This Week in Games

A Return With Arms, And Cats

I do need to apologize. I didn't quite keep to my word when I last said my usual "see you in seven" sign-off. On November 4 (the very next day after my last column went live), I went out to do some chores. I was going to get a haircut in preparation for Kumoricon, and I was going to take the opportunity to go to my local GameStop to pay off my Shiren the Wanderer 6 pre-order and also pre-order Another Code: Recollection. I made it two blocks away from my house before I got hit by a car while crossing the street to get to a bus stop. It's a wild thing: one minute you're walking, the next you're on your back staring at the sky and scarcely have a minute to process what's happening before you're thrown to the pavement. The good news was, I only broke my arms—no spine damage, no neck damage, no hip damage. The bad news was I broke my arms, and I was going to need surgery and rehab to get back to my usual self.

What followed was... definitely an experience. But I could endure with time, patience, dedication, a few tears, and a lot of humility. I even made it home before Christmas. It took quite a while before my left hand had the dexterity needed to play video games (and there was a bit where using my Switch made my wrist hurt), but eventually, I made it work. I was even able to play through the entirety of the delightful Super Mario RPG remake and get some quality time in on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (I finally made it into Chapter 6). There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm quite on track as far as healing is concerned. I was cleared to go back to work at the start of January—and if That Bitch™ was good to work, then That Bitch™ was good to come back to This Week in Games.

It was by no means an easy ordeal, but I was blessed with almost everything I'd need for it to go easier. I want to thank my lovely editor for being kind enough to dash right over to the hospital while I was on a gurney; it helped me not feel alone, and she also did me a great favor by talking some sense into me concerning some treatment matters (and her partner was lovely enough to gift me the nicest coat for my birthday). I want to thank my coworkers at my 9-5; they all showed a great deal of love and concern for me during my time in the hospital, making me feel appreciated and loved not just as a coworker but as a member of their community.

I want to thank our departed friend Zac and the tightly-knit community he gifted us all; they also were positively lovely while I was going through it. I want to thank all the folks in my favorite VTuber Silvervale's community; I've spoken before about how much they helped after Zac's passing, and they were with me every step of the way as I recovered.

I want to thank Isaiah Colbert for keeping the lights on while I was gone; he's got a good voice, and I look forward to seeing what else he does in the future. And most of all, I'd like to thank you, my readers. It meant a lot to see folks wondering what happened when I was absent and the column's "voice" was so different. It warms my heart to know folks can so readily tell what my mannerisms are through writing alone, and it made me look forward to coming back. I wasn't back in seven, but you were all good to each other; it's all a humble freelancer like myself could have asked for.

So, let's dust out the cobwebs and get back to what we're here for. I am forever proud that I am, was, and will be That Bitch™, and this is...

Talk about some big news to come back to! Folks were very excited at the prospect of Nintendo's expansion for the Nintendo Switch Online service, not just because it meant folks would be able to play select GameBoy Advance titles on the Switch but also because one of the titles teased in the original commercial was Camelot's beloved GBA RPG, Golden Sun. Even I'd forgotten that it had been teased in that original video! After a single afternoon of minor rumbling about a beloved GBA title getting a stealth announcement, Nintendo went and announced Golden Sun's arrival to Nintendo Switch Online+ the following day—with its sequel The Lost Age in tow!

Nintendo doesn't seem to be known for having a ton of first-party RPGs, even if their first-party RPGs tend to be beloved (see: Earthbound/Mother, Xenoblade Chronicles). Golden Sun was special; the GBA had a ton of great RPGs, between original fare like Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga or Mega Man Battle Network or the piles of ports of beloved classics like Phantasy Star Collection or Square's ports of the SNES-era Final Fantasy games. Golden Sun managed to stand out, thanks to its smart mix of then-stunning pre-rendered 3D sprites (a la Donkey Kong Country), fun puzzles, killer music, and approachable battle system. The first game, telling the tale of a quartet of psychics traveling around to keep the horrors of Alchemy from being unleashed upon the world, was also rather short for a game at "only" about 20 hours; Golden Sun: The Lost Age upped the ante with piles more of everything: more music, more summons, more puzzles. There was also a fun link system between both games, ensuring that you could transfer your data between games and allowing you to experience fun bonus scenes—as well as making sure "your" party from the end of Golden Sun joined up with the Lost Age gang.

Camelot was also responsible for several beloved sports RPGs on GBA (specifically, Mario Golf: Advance Tour and Mario Tennis: Power Tour), but their true origins lie on the Sega Genesis! Camelot was best known for the Shining games, specifically both Shining Force titles and Shining in the Darkness. Camelot would eventually depart from Sega following the Sega Saturn, which is how they turned up on Nintendo's turf. A ton of Shining Force's DNA is still in Golden Sun, like the curious way both series have sprites emote during conversations or the perspective in Golden Sun's battle modes mirroring the behind-the-back view used in Shining Force. Golden Sun even inherited Shining Force's exact menu interface—even the shopkeepers selling rare items as "artifacts" at shops! The Lost Age introduced a fun mechanic where rare materials could be taken to a certain NPC, who could forge them into rare and powerful items (after you left the town and went back in); this was lifted wholesale from a similar mechanic in Shining Force 2 where a similar NPC would take your pieces of Mythril to forge top-level gear in the game. You could even replicate the method of save-scumming to ensure you got the best gear in the exact same way! There is also Camelot's tradition for badass music; folks who love classics like Saturos's theme owe it to themselves to check out the many bangers in Shining Force.

The Golden Sun games got a very anticipated sequel in the form of 2010's Golden Sun: Dark Dawn on the Nintendo DS. I haven't played it in about twelve years and don't think I can do it justice. At the time, I was torn on it; it's a great sequel to Golden Sun, looks great on the DS, adds a fun mechanic with the character of the psychic beast-girl Sveta and her transformation, and added even more phenomenal summons—including canonizing Crystallux, a spectacular dragon made out of a chandelier that originally appeared in the U.S.' first trailer for the original Golden Sun. But back in those days, I was also playing a ton of more mechanically sophisticated RPGs like Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey or Etrian Odyssey II. All of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's mechanics, like the class system, the Djinn system, and the summons, were all tied together in a way that at the time felt too smart by half, especially when the game was already so easy that you could bumrush battles with nothing but the numerous Unleash moves your plentiful Artifact weapons had. I was also soured on Dark Dawn's story, feeling a bit sloppy; two-thirds of the game sends you on something of a wild goose chase that is clearly a prolonged set-up for a sequel that sadly never got made. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was a welcome surprise, but it also came out when "JRPGs" were a problem that a lot of pundits in the U.S. wanted a solution for, if you catch my drift. I need to revisit it; I think I might be a bit softer on it these days.

There is a lot of tongue-wagging over whether or not the Golden Sun games might get a revival in the wake of their appearance on Nintendo Switch Online+. There's certainly been a ton of buzz about Golden Sun that I haven't seen in decades; many folks have been fishing for fanart about it lately. It would be nice to see a sequel to Dark Dawn, even fourteen years out (hey man, Izuna is getting a sequel sixteen years after the fact). For now, l think it's best to appreciate what we've got while respectfully showing Nintendo how much we appreciate Golden Sun being given its time in the spotlight. Who knows, we might even get Isaac into Smash Bros if we play our cards right.

A fun part of my job is when I get to talk about crossovers, like when Like A Dragon: Isshin had a cameo appearance by longtime Yakuza fan Nyatasha Nyanners or that other time Like A Dragon had cameos from Vshojo's Kson. And this is a big one, because it involves Gloomy Bear! For the uninitiated, Gloomy Bear is a mascot intended to serve as a parody of the cutesy Sanrio mascots: he's a cute, violent bear all bloodied up from assaulting his owner, a boy named Pity, who took him in as an abandoned cub. It's a fairly well-loved line, and you can get actual Gloomy Bear merch right now from Hot Topic. While Gloomy Bear, like other mascot lines, has done plenty of crossovers before (they just announced one with fellow Vshojo talent Ironmouse), the real surprise was their announcement of a crossover with beloved indie bartending sim VA-11 Hall-A!

This is a pretty big catch for the lads at Sukeban Games! VA-11 Hall-A is a definite labor of love between a pair of Venezuelan devs: a visual novel detailing the life of a miserable twenty-something bartender in a cyberpunk dystopia. VA-11 Hall-A may suffer in some areas courtesy of being a story with an extensive female cast written by A Pair Of Straight Guys™, but much of what it spins about mid-20s ennui, finding your own identity or life in dystopia rings true—with that last one being particularly close to home for the Venezuelan devs. (Also, I'd take a bullet for my girl Alma Armas.) While their follow-up, N1RV Ann-A, has been in development hell for a good few years now, there's still a ton of love for VA-11 Hall-A. The devs just had one of their yearly play-alongs for VA-11 Hall-A, since the game takes place throughout December. These tend to shed light on a ton of backdoors trivia for VA-11 Hall-A, explaining things like character inspirations or how their ideas for gameplay shaped character writing.

VA-11 Hall-A has seen quite a bit of popularity in Japan, not the least due to the game's visual aesthetic, heavily inspired by the classic visual novels on the PC-88. It would be like Japan releasing a cover-based third-person shooter in the U.S. with a piss-toned color filter. This led to several cool Japanese treats, like a trio of themed cafés in Akihabara selling drinks based off of those in the game, and bonus illustrations and cameos in Please Tell Me! Galko-Chan! from mangaka Suzuki Kenya (before he got arrested for importing child sexual abuse materials). I'm unsure how the ball got rolling on a Gloomy Bear crossover with VA-11 Hall-A, but hey—cute merch! Fans can look forward to the usual: t-shirts with Jill, Dorothy, Alma, and Dana paired up with Gloomy and his brand of weird, cuddly friends, keychains, and phone cases. But most fittingly are the line of ten-ounce glasses, perfect for all your (responsible) drinking needs! Best of all, this isn't a limited-time collab, so anyone interested can pick merch up at their leisure. I, of course, already acquired my Alma/APB keychain and Sugar Rush tote. I already told you guys, I love Alma. You can't be choosey when your fave is a side character that doesn't get much love otherwise.

As mentioned earlier, N1RV Ann-A is still in prolonged development; a ton of circumstances have made Sukeban Games' work a lot harder. But I'm still cheering on my fellow Latinos, and I'm hoping folks in Japan also continue to enjoy our Latin-infused weebery for many years to come. As for you: remember that VA-11 Hall-A is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, MacOS, and Linux. Meanwhile, I'm going to sit here and hope Limited Run Games someday publishes a second run of the physical VA-11 Hall-A copies for the Switch. Yes, the ones with the legs and Aurahack's art.

So, Xbox puts us in a weird position; because of the absolute dearth of Japanese games or Japanese studios involved with Microsoft, there isn't much to talk about when it comes to them outside of their attempts at devastating anti-trust laws and trying to buy out studios in an attempt at shoehorning a monopoly on the industry. Sure, I could cover that Indiana Jones game... but it doesn't involve any noteworthy Japanese studios, artists or developers--that's editorial that is better used for something actually Japanese. So we were ready to just not comment on the Xbox Developer Direct... until we had a surprise dropped on us in the form of Visions of Mana getting revealed.

Because it's been so long since the last mainline Mana game (and because your average Xbox owner has probably never heard of Mana), the video goes into detail covering the history of the series, starting with Adventure of Mana (a.k.a., Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy) and the beloved Secret of Mana on SNES. There was also a lot of attention given to Koichi Ishii, famed creator of the Mana series and designer of its many monsters. While I don't know how iconic Mana's monsters are outside of the Mana fandom, the Mana series' Rabites are practically the series mascot (along with Flammie the dragon). Koichi spoke passionately about his efforts on the Mana series and its monsters, while also introducing Pikuls: big direwolves that you can use to move around in Visions of Mana. Ishii describes it as more of a Yorkshire Terrier crossed with a Pangolin, also it has itty bitty feet. Really cute stuff.

There was also talk about the Mana series' penchant for phenomenal music. The video goes over the new dynamic music system where map music will seamlessly flow into combat music. There's talk about the music having contributions from past series composers, but there was no word on involvement from Hiroki Kikuta (who composed the soundtrack to Secret of Mana). While there wasn't much specifically said about combat, it still continues the Mana series' action-RPG systems. There's much more of an emphasis on aerial combat, with your sword combos leading to launchers and air-combos. No word yet on what the other weapons will be like in Visions of Mana, but we can hope that some of the other series staples like spears, gloves and the like will be available.

Microsoft was very keen to tell people that Visions of Mana releases on Xbox Series X|S and PC this summer 2024... but it's also coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Steam. I'm looking forward to it! Nevermind it being the first Mana game on an Xbox, it'll be the first new Mana game in ages. I'm just hoping it's better than Dawn of Mana.

Another year, another scam. When I first started writing for this column, we were still in the tail end of NFTs, and the blockchain was the thing everyone had to jump in on because "it was the future" (notice the past tense on that). Then the Metaverse became the Next Big Thing™, until... it wasn't. Now, everyone is going all-in on AI-generated content, and that's already rankling the hides of consumers everywhere. We're certainly in the early stages of the "Mess Around And Find Out" scale, especially after Consumer Electronics Show tried showcasing an AI-fueled Mario—without Nintendo's approval or involvement (they're about to find out what happens to all those poor devils that make fangames). Like clockwork, Square Enix has decided to go all-in on the current scam trend.

In their annual New Year's letter, current Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu declared his intentions to "be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions." (Funnily, the letter heavily downplays NFTs and the blockchain after previous New Year's letters gassed them up but hard.) Of course, nobody wants that; AI generators are a scam through and through. Far from being any actual "artificial intelligence," AI generators are more like an elaborate autocomplete function that predicts what kind of words/image details should follow from specific prompts. The databases for these generators are infamously composed by scraping (read: stealing) art from various artists, living or dead—without their permission, of course, because who has time to ask for consent when there's money to be made? The quality of their output has been a source of contention, but that's missing the point: the whole ordeal sucks due to screwing artists out of a job, especially since the AI generation "making artists redundant" has led to so many art teams being laid off. Gaming especially doesn't need more layoffs!

Anyway, you might remember me discussing Square Enix's Foamstars in the past. If you don't, then that's fine too because Foamstars is pretty unremarkable: it's a team shooter biting Splatoon's style. At the very least, they shot for the sky by having famed Japanese artist-duo Gurihuri design the cast. They might look a bit "NSFW Blender animation"-y, but I credit them for details like giving the character Tonix a prosthetic leg. Even poster-girl SOA comes off as cute, despite her design feeling like Overwatch's D.Va slightly warmed over. That the rest of Foamstars seems to just ape Splatoon had seemingly nailed its coffin shut before it even left the factory. And it seems like we'll have to toss the whole kit-and-kaboodle into a kiln for cremation, because Square Enix decided the best thing to do was use the AI generator Midjourney to produce a few images for Foamstars; all in-game album art for the music in Foamstars is AI-generated.

Producer Kosuke Okatani insists that the "core" stuff (textures, character models) were made by hand, by the way, but that doesn't entirely absolve them of using an AI generator that's currently being sued for using the work of thousands of artists as its library without permission. Woof.

Do you know what rankles my hide the most? They had freaking Gurihuri doing the character designs. I don't recall any of this in any of the promotional materials or anything. It's not even in SOA's cosplay guide (no such cosplay guide exists for the rest of the cast, sadly). I struggle to gauge Gurihuri's popularity, but they're undoubtedly beloved to some extent: their work on the Gwenpool and Avatar: The Last Airbender comics gave them the nod among American fans, while they quietly designed the human cast of Sonic Unleashed. They're very talented, and their work on Superman Smashes The Klan earned them two Eisner awards. You probably wouldn't be able to sell folks on Foamstars on the back of Gurihuri's involvement alone... but giving them their flowers and promoting their involvement in your promotional materials would help. People like knowing who makes their stuff, they like seeing the behind-the-scenes parts of games come together. Which is why leaving it all to AI sucks so much: there's no "movie magic" when the whole thing came from an algorithm.

Foamstars is slated for a February 6 release date; it'll be available on PS4 and PS5, and Square Enix has announced that it'll be part of PlayStation Plus for the first month of release. So, you might be able to play it for free for that first month. Will Foamstars last any longer than Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier? I doubt it, but I don't want to see people lose their jobs over it. At the very least, Yoshi-P has kept Square Enix's dumb scam-fads out of Final Fantasy XIV. Speaking of...

Final Fantasy XIV! The little MMO that could! While Square held the Japanese Final Fantasy XIV Fan-Fest on January 6, many of these updates won't be seen until later this summer—and really, we needed some good news from Square Enix. Much of the news is really fun, especially for longtime Final Fantasy fans.

First off, some minor tech updates. As usual, new FATEs and Alliances (incidental missions and raids) are coming. But among the bevy of improvements coming to Final Fantasy XIV is an update to character models and lighting. Fair enough: Final Fantasy is rather long in the tooth, so it's about time for some polish for textures and models. But chief among them is that the new updates have darker-skinned characters in mind! Yoshi-P emphasized how the lighting engine in the past did a disservice to dark-skinned characters, and the updates do help!

Wow. Skin looks like skin now for dark-skinned characters. (You can also peep some other graphical updates, like improved depth and detail on eyelashes and hairlines.) This is a big deal; a lot of tech advancements don't take dark skin into account. There has been a lot of ink printed about how things like automated cameras or AI don't function all that well when the subject has dark skin—which opens the door to discussions like how many people of color are involved with the development of tech or whom the tech is meant to be accessible to. I can testify to how badly this can go; I once used my photo on a generator that was supposed to turn it into a painting. But since I'm dark-skinned, the algorithm had no clue what to do with me, so it turned me into this guy:

Full disclosure: I have not been that skinny for about seven years now (the photo is even older). Anyway, lighting and coloring are a whole science when it comes to media, and the same lighting or makeup techniques you would use to emphasize a character with light skin on-screen don't work for dark skin. This can do a serious disservice to dark-skinned actors (or if someone decides to generate a dark-skinned character in their video game). So good on the FF14 team for wanting to fix that, they just made a ton of folks happy.

We also got to see a new hub city that we will visit in the new Dawntrail expansion, and it's... not what we expected! While the South American-inspired Tuliyollal lets G'raha enjoy tacos, this new hub has been somewhat disparagingly compared to Cyberpunk 2077. Named "Solution Nine," this new city represents an area in what would be FF14's region of the Northern American continent. Now, there is a bit of trivia in here: many eagle-eyed fans have pointed out that "Solution Nine" was also the name of one of Zidane's limit break moves in Final Fantasy IX and that his homeland of Terra was also similarly technologically advanced. The Endwalker expansion offered lots of Final Fantasy IV-themed goodies, what with the Lunar Whale and letting people visit the moon (as Cecil and company did on their way to fight Golbeze and Zeromus). So maybe Dawntrail will have a similar Final Fantasy IX-theming? Folks have pointed out that the new dual-wielding Viper job is similar to Zidane's fighting style, after all. But what is decidedly not styled after Final Fantasy IX is the new magic DPS job: the Pictomancer.

Originally teased way back in the U.S. Fan-Fest last year (when Yoshi-P was wearing a Ninja Turtles shirt), the Pictomancer hearkens back to little Relm from Final Fantasy VI. See, the shirt worked because the Ninja Turtles are all named after Renaissance artists, get it? And look, they even designed the Pictomancer in the trailer to look like Relm! Details on how the Pictomancer will work are scarce, outside of it being a magical DPS job. Anecdotally, I saw some consternation from folks in my circle over Pictomancers being chosen "over literally anything else," but I honestly prefer this over anything like Green Mages or... I dunno, Geomancers? Elementalists? There are a lot of weird jobs throughout all of Final Fantasy, but finding ways for them to feel meaningfully different in an MMORPG can't be easy, and I imagine there is only so much that can be done to make a Gladiator not feel like a Warrior. I like seeing the weird jobs from old Final Fantasy games get their due—and so do a lot of other fans, who have made some spectacular memes with Pictomancers. (You need to remember, Final Fantasy XIV's fanbase includes a ton of homemakers and artists who treat their little WOLs as a virtual doll while they thirst for Emet Selch; they know the pain of painting on the wrong layer.)

There's another new job headed to Final Fantasy XIV, but it's a Limited Job. An explanation: currently, the only other Limited Job is the Blue Mage. There's a reason for it, too: the Blue Mage sucks, on purpose. While the job still has its famed concept of earning its skills from monsters, it is an exercise in being scammed into helping push Blue Mage job stones onto an unsuspecting populace (in-universe). Because Blue Mages would be so hard to balance in a proper party, what with them being a joke job, you can't use it for much of the content in FF14—it's just too hard to balance things around Blue Mages. Hence: Limited Job. It doesn't even have the same level cap as other Jobs (it has a cap of 80, compared to all other jobs capping at 90). So, with that said, the new Limited Job headed to Final Fantasy XIV is the Beastmaster. Final Fantasy Tactics players might recognize this job: it lets you control monsters. Again, details are scarce on how the Beastmaster will function, but we can already tell why this job is limited; it sounds way too hard to balance against the other classes. The good news is, Blue Mages have a friend now!

Speaking of friends, this week's 6.55 patch for Final Fantasy XIV gives players a new friend to fall in love with. Being the final patch for the Endwalker expansion as we prepare for Dawntrail, we're introduced to a new character: Wuk Lamat! And Wuk Lamat is important because...

... she's a female Hrothgar! When they were initially introduced into Final Fantasy XIV, the bunny-like Viera and the bestial Hrothgar were gender-locked: you could only make a female Viera, and you could only make male Hrothgar. Also, they couldn't wear hats because their heads were shaped differently from other races (animal ears, and all that). Endwalker finally allowed players to make male Viera, and Wuk Lamat gives us a taste of the female Hrothgar that'll be coming to Dawntrail! Most importantly, Wuk Lamat is wearing a hat. Turban. You catch what I mean. Hopefully, Wuk Lamat's turban signals the end of hatless Viera and Hrothgar everywhere. Folks are raving about Wuk Lamat: she's big, beefy, cute, and freaking adorable when she smiles. But the best surprise for me (being Puerto Rican) is that her voice actress, Sena Bryer, is a Puerto Rican trans woman! It's not often I get to hear about Puerto Rican voice actresses in the U.S.: for the most part, it's just been Lisa Ortiz, with Anairis Quiñones being a relatively recent addition. I'm thrilled Sena gets to voice an important new character in Final Fantasy XIV. I'm proud of her achievements and hope to hear Sena Bryer in many other games and anime. This is also a good move on Square Enix's behalf: since so much of Dawntrail takes place in a setting based on Latin America, it's good to have voice actors from a similar background offering an authentic accent.

And that's the most important stuff from the Fan Fest. Dawntrail drops later this summer; Square Enix hasn't announced a specific date just yet. It's gonna be great to see where Final Fantasy XIV goes from here! Also, thanks to my This Week in Anime alumni (and Final Fantasy XIV superfan) Nicky for helping with the FF info!

That'll do it for this week, I think. I want to thank everyone once again for being such an amazing readership. I was very much looking forward to returning to my column; I was very concerned about losing my typing dexterity after my accident. Provided, I was also concerned about missing out on the opportunity to cover any possible Izuna news while I was recovering. I think I might need my own Izuna-themed "There Is No News/There Is News" images for when the time comes. Be good to each other; I'll see you in seven (I mean it this time).