This is a seriously impressive fan-made Mega Man project. Gorgeous Mega Man X art. Multiple missions. Metroidvania style level design. And incredible soundtrack by Dominic Nimark. (I hear fan-made Mega Man projects are typically high caliber.)

Perhaps foolish, but I find it inspiring when creators invest in their fandoms to breath new life into beloved franchises. I don’t know if or how projects like this survive, but I’m certainly rooting for it. Worst case, I hope this catches the attention of Capcom and these folks get picked up for their talents.

David Yee, posting on Mastodon:

Something dissonant about the way that my Twitter feed is currently fully in desperation over the terrifying critical injury of Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old football player, on a field in Cincinnati—a communally-experienced condemnation of the NFL—and how my feed here is… just not? I want to leave that place with an urgency, but the transition is teaching me a lot about network effects and the nuances of specific communities and the intention of spaces and I mostly just want that kid to be okay.

My heart goes out to Hamlin and his family. The footage is ghastly.

Had I not followed Yee on Mastodon from Twitter, I fear I would have no idea about this heartbreaking injury in such a timely and communial manner. I don’t follow sports much, and seemingly I don’t follow many sports enthusiasts on Mastodon. For as much as I praise Mastodon’s tech and positivity, the insight into periphery or even foreign communities through Twitter’s algorithm, its large userbase, and (dare I say) its “town square” ethos was a huge draw for me. I felt more informed about topical stories on Twitter than I do on Mastodon. This is a chilling insight from Yee.

My daughter!

Excuse my lack of preamble, but she is without a doubt my most favorite part of 2022.

It’s very hard to describe the joy that courses through my entire mind, body, and soul every time I see her. I’ve wanted to be a father for as long as I can remember. But hours before she was due, I had this paralyzing fear that some damaged part of my brain would about-face and reject the pride of parenthood. Thankfully, I was very wrong. The second I heard her cry, my heart burst. It was one of the greatest moments of my life, and things only got better. I discovered an incredible force of nature. Instinct took over. I immediately knew exactly how to care for her; how to protect her. And not only her, but my wife who had just endured the incredibly invasive and major surgery of Caesarean section — common, yes, but it will lay out strongest person.

Caring for both my wife and daughter

For the three days we spent in the hospital, I was on constant watch for my family. The second my daughter cried for food, I was awake and ready. Every moment my wife asked for help out of bed or for a breakfast burrito, I was there. I yearned to support and care.

Prior to leaving for the hospital, I had packed my bag with books and video games, none of which I touched post-operation. I found the experience of “being there” riveting. It was the most present I’ve felt in a long time and I’ll cherish it for as long as I’m able.

Now, onto the “things”…

(Favorite) Games of the Year

1. Loco Looper — A crafty iOS puzzle game built with Metal, Swift, and SwiftUI. It lulls the player into a sense of calm with very simple 6x6 railroad crafting levels, but eventually turns into an incredibly challenging puzzler, always leaving one piece to frustrate one to their wits end. Continuing the theme of my daughter, I have extremely fond memories working through Loco Looper while rocking her to sleep every 2-3 hours for weeks at a time. Hail portrait single-handed mobile games!
2. Tunic — (I’m listening to the soundtrack as I write this. What a joy!) An homage to early 2D Zelda titles, printed game manuals (in foreign languages), and an unparalleled sense of discovery. I started this game on an M1 Mac and finished on Steam Deck — a joy on both. Do yourself a favor and turn on No Fail Mode. The combat doesn’t do its brilliant experience of discovery any favors.
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge — I won’t go on too much here. Read my review. All I can say is that TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge is a damn near perfect brawler with wonderful nods to both the original TMNT cartoon as well as the 8- and 16-bit era of TMNT video games.
4. Kirby and the Forgotten Land — I have not completed Kirby and the Forgotten Land, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less charming or impressive. For a Kirby game, I was not expecting something as rich and detailed as this. It demos poorly, so just move ahead with the purchase. You won’t regret it.
5. Elden Ring? — I didn’t play many games from 2022 in 2022, but I did pick up Elden Ring last week. In the 3–4 hours I’ve played, this game is incredible. I hate the lack of explanation about the controls, menus, items, builds, etc., and I’ve avoided any enemy more difficult than two swipes of a sword, but the world, fidelity, animation, and music are jaw dropping. This is my chill game of 2022. I’m sure that will change when I actually start playing in 2023.

Mastodon

For nearly 15 years, I was a heavy Twitter user. I made connections with many people I felt I had no business connecting with, found my tribe, and boosted my blog’s reach through some fortunate retweets and endorsements. And I tweeted a lot. But the act of tweeting began to feel more like an addiction and ephemeral than something of value. It was far from the feeling I get when I write a blog post, which was becoming fewer and fewer by the year. Once Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, I bolted. I deleted all of my tweets, more or less bid adieu to the platform, and leaned into the Mastodon account I created in 2018. And it feels fantastic.

Since November 13, 2022, I’ve been monitoring my social media Screen Time:

I find these results shocking. Not only have I reduced my overall social media usage, but dropping Twitter was much easier than I thought it would be thanks to a wide adoption of Mastodon from many folks in the communities I take part in.

While my time engaging with Mastodon is on the rise, that’s not due to an algorithm. It genuinely feels like a healthier, friendlier social-network. And the decentralized nature means my content won’t just disappear.

In small part, I owe Musk thanks in prompting me to have a healthier relationship with social media. In large part, I owe Mastodon for being there when the rug of a centralized platform was pulled out from under its users. A brilliant technology at the right time.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mastodon or think it might be too complex, check out Brendon Bigley’s “How to Use Mastodon” explainer at his blog, Wavelengths.

Analogue Pocket Cores

I received my Analogue Pocket in 2021 and loved it then. But in 2022, its firmware was updated to unlock the FPGA technology inside to developers. Through this, multiple open-source “cores” have been released for the device including cores for NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, amongst others.

These cores have changed my relationship with emulation and 8- and 16-bit retro gaming in general. Being able to hardware emulate my catalog of NES, SNES, and Genesis games and take them on the go is a childhood dream realized. In the early to mid ’90s, the best we could get was a Game Boy or Game Gear with slimmed down games, grayscale graphics, and/or poor battery life. Honestly, most of those experiences were great, but they paled in comparison Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES, or Sonic 2 on the Genesis. We just wanted to carry those experiences in our back pocket. And now we can. At a hardware level. The future.

Steam Deck

I’ve been missing out on PC gaming for some time. With the Steam Deck, I can finally enjoy classics like Half-Life 2, Halo, Mass Effect, etc., etc. On top of that, the ease of emulation through the Steam Deck is remarkable. While the emulation is not operating at a hardware level like the aforementioned Analogue Pocket, I am able to quickly load-up 3D favorites from PS2, PS3, GameCube, Wii, and many other consoles of yore. The Steam Deck is a wonderful companion to my Analogue Pocket, a great current-gen console (in handheld form!), and a hopeful glimpse into the future of handheld gaming.

Music

New Releases

• Band of Horses - “Things Are Great” — A return to form for pop/party rock indie mainstays.
• Momma - “Household Name” — ’90s era alternative wrapped up in a Gen-Z mindset.
• Dawes - “Misadventures of Doomscroller” - Throw Elvis Costello, The Greatful Dead, The Band, and a dash of Elton John into a blender.
• LIES - “Camera Chimera EP” — One half of American Football picks up where LP3 left off.
• The Mars Volta - “s/t” - Modern prog-rock legends return with a pivot into high-pop.
• mitch murder - “Selection 6” — Another collection of b-sides and rarties by the ’80s cheese synthwave mastermind.

Vinyls

• Further Seems Forever — “The Moon Is Down” 20th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set
• Thursday - “Full Collapse” 21st Anniversary Edition (3-10” Box Set)
• Sigur Rós - ( ) 20th anniversary edition - Signed Deluxe Box Set

Monique Judge, writing for The Verge:

If what is happening on Twitter hasn’t demonstrated it, our relationship with these social media platforms is tenuous at best. The thing we are using to build our popularity today could very well be destroyed and disappear from the internet tomorrow, and then what?

What happens to all the content you have created? Where will the archive of all your funny memes and jokes be? What is going to happen to all those selfies you felt cute in but didn’t delete later?

The answer is we don’t know because we don’t control Twitter (or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok). If one of these companies decided to shut down their service permanently, there would be nothing we could do about it.

Owning your content and controlling your platform is essential, and having a personal blog is a great way to do that.

This blog started out on the managed platform Wordpress.com. Wanting to own my own content, I spun up a new self-hosted Wordpress.org site called The State of Gaming (tsogaming.com) which would eventually become Zero Counts. In 2020, I migrated from Wordpress to Gatsby due to (amongst other things) a strong desire to get my content out of a database, into Markdown files, and stored in remote and local repositories, thus backed up via Time Machine, Drobo, Backblaze, iCloud, etc. Zero Counts and my career as a writer may not go anywhere, but it’s important for me to own, catalog, and control my work.

I genuinely appreciate the sentiment of Judge’s piece — I want to invest much more time blogging on Zero Counts in 2023 — but I struggle to understand how personal blogging crosses the chasms of connection, discoverability, and elevation. Perhaps surfing the web is a muscle I haven’t exercised for over a decade thanks to Big Algorithm, but I’m not exactly sure where to start with finding new blogs and outlets. Twitter was my primary source for new and interesting voices through retweets from my favorite writers and outlets. I think Mastodon has become my go-to community, but I don’t find myself connected to the zeitgeist, finding new content, or even engaging with my favorite creators on the network due to the lack of an algorithm. And that’s OK. It’s actually nice! I just hope I can find a way to find and consume the work old favorites as well as new and diverse voices.

I found Judge’s post via my RSS reader Reeder, so that’s a start.

The Besties Podcast discussing Marvel Snap during their Game of the Year bracket:

Justin McElroy: Recently, I’ve found the Locations that will pop up are so wild and random and significant that it sort of makes all your deck building and even the playing of the match irrelevant. I’m running into more and more areas like that. I had the planet “Ego” Location pop-up and that just plays all your cards for you. Like, you don’t even play anymore. And there’s a lot of Locations like that, where it’s so wild that it doesn’t matter what I’ve got in my deck — the match is already over.

Griffin McElroy: There was a recent Location that had you draw three cards then it destroyed the rest of your hand. I run a deck based around a handful of cards that if I don’t draw them, that’s it. If that was the first Location on the very first round of the game, I would say, “welp, I’m gonna lose, so bye.” And the game’s not particularly fun when someone bails out after a round or two. It completely gets rid of the whole Snapping-wager mechanic, which is so brilliant because it forces you to slow-play and bluff sometimes, which are mechanics that haven’t really been featured in a trading card game before. But it’s rendered completely void by these Locations that pretty much turn it into a roll of the dice.

Marvel Snap was a saving grace when rocking my infant daughter back to sleep after middle-of-the-night feedings. I could squeeze in five or so games due to its quick-start gameplay, small playfield, six round limit, and low stakes. It’s the perfect pick-up and play mobile experience. (Honestly, the 10s splash screen is the most tedious part.)

When the game first launched, I felt like I was able to run quick math to strategize the most opportune plays, which led to informed Snaps, the wagering mechanic Griffin mentions above. But as time went on, the Locations that alter the playfield with unique rules became so batshit insane that I felt like I could no longer track how a particular play would net out. I might increase Iron Man’s power 20-fold and obliterate my enemy’s cards or somehow sabotage myself by accidentally negating my cards’ powers, destroying my cards, or sending my cards to my enemy. Sometimes, a combination of all of the above would be triggered.

Hearing The Besties discuss the chaotic turn Marvel Snap’s design has taken initially had me drawing parallels to Mario Kart’s “anyone’s game” design. But the more I think about it, the more I believe Marvel Snap’s wild and seemingly unpredictable behavior highlights the balance and restraint designed into Mario Kart.