How is it the end of January already? We are already after 2025 and my understanding of time diminishes with each day. 2019 wasn’t two years ago?

In a moment of anger our son grabbed his sketchbook and in big, colourful markers wrote “I do not want to see you mom and dad.” I was proud. He wrote it perfectly! He turned 7 this month. I’ve been playing Stray Children with him.

With that, a quick end of January “back on my bullshit” survey: not only have I been playing Stray Children, I’ve also been getting into Final Fantasy VII Remake (finally), been trudging through Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (mouthful), 100-percent’ed Metroid Prime 4, been back in Animal Crossing, replayed Metroid Zero Mission, and been in and out of Donkey Kong Bananza doing post-game challenges. 

Of course I can’t half-ass anything so if I go in, I go in deep. I start reading. None of it necessarily relevant to what I’m playing, just a greater cultural context, criticism, etc. Unfortunately I realized that a lot of my previous video game bookmarks are woefully out of date. Many sites are dead, some have pivoted to casino games or guides, been sold off, are now podcasts, or are pure slop and spam. Even ones I wrote for once, a lifetime ago.

So what are the good places now?

I know Aftermath is there and they recently had the very appropriate: "I Do Not Feel Safe In The Country": International Developers Are Skipping GDC Because Of Trump's Border Chaos [Update].

Mothership launched this week. I like what they’re doing so far.

Jank.cool launched this week. I like what they’re doing so far, and I’m a big fan of unserious top level domains.

Rogue.site launched in September. Also a good top level domain.

I would ask “what else is there?” though the bigger question is what more is needed? It’s such a bad environment for online writing of any kind, let alone niche video game opinions, that I wish all these new sites success. They’re already competing for attention between each other, let alone against all the AI/SEO manure out there, and need all the clicks they can get.

The situation is bad all around and in times of strife creativity is needed. This 15 minute talk from (ugh, unfortunately) TEDx summarizes this:

Being in a text editor, making this, amongst other things, has been liberating. Even if some of that time is spent playing escapist games¹.

1. Though in the case of Final Fantasy VII role playing as a rebel against a technocratic corporation destroying the planet is maybe a little too on the nose for today.

Toronto icon Catherine O’Hara died today.

Old Toronto (Yonge at St. Mary?) repped in the above.

Related Links

"Yes, It Was Elitist, And No, That Wasn't A Bad Thing" - EDGE Alumni On Why The Mag Is Still Going Strong, Over 30 Years On | Time Extension

Time Extension does a 30 year retrospective on Edge Magazine, a publication that was influential on me during two separate periods of my life (the first when it was Next Gen.)

I’ve had a 25 year career doing other stuff and yet one of my proudest highlights was getting to write a couple reviews for Edge online. I think they were credited as “Edge Staff”.

Intelligent Systems Video Boy VUE

2026 is already doing something weird to people: getting them excited for Virtual Boy releases. Here’s an old look at some hardware used to play Virtual Boy games on a TV.

FINAL FANTASY IX - House Grooves | SQUARE ENIX Store

Square Enix is releasing a deep house arrangement of the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack. Sure. OK. If Square Enix had any guts they’d release a UK Funky version.

Listen to This

HodgeTom's Tweaks

When I wrote about my favourite music of 2025 I mentioned a lot of genres getting 2025 revivals yet never mentioned UK Funky. I did mention Bristol like a dozen times though. Hodge, from Bristol, with one of my favourite UKF tracks of last year.

Seriously, is anyone excited to play D-Hopper? I appreciate Nintendo acknowledging, and releasing, this part of their history though it would have been more appreciated if they made the Switch a little more friendly to DS games.