This was the year that was. What did I spend my time playing and doing in 2018?
I can identify a few trends in the games I chose to play this year. One is Star Wars games, inspired by my watching through some Star Wars shows and reading comics. None of the games really blew me away but with the franchise being on my mind I made quite a few pixel art collages, the most intense one being my attempt to portray as many Clone Wars-era Jedi as I could.
The monthly game club I manage was a success in its first full year, leading me to many unusual avenues from Tamagotchi to In Cold Blood, Crazy Taxi to Hamtaro. I didn’t review all the games I played through it, only the ones I finished, but there was a good variety. Some also led me to follow a series outside of the game club; I started a retrospective on Spyro from last year’s play of Spyro 2 which will continue in the new year. I also jumped off my own nomination of Rockman Zero 2 to immerse myself in the post-Mega Man offshoots, with the pleasing Mighty No. 9 and disappointing Gunvolt.
Other games I played were followups to previous chains, with my lifelong Picross obsession ticking along, or Sega Superstars Tennis continuing my Jet Set Radio retrospective (indirectly branching into Sonic Generations through Rush). I also put a fair bit of attention on the DS, and got some joy out my new (used) PS2, especially with an Ecco followup.
Other than that I had a great time streaming (Wednesdays 1pm Australian Eastern Time), despite little external encouragement. This year I had a heavy feminist theme: every week I streamed myself playing a new game or games starring heroine characters. This idea was a lot of fun to plan game picks around, including occasional sub-themes like robot heroines, Namco heroines, heroines of colour, etc. All the streams have been archived here, and here’s a pixel art summary of the characters I discovered through them (part 2 coming soon). Next year will not be as focused but I will return to the heroine theme regularly.
Comic scanlations got a bump this year as I found Ragey’s archive of excellent scan material. Thanks to him, I was able to release small comics based on Diddy Kong Racing, Star Fox, Rayman, Zelda 2, Mario’s Picross, and various other Mario games in English for the first time. See them all in the scanlation tag. However, I’m most pleased with the collection of manga snippets related to the 1993 Super Mario Bros film that I collated and translated.
A roundup of any miscellaneous blog content: I made a video showing all of Donkey Kong Jr.’s adventures in various versions of his game, updated my humorously comprehensive Zelda timeline for probably the last time in its current form, and did a penultimate update to my archive of Donkey Kong Card Game material (only one card image still missing!). Finally, I recently began a Doctor Who pixel art series, starting with all classic Doctors and their companions.
As for awards… it’s too hot today. I liked Bloodborne, Overcooked, Sonic Generations 3DS, and Mighty Gunvolt Burst. I’m still playing co-op games with my spouse, but we only finished Lego TFA, which was a good time. See ya later, thanks for checking out my work this year.