What a year 2023 has been.
Look, I already did a big reflection on the first day of the year end roundup, so I won’t repeat myself too much. But still, I’m bewildered I got so much done, especially in the last quarter of the year. Lots of queue catchup, lots of games played, and lots of (mostly failed) promotion attempt on the Tomie video.
I am bummed again, that I didn’t finish my queue in time for the end of the year. But I’m on the edge of finishing my Steam Queue, finished my Xbox Queue, and got a lot of the Switch one cut down with more in my sights. At this pace, I’m still confident I’ll get it done before long and will be more open to freeing myself up for new games, more time to spend on them, and other avenues I might look into both as a writer and as a retro game fan.
So… What’s the future? What’s 2024 like for SFG, and what ideas do I have in my head? For fun, I’ll also do a short bit of predictions for gaming stuff in 2024, and will come back next year (if I am still alive then, I am aging after all to a old 26 years of age on this planet) to look back on them and see which I got right, and which I got way, waaaaaay off. I debated doing a “oh my internal predictions I had for 2023 and seeing which ones I messed up”, but since I didn’t share any predictions for 2023 publicly, I don’t think it’s worth making the long article even longer. So let’s discuss the future!
Ten. Whole. Years.
In June of 2014, a teenage Connor was bored in his Vacation Cabin loft on his Wii U Gamepad browsing the Wii U eShop for games. He was reading GoNintendo very actively at the time and noticed a bunch of upcoming games were on the Wii U eShop, but nobody was talking about them. He really wanted to play them, but didn’t have much money and wasn’t sure how else to take a gamble on those games if nobody was reviewing them.
One game stuck out to that Connor. A cute bunny game called Chubbins. Nobody else paid attention to it, but Connor wanted to play it since it looked cute. Thus, Connor dusted off an old free forum he made solely to talk about Pokemon (even though nobody else came to the forum), and decided to start publishing reviews on PokemonBattleZone, AKA, PBZ.
Soon, emailing a bunch of random indie devs via their press emails somehow worked, and by the end of the first month he had several reviews up and a lot of game codes to go through. It also helped that the Wii U eShop had a bit of an indie boom around this very summer. Even with growing pains and poor writing quality at first, he kept at it, even foolishly thinking he could get Nintendo games and such right away… And made it his hobby to cover Indie games and other obscurities that nobody else seemingly would because they’re cool.
That above, is my story-style recap of how I got my start as a reviewer. While I did make “Reviews” before June 2014, they were really just paragraphs of random opinions with no structure or reasoning to them, even on my forum. I had no scale, I had no consistent system, and I had really no sort of credit to my name outside of GoNintendo choosing to feature some reviews of mine to their readers; even some pretty bad ones like a Picross e review I made in poor judgement with only Mario’s Picross as a comparison tool! (I made better Picross reviews later.)
But Chubbins really did get me my start. I even noted it when I covered the game’s remake, Rotund Takeoff. If it wasn’t for me goofing off on my Wii U Gamepad bored outta my mind, I wouldn’t have tried writing about games. And I wouldn’t have stopped writing lame fanfics to try and get any sort of game-related creativity out in the world. (Lost to the world of time until I find the co-author responsible for the mess, was a stupid Ys & Looney Tunes crossover. It’s as dumb as it sounds.) Good thing I didn’t do it during the Switch era, as a ton of asset flips plague the store plus trying to review every game that comes out in a week would be impossible.
But during the Wii U days? I’d like to say I did a pretty OK job at covering a lot of the indies that came out in 2014/2015 for it. Sometimes I see retrospectives on the Wii U or its eShop, and a lot of those games were ones I covered in the early days of SFG, and for a lot of those games, they’ve been long since delisted with almost no other trace of them on any other platforms. Nothing like GEOM or Xtype will ever show up on Steam or Switch, and even now my reviews of those titles are some of the only surviving impressions of those games on the internet from the time. I may have gone through a lot of crud, but I found a few gems or decent titles from beginner developers who were truly passionate about that sort of thing, and I’ll always cherish that experience.
So what does all that have to do with the future of SFG? Well, 2024 will mark ten years since I started those reviews. June 2024 will be the 10 year mark, and I honestly have no clue what I’ll have at that point in time. The name switch to Seafoam Gaming didn’t kick in until the following year, so I could wait until 2025 to celebrate, but I feel that even if my first year of reviews weren’t so good, it’s worth celebrating when the June anniversary comes closer.
How would I celebrate? I’m still not sure, like I said. I started as a 100% solo review website, and I’ll continue as a 100% solo review website. I’ve gotten lots of help on projects such as my art assets and my translation efforts, and will continue to reach out to friends for more collab efforts like that in the future. But nobody really “got me” into reviewing besides my interest in Chubbins… Which I already covered several times and even interviewed the creators about. I’ll think of something by then, but I guess this portion is more of a preemptive thanks for supporting the site throughout the various years, and for reading my stuff.
I haven’t gotten much feedback on my writing outside of some from friends over the years, but I’ve noticed a small uptick in activity lately, so I hope that does lead to me getting tips on how to make this formula even better. I do worry my sentences get tiring after a while, or feel a bit samey, so don’t hesitate to give me feedback.
Site Rebranding
In 2024, I feel like with the queue wrapping up it’ll be prime time for a much, much needed rebrand and new focus. No, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna change the website name, or go from covering video games to movies or something silly like that, but I really wanna try and get myself out as the “retro compilation/port fanatic”. Most of what catches my interest these days are attempts at bringing back retro games or retro-style things to a modern age, and with efforts like Atari 50 setting new standards in this regard, I really wanna make it my goal to cover as many retro reissues as possible to be a great source for them.
I notice in recent months, a lot of people really flock to my reviews of the Taito Super Pocket and some of the retro compilations that came out this year, especially if they were ones not covered by other sites, and that’s more or less what I want to aim to do more of. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop covering indies or even modern AA/AAA games that catch my eye, and with a free queue I’ll be much more comfortable taking on games and being able to focus on covering them much more in-depth and way quicker than I was able to with some games due to the huge queue, but I’ll definitely be curating a bit more. You will never see me review the sort of handheld mode only games the Switch eShop gets on a weekly basis, as I do not want memories of covering bad Skunk Software games to return to me.
So yeah, I’ll change my focus post queue, and do so in a way that I can cover and review products without much stress to myself or interfering with my full time job. That means I won’t just accept every game thrown my way, just like how I’ve been rolling for a few years now. I’ll also continue to do more reviews of stuff I pick up in my own time, namely, every single Evercade cartridge that exists as of the time of this article. Yes, that’s nearly fifty cartridges I’ll be covering. Yes, that’ll be a lot of work, and that’s why I’m waiting to do it after my queue. But it fits the niche, they have neat obscurities on the carts, and I enjoy covering retro stuff. When I can throw in something newer now and then, I think it’ll lead to a good balance that won’t crush me like my 2018/2019 days nearly did.
Thus, with a shift in focus, comes the shift in branding I eluded to earlier. I already got myself a new Twitch icon for when I eventually stream stuff in my own free time, and I likewise plan to change the SFG logo, banners, and other assets to be more reflective of the retro-focus and just how much I’ve changed as a person in general. Basically, say goodbye to this.
Man, this icon stuck with me for a long while. And I really really like it too! I noted before I commissioned it from a great artist known as KKJDreamwalker, but looking back now, I cannot find any trace of that artist whatsoever. I didn’t stay in touch with them after they completed the asset, otherwise I’d contemplate asking them for an interview and trying to promote their content, wherever they are now. (If they didn’t turn into a bad person in the years since)
But this I had commissioned back during a rough part of my life. I forgot exactly when I got this icon, but I think it was 2015/2016, so it’s been around a long, long time, but if you couldn’t tell, this is basically an Articuno (fitting the name of my site), in a shadowy fashion akin to Yu-Gi-Oh. During 2015/2016, I was worrying about my future, and dealing with some of the not-so-fun flashbacks I still deal with today due to my pre-adoption upbringing. Somewhere around that time, I paid to have this logo made, and more of less requested it in a “shadowy” style. Mainly so the logo isn’t just blatantly a Pokemon and a copyright risk, (though looking back, that obviously wouldn’t have worked) and also to sorta reflect what I felt was my mind when covering a game; a stern, harsh look at a game to find the good out of it. (It also does not help that this was right around when I covered a ton of bad Wii U eShop games nonstop, pre Switch)
Basically, if you ever took the site icon as one that was glaring at you, congrats! That was basically where my mind was when I commissioned it. But I’ve grown over the years, and despite some rough moments and the whole, stressful, derailing year of 2019, I feel a lot differently than I did when I got that logo commissioned. I’m more energetic, passionate about the series I love, and a big retro fanatic.
With the queue rounding down, and with me making a lot more art friends and being a bit more of an outgoing person, I feel it’ll soon be time to get a brand new logo. One that’s more reflective of me going through the waves of history, and one that’ll show a more positive side of me. I still am brainstorming tons of ideas for said new logo, but I hope you enjoy it when I do get it finalized sometime early next year! I’ll also likely change up the WordPress theme around that time, since I’d like the site to not look so basic, and I also plan to go through and change the font color of some older interviews, so they don’t look horrible on a dark mode color scheme.
Interview Ambitions
With the Tomie interview doing so well, I hinted at wanting to do more like it. And for a while, I’ve tried to track down a certain someone for a full interview but to no avail. Still, I’ve been exploring interviewing more for my interview initiative, ranging from indie devs behind cool games I like, youtube/other press people who interest me that I feel need more attention, old PR/developer people from defunct retro game companies with interesting stories to tell, and obscure Japanese developers/writers/composers that never had stories told to a western audience.
In 2024, I’d like to get a few of these done. If the stars align, maybe another moderately sized interview will take place, and I’d really love that to happen again. Tomie Part II? Eh, I’d like to ask him about Shiren 6, but outside of sending him my regards about the game doing well, I can’t think of much to ask him on and I’d rather know about the other creatives at Chunsoft rather than make my interview section the Shinichiro Tomie show. Needless to say though, I am very very hyped for Shiren 6, so I’ll see what I can do about that one and if that would lead to any interview chances. There will absolutely never be another video companion to an interview again, though; the Tomie documentary did so badly it’s not worth my time to crunch myself on another, and I even eliminated my Adobe subscription entirely as a result. Maybe I’ll do more Eternal Memories in general if I get a drive for videos again, but for now, that love letter to Mystery Dungeon and Telenet is my grand finale and the pre-hiatus video.
Assorted Predictions for 2024
Here we go, as hinted at earlier, I felt like sharing random predictions for stuff in gaming or other aspects that interest me in 2024. These are all just random assumptions and thoughts so please do not label this as insider info or give it to a tabloid like Video Games Chronicle. Outside of a small handful of things I have hints of, I don’t know any huge secrets. No, I do not know what the Switch 2 looks like. Anyhow, onto the predictions!
The Analogue 3D will get delayed out of 2024. I think the preorders will go up in 2024, but the FPGA cores for N64 have evolved a ton in such a short amount of time, that I seriously doubt they’ll open preorders early in 2024 and then ship out a finished product by the end of the year. I expect a lot of delays akin to how the Analogue Pocket adapters have suffered, with next to no communication on them either. (Just ask Duo buyers how they feel about the dreaded “Label Created” status) I think N64 as a whole is a pretty poor system and while a console like this will do a lot to bring back interest in it, I really do not see it spiking up the prices of random third party stuff or JP imports. People will buy one to play their marios and zeldas just like a lot of casual buyers bought a pocket to play Pokemon a little better.
Shiren 6 will be the best selling Shiren in the west by far. This is a bold assumption I’m making, yet alone one on the prelude to a Switch exclusive launch, (lacking the Steam release Shiren 5 eventually got) but I really feel the energy in the air for this one. It’s a throwback to the more classical Shiren games, which JP fans have wanted for a long while, and it seems to have been deliberately designed as a starting point, taking place earlier in the timeline, and with a goal of being pretty easy to get into despite inevitably kicking your ass. Shiren 5 on Switch did very well, and has been on sale plenty of times, but this one being a full price game will be a huge barrier of entry for the west.
I’m honestly a little scared this gamble may not pay off for the western side of things, considering how Shiren 5 only sold as much as it did by being ported over and over and over and over again, and the US only got it on Vita and Switch/Steam. Shiren 1 on DS didn’t do so hot, we don’t talk about Shiren 3, and Shiren 4 and DS2 just completely jumped over us. There was a brief period that made me fear we wouldn’t even get this one, but here we are, with a US launch in February, and I really hope the rise of roguelikes make this game a hit, even if it may take more porting to do so. This won’t be like a PMD game and sell hundreds of thousands on the launch weekend. But with this being the first new Shiren in ages, one with very positive preview impressions, and being as newcomer-friendly as it can be, I feel this will hook certain people and those certain people will spread the word on this game hard.
One Limited Print Company will shut down in 2024. Cheating and still following my “I’ll never write an article about a limited print company again” rule, I can at least make my own assumptions on how this market will pan out, as I’ve done before. And to be blunt, 2023 was the year which illustrates just how dry this concept has gone.
Companies that do the open preorder model, barely hit their MOQ amounts, which for Switch is usually a risky 5K units in the US, and 3K for PAL. Companies that order the limited units and leave it at that, still cannot sell out their stock, even when they do get the items in hand. Strictly Limited Games did a warehouse clearing sale, and almost nothing sold out completely despite plenty of discounting. They’re even doing a free shipping promotion, and I’ve barely seen movement on their stock.
Anyone who wanted a limprint game from companies like them, got what they wanted or are still waiting on the pending orders that seem destined to never ship out on time. Dispatch Games will never come back, and you’re a fool for ever assuming they meant well after 2020 to begin with, and I doubt they’ll ever officially declare “the end”. First Press Games is dodging even developers now, and unless they get a cash flow outta nowhere I doubt we’ll see stuff like Psychotic Origins make it out next year. You can already get a physical Goodboy Galaxy cart for the Evercade this very minute, long before you’ll ever see a retail GBA version from FPG. We’ve already seen companies like Special Reserves close up shop and shift focus more toward retail, and companies like Red Art Games seem to have the right idea in that regard too, going to more retail-oriented ventures.
Thus, I’m pretty certain at the current pace, that sometime in 2024 another company will follow SRG’s lead and close up shop for retail/infrequent normal releases, or just shutter altogether after completing pending orders. This business model isn’t really that viable anymore, and the Switch boom has ended. PS5 collecting isn’t really catching on, and we don’t even know what console Nintendo has planned for 2024, if there’ll even be one at all. If it uses the same old cart types as Switch, we’ll probably get a few lim prints on Switch 2, but it’ll quickly die out. It’ll also be a reason for certain companies to milk their “no reprint” rule and copypasta Switch 1 games as native Switch 2 games, ala early PS5 limited prints. Forget about Xbox, nobody has sold good numbers of anything worthwhile in a physical format for years.
Who do I think it’ll be? While I could be pessimistic and say it would easily be FPG or Strictly Limited, I think the most likely outcome will be one of the smaller, barely remembered limprints, such as 1Print Games or Premium Edition. Those are small branches with little backlog, doing their own thing, and eventually they’ll find a game to stop on without much trouble, or maybe shift into doing non limited stuff or game merch. Just because a limprint company stops doesn’t mean they’ll all stop by exploding like Dispatch did. I at least hope every limprint current out there manages to get their pending orders caught up in some capacity in the next year, though…
The Switch 2 will launch in 2024, duh. One of the most predictable predictions known to man, it seems clear the Switch is winding down. We got robbed of a pro model, but the past two years made it feel as if we really didn’t need one after the rough performance of some 2020/2021 titles. This year in particular had some really stellar stuff come out. But next year seems to be play-it-safe or remaster city, and I expect that to continue into 2024. A lot of games that will be sat on for this very calendar year will come out, as the Switch 2 gets its own software exclusives prepped for whenever it launches.
When do I think it’ll be released or revealed? I’m betting it’ll be revealed in April or June, with a release set for September. November’s Pokemon Game (Because there will be a Pokemon game no matter how much we dislike the release pace) will be a Switch 1 game so all the kids can get it on their consoles, while Switch 2 players benefit from improved performance or some visual upgrade of some sort. Or it could just do nothing like how the New 3DS did nothing to the Generation 6 titles.
Either way, I expect them to have a few big games for this holiday, and on a whim I’m gonna guess the big launch title will be Mario Kart. It still feels too recent for a 3D mario, but definitely about time for a new original Mario Kart. Plus, 8 on Switch is literally impossible to topple in the sales charts, and it keeps selling. They could literally publish only one first party game for Switch 2 this year and make it Mario Kart 10, and it will do gangbusters. But who knows what the future will bring on that end.
There will be no Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2 (Explorers of Sky Remake). Not just in 2024, but period. I’ve been hopiuming this into existence for a few years now, but to be blunt, that was mainly because I felt this would be safer for the MD team to make than a new Shiren title. Since we’re getting the latter, I see no possible way they churn out a remake even in this remake-filled year of 2024. If one somehow does come out, it would have to have been finished for quite a long while.
Plus, I feel like with Rescue Team DX, that was more so meant as a starting point for newcomers and to celebrate the subseries as a whole, and with it nearing 10 years since the last mainline PMD game, I feel 2025 will be the year we get another one, and it’ll be an original game. Either that, or Super was the grand finale, and they’ll just port the 3DS ones in some way, or throw up the Explorers saga on a DS Switch Online type of service. It’s all Shiren for 2024, baby.
Evercade will get a cool niche company I love, and a popular company everyone loves. I love the Evercade, and part of 2024 is me reviewing every single cart that exists for it once my review queue clears up. I got into it for having the balls to cover obscure games instead of the same old same old, (seriously, look at the stuff in the Namco collections, those are not the usual home ports you always see) and recently Evercade has done a great job at providing the new and obscure old. Last year we had the stellar Sunsoft join the lineup for the obscure, and we got the super popular Duke Nukem IP for the popular.
So in 2024, I predict we’ll see some returning companies, along with two newcomers in that same fashion. For obscure company, i’m expecting NCS/Masaya to show up, (they give their stuff to everyone) and for the more well known, I have a hunch we’ll see Tecmo or Konami in some fashion. We could also be hit with a big old European tidal wave though, and get cursed with James Pond or some crud like that instead. Maybe some Last Ninja goodness as well, or MSX stuff like D4 Enterprise stuff. Who knows! It’s exciting and a good system to get if you like the obscurities Switch Online throws at you.
A previously “unreleasable” retro game will somehow make it out again. I’m talking about games with weird legal issues, uncertainty with who owns them, or games that just never ever seem to come out no matter how hard people try. Sometimes the impossible is possible, or someone cares enough to pull an obscurity out of the void. This year we got some obscure Sharp X68K stuff for that mini system, (though it’s a pain to import, so I can’t cover it for SFG sadly) including a game made by a company, Takeru, who just no longer exists. The Egret II mini got Twin Cobra II, which never seemed like it would ever come out again. (then again, neither did anything Toaplan for the longest time)
For 2024? I’m predicting with Digital Eclipse being the crafty people they are, they’ll pull out some unreleased prototype for their Gold Master series, and release it. I don’t mean just some unfinished or old beta build the creator had, but like, a home port for a game they’re compiling that nobody knew existed until that moment. NES port of something obscure that never got made? Sure! It could happen. Or they could do something stupid like emulate the Nuon, which would also fall under this umbrella.
I also expect someone in some way will try to get something like the Vic Tokai games or the Takeru NES games out with that new Japanese copyright law; the same one which got another Takeru game out for the X68KZ. I don’t see this being likely for many more years, but who knows, we could get surprised. Or maybe that damn Lufia compilation I’ve prayed for a decade to happen, finally does happen. It’s pretty exciting to see all the effort put into retro compilations as of late, and I hope it continues.
And… Those were a bunch of predictions! And a bunch of plans for my general future once the queue winds down. I’ll continue to write status updates off and on like I usually do for SFG to indicate where reviews are and whatnot, (and yep, several of them are still being worked on as I type this) but for this year of 2023, I truly do thank you all. I dunno how many people read my full articles on a daily or weekly basis, but if even one person (who’s not family) is excited enough to wake up and check to see what I make daily, then I am so, so thankful you enjoy my wild rambles about retro compilations and new gems. I’ll aim to do better next year, clean out that queue, and then pop a V8 energy drink out to celebrate. Yes, I love V8 Energy.
Until next year… Take care and be safe! May my 10th anniversary, be a great one…
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