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.

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.

At what point is a game unjustly maligned? When is a Flawed Gem merely a stone? When we say a game was brave and experimental... was it? Or was it a predictable failure of the times it was made? Does a failed product need to be secretly kinda good, or important, or influential to deserve respect?

No. And while I am unsure exactly how I fall on Castlevania 64 and it's strange seque-xpansion, I walk away respecting these games. I find myself dwelling on how people try to rehabilitate flawed titles like these. Because does a game need to be good to be enjoyed? Does it have to be good to appreciate the high level of skill that made into making it? Does a game have to be good to be under appreciated?

I think I'm going to do it this time and actually keep it short, but I've been doing more replays of games I haven't played in like 10 years, so here we go.

Mega Man X

I'll be honest, I don't really like Mega Man? No fault of the games, but over time I've realized my taste for shooty games is more in the area of Contra or Metal Slug(much more high damage, low health, volatile games(Oh wait this is why I like Shmups even though I'm bad at them)), so I tend to go back to them less.

Some people might be like "IWBTG is basically megaman, you have like the same type of movement and shooting!" but let's be real, how much did that gun actually do?