Admittedly, it hasn't really felt like Fall since Thanksgiving in my part of the country. But I've still got a few days left before we officially hit Winter. So I'm going to use them for one last ride before the end of the year. After all, there's still a little time left for some major speculation. But before we get to that, let's begin with some Falcom-related developments that have taken place since…

I was honestly torn on how to title this year’s wishlist article. While “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t” is the title of an actual Christmas film, I was also tempted to use “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, But Then Was” – a parody title taken from The Simpsons – for the simple fact that it seemed funnier. But considering how I’ve stuck to using titles from real-world Christmas specials and movies for the titles in this series so far, I decided to just stick with my first choice.

Five years ago, I wrote Sensed Scareless, an article where I opined that despite my love for the medium, video games just can’t scare me the same way that films, TV shows and books do. Even half a decade later, nothing about my stance has changed. Despite my best efforts, I still haven’t found a game that has managed to get more than a cheap jump scare out of me.

Last year, I skipped October when it came to my bimonthly updates on Retronaissance. While it isn’t much of a consolation, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Throughout most of the month, I found myself unable to brainstorm a suitable topic. Then, when something finally came to me, I was so swamped with other projects that I just didn’t have the time to give it the proper attention it needed before the end of the month.

Of all the weeks, the Next Fest just had to be this week, huh? Yeah, unfortunately for me, the week of October 13th was actually a fairly hectic one. On the plus side, a few of my engagements got cancelled... but there were still two that ate up far more time than I would have wanted. In the end, I took some pretty late nights on the 18th and 19th to wrap everything up.

Yep, it's time for another one of these. And just like last year, I feel that I have to remind everyone that Summer doesn't actually end until September 22nd. Granted, that's not much of an excuse. But either way, the title is still technically accurate as I'm writing this... and hopefully, that will still be the case by this post goes live.

It’s funny. I’d always wanted an excuse to write a list like this… but I never really expected that the perfect excuse to do so to would just fall into my lap one day. I originally toyed with the idea of discussing older games that I’d like to see re-released on “modern platforms” – which just so happened to include PC – but it felt like it warranted a significant format shake-up.

Some years back, when I was worried that this series of articles was finally beginning to lose steam – no pun intended – I decided to take a moment and see if there were any other subjects that would have been worthwhile to pursue. In the end, several ideas immediately flooded to mind during this brainstorming session, but of them, there was one topic I was particularly excited to tackle: the then-emerging market of handheld gaming PCs.

Alas, much like last time, this post went up later than I was hoping. While some of the blame falls on the fact that I had a whopping 462 new demos to play through -- plus 17 more that were already on my wishlist -- I have to admit that my attempts at trying to streamline the process didn't exactly compensate for both a variety of interruptions and my own tendency towards procrastination.

YouTube video by New Blood Interactive

YouTube video by New Blood Interactive

YouTube video by New Blood Interactive

To celebrate the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, we're giving away a Nintendo Switch 2 + New Blood games for it! If nobody else got you, you know New Blood got you.

Betcha didn't expect to wait this long for the next one of these, did ya? Admittedly, there were a few things holding this one up. For starters, I'm still slowly chipping away at my backlog of journal entries for Cold Steel III. On the plus side, I've managed to all of Chapter 3 posted now and as of this writing, I'm two entries deep into writing for Chapter 4 -- that just leaves eight to write and ten to post until it's done.

Wow. It’s hard to believe that I’ve already done ten of these lists. What started out as a tongue-in-cheek reversal of my regular habit of begging for ports of games to my platform of choice has since turned into one of my longest-running series on Retronaissance. What’s even more impressive is that I managed to keep it going without so much as an iota of spite behind it.

Well, I teased that something like this was coming back in this year's gaming journal, didn't I? Now that I've gotten every achievement in the game and consumed all of the additional content, it's time for me to go into further specifics when it comes to this game. That being said, there's obviously going to be spoilers for Rain Code itself in this write-up, but given the connections it has to Kazutaka Kodaka's previous work on the Danganronpa series, chances are that I will also be including spoilers for the mainline games in that particular series, specifically:

Once again, it looks like I'm running a bit late on making a reflections post following the latest Steam Next Fest. I wish I could blame this delay on another family emergency... but alas, it all boils down to my own laziness. Of course, sifting through a record 401 demos didn't help matters much either -- especially since this is probably the first time where I didn't get saddled with any games that either took their demos down before I could download them or never had any up in the first place, whether it was just in my region or worldwide.

It’s funny. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to become more open-minded about the kinds of games I’m willing to play. Any long-time readers should be able to attest to the fact that I went from being utterly repulsed by turn-based JRPGs to enjoying a fair number of them. That being said, there are clearly still various genres and descriptors that immediately kill whatever interest I have in any upcoming video game.

I know it hasn't even been two months since the last one of these. But in my defense, I haven't really been doing one of these in Autumn the past couple of years. So, if anything, I was just really ahead of schedule last time. And while I generally hold off on doing another one of these until I have enough info to work from...

As another birthday approaches, I'm not sure how I feel about how my last year went down. For a while there, it felt like I was just spinning my wheels for a lot of it. Then I ended up losing my job at the end of September... right around the time when my sister moved back home. And since that also lined up with the rest of my family going on a trip to Italy, I guess it was a small blessing for little sis that I had plenty of free time to help her out as she slowly shifted the metric ton of crap she accumulated back into our childhood home.

January 1, 2025 Number five... is alive! Hard to believe that I've already done four of these. If you're curious to see everything that came before, here are the links to my previous journals from 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Considering how I've already reminisced about the first three journals during the previous journal's intro, it feels more appropriate to reflect on 2024 in this introduction.

Dariwan Has it really been 12 months..again? Already? These years keep going by so fast. This year was...a doozy as usual. We had highs and lows. A few games excelled and some companies fell. Let’s begin with a new segment. Let’s see what the top 3 were last year, if I even own or played the game and how successful it is.

Today is MegaMan’s 37th anniversary. It’s been three years since I posted my last retrospective on the series, but since my last entry focused on games that the creative leads that helped create the Blue Bomber made after they left Capcom back in 2021, it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s been four years since I last revisited MegaMan proper.