SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY (Nintendo, 2017)

The forced wedding is stopped; the bunny wedding planners are crushed; Bowser is, like The Joker after battle after battle, unconscious, somewhere; Cappy and Mario are, at present, hunting for Princess Peach who has once again gone missing from the just-unlocked Mushroom Kingdom – though it seems of her own volition this time; and my first completion of a MARIO game in over 30 years (SUPER MARIO WORLD is still the best) is in the bag.

Why that long? Other than ignoring most of the post MARIO WORLD games on the SNES – CASTLEVANIA and LINK TO THE PAST were my jams – I had a seizure while playing MARIO 64 on the Nintendo 64 (right combo of lights and images at the right time, I guess) and, rightly or wrongly (seems to be the latter) avoided the series out of fear of it happening again until the gateway drug of MARIO KART 8 and the desire to end my niece's reign of terror (read: beating me every race) but the longer version of that particular saga – the seizure, not my niece's reign of MARIO KART terror – is another story for another time.

But ODYSSEY itself.

One of the things that's been asked in the accolades for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM is how did Nintendo make that game – as in "how did they fit all of that and do all of that in a system that came out in 2017?": the answer's simple: Nintendo knows how to make great games without requiring a bevy of onerous cutscenes and/or shallow open worlds with no point beyond window-dressing – narrative or otherwise. They focus solely on simple stories (rescue the Princess / save the kingdom / stop the aliens) delivered in strange, surreal celebrations of the medium – the "flatland" 2D, pixel sidescrolling sections in ODYSSEY being the most wonderful celebration of video games and video game history in recent memory; I cheered every time I got to stuff myself into a pipe and go 8-bit – with an unfiltered creativity and passion devoid of irony and apology; they are and remain the Disney-under-Walt / early Pixar of games.

While I did miss the block-smashing power-up mushrooms – how long have they been gone? – and, though I loved Cappy and his Black-Lodge / Man From Another Place speaking style, found myself rescuing him from that bird only to shut him up (and get on with the game) there's not a lot I can add other than ODYSSEY is pure, unfiltered fun and that I question your humanity if you don't find yourself charmed by it more than once a gaming session. A must-play.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD (Nintendo, 2017)

Being among the first games I purchased when I bought a Switch Lite last summer in order to train to defeat my niece at MARIO KART and being the game that led me to a.) immediately go buy the OLED Switch so I could behold this thing on the big screen and b.) give the Lite to my wife and get her hooked on video games for the first time (ANIMAL CROSSING and LUIGI'S MANSION 3 being her particular jams), finishing – or at least finishing the story (much to my dismay, you can't go back into the game and play around after the main story's end – will remember for TOTK) – BOTW has been a long time coming and I already miss it terribly (in spite of taking six months off because the totally open nature of it wasn't a good fit for my weary brain at that point; couldn't do ELDEN RING either).

A few quick observations:

• Goron Town is my favorite of the Hylian 'burgs.

• I'm proud that I remained alive even though my cooking skills weren't up to snuff and yielded many inedible one-heart concoctions in an effort to make elixirs which I never figured out how to make.

• I loathe destructible weapons and major tests of strength.

• On that, my reflexes are nowhere near as good as they used to be in my nascent gamings and as such, I fail miserably at blocking and parrying.

• The levels in the snow are achingly beautiful. Games are art.

• I want a sand seal.

• SHIELD SURFING IS GREAT (if I can remember the button combo to get to it)

• While this is indisputably one of the greatest games ever made, my favorite Zelda game remains, after more than 30 years, A LINK TO THE PAST.

Not sure what else I can add that hasn't already been said about this triumph but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the (INSERT ELEMENT)blight Ganon fights: perhaps it's that I'm a classically trained gamer (read: NES on Christmas '85 or '86) but there's something about a Nintendo boss fight that's more thrilling than any other company's boss fight, a hardfought success that elicits a string of profanities both in that success and in the seemingly interminable heartbreaks that precede it.

And now, a break for the more contained METROID PRIME REMASTERED (and I really need to finish METROID DREAD) and perhaps something else (I do need to actually play ELDEN RING) then, depending on how long my willpower holds out, it's back to Hyrule to lose all of my powers and weapons for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM to gain them back amid a slower exploration and more complete completion. For now, though, I’ll bask in the unmitigated triumph of this work of art.

a major test of willpower

Given that I a.) only freed the final divine beast in BOTW last night (Goron City is my favorite of the divine 'burgs and Link's cut-scene jump into the volcano was a moment of pure badassery) and have yet to go all Master-Sword-wielding-Hylian on Calamity Ganon and b.) like to mix things up in my gaming (and should probably finally get around to ELDEN RING, though I had to stop because it was so similar to BOTW) TOTK will remain shrink-wrapped until I'm ready to partake.

Official “I have vanquished Thunderblight Ganon” face (with level-up screen capture middle finger).

KILL IT WITH FIRE and POWERWASH SIMULATOR satisfy both ends of my housekeeping spectrum and complement each other perfectly.

"(but I don't know) what that something else could be"

Wrote the above in a note to myself in (one of the) WIP(s); I write this rather frequently, actually: an agnostic faith that I might find it or might not (?) – difference being now that it bothers me far less, if it's the latter, than it used to.

(This is what I tell myself.)

Playing GOTHAM KNIGHTS on the Series S and I'm entertained enough: once I read that the combat was more ASSASSIN'S CREED than ARKHAM (I can't counter? What?!) it made sense and I was able to get over the initial reluctance to embrace it. CYBERPUNK 2077 is waiting in the wings. Still playing ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD, though that's much more of a backburner endeavor, more often than not played in handheld mode (that OLED screen on the Switch is GORGEOUS), except when I have to face one of those stupid tests of strength in the shrines; as someone sagely told me on Mastodon: "When fed up, go foraging": I have been foraging with increased frequency – perhaps I should apply that axiom beyond ZELDA and into the WIP…

Important note: in spite of my Racoon Mario getup below, I've yet to actually fly but the day is young and the sun is only now rising.

PolterPup FTW

As if I wasn't already a proud husband, you may now consider me a proud gamer/husband: my wife, who has spent the last decade insisting that she could never get into video games (other than the Apple Arcade / iOS puzzle ones / CandyCrush monstrosities) and that the dual thumbsticks screw her up is now fully addicted to her Nintendo Switch (I traded up for an OLED and gave her my Lite): MARIO KART 8 was the gateway drug. Went out yesterday and she picked out her first game of her own, LUIGI'S MANSION 3 (very fun, actually) and, once we figured out what she needed to do, she was well and truly hooked.

Still making my way through ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD, cooking inedible dishes, and gliding around and about with occasional dalliances into MARIO KART and, when I'm feeling particularly sadistic with myself, CUPHEAD.

ComicsThing in Muse board: pictures abound and my brain is simultaneously happy and overwhelmed... the crush of it all but the opportunity of it all. Never underestimate the value of seeing things laid out before you, even it's in a weird sort of digital hybrid. Now to figure out what to do with it, how to make Obsidian and Muse play well together / what needs to stay what needs to go, that sort of thing.

OLED void amelioration

(Update, 1019: the SmurfPiss Chariot rides again.)

60ºF, clouds: gave in and bought myself the OLED Switch (podrelease reward) and will dive back into ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD on the big screen – though today’s main non-writing project is to replace the car battery in the SmurfPiss Chariot; spent much of yesterday afternoon caked in battery acid and corrosion what fun. The Lite goes to K so she can learn how to get thumbs working with dual joysticks, a hand-eye coordination complexity that has befuddled her since even before we started dating.

Pleased with the sound quality of the latest TSR: the Vocaster Two was definitely worth the price tag (though I could have gotten away with the Vocaster One; didn't realize that the second input was for a second physical guest but maybe someday I’ll actually use it) and the post-prod addition of music was easier than I expected (without a physical knob, I couldn't do the intro/outro over the music live).

The only solution to the post-release void is to work on more things (and upgrade to an OLED Switch). And so it is and so it goes. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

tue/20220913

59ºF, clouds: convinced that part of my Switch love is how much it reminds me of Sega's Game Gear, as close to a perfect portable system as one can get. Current game lineup is CUPHEAD, HADES, and UNTITLED GOOSE GAME in addition to the MARIO KART boot camp: I think I'm unraveling some of my niece's launch trickery. Victory will be mine.

Staring at the screen that's both filled and blank, a recognition emergent that not only do I not know what to write – both in the bird-by-bird and the broad sense – but I’m unsure of how to write it; suspect that it will take both what/how to solve said quandary, or a third (why?) or the right balance of the HW/Obs/Muse nexus but: can't decide if Muse is contributing to the solution or to the problem – or if it's showing me the problem which will, in theory/dreams, lead to the solution? Either way, might be time to let MainFictionThing percolate for a week and return to other MainFictionThing(s).

That said, something's sounding right though I don't know what. Alas.

RIP Godard; I had already planned a rewatch of ALPHAVILLE. Might have to push that up.

mon/20220912

63ºF, clouds: Slept through my alarm (only by twenty minutes; must've turned the thing off. Morning blood sugar check reminder alert FTW) and the world didnt end, at least for now.

Returned to working with Muse – NOT as an Obsidian replacement, but as a compliment – this morning: recognized that since MainFictionThing will be released only in physical form (Press (A) 02, hopefully) it needed the spatial thinking Muse does so well for me to approximate page turns and that the more rote, line by line nature of Obsidian wasn't working: I need to see it, manipulate it.

Attempting Muse again with one eye open: flashbacks / PTSD remain from the vanishing text issues that led me to abandon Muse late last year but I'm hopeful that the Mac-iPad sync will at least absolve some of them. Nonetheless, my stance that it's a brilliant concept remains firm: I wish only that my confidence in it wasn't so bendy.

Current method/solution: Obsidian on the Mac (since the Stream Deck works only on Mac), Muse on the iPad. Type things, do full on-writing in Obsidian, add, via Universal Control, to Muse board for manipulation on iPad, return, repeat. More handwriting? Hopeful ameleoration of vanishing text issues. Live back-up, etc etc.

The Switch is a delight.