Been a while since one of these, hasn’t it? The last major post like this was done in the aftermath of a very harsh Q1 for me, and luckily, a lot of things has vastly improved since then: My new laptop is something I’m adjusted to now, i’ve gotten better at backing up stuff (still have a lot I need to get to, though), and the new device even proves itself as being more handy for video editing purposes than my older Macbook.

Yet despite that, the biggest win for me came when I published my grand interview with Shinichiro Tomie, the scenario writer behind Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. A nine year goal in the making, finally accomplished, which unknowingly opened a rabbit hole that I fell down while working on a video going over the lengthy quest in detail, and how Tomie, Masayasu Yamamoto and myself all ended up connecting in the end. Scripting is nearly done, I have an awesome artist set up to commission a kickass thumbnail for the video, and it’s gonna be epic, but it may not get finished until the end of this month or next, in October, so I can’t promise any ETAs.

Either way, the reception to this article has been amazing. It may not look like it here on the site (where nobody comments anyhow, but you still can! I just have to approve your first comment, so don’t be shy), but on Twitter, Reddit, Discord, and my friend circles, the article was a smash hit, a lot of people surprised by my dedication to the PMD brand and how I even managed to communicate with Tomie-san to begin with. Yet again, Kody NOKOLO is to thank for the translation work, and I cannot stress enough that I couldn’t have done this without him, despite my notorious stubbornness to try and do everything 100% solo.

I hope the upcoming video will provide a good insight into my own personal journey (even if focusing on my own growth may put off some people hoping it would just focus on Tomie/Yamamoto, but that’s what time stamps are for, and I promise to not make it a self admiration thing, I’m not like that at all), along with how important Tomie and Yamamoto are both not just to Mystery Dungeon as a whole, but also to what I argue, the overall gaming industry: the stuff these two have worked on influenced way, way more games than you may possibly have imagined! The script is at 10K words and we aren’t even close to done, so it should be a nice lengthy one to listen to as you work or something.

With that said, some other things have been worked on too, and of course, my full time job absorbs most of my workload anyhow (otherwise tons more would have been done by now). Unfortunately, that means I have to yet again lament that I have failed my goal to shrink the queue, but on the plus size, I’ve not really grown it much either: I’ve knocked out quite a few queue games this year, mainly on Switch and Steam, and there’s still some more to come on this front too. I haven’t really taken in any new games unless they’re super short and I know I can cover them in a weekend, and while I am getting a lot of review code offers (almost an unusually high amount, if my 5K+ Inbox is any indication, though I read every subject line so if you want something, please reach out again, or tweet me @SeafoamGaming on Twitter!), I pretty much reject or avoid anything I’m not already looking into or that wouldn’t fit on my schedule, unless it’s from a dev I know well enough already.

Part of me always gets anxious with how long some of these have taken, especially since well, I’ve made articles calling out companies for how long their limited print games have taken to ship out. Seriously, we’re nearing the five year mark on a few games, which I never ever wanted to have happen at all, and thus, I want to do them justice: but my over obsession with making something “worthwhile” leads to said thing being bloated more, and thus, in a loop. I finally got better at that lately, and that’s why some longer-time games such as Semblance have finally gotten out of the review queue after I snapped myself into just writing my thoughts without worrying about how to make up for time.

Really, I just found buying the games I enjoyed on another platform to give the devs extra cash for their troubles, or talking with them after the fact did enough to remove my worries as-is, but yet again as I always say, if I have a pending review of something from you and you want to reach out to me about it, please please please let me know. I’m an open book and would be willing to help out extra to make up for any trouble my delays have caused, and while some reviewers drop games they took to review, I can’t in good faith let myself do that, so I always aim to get things done, even if they take ages. Hopefully in some cases, it gives a game a second wind, since you guys appear to like my reviews quite a bit.

With that said, there is a subset of games that is giving me trouble, and those are the reviews lost in the data crash. A couple of titles were nearly finished, or even fully done, and to have the reviews totally nuked left me with little motivation to redo it, and replay parts of the games I took notes on (Which I also lost). They’ll still get done, but I’m gonna focus on the stuff I can do quicker first to shrink this queue before the end of the year.

Afterward? Well, as of now, I’ve only reached out for a few smaller stuff like Shovel Knight Dig, but in general I’m just content buying stuff I want to review for the site but didn’t want to bother for a code over: The TMNT collection is one of those cases, and I should have my review up next week. So there’ll still be stuff on the site, even as I work on my huge titan of a queue, a huge steam deck review (one of my bigger reviews, hence why a lot of other things took so long), and the huge tomie video. Lots of fun stuff, all one person. Still no plans to hire anyone else for the site but I am debating hiring artists for some thumbnails for future videos, or possibly a caption person for the Tomie video as I really want to make it super accessible. (or even subbed in Japanese, if my wallet lets me)

Still, a full time job plus video editing plus reviewing means little free time for me stuff, which just… is weird. I can’t really drop either of my 3 duties, but at the same time, I’m not really minding it when I do get around to either of those. I still think when the queue is finally caught up, I’ll just stick to shorter games and stuff I personally request, rather than just accepting everything everyone offered me like I foolishly did 3-4 years ago. Especially when that didn’t work nicely with my 2019/2020 from hell. I also plan to do more opinion articles and countdowns too, since stuff like the end of year wrapup and the Turbografx Mini article did quite well, and I had fun with those, more fun with the Limited Print stuff, which also means…

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Ranting about Dispatch yet again because I can

I’m still keeping to my word in that despite several recent urges to write more articles on limprint shenanigans, I’m not gonna make a new article on any of them anytime soon. Lots of stuff happened and sadly I debated making a second version of the report card to show my updated thoughts on each limprint, since a lot of them have tanked, and further reaffirm my personal fears about the market. But people still ask or post about how they don’t get why X isn’t shipping or where X company has gone, and it irks me knowing that I can’t get anything done about it. I can’t force people out of hiding, nor will I bully anyone who’s not willing to provide an answer on twitter/email. I’m not a tabloid, and I refuse to give into SEO garbage.

Yet I can rant and reaffirm something since sadly, it seems this still comes up and I see people on social medias with some sliver of hope, and I pretty much have to repeat myself, on the subject of Dispatch Games, they are gone. Brian blew the money and ran. He’s not coming back, and definitely doesn’t have the cashflow to deliver the CEs even if he did. It’s now been the longest period of silence since the last proper update at the start of the year, and outside of a lone eShop sale and him nuking tweets to break embeds in my articles, he’s done literal jack to make up to his customers. People can’t get ahold of him for refunds, they can’t get ahold of him for promised eShop codes, because he doesn’t have anything to give.

He’s BROKE. GONE. ZERO. hoping he can just fade away due to the company being an LLC. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the domain expires at this rate, like how Monkeypaw Games did. (though at least, despite them owing me a Tomba Plush, they didn’t have any preorders that went unfulfilled) You are not getting your games. None of them except Tengoku exist and even then Brian couldn’t have the money to send them to the freaking manufacturing plant to kit them.

Strictly Limited announced the Jajamaru PS4 collection Dispatch silently cancelled, further putting a nail in their coffin. The company Brian’s Co-Founder went to work on for City Connection, is now porting Gimmick for Sunsoft, Brian Schorr literally has nothing left and nobody else at his company. This whole time he could have reached out to me via twitter, facebook, linkedin, or email to clarify my findings in case I messed something up (and i probably have, with how tough it is to find any info on the company since they’re ghosting buyers), and he has not. He has not reached out to anyone except for erasing his twitter feed and wiping his company facebook whenever an article explicitly naming Dispatch Games spreads around. It’s fucking insulting and yeah, DISPATCH GAMES SCAMMED YOU ALL. YOUR GAMES ARE GONE PENDING A MIRACLE IN WHICH HE GETS FUNDING OR COMES CLEAN.

Of course knowing my luck he’ll come back onto twitter in a few days after this goes live but to be blunt, you know what you need to do, Brian. Come clean, end the agony for customers wanting news on your games. other limprints, even with their horrendous wait times and QC, will get all three of your CEs done in a faster time than you would if they started right this minute. 3 years is too long to leave people without cash. Do the right thing.

I won’t make another dispatch games article, because I can’t. There’s no info. He’s gone. He’s a one-man guy who moved states and sold home to fund games he couldn’t afford to print in the end anyhow. Your money’s toast and unless you can sue him or something, Game Tengoku, Radirgy Swag, and the Train game physicals are never happening, lest the carts of Tengoku leak out one day. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s how it is, and I’m sick of really just being unable to do anything.

I sent news tips on my prior article on Dispatch to FOUR different outlets, some of which have many small sub-outlets. I tweeted at people who wrote about dispatch before I did. Nobody replied. The press does not care about this. I’m just a lone wolf who does because I don’t like seeing people getting screwed and I love Jaleco games. So with that, and if nobody is really gonna report on my article like Nintendo Life, GoNintendo, etc, then I cannot help you guys further, and I’m sorry.

Either way, with that rant out of the way, let’s hope the final quarter of 2022 is on a positive note, and that everything will go well: like always, lemme know what you think or if you have any concerns or questions, I will answer, even if your comment gets held for review.