 4 seconds, without ever once hitting a flipper, and that included three total returns to the plunger. Designer Bob Smith apparently took inspiration from Atari’s own Superman table. Atari tables were notorious for breaking down, so kudos to Mr. Smith because my PC didn’t catch fire playing this (like Atari pins really did do). But, come on. Including this game is a little tongue in cheek. The control you have over the ball is minimum. None of us found the nudge effective except in very limited circumstances where the ball was bouncing slow enough but in a sharp-enough angle that a tiny nudge pushed in down one of the scoring lanes. The biggest misnomer of pinball is that it’s random chaos. Video Pinball for Atari is random chaos.
With the difficulty toggled, it opens what I assume are double outlanes.
Can You Trap? No. If you attempt to, at best, the ball just reverses direction and bounces until it hits the staircase that represents the slings. Can You Pass? No. You can’t even really aim the ball all that well. Pinball is a precise ball sport. This is just batting a ball back into play and hoping for the best. The world’s greatest snooker players couldn’t calculate the amount of trajectory that goes into “shots” in video pinball. I’m not even sure it’s charming in the way video pinball can be. My family firmly disagreed. Oscar said “all things considered, there’s dynamic scoring with the drop targets raising the bumper value. There’s ‘lights’ in the Atari lane that grant bonuses.” Even 9 year old Sasha found herself defending it. “The plunger is easy to use and has adjustable strengths. You can aim the first shot!” Mind you, defending or not, none of us gave this a YES! It’s like a novelty toy more than pinball, and it wasn’t until after the review that I told my family I only had us start with this to see if they were going to hand out YES! votes like candy to trick or treaters. Verdicts: Cathy – NO! Angela – NO! Oscar – NO! Sasha – NO!
Well, it’s that time of the year. The time where I reflect on another year of playing video games, and annoying my Twitter followers with too much pinball and basketball talk. I’ve done twelve years worth of these things, and I’ve long since passed that stage of my career where I look at my review index and say “wait.. when did I review THAT?” No, now I’m to the point where some of my most popular reviews are nearly a decade old now, themselves. The Shovel Knight review that shifted my review process firmly into introspection? That’s eight years old. My Dead Cells review? It turns five years old in October. I’ve been doing this a long time. So long that I’m FINALLY no longer “that girl who reviews XBLIGs” anymore. XBLIG has been shut down for six years now. The foundation of my entire career has been shut down for half its existence.
I’ve spent the last year with a series of big projects. I’m working on a book of reviews of golden age arcade games. I’m working on a review guide to every aspect of Pinball FX, and that one’s really fun because I get to work with my friends and especially my father and sister on it. I’m also covering a lot more classic games. I mostly focus on licensed games that haven’t been re-released since their initial publishing. It might not be “indie” gaming, but it’s what fascinates and interests me. I enjoy a lot more games than people probably realize. Especially with my lack of updates since February.
I’ve always teeter-tottered at Indie Gamer Chick between overly-active to months of inactivity. At least here, properly on the blog. On Twitter, I’m more active. I have a much more broad look at gaming these days. I fully admit, I’m overwhelmed by the amount of indie games out there. It’s astonishing and awe-inspiring, but it also makes it harder for me to find stuff to review. I play a ton of games, and I might have opinions on every game, but finding fun and entertaining ways to express those opinions I’m finding more and more challenging. I’ve called it “running out of words.”
Back in March, I got an early copy of a game called LUNARK. It’s based on 90s “cinematic platformers” like Prince of Persia, Out of this World (aka Another World), Flashback, etc. I’ve never been a fan of those types of games in a “whatever floats your boat but these just aren’t for me” sense. But, a critic absolutely should challenge themselves by playing games that not only aren’t their favorite genres, but actually the opposite of that. I had low expectations going in.
Surprise: I had a good enough time with it. It rights a lot of wrongs typical to its genre, like so many of the best indie tributes to classic games do. Developer Canari Games understood the problems inherent to the rotoscoped-style of action platformers and built the game around the strengths while minimizing the limitations, creating an experience that even people like me, who aren’t fans of the genre, can enjoy.
Here’s the thing: that’s my review in its entirety. You can see the problem. The worst thing a game review can be, besides unfair (if not outright corrupt) is boring. I try my hardest to write reviews that I would enjoy reading myself. Because of health issues, I’ve had to change my process. When I started IGC, I told people “never take notes when doing a review. That way, only the important things worth talking about stay with you.” Now, I take notes. I have to. In fact, I write the framework for the review, meaning the raw gameplay notes and the gags I intend to use, as I play. I also used to not seek a lot of help when writing. Now, my family helps me out. I don’t type as well as I used to, frankly, and they help a lot with keeping me on track. Even with those limitations, I think I’ve done my best work ever in 2022/23.
With LUNARK, I kept my notes. I replayed stages.. totally deliberately and not because I died a ton of times WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT STOP IT!!.. and started writing it. And there was a problem, because I was bored with my work. NOT THE GAME! The game was fun. I liked it. I just couldn’t translate what I enjoyed to a traditional review. I was actually not feeling physically good when I started the game, and then I ended up in the hospital for several weeks with a bowel obstruction (“you’re full of shit, sayeth your doctor!” That line from my father kills me. Love you, Daddio). Okay, maybe I just wasn’t in a mood to do reviews then.
But, nope, I couldn’t muster up an interesting review for a game that deserved a lot better than I could give it. That’s actually been a problem for me since February. Papertris? I enjoyed it. I had a LOT to say about it. I’m still struggling to get it right, though I was very enthusiastic about the game on my Twitter feed. Maybe that’s where my “work” belongs now, where I don’t have to worry about boring anyone. That’s one thing I don’t want to ever do. If I can’t have fun writing the review, I probably shouldn’t do it, regardless of how good or bad the game is.
I’m not done. In fact, I’ll be posting my first indie review here in over half a year for my anniversary. Going forward, I’m just going to have fun. And I’ll talk about games on Twitter always, even when I can’t “find the words.” Maybe I’ll start a “here’s what I’m playing now” series on this blog that gives updates to the things I’m playing. I have a full guide to Pinball FX that’s coming along really well (of course, five other people are writing it with me, which helps), and I’ve got some ideas for features.
And I’m going to try not to be mad at myself for this situation. Nobody is the same person they were twelve years ago. People know me as a game reviewer, but I’m not really. I’m a blogger who does game reviews. It’s not my job. It’s my hobby. Albeit, one that has a lot more people following it than Mom’s new hobby of learning to crochet, which she has picked up because, quote, “I’m old. I should be doing old people things now.” I tell you, you don’t know what surreal really is until you see your mother trying to knit a stocking while blasting Metallica in her ears through her phone so loud you can hear it too.
Twelve years later. I’m “running out of words” but I ain’t out of words. As my sister said, “no you’re not. You just need to sit back and learn all new ones.” She’s wise beyond her years. I don’t think I’m wise. I’m sage at best, or perhaps insightful, but not wise. I take on so many projects that I don’t finish, and one thing I want to do for this, my twelfth year, is challenge myself to go back to those abandoned works and search for the words I never found the first time around. I don’t owe it to my readers, who I cherish so much for sticking with me for twelve incredible years. No, I owe it to myself. After all, it’s my name on it.
Cuphead’s DLC is fun. And glitchy. And weird. Indie Gamer Chick’s Cuphead: The Definitive Review – The Delicious Last Course is live, and if you want to know about Cuphead’s so-called “easy mode” that the DLC has, this is the guide of how to get it. For your $7.99, Ms. Chalice isn’t exactly that, but she’s close. If you don’t want to use Ms. Chalice, that’s fine, because the DLC also includes over-powered guns that significantly make the main quest easier (I beat it in under 100 lives, which is a marked improvement over the 713 I needed the first time). Here’s a guide on how to finally give you an edge over the game. Starting a new file, you just need to accumulate coins and give yourself access to Ms. Chalice and the DLC guns. It requires you to only defeat the easiest Run ‘n Gun level AND one Mausoleum. That’s it.
STEP ONE: GET THE TUTORIAL COIN
There’s a coin in the tutorial level inside Elder Kettle’s house. Grab that.
STEP TWO: GET THREE COINS FROM THE APPLE
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Just talking to the Apple will give you three more coins.
OPTIONALLY: At this point, if you have NO faith in your ability to beat Forest Follies with the pea shooter, you can buy a gun to help you. If you skip this, you’ll be able to fully load yourself faster.
STEP THREE: COMPLETE FOREST FOLLIES + GET ALL 5 COINS
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You need to be beat Mausoleum I to open the pathway to the DLC content, and you can’t do that unless you beat Forest Follies. This is the easiest level and the coins are a cinch to get, and you need at least 7 coins to buy the Heart Ring and one DLC gun. Make sure to get all five coins. If you’re confident in your ability to defeat Treetop Trouble, you can beat that and grab five coins there, but it’s a LOT harder, and this is supposed to be “easy mode access.” Wait until you have Chalice.
STEP FOUR: DEFEAT MAUSOLEUM I
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Not only is this required to open access to the DLC, but now you’ll have a Super Art when you start fighting bosses. This is a cinch. Just parry the enemies.
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You can now access the DLC. Talk to the ferryman and he’ll take you to the DLC island, but there’s two more coins (possibly five, depends on how your save file feels) that you can access. You’ll also immediately get the Ms. Chalice charm, the Astral Cookie. With Ms. Chalice, you can’t equip other charms. You won’t need them. She gives you one extra hit point and her double jump is overpowered.
STEP FIVE: GET THE COIN FROM MS. CHALICE’S TUTORIAL
Go to the food cart, which is Chalice’s tutorial, and grab that coin.
— Indie Gamer Chick (@IndieGamerChick) July 11, 2022
STEP SEVEN: BUY DLC GEAR AND YOU NOW HAVE “EASY MODE”
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The DLC guns and charms are only on Inkwell IV. Don’t buy from other shops.
Ms. Chalice is incredibly weak against Shmup battles (in my complete play-through with Ms. Chalice, 37 of my 98 deaths were against the Shmup bosses, with Cala Maria taking 13 of those alone), but the Heart Ring works for Cuphead in Shmups and gives you up to three extra hit points. The Heart Ring grants you an extra health for your first, third, and sixth parries at no penalty to your health. This IN THEORY should help you get perfect scores, but Studio MDHR only had five years to work on the game and it’s incredibly glitchy and sometimes you can finish a stage with 5 health and it still says you didn’t finish with the required three health.
The Converge has a really powerful, quick-to-shoot EX shot that I called the “FU BOLT” because, I mean, look at it!
The Crack Shot is my personal favorite of the new guns. It’s like a more powerful Chaser, AND, if you hit the shot before it breaks for the heat-seeking part, it causes almost twice the damage, so it’s versatile. The Converge is the second best, as it gives range, pierces all enemies and is quite powerful. If you hold the aim lock button down, it MIGHT focus the three bolts more narrowly (the game is insanely fickle about this working. It’s not consistent at all. The DLC is weirdly glitchy, but hey, they only had five years to work on this. You can’t expect it to work!). If you didn’t buy a gun for Forest Follies, you should be able to afford the Heart Ring, Crackshot, and Converge.
Cuphead should be a lot easier now, and you have a lot of flexibility to come up with strategies.
OPTIONAL: TAKE OUT THE PAWNS
If you’re feeling confident, you can keep going from here as long as it’ll let you go. The Knight that you fight after the Pawns is by far the hardest of the five Chess pieces, but you get coins for every victory after.
You can get two more coins by taking out the Pawns. Use Ms. Chalice for all the battles with the Chess pieces. You can tell they were made for her. You can also buy the Twist-Up, which has bosses it works really well against, but precision shooting is a lot harder. If it allows you, you can try your luck on the Knight too for even more coins, but he’s a lot harder. If you don’t want to use Ms. Chalice, the Crackshot and the Heart Ring should be enough to at least get your through Inkwell I and stock-up more coins to give you the secondary gun of your choice. Have fun now that you can enjoy the game a little more.
This is it. I’ve now been Indie Gamer Chick for one-third of my life. Tomorrow marks eleven years since I opened IGC, and on July 11, I’ll turn 33-years-old. That’s a not-insignificant chunk of my lifespan spent making dick and fart jokes about video games as a means to actually say how much I like or dislike them. Which, looking back, the formula seems to be dick jokes for the good stuff and fart jokes for the bad. As it should be.
One of the voices in my head is telling me “HURRY UP AND GET THIS OVER QUICK SO WE CAN PLAY CUPHEAD!” The rest of the voices are telling me to burn things.
So, this is supposed to be that time of the year where I sit at my keyboard and tearfully thank all my readers for their continued support and wax poetically about the future of indie gaming. But, this time, the tears aren’t there. Oh, make no mistake, I’m thankful. From the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU to everyone who has ever supported my work here at IGC. I do love you all! No, the difference this year is, for the first time doing this annual tradition, I find myself looking nostalgically at the past. Indie gaming’s future is secure. When I started this blog in July, 2011, self-publishing was nonexistent on consoles, outside of the unloved and unseen Xbox Live Indie Games. Hell, Nintendo wouldn’t even talk to a creator who developed their games from home instead of a “studio, with a security system.” That security system apparently being a deadbolt. I’m not joking. Those days are long gone, and good riddance.
Instead, on this day, I find myself looking back at a life spent playing video games. Once upon a time, I was a little girl on the autism spectrum who had no friends. I also didn’t like to play with toys and had trouble having anything besides TV hold my interest. “You have to do SOMETHING more engaging with your free time!” my dad would often croak. My parents were constantly trying to find something that I could get into. I’d played a PlayStation kiosk at Sears at the mall, and told my parents I wouldn’t mind this. On Christmas morning in 1996, Santa Claus brought me a PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot, and I enjoyed it just fine.
Ever since I started doing game criticism, I’ve given the lion’s share of credit to my gaming fandom to Banjo-Kazooie. But actually, Crash Bandicoot was probably the best possible introductory game for a 7-year-old of its era. It’s sort of all-encompassing of the video game experience. Very underrated as a starter-game is Crash Bandicoot.
I wouldn’t call that specific moment life-altering. Rather, it planted an important seed. A seed that was, perhaps, a little damaged when my first outside-of-Christmas game that my parents selected was, I’m not kidding, BUBSY 3-D. Wow, fail, Mom & Dad! Of course, being just 7-years-old at the time, I didn’t exactly comprehend just how historically bad the game was. In fact, I kind of wanted to like it! I put a lot of time into it. I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t as easy to control as Crash Bandicoot was. These days, as IGC, I’d boil it in oil. But at that age, I was just frustrated by it. My parents redeemed that over the next year with games like Herc’s Adventures (REMEMBER THAT?) or Crash Bandicoot 2 for Christmas of 1997. I’d play them. I even beat both Crash games for the first time.
And then, on my 9th birthday, July 11, 1998, I got a Nintendo 64, along with Banjo-Kazooie, and everything changed. I wasn’t just enjoying this game. I was utterly, completely absorbed by it. Obsessed, really. I beat it about three weeks later, but I wasn’t finished. I wanted to get all the jigsaw pieces I missed, and then every note I missed. As summer turned to fall, my parents couldn’t believe I was still playing the same game. “Didn’t you beat this?” I must have heard, without exaggeration, a hundred times from them. When I finally got the last Jigsaw piece I didn’t have, I didn’t know if it would open more game content or not. When it didn’t, I wept. No joke. Like Alexander, I didn’t celebrate, but rather cried, for there were no more worlds to conquer. And I wanted so much more, and my parents obliged. Over the next few months, mascot platformers like Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon dominated my free time. When my parents got me Yoshi’s Story and it was so pathetically easy that I saw the end credits in just a few hours, and I wanted to see what else gaming had to offer besides platforming.
The answer was: EVERYTHING!
Goldeneye! Blast Corps! San Francisco Rush! NBA Courtside! Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time! Gran Turismo! All day, every day, at least when I wasn’t forced to stop to eat, sleep, or sit with my tutor and do school work (I was home schooled. My first grade teacher sort of broke me for school forever). I lied earlier. Here come the tears. Because I look back at that time and remember how excited I was by every new release, or something as simple as the new issue of a gaming magazine with a demo disc, and it was so life altering for me. I was a really unhappy little kid, and gaming changed so much for me. I’d found my thing, and the amazing thing about video games is they’re always getting better. Anyone who says otherwise is just drunk on nostalgia.
Some of those 007 difficulty missions were a pain in the ass, but 10-to-12 year-old me aced them all. Goldeneye was the first “super difficult game” I beat, though it took a LONG time (like seriously two years or more) for me to actually finish all those 007 missions. I never really got to show off my skills though, as I was the worst of the four kids who played Goldeneye at an autism support group my parents took me to, where we basically would just play Goldeneye for hours. This kid named Bradley James was so good that we’d play 3 on 1 matches against him and be lucky in some modes if we were even able to spawn without dying. Compared to him, the 007 levels were a walk in the park.
I think the final, solidifying moment of video games becoming everything to me had to be the launch of the Sega Dreamcast. My first ever brand spanking new day one console. I got to go get it at midnight on September 9, 1999. I’d be surprised if I ever got up off the couch once after I threw Sonic Adventure on and kept playing well after the time the sun rose. I mean, I assume I must have gone to the bathroom at some point, but I question even that now! By the end of September, when I was getting hyped for a goddamned fishing game, Sega Bass Fishing, it was a done deal. Gaming was everything to me. All I wanted to do. Any time not spent on a game was a complete waste of time It was a three console process that took place over the course of about three years, but by time Christmas of 1999 rolled around and all I wanted was more video games.
The underrated star of the Dreamcast launch lineup. I had Afro Thunder’s stats so boosted that I literally couldn’t lose. It wasn’t exactly a balanced game, was it?
I was 10-years-old when the Dreamcast launched, and I’ve had an up-and-down life since then. A life that, yes, included extended periods of substance abuse. Nobody is the same person they were as a child, and if they say they are, it’s probably because they’re a douchebag. But, there’s something incredibly reassuring that, twenty-three years later, I’m still spending basically all my free time playing games. They’re still totally capable of filling me with a sense of playful awe. That I can still sit down with my father, 40 years my senior, and Angela, my kid sister 20 years my junior, and the three of us can laugh and cheer and high-five playing a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game in 2022 is such a wonderful thing. My parents always were so happy and supportive of my love of video games, and they’d take time every day to watch me play and ask me questions about it, but they didn’t join me.
There were exceptions, like Wii Sports, Peggle, or especially Boom Blox. For a while, we’d bust Boom Blox out at parties. WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, BOOM BLOX?! COME BACK!!
Well, not anymore. Today, we have four Nintendo Switches in our household. Each of us has one, and my Mom puts about two hours into her Animal Crossing Village or her New Pokemon Snap high scores every day, and she’s cuddled up on my Dad who might be beating Ghostbusters: The Game on his own Switch while he’s at it. Angela’s not passionate about gaming, but she plays her Switch a lot, holds multiple digital pinball world records (so does both Dad and myself), and is already a contributor at The Pinball Chick. My family plays games now, too? Who says dreams don’t come true?!
One of the most common questions I get from my readers and my social media followers is do I wish I had gone into a career in gaming? Usually this takes the form of “do you wish you had gotten into game development?” People are always surprised at how quickly and easily I answer that question: no. I guess that makes me somewhat unique among those who grew up as clinically-addicted game fanatics. The thing is, I never thought I could make a game better than the stuff I play. Well, I mean, sure that depends on the game. One of the dumbest clap-backs to a review is “OH YEA, LIKE YOU COULD DO BETTER!” Which, the obvious reply is “than this game? Well, I have no experience, no artistic ability, no technical know-how, but.. yea, I could pull a better game out of my ass than this. I mean, if I actually wanted to.” But, I don’t. It’s nothing I ever remotely aspired to. I didn’t doodle characters. I didn’t map out levels. I didn’t think of wild twists on the formulas I loved. I loved playing games, but I don’t make them. I still don’t. I’ve had ONE idea for a game in my whole life, for a twin stick Tetris Attack-like game, and I don’t even think it would work.
My other great passion in life is the sport of basketball, and my only REAL regret in life (well, besides the drugs, BUT HEY, four years sober now!) is that I didn’t pursue a career in basketball. I mean, as a scout or GM. Other than golfing, I’ve never played a real sport in my entire life. Besides, I’m 4 foot 11 inches tall and I chain smoke like a steam engine. Not exactly the traits of a great athlete. But, I’ve loved basketball since I was 6-years-old. I get a kick out of how people call me a “bandwagon fan” for the Golden State Warriors, when my first season watching kicked off a historic drought of them not making the playoffs. Ten fucking years, which ended when the “We Believe” squad pulled off a historic upset of the #1 seed Dallas Mavericks while I collapsed on the floor and cried tears of joy FOR HOURS! I thought that was as good as it would ever get being a Warriors fan. Heh. Who knew?
Nah, I didn’t ever want to work in video games. I think that’s a big part of why I’ve been able to find success as Indie Gamer Chick. I don’t have to pretend like I’m a professional games journalist. I’m not. I never will be. I don’t consider myself an especially talented writer, so I think there’s something about not wanting this to be a career that is reassuring to my readers and followers. I don’t have a Pateron and never will. I don’t ask for money and tell everyone who wants to contribute that they can donate money towards epilepsy research. I almost never take review codes, unless it’s for retro collections or games not yet released (and for those, I buy a copy when the game comes out every time). I can be crass, and I can probably be annoying, and sometimes people REALLY disagree with my opinions, but there’s nothing cynical about IGC. My favorite quote comes from Conan O’Brien, on his final Tonight Show.
“Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. It’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
It’s true. My only real regrets with my body of work is that, early on, I had a tendency to be a little too mean-spirited with my negative reviews. Hurt feelings can’t be avoided when a game gets a less than positive reception. Bad games aren’t cranked out of a factory (insert obvious AAA joke here, Ubisoft or EA or whatever). They’re made by people who are often well-meaning and love gaming every bit as much as I do. One of my best friends today, Shahed, is someone whose game I completely demolished, and he’ll never let me forget it, that’s for sure. I’m happy he doesn’t. It’s a constant reminder: review the games, not the developer. That’s the advice I give everyone who wants to do game reviews. And especially don’t assume any bad intentions.
“COME ON CATHY, WRAP THIS SHIT UP!” And burn things.
Actually, my best advice beyond that is, when you do your thing as a gaming content creator is ALWAYS take time to remind yourself why you fell in love with video games in the first place. Because sometimes you’ll be bored and sometimes you’ll have writers block and sometimes you’ll be stuck with a game that’s so middle-of-the-road that you have nothing interesting to say about it. For the longest time, I was mad myself that I didn’t produce as much content as I used to here at IGC. The next review is for Shredder’s Revenge by Tribute Games. The last of their games I reviewed was Wizorb way back in September, 2011. It was my 101st review!! I had only been open for just under three months! Holy crap, I was turning out reviews like a machine back then! And, I hated that I don’t do that anymore. That I CAN’T do that anymore.
Then I realized something: hey wait, who cares? I have an outlet to talk about games and to jump around and play whatever I want, whenever I want, and I’m not a professional so deadlines and due dates don’t apply. And, what do you know? The last twelve months have been the most fun I’ve had since launching IGC on July 1, 2011. How lucky am I? Eleven years later, and I still have fun with this. Over the last couple years, I’ve found my new #1 game of all-time when I ran through Mario Odyssey a second time. I’ve set pinball world records. I’ve played THOUSANDS of retro games. I’ve conquered Cuphead (and I’m about to do it again!) and Dead Cells and many more. After a quarter century of playing video games, and now having spent one-third of my life now doing Indie Gamer Chick, I’m still having the time of my life, doing the Gaming Thing.
CUPHEAD
Video Pinball (Atari 2600)
Family Pinball (aka Rock ‘n Ball, Famicom/NES)
Psycho Pinball (Sega Mega Drive)
Video Pinball
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