I'm over half way through Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat. What an odd and sometimes delightful game. The bongo drum controller proves itself to be the goofiest peripheral I own and I am glad I am playing this way, despite the lack of finer control.

I imagine myself chipping away at the core games on this essay. I don't have many games to play intentionally for the remainder of the year. I'm skipping Zelda for budgetary reasons. Metroid Prime progress for Chapter Select is slow. Much slower than I anticipated. I did just beat Prime 2 though and that felt good. I worry about Hunters, but that should be shorter.

Back to the essay though, I find myself getting pulled toward the deeper history and design of the 3D Mario games after Galaxy 2. I need to remind myself that the core focus here is DK for its novelty and significance as the "start," then the Galaxy games for obvious reasons, and then Splatoon 3. I don't think I have the time to divert into 3D Land, 3D World, Odyssey, and Bowser's Fury. While those may be beneficial, they change the scope and focus of the project tremendously. At that point, I would consider playing all the Splatoon games too. Scope goes from four games to ten. Scope creep is real and I am trying to keep it in check.

Before signing off today, I don't love the name "Essay Diaries." I just needed something to change from "Wiki Stories" so I could keep the same Buttondown account. Buttondown is so good. If newsletters were my bread and butter, I'd use them.