Sure any recommendation is good! It doesn’t have to have these kinds of vibes at all.

GunBuster (technically early 90s I think?), A Wind Called Amnesia, Outlanders, Record of Lodoss War, Dirty Pair and some cat girl robot show I already forgot the name of (this one is more PG)

He has latched onto just collecting as much currency as possible and has no interest in actually making progress.

The dubbed aspect is partially so I can work on something while watching. But it’s also part of the charm for me.

It’s more like “teenage boys are going to be thrilled by this” and less like “40 year old men are going to obsess over this and buy all the figures.” But yeah, generally the animation is cool and the plots are insane and it all scratches an itch for me.

Like, much of it IS gratuitous. If there’s a female character, you’re probably going to see her getting changed or taking a shower. But it’s not like “her boobs are what make her magic, so she shows her boobs to cast magic” type stuff you might find in modern gratuitous anime.

It's so nicely paced, with a perfect difficulty curve and escalation of its mechanics. Looks and sounds like a dream (literally and figuratively) too.

He is mocked daily by an impersonator, living in a backwards version of every bathroom he enters. Whenever he attempts to cross through the portal to reach the backwards Pete, the portal simply breaks apart into many smaller portals… and Backwards Pete multiplies.

My position: if you’re making a 4 hour theme park video, your name had better be Jenny Nicholson.

The flower pot was very important too and I tried to get as many wild cards as possible to make the most use of it.

The unobscured Joker line-up. I knew it had potential with Burglar + Shortcut. Mime + Barron was a late-game synergy pairing that helped get me over the line. Everything else was also important, just less explicitly complimentary.

Dressed like a Beatle in the 70s dodging questions about his rumoured solo album.

I was a QA tester on that kind of game like 12 years ago, and even when I wasn't making the design decisions... I felt deflated just knowing that the "game" we were making was basically just a money extraction parlour trick. I almost quit the industry over it.

Now I’m wondering if thinking “hell yeah” whenever this guy talks is as universal as I think it is

Buy Birdcage here. Do not sleep on it. If you live shmups, this is for you. If you don't, this game is the one that could get you into them. it's incredibly accessible as well as being deep. PLEASE drop a tenner on it. store.steampowered.com/app/2158550/...

And unfortunately many people that go into fields like engineering or medicine aren't actually passionate about it, but simply feel pressured into pursuing those careers by their families or societal expectations. So if there are shortcuts, I'm sure many will use them.