Hello again! Sorry for the lack of content in uh, over a week. I didn’t intend for that at all and had a hell of a lot to do the past week, and this week in general has been the pits for me mentally. Anxiety, frustration, rage, and lots of annoyances. So much so that I got really annoyed.
Right away you’ll see the big thing; a site logo or two. Favicon should be uploaded, (and hopefully not crap out on mobile this time, the slogan is finally more fitting to the stuff we tend to cover here, retro gaming, rather than just something with the word “content” in it, which I hate way more now than I did in 2016 when Eric Warpjump implemented it and came up with that) the top of the site should have a nice shorthand to go along with the home menu text (unfortunately, deleting that would delete the website from having a name, uh oh!), and this thumbnail should show a gist of the SFG logo. It’s autocropped, (And that’s a reason I wanted a full redesign) but it does an OKish job. Here’s the full, normal version for your eyeballs!
Yeah, I like that a lot more than the old one. Sorry birdy, but while you were a good reflection of then-2010s yugioh loving me with a knack for Pokemon, nowadays I’m a jack of all trades when it comes to reviewing stuff here, mostly for retro. Thus, keeping the Seafoam coloring and going for a bit of a wavy design that I think turned out very well. My good friend Alisonkira did the work here on all new SFG assets, and it was absolutely worth the wait. (The long hiatus is on me, sucking at even doodling a crude mockup. That took a ton of tries and even help from my IRL friend…) When it comes to the new assets, those went off without a hitch and rock.
Unfortunately, my plan to time it with a grand article and a website redesign didn’t. Let’s go into my issues, maybe find ways for the community to pitch in and help, and announce what I am planning to do!
My WordPress Blade is Dull
In the age of Substacks, Ghost Blogs, and other such things, I’m actually kinda amazed WordPress is still working well for me as much as it has. The dot com variant is the one I use, since I used dot org once when taking classes on WP and found it to suck major ass if you didn’t know how to maintain everything 24/7. By and large, the limitations of the themes and structure here didn’t bug me since SFG has a few core, strict rules for me as the site owner, that have generally stayed the same over the decade+ this site has existed in some form.
1: Share reviews/opinion pieces of various things, mostly via review copy, but also via personal purchases for the sake of feedback to devs/companies involved, or just for fun
2: The Scoring Structure must never, ever use decimal points and must always be whole numbers forever. It must also not fall victim to outside influence on what others think the numbers should mean (there’s a reason I have a scoring page describing my scale)
3: I am the only person authorized to publish anything on the site directly. I will collaborate as needed and will work with people for translation/interview purposes, but this is a 100% solo effort and I accept this even at the detriment of the Legacy Queue. If I’m not the one reviewing a game here, it ain’t a SFG review.
4: All review copies accepted and put on the queue, no matter how long it takes, will be reviewed and must be. This is why I ignore a lot of keys sent to my mailbox by devs unprompted otherwise I’d never ever get anything finished, and only redeem ones I’m certain to use and cover even if it might take a while.
These rules by and large have remained consistent for over a decade even with infamous cases like the in-development still Danganronpa V3 review. (I do plan to cover this finally before 2X2 launches next year, barring it isn’t Q1 next year) It has persisted through the times SFG was a shoddy forum on freeforums, it has persisted from the most basic, earliest iteration up on wordpress, and it has persisted to the current theme I rolled around the time of my Tomie interview. Those aren’t changing, so what’s the issue?
To put it bluntly, it has officially been so long since I used in-depth wordpress editor tools, let alone ones predating the hybrid/full site editor ones, that I legitimately have no idea how to use any of the newer themes in a way that doesn’t break parts of the site. I experimented with many designs. Some seemed promising, but in the preview would completely implode due to how old these blocks are, or would do weird shit like make my homepage an endless scroll of each review in full, which sounds just as much of a nightmare as it was.
Not even to mention the AI garbage it tried shoving my way, such as templates that used AI art I will never, ever use, or were stereotypical cringe “gamer/blogger” types that they felt insulting. I never felt myself dry up so much until I saw that one of the most popular recommended themes for game reviews was a Roblox inspired theme. I’d rather drink an entire can of paint than ever interact with anything related to Roblox. The logical solution to this would just be to use another classic time, akin to the current Canard theme I make use of. Unfortunately because WordPress are dorks, they don’t even let you search up classic themes by classic themes anymore; if you know the name of one you can use it, but otherwise no, you’re out of luck. Being I don’t know every classic theme in existence, this is obviously obnoxious to deal with
So basically I use a new theme I have no experience with the tools of, risk tons of stuff breaking, and have a headache fixing it all, or I use a classic theme that lets me customize and edit stuff more, but I have to actually know what classic themes are available to even consider them, and lemme tell you, Yahoo and Google Search are useless even if you delete the AI overview crap.
So I went with plan C, super begrudgingly; keep the theme the same, and instead of all at once, quietly, slowly edit and tweak the old theme to be a bit newer. Fixing bugs, making block elements work better, removing the infinite scroll for better mobile support, adding more menu options and maybe new pages, update old ones, etc. Doing this is better for my productivity and not only ensures I can get back on my queue and cover games I obtained this month/last month, but also the four part end of year roundup I always do without fail. Please do forgive me for this, but I’d rather have something I know works I can tweak than risk breaking the entire website.
So yeah, that’s a huge bummer. Sincere apologies. If you know me though and know what wordpress dot com themes are viable/might be worth trying, especially if they’re a classic/hybrid theme, lemme know. I did find some super rad newer ones, but they require upgrading the site to the point operating costs would double, and I do not run ads on SFG; I’m refusing to until I finish my review queue, and maybe not even until I finish my legacy queue. However if there comes a point I feel it’s needed due to life circumstances, I will enable ads. I will absolutely ensure they are non intrusive though and do not give a shit if you use adblockers. I use adblockers. I don’t care. Go nuts. Just be aware that norm might have to be broken, especially if it ends up being the thing to make an actual upgrade viable. Still, with nice new assets to use on all the socials and whatnot, I am genuinely happy about that. Now onto some updates, including… That article.
Limited Run Games Part III in Ice… Not for Much Longer
Let’s do a wild recap of the crazy and silly process it took for me to basically finish an article I didn’t want to write, but had requests to and figured I had enough material to do so, considering how it became obviously clear even after two pieces that Limited Run Games doesn’t give any shits about quality control, unless it’s very specific things they know are hyper popular. I made it my first ko-fi goal, an IRL friend smashed it, (and then I have a funny story of someone else who tried to smash the goal, which I’ll reveal in the article itself) and thus the work began like I did in the other pieces.
Things got a little weird. Eventually certain things happened to make me realize I have been a bit manipulated during the writing process to try and change the editorial direction of my article, (despite one person I was talking to agreeing to not do that) so I pretty much did a big re-edit of the article and iced it for most of the year, planning to finish it when the summer ended. Summer ended, many rewrites took place whenever a new QC thing happened or something I mused about in the opinion piece panned out or when something from my sources came true or needed more time to cook before I could decide one way or the other.
I cannot say much else besides this, but during all this writing process I got several out of nowhere emails basically complaining about me still working on it, and found them pretty silly, since it’s literally the final Limprint article I’ll ever make, barring minor pieces for any emergency news or whatnot, or notes in status updates/end of year stuff, because I’d rather talk more fun stuff like Evercade and retro compilations like I’ve been doing. I normally don’t give two shits about being emailed with complaints about anything i write unless it has legit feedback, which I’m always glad to take into account.
By November I finished my draft and was having some close pals look it over, when we heard something absolutely stupid, dumb, and ridiculous happen. Something that also tied into the emails I got. I was advised by my peers to pull the article and wait for anything to happen, and it seems as of now the coast might be clear for me to feel safer doing it this month. It might be real freaking silly to be this reserved over an opinion article, especially one that would have never been needed if you know, QC was done better at the company in question, but I had good reasons to which I feel will be made more apparent at a point in the future.
Either way, the final LRG, and limprint article is a big one. Lots of recent QC stuff, info I heard years ago about how LRG operates in that regard panning out and seeming to be finally verified/backed up by more credible people, and really my overall thoughts on the limprint bubble now that we’re in a Switch 2 age and the first limprint Switch 2 game just got announced. (R-Type Dimensions III) I honestly go more into the nature of collecting in general VS just LRG and even touch on a few other limprint startups I never got to, so I think it’s worthy of a finale article and if you don’t like it for being a limprint article, hey, it’s the final one! You never have to worry about me writing thousands of words like that ever again for limprint.
If you’re the kind of person who’ll throw a literal email tantrum over the existence of a limprint article because a company you like got called incompetent or whatever, kick rocks. Either way, I don’t have an exact date but I’d like it to be on a weekend. Just happy to finally, finally have that basically done and dusted. It’s like returning the Master Sword back in a pedestal, to never use it again…
Review rush!
We have a lot to cover soon! I got a bit in over my head! But I took tons of notes! I dunno how many I’ll get done before the big roundup, but I wanna get as much as I can! Street Racer and Scurge Hive are both next in the queue, with me also wanting to get back to Bubsy’s Purrfect Collection and Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons. Interesting action RPG Angelique Era is also out now, and I’ve had fun with the little bit I could play before a big vacation last week, but I’ll need a lot more. That last one might slip into next year. Soldner X is another one I’m mixed on, but I think I can get that out before 2026.
As for Switch 2, (ironically, the system I have a grand total of one review for still, but not for much longer) the remake of Broken Sword is the first S2 game from a review copy that will be going live, either next week or the one after. Milano’s Odd Job Collection just got released, but the S2 edition is not set until a few weeks from now so I’m deliberately holding that back so I can review the S2 edition in particular. Lastly, Majogami is still a big mountain of mixed emotions for me, so that might slip into January too (but it will show up in the end of year roundup. Not as a worst game, don’t worry, it’s not Umbraclaw.) As for my free time stuff like Bravely Default and Yakuza, that’ll have to wait until next year. Still, I plan on Switch 2 being a bigger platform for SFG review content next year, so don’t worry!
Thank you for moving into Year 12
June of 2026 will be my twelve year anniversary, and it still remains amazing to me how long I’ve been doing this. Back in the day I was convinced I’d just end up being a youtuber who’d get a nice niche audience and build a community that way, but in the end that didn’t pan out but my writing side gig did. Well, I’m happy to have a small but loyal community of readers, and I hope that keeps going into 2026! I’ve had a lot of struggles this year, but I somehow ended the year somewhat OK, thankfully. 🙂 See you next time!