issue 1: the beginning
Hello and welcome! This is Issue 1 of “a bit of bird words” wherein I’ll talk about the various games I’ve played, books I’ve read, and sometimes other cool things I’ve seen (or even made myself) during each month.
If you’re coming from Cohost, first off: hi! This is where you’ll find my monthly media check-ins from now on, though the format will be a little different.
Now then, let’s begin!
Game of the month: Racing Lagoon
Square, 1999 (PlayStation)
I’ve been thinking a lot about Squaresoft lately. Or, well, I’ve been thinking a lot about Playstation games, about where we were technologically with video games in the 90s. I didn’t actually play a Squaresoft game until sometime around 2003, though; that’s when the Greatest Hits version of Final Fantasy IX hit shelves, and that’s the version I bought from a pawn shop as a teen. But these games—their graphics, their narratives, their music—are probably what had the largest impact on me. This game came out in that era of 90s Squaresoft RPGs on the Playstation and is emblematic of that time.
Racing Lagoon is a game about street racing—you are Sho Akasaki (or whatever name you like) and you will find yourself going up the ranks from an unknown racer to, potentially, Yokohama’s Fastest Legend. Racing Lagoon is an RPG, but with some (maybe predictable) twists. “Battles” are street races on various courses. “EXP” is, instead, RP, and you can spend this not to improve Sho, but to improve your car by stealing parts from your opponents—and they, in turn, can steal from you if you are unlucky enough to lose.
The actual racing took me some time to get accustomed to, but it was enjoyable throughout the process. It’s a good thing the game is very forgiving when it comes to walls, because I hit many, many walls during failed drifts.
I don’t want to talk too deeply about the story, because it takes you on some truly bizarre turns. It’s a bit of horror and a bit of sci-fi, all contained within a wrapper of treating street racing as a path to enlightenment. Racing Lagoon is, in a word, earnest. Characters are so incredibly serious about what they are doing, why they are doing it, that you can’t help but be right there with them in racing toward some greater understanding of self.
I loved my time with this game, and while it never received a release outside of Japan, there is a fan translation that I recommend.
Games finished this year: 29 (+2)
Book of the month: Paradais
Fernanda Melchor, 2021
This was a hard read, honestly. Melchor’s writing is oppressively bleak throughout, making the reader feel as though they’re being smothered by the inevitability of the plot. It’s tipped quite early in the story that the end will be a horrific series of acts—but how it happens is beyond anything I could have imagined. I’m long removed from the pain of struggling to enter adulthood, but Paradais manages to find ways to press on those old wounds.
This particular book is short enough that I won’t say much more about it. The most astonishing thing about Paradais, in the end, is that despite what the main characters Franco and Polo ultimately do, it’s hard to feel disgust or anger toward them. If anything, I felt anger at the circumstances that led them to this end, at the state of their world and what forces conspired to create the world in which they are forced to grow up—awkwardly, painfully, eagerly.
Books finished this year: 53 (+4)
What else?
This was a pretty rough month, honestly! I’ve had a lot of personal medical stuff to deal with over the course of the month and it’s all been exacerbated by the slightly-too-warm temperatures.
But August did close with some positives! Our local game store brought in a big haul of NTSC-U games, including a copy of Sonic CD, and I’m very happy to have added that to my collection along with Apollo Justice and Phantom Brave, among a few others. We were also lucky enough to stumble on the big local flea market again this year and had a lot of fun checking out all the different things people were selling.
Next month we’ll be able to go swimming biweekly again and I’m hoping to order my 2025 Hobonichi Techo. I haven’t decided if I want to get a new cover or not—I’m using the same one I picked out in 2023—but I’m looking forward to continuing to reduce device usage by means of physical materials: journals, planners, paper calendars, etc. Maybe one day a physical alarm clock???
Thanks for reading. You can check out what games I’m playing on Backloggd and what books I’m reading on The Storygraph.