I speedrun a 1995 point-and-click called Shivers. It’s a great game, but it never became as well-known as Sierra On-Line’s other stuff like King’s Quest or Space Quest or Leisure Suit Larry. They made a sequel, but it didn’t capture the same magic, and both games largely fell into obscurity.

I’ve watched a couple people slogging through this on Twitch, I’ve seen plenty of SGnG casual playthroughs and speedruns, and I have a tiny, tiny bit of experience playing the NES Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins. I love watching people make progress, but playing the series is just not my thing.

I played a lot of Dance Dance Revolution in my late teens to early 20s. On a couple days at the arcade, I met a girl who played and talked to the rest of us nerds about the game, about the arcade, about the soft pretzels they had there, and then quickly changed the subject to buying CutCo knives.

Absolutely. I had season 1 on for background noise while I was boxing up my things to move, but by the end of season 2 I was giving every episode my full attention and sometimes rewatching episodes I’d just finished because I felt like I’d missed some important details that might affect the story going forward.

After the final episode of the original run, I’m torn on whether I’d want to see ol’ Scrotum Phillips legitimately successful, digging himself out of another career drought with another stint in food service, or hosting a catered party for a “Where Are They Now?” episode on one-dimensional ad characters.

Yeah, I’ve played many great Kickstarter games, including a few revivals. I’m specifically talking about Toe Jam & Earl just because of the trajectory of the series. I was disappointed by its first sequel in 1993 and continuing to call for another sequel after the Dreamcast failed was equal parts joke and a…

The Peninsula of Power is a speedrunning staple, but, at least when I was a kid, I did most of my leveling in more level-appropriate spots. I was aware that those four map tiles existed, but I thought of them as certain death, not a tool to be abused. You’re probably having a pretty decent approximation of the original…

Toe Jam & Earl: Back in the Groove has continued to serve a steady, competent dose of nostalgia. At this point, I’ve managed all the hardest challenges that reward achievements (deathless run, hard mode completion, pacifist run, no-present run) and it’s just down to grinding out completions to get the rest of the…

These things are terrible. They’re completely flavorless and the texture is just offputting. Please stop putting them on my pizzas, thanks.

Yeah, I barely played it during a brief rental when it was new, appreciated the very achievement-like notes you got for accomplishing various things, and didn’t really feel like I got a feel for the villagers or the most efficient crops or the festivals or any of the other engrossing parts of the game before returning…

Hmmm. Maybe I’ll just go back and play the used, unplayed copy of Magical Melody I picked up a few years ago instead of buying this one on release. I probably don’t need more than 2 farm sims in my backlog anyway.

The first one on the list that I can get within 100 miles is the Filet-O-Fish. I swear, next time I can freely take a legitimate vacation outside of my time zone, I am doing so much fast food tourism.

I mean, sure, if you can’t afford a gamma ray sauna.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are we talkin’ left Twix or right Twix?

I grew up on expired Peeps that my grandparents bought in the post-Easter candy sales from the previous year, so you can imagine how I feel about the things. We used to stuff them into plastic eggs when they weren’t looking so we wouldn’t have to eat them, but then they thought we really liked the things and started…

I fired up Super Smash Bros Ultimate last week, played a few matches, found the World of Light, unlocked a couple characters, and promptly became frustrated at some combination of gimmicks or another. I powered through, unlocked another couple characters, and became frustrated again at a completely different…

Completely unrelated to the main point of this article, but I didn’t realize The Room 4 had been released on Steam this month. Thank you for accidentally being the one to tip me off about it! I don’t even think Remote Play would work well for a game like The Room, but I’m still getting plenty of mileage out of this…

You say that, but while we’re distracted by his money, he’s stealing our hearts.

Sure, but now instead of grappling with my anxiety and rationalizing through how unlikely it is that petting a dog will give me COVID or re-applying hand sanitizer every time I touch an unfamiliar surface, I can just shout “DOG!” from across the room like a joyful toddler, just like I always have.

Yes, yes, there are medical reasons, but the single best argument I’ve seen to not even think twice about getting vaccinated is that, three days ago, on February 22nd in the year of our lord 2021, while getting my tires changed at a local garage, I got to pet a stranger’s dog without having weird, “Not all of these…