Well, that was a rough month. But some of the bigger roadblocks are out of my way now. Let’s just go into everything and ramble a bit about some ideas I have…
Stress of the World, yet Hope
Well, this month has been a pretty brutal one mentally. They come and go like that, unfortunately. Lots of reasons as to why, such as IRL stuff I noted last week, but also the fact that I’m under a lot of IRL pressure lately; both with my non SFG activities, also also due to a bunch of stuff I’m trying to ramp up for the site, maybe a bit too quickly all at once…
See, I noted last month how I was pretty excited for the Switch 2 and planned to put out a ton of stuff for it, but as you can see, I only have one Switch 2 related thing out this month, and that’s my Welcome Tour review. A little bit late to the crowd, I know. But honestly, that’s both because I’ve been struggling with IRL stuff and stress, while also multitasking between so many different reviews/ideas at once almost to the point of complete overload.
Lemme explain how. See, when I do a review, I break it up into sections as you all know, and I also write a good amount of notes mentally or elsewhere to put down certain aspects I find interesting for the review; this is how I focus so well on quirks like emulation oddities, bonus features, obscure aspects to a game, etc etc. I like to think that’s what keeps my reviews, especially of retro adjacent stuff pretty effective and engaging enough that I still get people reading stuff from years ago, or even reading a review from the legacy queue I end up putting out years later due to my stubborn “Do Not Give Up on a Review” mindset.
The problem with a system launch and buying a bunch of stuff at once, is trying to do that for like 5-6 games all at once gets me overwhelmed, and has me left with little idea what to even do or where to start first, which is why I went to Welcome Tour since, well, it’s the introductory app. But now I’m tasked with wanting to cover Yakuza 0, ACA2 Ridge Racer, Bravely Default and Suikoden, and three of those games are pretty darn long! It’s kinda giving me flashbacks to the whole problem the legacy queue ended up with from me asking for a lot of games at once, and then freezing up due to being unable to do all of them. Luckily, this is all on me this time, and I didn’t ask any company to cover their Switch 2 games, so I can worry a bit less about doing these at my own pace. As long as the readers like my work and find the reviews helpful, that’s what I aim to do.
Still, it has left me realizing that yeah, maybe it’s time to go back to Clock Tower and Gumball in Trick or Treat Land before they get a bit too outdated. So I need to shift focus to that in July, and that’s my big plan for the time being. The S2 reviews will come when they’re done, no ETA, just when I can get em out, but I need to get both the current queue games done before the end of July. There’s a single Switch 1 game I requested recently for the sole reason of seeing the Switch 2 upgrades they did ahead of time play out, but otherwise I don’t plan on taking any new games during the month of July outside of ones I buy myself. (outside of maybe Irem Collection 3, for the sake of completion, since let’s be real, i’m convinced that’s the final volume anyhow)
TLDR: Overwhelming myself due to IRL and crunching on a bunch of games once again, but i’m shifting some of that focus to my 2 current queue games shortly.
The Big Back Compat Article + Hardware
I have a pretty huge Backwards Compatibility Article in the works, and I mean huge. If I were to list it game by game, I’d end up with dozens of games tested, both obscure and known, and it would probably eclipse my impending LRG Part 3 (yes, more on that, I promise it will exist) if I write it that way. So I’m not gonna do that, and will instead go for a more generalized approach, where I just ramble about games in certain categories/genres/companies, and give my thoughts on how they perform on Switch 2 vs OG Switch. Retro ports, compilations, JP imports, delisted hyper obscure games, you name it! You’ll absolutely see some names dropped that nobody else has bothered to publicly test, and I cannot wait to have it out.
Unfortunately, no ETA. I learned my lesson, especially with scope creep impacting another of my articles. But I do hope it’s soonish provided I stop finding new old obscurities to throw at this thing and see if they run better. Thank goodness Switch 2 has easier photo sharing to make that part of the article super easy!
Next up, the whole Hardware trilogy of reviews I keep touting. The Evercade EXP-R is still in the works, even with an upcoming model without a pack-in to launch later in the year, but I think I’ll wait to try the next two carts before I get it fully reviewed. Not that I’m struggling to say much about it, just the fact i’m busy with bigger priority reviews, along the fact that the more I use it, the more I can tout the reliability of the system and how it holds up with age/usage. But yes, when this is finally out, the EC reviews will resume since I held them off to focus on this. That should bring nice filler to the site alongside the Switch 2 stuff I wanna talk about.
And yep, the Analogue Pocket as well, and part of this was because of wanting to wait for the EXP-R review, but also so I could get in games for the adapters, since I’ll mention my experience with that too. However, even with that finally done, I will not intend on getting the dock. I will talk about the dock though, and I have a certain something to complain about with what it currently lacks, and if you know analogue, you know what I’m looking to rip into them over. Still, another in the camp of “I can see how this holds up over time” that benefits the review in the end.
Lastly, the Switch 2 review. Just like how I didn’t rush to review my Steam Deck after getting it, and how mine was months later than everyone else’s review, I plan to review it after other things are covered and to see how it holds up with a few months of usage. Pretty much after the high of a new console has fully worn off, in other words. I debated reviewing the original Switch as a means to bookend/cap off that generation, but I know as well as anyone how that thing will get games for years to come, so maybe i’ll just wait and do it if the OG Switch model gets discontinued or something… I don’t exactly have kind things to say about that console, despite it being a lot of my 2017-2021 output. Nevertheless, I do plan on covering some cool gaming hardware soon, so I thank you for your patience
Unleashing the Ed in LimitEd Run Games
No there’s no guy named Ed at LRG as far as I’m aware, or at least nobody on the corporate side of things i’d talk about when LRG part 3 is finally done. But after too many rewrites, new things popping up I keep adding, and scope creep, I think I really need to think super hard about how I’m gonna cover this. While I plan on skimming a bunch of the month-by-month details, I wasn’t sure how exactly to get another QC article out with a sense of finality that’d inevitably have people asking me months/years later “what about X incident?”, and i struggled with that for a long time.
I think I might not be doing that anymore. And it’s all thanks to Ed Zitron. If you don’t know, he’s a very wise guy who caught onto the whole GenAI hype bubble and how it’s largely propped up as a sham for the sake of big tech and billionaires to waste money in an industry that just isn’t profitable or going to last, but they sure want you to think it could become god! And I think while reading his articles ripping into big tech companies and media outlets without being too extreme, I kinda realized something.
See, while I will name and shame big figureheads in my limprint articles, I often get flak for doing so, and I sometimes would worry a little bit on if I was going too far about it. I did and will continually stress for nobody in my audience to harass any individuals I name no matter how much they do not like the company, because that’s a stupid childish thing to do and if any of my readers were to do that I’ll condemn it in every possible sense of the manner. Far too many content creators use ragebait and making people targets for the sake of views, and I’ve made it 10000% clear that I’ll never ever do that at SFG.
In the past, my old articles did just fine and people behaved, but I often get a little worried when writing about this one since it goes into a lot of heavier things; allegations of rushing out products from a year+ ago, proven social media lies about what state a product would be in, etc, and the fact I really do not want to beat a dead horse. But on the other hand, we are dealing with a company where most of the problems I cite are literally traced back to certain individuals and their means of conduct/online behavior when it comes to people bringing up concrete issues that have been stated over and over again with no improvements. There’s just no way I can tiptoe around writing parts of my article without naming people and saying their conduct/behavior is a legitimate issue in how their company will be perceived and how in order to change it, the people must change their behavior or resign from the industry entirely.
And honestly? Seeing Ed’s way of doing things, by just brutally honestly calling out their bullshit, pushing to your readers to not harass individuals no matter what, but still know the fact how they are not good people? I think I’m feeling the need to just be more honest. I will run the draft by several of my sources/industry peers before it goes live, and again, this won’t contain any major shocking revelations if you’ve been buying from them or been part of their community for years, but it will at least reiterate my final stance on the limprint industry as a whole, the whole limprint bubble that inflated and popped before our eyes, and how so god damn many people in the gaming media propped up LRG as the saviors of physical gaming when if anything, they’re accelerating the push to digital. Hell, this whole ordeal pushed me to be more digital for modern games.
So yeah. I’m gonna be very very careful to write it in a way to call them out directly, but to not be mean about it, if that makes sense. This isn’t something I like doing, but like with Dispatch Games, if nobody else is willing to, I gotta answer the call, even for the last time…
Bonus Euro limprint thoughts
Because I got a request from a longtime reader who asked me to write thoughts/something on the two Euro Limprint companies, I figured I’d just give general musings, since again, I do not plan on doing more limprint articles on them, or any limprint articles for that matter after the LRG piece is done. But that doesn’t mean I can’t chime in with some musings when asked during a status update.
So, Strictly Limited. Far as I can tell, they’re still doing decently on their PS stuff, but slow as heck on Switch. Still giving the lame “Industry Slowdown” excuse when everyone and their dog knows that’s just code for Layoffs, and them constantly pushing the dates back isn’t fooling anyone at this point. Some even think it may be on purpose to avoid the statute of limitations for getting your refund back via the EU, but I’m not sure if I’d go that far yet.
They at least don’t seem to be getting new games open for preorder, seemingly aware nobody is gonna buy their games until they ship the old ones out. In fact, Spica Adventure just got thrown into a Parasol Stars pack almost certainly because the former was selling next to nothing in preorder and the digital SKU still does not exist as of now. They are doing more “Speedruns”, but at this point I feel that meaning has been completely lost since Iron Meat had a bajillion reprints and many cases of people buying it only to get it months later anyhow, so I’m pretty sure it’s now code for “we have the tiny funds to publish this and hope we get our money back and if it sells out we can print it again”.
Interestingly, the ININ store did a special edition of X-out, which I believe already shipped? The standard version at least, showing that alongside the retail versions, this company can put out games, and I think SLG is just on the verge of shutting down. I really don’t see them being viable in the Switch 2 era despite them promising Switch 2 games, and I reaaaaaaally doubt they have the funds to manufacture $70 physical indie games. Unless it’s something wild like Fast Fusion, I don’t think they can put out a S2 physical that’ll sell out.
As for First Press Games… Well…. It’s First Press Games. Nothing they’ve done since then is unexpected. They continue to ghost devs, they ignore refund requests despite German law, and they sell the Goodboy Galaxy stuff despite the contract being terminated. Despite boasting a ton of new titles coming soon, we’ve not really seen any announcements, and there’s even been reports the in-stock physicals are just not shipping or taking weeks to ship. This really is just a one man operation ran by a guy way in over his head, who refuses to just fess up, apologize, and give people a full explanation over the constant delays.
And yes, Chained Echoes on Switch still hasn’t shipped yet nor have all the PS4 copies. Shocker. Yet the publisher/dev are still backing FPG. Pretty shameful if I may be honest. I’ve also seen some people get mad at the Goodboy Galaxy dev, Rik, for not commenting on the FPG matter in months and the Switch version being fully MIA, but that one I can understand a lot more since they’re in a very, very tricky legal situation.
It isn’t exactly Rik’s fault that he can’t comment on why your refund requests are being ignored or why you haven’t gotten any updates on GBG’s Switch version, especially if there’s legal counsel involved. Considering they’re dealing with a company disobeying takedown orders and who might even try to steal the IP entirely, I’d rather they stay quiet and win the case vs blab too much and lose everything. Just be patient, Rik is fighting for you. I never talked to him one on one ever, but I feel like since he cited the German consumer form I linked in my old FPG article, he read my prior work on the company, so he did his homework. Now to hope Goodboy Galaxy ends up safe and sound after this.
Hope for the Future
Despite all my world anxieties and other things, I do see general hope in the future going forward. We’re seeing younger people starting to turn out IRL to help their local communities push for progressive action and change, we’re seeing major opposition to bigotry and oppression worldwide, even to the point Hungary is getting told “hell no” when they tried banning Pride, and in the gaming industry you see people rightfully ripping into companies that seem to use AI in a disgusting way like Forever Entertainment with their Front Mission 3 remake, which I’m glad I didn’t request due to my stacked queue as is. (As a side note, I don’t think the Bamco golf game using AI for leaf textures is as bad, and it seems to me like a thing the devs did for that free investment money during the hype bubble, and i’d rather a dev do that than pull off a corruption of art like Front Mission 3 did)
There’ll be lots of challenges, but I feel that if people stay together, stop purity tests, and push for an overall more progressive, kind future, we can do this. It’s the thing that keeps me going even though the darkest anxiety moments like today, even. Even companies that act corrupt and have arguably hurt indie devs along the way with bad publishing deals, I feel will end up falling out of favor for ones who treat indies better. Remember Nicalis? They don’t really get many partners anymore for good reason.
And with that, I end this rambly June Status update. Big articles coming soon, but who knows when. Just thank you for supporting me even with this big, big stressful period in my life.