I've recently redid a huge amount of URLs in an attempt to have cleaner, less robotic seeming links. Some articles still have longer urls, but I tried to be as neat and human readable as I could.

All these URLs should have valid redirects from the old URLs they had. If you got a 404 error clicking a link, please contact me on Twitter or Bluesky or email and let me know. It is very important for me to try and preserve as many links as I can. If I still host the content, I want old links out in the wild to point to it.

I suspect these changes should be painless, but lemme know if anything gets weird.

I've also removed "Game Journal:" from the title of some older articles. No one should care. Now, Game Journal should ONLY refer to grab-bags and shorts, and not full, in depth write-ups.

Edit: Thank you Camille for the heads up that the RSS feeds were broken due to a bug with the direct rules. I've modified things to make them work but it involved moving the RSS feeds. They SHOULD auto redirect, but if you have any problems, please email me(... My email link, which was ALSO broken until Camille pointed it out).

(There is not actually more to read, I'm just making sure it shows the whole post)

RIP to a real Website.

While not my actual real last post, emotionally my "final cohost post" was written days earlier. It's mirrored over here, which brings me to the fact that there is a mirror. While the cohost page may stay up, redirecting to the Internet Archives's Wayback Machine, I have my favorite posts archived over here.

I'm not going to dwell here on what a tragedy(It's a HUGE tragedy) and loss it is that cohost couldn't survive. Instead I'm going to highlight some things I did there that I enjoy. Allow me to recommend a few posts.

Pleasant and Useful

• Using CSS to make Discord Better, is probably one of the more useful things I put on that site. Just don't blame me if you get yourself banned!
• Getting Feedback is Hard and it's not because your Friends Hate You, a write-up talking about fighting RSD style impulses and understanding why your friends might not be giving you as much feedback as you'd expect.
• Engage with Media but don't Overthink it!!, a super bare bones guide to being a more active participate in the media you enjoy.
• Swiss Format is Sick, about how Swiss is great for running online tournaments and any online TO should at least try it once.

Some fun ones also include.

• 10 Games to get to Know Me, which is exactly what it says on the tin.
• So you wanna display a Fuchsia pixel in the middle of a Screen?, which is a casual deep dive into the absurdity of display technologies.
• You can also check out the Wrestling tag, if you're that kind of freak.

Me, Being a Hater

• Hate, a post about how much I despise Steam Trading Cards that borders on free verse poetry.
• Achievements are one of the Worst Things in Gaming that Didn't Have to Be, a post about why I think Achievements were one of the big Unforced Errors of modern gaming.
• Stop Implementing Coyote Time, a half(... More like quarter. Maybe an EIGHTH joking) joking post about why I hate how we force every game to have generous "Coyote Time" and how it leads to a weird airjumping arms race that is worse than the problem it was trying to solve.

I've also added a Links and Friends section. If I know you and your work and you have a 88x31 icon, feel free to hit me up in all the normal places. Speaking of places to find me, besides the usual stuff linked on my sidebar (which I will eventually have to update), here are a few new places you can find me.

• Bluesky
• Pillowfort
• Dreamwidth
• Mastodon

We'll see which ones of these actually ends up working for me. Anyways, until next time...

Toy is a term I've been using among friends(It's Mirai, it's always Mirai) lately. A term I can use, talking from anything old video game remakes, to character designs, negatively or positively. Of course this doesn't help me when I want to use the term publicly. Saying something is a toy invokes a lot of different often contrasting ideas. So for the sake of clarity, I want to share my definition.

Also to be clear, I'm going to be talking a lot about remakes and remasters, but this isn't about them. Anyone who has read my writing already knows how I stand on these topics. This is about the term.

What is a Toy

What is a toy in this context? In modern times what we call a toy could be a complete, sophisticated building system, or something that is a hobby all into itself. When I'm saying toy here, I mean something older.

Toys, as they were, for thousands years(Kinda glossing over the Cup and Ball tbf). Concept, reduced down into a caricature representing their most important traits. A policeman distilled down to a hat, a firefighter distilled down to the color red. Vague shapes without limbs. A wooden toy knight, cherished by a medieval child.

A toy isn't trying to be the thing it's representing. It's a symbol. A toy is an streamlined proxy. An idealized Memory. A fantasy.

Sylvie's games have become appointment playtime for me. Few games make me feel antsy to get to them these days. Fromsoft and Kojima games are some of the only games where I have at least some amount of urgency(if 'urgency' means 'I'll get to it in a year') to get to. Sylvie cuts in line. This isn't a fair comparison, as those other games cost money, and often more distressingly, time, but even all things being equal, I feel a drive to play her games on par with some of most exciting games I can think of.

I was so excited to see the release of Funeral Song for the Elemental Lords, that despite it coming out 6 minutes before our Monday Super Turbo stream, I was determined to play it. I rushed through me and CaliScrub's weekly FT10(okay it's like 2 FT5s with two different characters but like whatever, it's Ken and Ryu vs Gief), going 10-4(but it was close) in the hopes of playing the game sooner. Once we were done, I shrank down ST into the corner of the screen and got to work.

I find myself a dabbling viewer of Jeff Gerstmann's Ranking of Every NES game series. I appreciate The Science, even if I can't understand a world where Commando ranks higher than Guerrilla War... but science isn't an answer, it is a process, and more important than the exact rankings is hearing Jeff's process, hearing him try to decouple his preconceptions from the game sitting before him. While this kind of objective(Big 2000s internet forum energy) approach is one I find myself trying to get away from, it's still interesting to hear someone older, and with a wider breadth of knowledge, contextualize these games in ways I could not. It's pretty good stuff, though not the point. The point is more that in the last episode I watched, he ran into and was taken back by two crazy, ambitious games, Die Hard and The Lone Ranger.