I start a new job this week, so whilst you’re reading this, I'll be doing those mandatory employee training modules every company has you do, and trying to learn everything about my new role as fast as possible.

If you are new here, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for my website Reconnect. Whilst Reconnect aggregates nearly 300 different video game blogs and puts them all in one handy spot for you, the Recap is my curated pick of some of the highlights of the week delivered direct to your inbox every Tuesday. (Well Tuesday in my hemisphere).

This week on the recap, we’re going old-school as we discuss Sonic, Mario, Dreamcast, PS2, Advent Children and much much more….

(It’s almost like contemporary topics are too depressing to write about this week so we’re all writing about the past, the better times.)

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Crunching for the spin off: Did you know there was a spin off of Smash Bros? I didn’t but as TimeExtension explains, the game’s development was a nightmare.

• Keep it simple stupid: Game Wisdom breaks down the simple elegance of Solitaire's game design.

• Ring Collector: Super Jump Magazine examines the long life of Sonic and how he has kept himself relevant over the years.

• So bad it’s good: takes us back in time to an odd Dreamcast horror game that some love, some don’t and it’s never been remastered.

• Wanting the back catalog: asks the question, why is Sony so reluctant to use their back catalog?

• Ludonarrative this and that: brings a new concept to the table to help critique or award a games tempo, is it fast paced and good, or is it slow and boring?

• Enby Realness: Sidequest writer, Jervon Perkins, walks us through their history with picking a gendered character in video games and not feeling represented, until being able to choose non-binary as their characters gendered, just clicked.

• Tin Foi Hat time: has a theory about why games have achievements, but you need the sink running and a white noise machine playing in order to hear it, else the feds get you.

• Dilly dally, shilly shally: pens a love letter to their favourite Final Fantasy series, and goes deep on the topic.

• Instalock: expands on the conflict that can occur in competitive games when the team doesn’t want you to play the character you want to play and instead pressures you into picking the meta character.

• The best DVD player on the planet: explains the PS2’s success story and how DVDs drove that success.

Fun Tidbits

• Your Guide to July’s Family Friendly Video Games

• Steam is having another record year for revenue

• This Is Probably The Closest You’re Going To Get To Playing A “Real 3D Minecraft” On The Game Boy

• Ask Us Anything! – TWIV Mailbag Volume 2

• The Quest To Preserve The ‘Tales’ Series’s Mobile Spin-Offs Just Took Another Impressive Step Forward

• Super Monkey Ball is Getting Ported to the Sega Dreamcast — Impressive Footage Shown Off!

• We’ve Had GBA, DS And PS Vita Clones, Now It’s The Turn Of The Nintendo 2DS

• DONKEY KONG BANANZA ALARMO

• Valve open source the Steam Machine e-ink screen so you can make your own

• I Choose You, Hershey Canada & Pokémon Launch Limited Edition Chocolates

• This Magical Girl-Inspired Sega Mega CD Game Is Finally Available In English, With Some Handy Quality Of Life Fixes

• Godot Say No To AI

• “This Project Is Not Vibe-Coded” - Developer Behind PS1 Recompilation Tool Takes Aim At AI

• The technical demo for Final Fantasy VII on the PS3

Unfortunately we’re going to be starting this issue off on a not so positive note. Due to the rising costs of Avocado and the difficulties in acquiring RAM, as of March 27th 2019, the Reconnect Recap will no longer be available physically. We understand this may be an inconvenience to about 3 of you, and we make no efforts to apologise.

(Sorry I had to 🤣)

Jokes aside, welcome to another issue of the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to my website, Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. Reconnect houses tens of thousands of articles from hundred of writers, meaning it’s never been easier to find something interesting to read. The website updates multiple times a day, allows you to subscribe to it via RSS and if thats too much like hard work this newsletter will recap the weeks thats been and will bring you the highlights.

Talking of my website, those who follow me on the stack will have heard it’s undergoing a rebuild. Don’t have a release date yet but will keep you all informed of how its going, it’s being rewritten from the ground up so it’s going to have a bunch of new and exciting features for both my viewers and for the guy that runs it. It’s also getting a full top to bottom redesign because my boyfriend is my designer, so massive changes coming and I can’t wait to bring those to you.

Another point I will reiterate, I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I’ll be exploring avenues to monetise Reconnect. My goal will be to do it elegantly, there won’t be annoying pop up ads or crap like that, but with the website attracting 100k visits a month and this newsletter going out to nearly 1500 of you, I would be a fool not to, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This week on the recap, we’re covering Game Design, Narrative Design, Bot Design, Screen Save Design, Cozy Design, you get the picture!

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Maps on Maps on Maps: Quake is now 30, and as Jank.cool, explains the anniversary is being celebrated with a plethora of game jams to provide new community maps to the game. The downside? That’s a lot of fucking maps.

• Not just Pizza and Pasta: gives us a peak behind the curtain to show us how Italian Indie devs are shaking things up and making a name for themselves.

• Having fun in Queensland: The latest guest post on is all about the local indie scene in Queensland Australia, and wants to remind you that it’s catching up to it’s more successful sibling states.

• Queensland Game Festival: Double Feature! Whilst Infinite Lives focused more on the growing development scene in the state, shared her thoughts from the showroom floor and the games that caught her attention.

• Bring back the Bots!: There was an era where it didn’t matter if you had no friends to play your multiplayer games because bots existed. takes us back to those glorious days and asks, why in this era of AI do we not still have this option?

• How to lose a guy in 60s: breaks down early user engagement and the windows you have to focus on in order to keep your player happy.

• Is it cozy tho?: I love a cozy game right up until it starts to feel like a second full time job, then I lose all interest. I’m not the only one who feels that some cozy games aren’t cozy, explains….

• Where to take your narrative career: chats to two seasoned narrative designers to understand where the advanced stages of the career can lead.

• Saving the Screen: Games have been art forever, regardless of what era they came from and the technical abilities of the time. reminisces about the early era game screenshots and pre-rendered cut scenes that made them go; wow.

• Juicing: The latest Devlog from Erebus games is all about ‘juicing it’, where they go around and add a little bit extra to those features.

• Doing it in public: Why don’t some newer games have features that games had twenty years ago? answers that question with a suggestion.

• Feeling Authentic: explains how to give your game that authentic feel, like it’s actually set in the setting you envisioned.

• Lets get physical: Something new I’m trialling, is when there is a big topic of the week, I want to highlight everyone's efforts, so rather than picking one, i’ll curate a handful:

  • The End of Physical Media: PlayStation Goes All-Digital by 2028

  • Welcome to the Endgame

  • The Slow, Deliberate Death of Game Ownership

  • Are Physical Video Games Dead?

  • If Physical Games Are Going Away, What Does It Actually Mean to Own a Game?

  • I Bought the PS5 with a Disc Drive on Purpose

  • ESSAY – Why I Don’t Care About the Loss of Physical Media

Fun Tidbits

• Deduce which villagers are good or evil in this upcoming roguelite game of demonic bluffing

• Sega’s Rent-A-Hero Series Just Made A Comeback, And Somewhere, A Monkey Paw Curls

• An Inside Look at the GameTank

• 50 Ways to Ruin Your Indie Game (and How to Avoid Them)

• Seven things you probably didn’t know about Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin

• June 2026’s top new PC & console games, revealed..

• “The Magazine About Atari, Made On An Atari” - Atari Legacy Launches This Month

• The Impact of Mobile Games in Europe in 2025

• "It Was A Full-On Assault" - How Sega's "Disruptive" Marketing Led To A Starring Role In A Cult 2000s Comedy

• 2026’s top games by copies sold (so far)

• The Creator Of Fantasy Zone’s Opa Opa Has Been Posthumously Revealed

• Game Informer Magazine Archive

• Raiden (Amiga/Falcon) and Space Junk (Atari Falcon) Source Code

• GDStudio – A Better Godot Editor?

• A PS2 disc-shaped rabbit hole post

It’s been a hectic week of Steam Next Fest, GTA’s Next Game, and Valves Next Box. Only two of which sparked debate about the cost of said items.

But do you know what doesn’t cost you a dime and is packed with value? The Reconnect Recap of course. This newsletter is a companion piece to my website Reconnect. The only website on the internet aggregating hundred of video game blogs across the entire internet, not just substack.

This week we’re talking Cozy, Sega, Game Dev, MMOs, Accessibility, and much much more!

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Calling them cowards: Azhdarchid wants to discuss whether branching narratives with no real player agency are just a cop out.

• Cozy-Vania: argues that Metroidvanias can be cozy, and has recommendations.

• Cozy-ride: Yes another cozy story, that’s because they are just so…. cozy. explains how he finds Forza to be his cozy game.

• Accessibility with Ants: recently spoke to Mike Winzler of Grounded about how their plethora of accessibility options allowed gamers to cater the game to their own needs.

• So long, farewell, and thanks for all the fish: Jank walks us through the stages of grief as we say goodbye to the video game characters we fell in love with.

• Things are looking up: brings us some sunshine in these trying times and argues that things in the industry are going to get better soon, we’ve just got to hope.

• Buying the box: has decided that they are getting the Steam Machine, and wants to run you through their thought process and why the sticker shock is just the cost of doing business right now.

• Gaming in the big apple: runs us through all the initiatives supporting gaming in NYC and how having a gaming mayor will help.

• Hunting for MMOs: We’ve covered ‘s quest to find a MMO a few times this year. This week they are taking a pause to review how the process has been going.

• 90s Success: explains how 90s Chinese micro-dramas are having a big moment and a huge impact on games.

• 7 Deadly Sins: runs you through the 7 mistakes to avoid when pitching your first game.

• Perks of a Game Dev: The latest Devblog from explains how they incorporated perks into their roguelike.

• Categorisation Madness: dives into why games need genres, and also pokes holes in the practice.

Fun Tidbits

• The Steam Machine should launch with around 30,000 playable games

• “Probably The Best Puzzle In The World” - When The Man Who Made Tetris Met The Creator Of The Rubik’s Cube

• Fans were so angry about a Command & Conquer mobile game that it changed EA

• The Making Of Tomb Raider 1997 - 2000 To Chart “Pivotal Period” In The Legendary Series

• Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: June 15 - June 19 (2026)

• “The Magazine About Atari, Made On An Atari” - Atari Legacy Launches This Month

• Godot Engine 4.7 is out bringing a new Asset Store, HDR support, Steam Frame support

• Battlefield Studios Join Godot Development Fund

• The Roost Radio: Animal Crossing Lofi

• Sega’s Rent-A-Hero Series Just Made A Comeback, And Somewhere, A Monkey Paw Curls

• The Ultimate Steam Next Fest Wrap-Up: The Algorithm Did Not Want You To See This

• Super ZSNES Just Got Even Better, With A New Update Adding Initial Super FX Support, Fixes, & Quality Of Life Features

• These are the most-played demos of Steam Next Fest June 2026

• Steam Next Fest’s winners, and why the event might matter less than you think

• Sega’s Yosuke Okunari Wants To Make Every One Of The Company’s Games Playable, But Admits He’ll “Probably Retire Before Then”

• Port of ‘Noiz2sa’ Submitted to SegaXtreme Saturn Showcase

• "It Was A Full-On Assault" - How Sega's "Disruptive" Marketing Led To A Starring Role In A Cult 2000s Comedy

• ArcStation: Installation & Demo

• How Small Spaces sold ~15x its Week 1 sales after a year (!)

• New (Old) 3D Golf: porting PC-9801 & Virtual Boy to Mega Drive

You are under no obligation to give me a cent, this is targeted only at those who have some dollars to spare (who does in this economy?) and feel comfortable donating to lil ole me. If you cannot, thats fine, if you don’t want to , thats fine.

So donation link is here, but because I never like doing anything for free, I thought I’d write a video game article to at least entertain you, so no matter what you do, you’re getting some entertainment out of me.

I played shitty mobile games for cash, and I’m kinda hooked.

As previously mentioned I need some extra cash, and to everyone’s surprise Reconnect doesn’t earn me a cent (yet), in fact it costs me money to run 🤣. Whilst I’m already making moves to pick up some extra work to help get by, one anxiety riddled night led me looking on Reddit and TikTok for other ways to make a bit of side money.

I stumbled across paid surveys, you know that get rich quick scheme every influencer and their dog is peddling. So I downloaded a few apps and after doing about 20 surveys in a row, I had about 4.38c.

Yay, poverty solved right? I just need to do about 78 surveys an hour, every hour, without sleeping, for 8 whole weeks, and I should be able to afford a latte. Nothing reminds us why we need minimum wage more than doing a 35 minute survey for 80c.

But one of the apps, that I won’t name, because I’m not being paid or sponsored, had games you could play for money.

Colour me intrigued…. do you mean to tell me that I had been playing games all these years for free? In fact to be more accurate, I’ve been loosing money with this hobby?

Well it’s not quite that. I wasn’t being asked to sit down and play Ghost of Tsushima 2 for a cozy eighty dollars an hour.

I was instead taking part in something I think could be more accurately described as advertisement fraud.

See, the games were all these shitty free to download, but overloaded with micro transaction mobile games. You know the ones with the obnoxious adverts involving an old lady and some weird premise?

I instantly clocked the scam. They have these big numbers at the top like “$140” but then you click into them, as pictured above, and you start to see how much work has to go into even earning a few cents.

To earn that $140, I’d probably have to invest over a hundred hours of my time, and probably some micro transactions along the way.

So I thought, why not give one of these a go, I’ve got a lot of spare time on my hands right now, let’s see if any of this is tenable. Maybe I can make a few bucks, rather than the whole bag.

All in all I downloaded five games, and went about giving them a good old college try.

We know the hook here right? You sink a few hours into the game having fun and then the currency starts to dry out and you can either wait 3 hours or you can give them some cash.

Nearly all of the games had a financial goal for making a micro transaction. As you can see above, I get $5 if I do a MT, but of course the cheapest one is $3 so I’m only making $2. Though fun fact one of the other games, had a freebie in the store, that actually counted in the system, so I got $4 for free. Suckers!

Of the five games, three of them were this weird ‘Merge + Adjective’ style game. My thinking was, these games have to be identical in their systems right, and the only difference is the setting and premise? Maybe I can crack the code on the play style and benefit three times over.

WRONG.

Lord was I wrong. Each game played quite differently from the others, whilst the gameplay and trappings, including timed content, were the same thing, the way they structure the economy and what you have to do was wildly different. I had genuinely thought these scam artists had basically developed one game (which would be a lot of work) and then spun it off six or eleven times in different flavours.

No these madmen actually changed each game enough that they are effectively different games. Thats dedication to the craft of game design right there, and they’ve earned my respect in that regard.

So a week later, what have I learned? I’ve learned i’m not going to get rich playing mobile games, thats for sure. On average after playing each game for about two days, I was only at a few dollars for each title. There’s no one making that top $140 amount, unless they are willing to sink their own money into it and defeat the purpose.

But I think i’ve stumble onto a scam. These games are riddled with ads, so by paying people, or appearing to pay people, to play the game, and watch more ads, they are in turn earning more ad revenue. Surely the advert providers have terms and conditions that limit these parties from deliberately boosting numbers to get more adverting payouts?

But the scam is of no concern to me. Honesty, after a week, i’m kinda hooked, I open them up each day, take advantage of what I can for free, see if any of them have ticked off a few more dollars of earning, then move on with my life. I don’t think this is my way out of trouble town for now.

I sold a thousand NFTs for .10c and now I can afford 1 game

I’m a sucker for vampire survivors type game, and so this week, a few podcasts I listened to recommended Terra Tech Legion. A new “Bullet Heaven“ game where you drive a car around shooting enemies whilst being able to change the entire load out of your car. Obviously I was interested.

Side Note: I know '“Bullet Heaven” is now the official genre as bestowed by the Valve gods themselves, but when this style of game first came about Jeff Gertsman coined them AS games, because Automatic Shooter, pronounced ASS, and that will forever be my canon.

But as we’ve covered off multiple times in this article, i’m pathetically poor. So poor that the mere $10 that Terra Tech requires would bankrupt me and my entire lineage (not really), so I decided I could’t buy the game and would simply wait until my Only Feet account starting raking in the cash.

But then I was stumbling through my Steam Profile and came across my Inventory. You know the Inventory, that weird dumping ground for a bunch of cards, gems, gifs, and trinkets that Steam is constantly notifying you about, but you have no idea what they really do.

Of note, was CSGO Card that I had in my inventory that said I could sell it on the Market place for a $1. Up until this point, I didn’t know you could sell this shit, I thought it was a long forgotten Steam feature they couldn’t be bothered removing, let alone a thriving market place.

So I looked at the rest of my inventory, and did I find a rare Damascus steel knife from Counter Strike I could see for thousands and make myself rich?

No.

But I did find that I had literally hundreds of items in my inventory I could sell on the Market place. So, again I have a lot of free time right now and I’m clearly in a yolo mood, besides I needed something to do while I waited for the gems in my Merge Grandma game to renew, so I got selling.

The majority of them I listed at like 6c because thats what the market said they were worth. A few got in to the high twenties, of cents…….

For every card, it takes:

• 1 click to open the Sell window

• You have to enter the price

• Click that you agree to the terms and conditons

• Click to approve the sale

• Then open the mobile app, and review and approve the sale

• Which results in an email confirming your listing.

I did that hundreds of times this morning, and every time one sold, I got a confirmation email.

Suffice to say, my iPhone is pleading me to put it out of its misery.

But after a few hours of clocking and typing 0.05c over and over again, the fruits of my labour started to manifest.

But think tiny fruit, like fruit that ants would look at and think, oof thats a small apple.

But I’m happy to report that clearing out my Steam Inventory in what can only be described as the internets saddest garage sale, I now have enough to buy Terra Tech Legion.

Success?

Whilst I spent this week poorly managing my time in return for literally cents on the dollar I actually had a lot of fun and thought this would be a hilarious thing to write down.

I hope you enjoyed this little piece and keep your eyes peeled for the Reconnect Recap coming in a few days.

Ciao 👋

Well it’s been one of those weeks hasn’t it? It’s been an absolute firehose of Xbox news this week and I’m desperately scrambling for the off valve, I don’t think I can take any more news from the green company.

Which is why we aren’t covering any of that here today, today we’re giving ourselves a break and looking at gaming content thats positive, cheery, and not even remotely green.

If you are new here, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to my website Reconnect, the only aggregator of video game blogs on the internet.

This week, we’re coving blue hedgehogs, letters to our younger selves, football, dial-up internet, and much much more.

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Camp Dad: guest posts on reminisces about his late father and his peculiar play style in his favourite shooter.

• Note to Self: recaps twenty years in the industry by writing a letter to their 10 year old self.

• True to the source: Voice acting is extremely underrated and can really make a huge difference in the authenticity of the experience. picks up on an impactful casting choice in the latest bond game.

• Controller Corner: lives true to their name and discusses how Valves latest controller is near perfect.

• Choose your racer!: dives deep on gamings long history of racing cars with gaming mascots as a new one emerges on the horizon.

• Digital nom noms: SuperJump Magazine explains the importance of food in setting the scene of a game, feating Yakuza.

• Simpler Times: remembers the early years of the internet, the feeling of looking up gaming information back in the PS1 era, and the noise of dial up.

• Football realism: I didn’t know that Football games don’t simulate proper ball physics, explains why this is.

• Real competition: When your game is going up against thousands of others at Next Fest, it’s easy to think of all of them as being your competition, but are they really? explains how that’s a bit of a fallacy.

• Pulling the plug: It’s a big decision to cancel a game in development, explains how to go through that process.

• Anthropomorphic blue eulipotyphla: Sonic turned 25, and is willing to bet that even if you’re old, your introduction to Sonic was probably via the NES which had the inferior version of Sonic, those who got to play it on the Master System, had it much better.

• Getting Started: shares his thirty year history with video games with us and how he got started.

Fun Tidbits

• EposVox Launches JAMPACK’d Magazine

• “We Have The Means To Fight This Case To The End” - Gaming’s Most Infamous Trademark Troll Is Back

• Narrascope 2026: The First Year of Adventures from Japan

• FIFA International Soccer, The Game That Launched A Billion-Dollar Series

• Alternative racing games to play instead of Forza Horizon 6

• “With Ridge Racer...I Had To Keep Myself In Check” - Klonoa 2 Composer Asuka Sakai On How The Platformer Allowed Her To Open Up

• Godot 4.7 Released

• Recompilation of Castlevania for the Nintendo 64

• ‘Diggy Diggy Mole’ Is “A New Metroid-Like NES Platformer” About A Mole With A Pickaxe Embedded In Its Skull

• Three Big Commodore 64 recoveries

• After “Nineteen-ish Years Of Development”, The Original ‘Mother’ Has Been Remade As A Patch For Earthbound SNES

• Gravitor Prototype (Atari) Preserved

• This “Heartfelt Tribute To Classic Japanese Train Sims” Could Be Steam’s Alternative To Densha De Go!

• Joe’s State of Unreal 2026

• Taito’s Space Invaders Follow-Up ‘Space Cyclone’ Is Heading To Modern Consoles, Alongside ‘Legend Of Kage’ NES

• The Day Sega Took Over An F1 Race, And Ayrton Senna Lifted A Sonic Trophy

• How Sony’s games have sold on PlayStation in 2026

• New (Old) 3D Golf: porting PC-9801 & Virtual Boy to Mega Drive

Woof it’s been a wild week of non stop gaming news, we really do just get a fire hose twice a year don’t we?

As a point of difference, I deliberately steer this newsletter away from the topic on everyone’s lips. There’s a million places you can read about the latest SGF news, so why don’t I spend some time highlighting other works, though there may be a few related stories.

As always this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to my website Reconnect, the only place on the internet that aggregates nearly 300 active video game blogs of a variety of flavours.

This week we’re covering, game genres, nurturing games, censorship, analytics, and much much more.

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• What’s in a rating?: guest poster looks into whether game ratings are actually doing their job in regards to parents picking appropriate games.

• Censoring Pride: has a great deep dive into how queer content in video games is censored eight ways from Sunday.

• Looking back at Mudman: Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games takes a look at the character Mudman from World Heroes 2 and asks the question, was the representation of this character above board?

• Schrodinger’s Cat: Thinky Games interviews the developer who successfully turned the philosophical concept of Schrodinger’s Cat into a puzzle game.

• Parental Figures: Sad Dad, and now Glum Mum, games have become a staple in storytelling, starts a mini series on the portrayal of parental figures in games.

• Toxic Players: wants to know, are games more or less toxic now? Have the tools meant to curb toxic multiplayer experiences working or moving the problem?

• 25th Anniversary: celebrates the Game Boy Advance’s 25th Birthday, feel old yet?

• Not so Cozy: writes about an emerging new trend with cozy games, they are getting darker.

• What’s in a genre?: Laura Michet muses over the concept of a games categorical genre, and how her experience in both the east and the west provides a different viewpoint on the same category.

• The wrong list: Games Wisdom provides a top 50 of what not to do when launching your indie game.

• Death by numbers: make’s the argument for why review scores have gotten a bit out of hand.

• Dodging the bull: reflects on SGF, the slew of new games and the obvious elephant in the room.

• Hate to replay: As say’s you know those games you would happily replay if it wasn’t for that one bit, here’s his list of those moments.

• Growth Potential: Game growth always was very linear, you just kept releasing games, but how does user generated content, nostalgia, and Hollywood influence the growth of today’s games? explains.

Fun Tidbits

• Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest 2026 Edition – All the Announcements and Trailers

• How are recent PlayStation Studios games selling?

• Surprise! The Developers Behind Cuphead Just Announced A New 8-Bit Spin-Off For The Sega Master System

• “Another Step Closer” - The ‘Impossible’ DOOM Port Could Yet Happen

• Building XBOX Games with Godot Sample Launched

• Reminder about the Blendo Steam Sales Data Viewer

• The Museum of Screens Research Team: Arno bros

• The Master Chord: Legend of Zelda guitar lofi

• Summer Game Fest’s Steam wishlist winners

• Starting your game with text on-screen

• Asia Game Buzz & GameDev Reports: China’s Steam & PC Gaming Market in 2025

It’s been a mental week for most of us! You’ve either been intensely following all the fun announcements or intensely burrowing through walls in the latest Yacht Club game.

I’ve been busy this week with neither! Work and personal life got a bit full on, but any moment I had spare, was going to starting the redevelopment of Reconnect. This will be the third iteration of the platform and I’m excited to show you all what i’ve got planned. If you have any feedback about the site or the newsletter, nows the time to let me know!

As always this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. Whilst Reconnect updates multiple times a day with new exciting articles from nearly 300 games writers, this newsletter comes once a week, straight to your inbox, highlighting some of the coolest pieces of writing from the week thats been.

This week we’re leaning heavily into games development, primarily narrative design, devlogs, and funding. We’re also covering off portable emulation, game analytics, game music and much much more!

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• May Madness: has the stats for best selling games in May, the number one spot will leave you shaken, not stirred.

• Needs something new: highlights how Sony’s first party lineup has been returning less and less sales every year, is it time for something new from Sony?

• Choosing your translation: What do you do if your indie games second stretch goal was to translate the game from English to another language? Well you do what did, and hold a poll with the fans!

• We need to talk: Narrative Guru, , wants hiring managers of the industry to listen to her advice about hiring narrative writers.

• Sprucing up the graphics: I love a Devlog, and has theirs for the month of June by improving the graphics on their game and adding co-op.

• Running Doom, in the future: ponders the question, in 500 years from now, what games, from today, will still be around.

• Geographic redistribution: Ten years ago, if you wanted to be in the industry you need to live either in California, Canada, or Copenhagen, has evidence to show that the migration away from those hubs is occurring.

• Know your terms: Getting funded is as much about having a kick ass game as it is about speaking the language of the publisher, has the guide on how to talk the talk.

• Feeling Twisted: looks back on Heavy Rain and how the narrative choices in that game left an unsavoury taste in peoples mouths.

• Feeling Frosty: After the massive success of last years Frosty Games Festival, this years job was a lot harder. explains how the organisers took over two hundred submissions down to fifty for this years showing.

• Moshing to Metaphor: Resident games music expert, explains how video games concerts are having a moment right now and what that means.

• Finding your community: Are you an indie dev, do you want to build a local community where you are to shoot the shit and help solve problems? Well has a yellow pages of where to find a community near you.

• Breaking the wall: Games tend to be self contained experiences, but what happens when they start to reference things outside of their container? Well i’m not talking about Skynet, but is talking about Psycho Mantis judging your saved data from other games.

• PS1 on the Go: Follow as they convert their PSP into a portable PS1.

• Be yourself: As part of Pride Month, Thinky Games is interviewing queer game developers, this latest piece is with Ashe, Game Director of Blobun.

Fun Tidbits

• The Devs Behind Loco Motive Once Pitched A Red Dwarf Adventure Game, & It Looks Smeggin’ Brilliant

• ExitLag ChampZ: A Major Ladder Tournament for Path of Exile 2

• “We Were Hoping To Have A Better Update Than This” - Hyperkin’s Portable Genesis, The Mega95, Has Been Delayed Again

• Hateno Ancient Tech Lab Lofi

• “That Was My Favourite Sonic Game” - Former Sega Exec Says ‘Sonic CD’ Is Getting A Remake

• Enter the Chronosphere is a ridiculously stylish and engaging turn-based bullet hell

• “I Was Saddened To Learn That You Are Leaving Sega” - Here’s The Letter That Brought An End To The 16-Bit Console Wars

• GOG Preservation Program expands with POSTAL 1 & 2, Hatred, Redneck Rampage Collection

• “It’s Not About Putting An Old Game In A Nice Box For The Sake Of It” - Utopia Is Getting A New Physical Release On SNES

• Atari helps celebrate thirty years of Toy Story with two new collections

• Namco’s Time Crisis Once Took Place In New York, And Had A Plot Similar To A Famous Bruce Willis Film

• Games that weren’t: Danger – High Surf

• Sega’s Cyber Razor Cut - “I Spent The Entire Shoot Expecting It To Explode”

• Poncle Establishing New Japan Studio Led By El Shaddai Creator Sawaki Takeyasu

• “A Small Tribute To One Of My Favorite Games” - Game Boy Tetris Is Being Ported To Sega Genesis

• A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS

• “It Was Magical” - The Vectrex Mini Gets The Blessing Of The Original Creator As Game Lineup Is Revealed

• Sega Might Be Releasing A Low-Cost Handheld With Removable Game Carts

We often talk about how secretive and elusive game development is. We rarely know about what games are in development, and what games got scrapped.

We never hear about the behind the scenes stories, the herculean efforts that went into making a game and what challenges they faced.

For a lot of games, the ‘how’ is a black box. Thanks to the likes of NoClip or investigate journalists, we’ve started to get a little more of a peak behind the curtain, and in nearly every single example, the results are shocking and quite educational.

This lack of information creates a vacuum and in that vacuum speculation runs rampant. No one is more sure of their opinion, whether it be a basement dwelling incel, or an industry veteran, when we don’t have the facts. Why did Sony release Concord, why don’t we get a Half Life Three, when will Beyond Good and Evil be officially cancelled. The list goes on and the speculation blossoms.

So it begs the question? Would more transparency make for a more informed opinion? Would people be more understanding if they had more knowledge about what challenges a studio faced in developing a game?

The answer is no. The evidence, Bungie.

Dirty Laundry on display

I cannot think of a single other publisher, that during active development of a game had so much of their dirty laundry aired out for the public to see.

We knew about how aggressive Activision was with the early days of Destiny. Expecting them to pump out content and move onto sequels at the same pace as Call of Duty and that they were disappointed with the performance of Destiny’s DLCs.

We knew about the difficulties Bungie faced with the custom engine they had sunk too much money into to change. The knock on effects being that they had to vault content in order to keep install size down and keep testing manageable. A decision they are still persecuted for.

We knew about the difficulties the studio faced going independent, as Activision had provided multiple support studios for the ports to PC and Console and now had to in-house that development.

We knew about the internal issues with the company, hearing about workplace bullying and sexual harassment. Whilst the studio worked hard to resolve those issues, just as morale was probably improving, the studio suffered a consistent haemorrhaging of layoffs in their final years, whilst big names at the studio got to float away on their golden parachutes.

Then Sony partially bought them out. We knew that they bought them so they could use their experience to help Sony with their goals of launching eight live service games by 2026. A goal that was never achieved. We even know that it wasn’t Bungie’s fault those titles never saw the light of day, it was Sony who couldn’t fathom that their primary IP’s did not translate well to a live service model.

We knew that Sony’s partial buyout was contingent on Bungie meeting certain financial targets, targets that were difficult to meet and, when failed, would result in Sony owning all of Bungie. Heck, we even know that a Senior VP at Sony bemoaned how expensive Destiny was to develop.

I used to think that Bungie was just unlucky, constantly going from owned to independent in a viscous cycle, and on top of that, experiencing all the other issues.

But as time goes on, we hear about the same issues occurring at other companies. The same issues of unruly ownership, engine troubles, and cultural issues.

So why did Bungie receive so much hate? Why was Destiny constantly referred to as a dead game, even during its prime. Why are people now celebrating its demise?

The answer to that question is very multifaceted and probably an eight thousand word think piece at the least. But it boils down to the obvious points.

Gamers are both entitled and constantly being shafted by the industry they love. Late stage capitalism is demolishing the traditional game scene at speed, and no game is more at the forefront of that onslaught than a live service game. Finally we live in an attention economy where negative journalism is more lucrative than positive.

My overall point here is that Destiny was no more problematic than any other game. Their only crime was not being absolutely perfect and not being able to predict the future.

Especially when you consider…..

It was so successful, other games were called Destiny-Killers

We all seem to be missing the part where this game was a roaring success. If you’re not a destiny player and you solely consumed what the media fed you, you may believe the lie that this game was a bad game.

But it wasn’t. I mean would a game, that was dependent on returning players to pay for new content, last nearly nine years? Especially given how expensive it apparently was to develop for? The game averaged ~100k concurrents on just Steam a month, it was obviously good enough that people, like myself, returned month after month, year after year, purchasing the season passes, dungeon passes, and micro transaction content.

Instead of looking at Destiny like some lamed horse that was also the runt of the litter, let’s consider it amongst all other live service games to have come out in that time. Whilst yes we have the juggernauts like GTA V and Fortnite, there are some live service games whose life was measured in days, there are plenty that were measured in months, and a decent chunk of them that went for a few year and considered to have a ‘good run’.

For example, let’s look at a sample of Live Service Games launched since Destiny 2 came out, and how long they lasted.

Short life span

• Concord - 7 days.

• Highguard — 45 days

• Rumbleverse — 6 months

• Babylon’s Fall — 1 year

• MultiVersus — 1 year

• Knockout City — 2 year

Medium Life Span

• Marvels Avengers - 3 years

• Anthem - 6 years (not really)

Still going

• Destiny 2 — 8.75 years

• Fortnite — 8.70 years

• Sea of Thieves — 8.22 years

• Fallout 76 — 7.56 years

• Apex Legends — 7.34 years

It appears as if we should be celebrating any live service game that makes it past two and a half years, reminder Destiny nearly made it to nine.

Let’s not forget that Destiny was such an influence in the industry that we coined the term Destiny-killer, for any game of a similar play style. A title like that puts the game on a pedestal as saying ‘this is the one to beat’, you don’t do that for a bad game.

They didn’t call Borderlands 4 a ‘Redfall-Killer’, they called it a Destiny-killer, along with Anthem, Outriders, Halo Infinite, Godfall, and Defiance.

For the most part, most Destiny-Killers didn’t even make a dent, and the ones that are still around today like Warframe and the Division, don’t see Destiny as competition, these games co-exist with their own communities.

Not beaten, not killed, retired

I’m going to be bold and argue, no one beat Destiny, it retired.

I think it’s hubris to look at the state of the industry now and think that Destiny could have ended any other way.

Nine years is an incredibly good innings, and the industry is rapidly changing under our feet. The only reason Destiny’s true competitors, other successful live service games, are succeeding is either through absolutely mind blowing daily revenue like Fortnite and GTA V, or a more measured, cautious, approach to development like Warframe.

None of what makes Fortnite or Warframe successful can be applied to Destiny. Destiny isn’t a battle Royale that can churn out a new map every month, nor is it development scope small enough that it can slowly plod along like Warframe can.

Simply put, Destiny sits on the razors edge of being expensive to develop for, with its story, voice acting, and mission structure, but not big enough player-base wise that the in-game spending keeps them solvent.

Even if Sony hadn’t acquired them and executed a hostile takeover, I think the runway would have ended about the same time. Existing fans are bored of the formula, there’s only so many new stories, variants of guns and dungeons a single developer can churn out. Not to mention, the story ended, we are in a lull in the narrative, for many of us, it felt like Avengers End Game, everything we had been working towards was resolved. To start new storylines and conflicts is an awkward change.

Nothing says the that now is the right time, like the fact that there isn’t a Destiny 3 on the horizon. Had the gameplay loop and content still been engaging enough to keep a player base then Sony could have justified a third sequel. That would have given Bungie the chance to change engines, start a new story, and streamline and change how the game feels.

Destiny just hit the end of the road, an unavoidable reality for all live service games. So yes, I argue that it retired, honourably discharged, rather than killed or pushed out of town.

It was a game that made hundreds of thousands of people happy, and yet it was used as a punching bag.

There is so much positive things to say about Destiny. People have always complemented the way the shooting feels, a compliment that is present in all the Marathon reviews, remember these guys made Halo.

The lore of the universe and story were always top tier, with a cottage industry of people dedicated to explaining it on Youtube. The guns are so iconic, you can buy replicas not just from the official store, but from high quality talented people on the internet.

People dress up in Destiny cosplay, when characters died in the game we were moved, when voice actors died in real life we mourned, and when a new Raid was released, people across the world would compete to see who could finish it first, sometimes playing the game for multiple days straight.

Destiny had a success story most other games would kill for, and yet it got tarred at some point. Yes we live in an industry where the more passionate your fans the more negative the overall sentiment, cough couch Star Wars, but it always felt more than that. Gamers for the past 8 years have been calling it a dead game, for no other reason than to stick the knife in. To what end?

I’m trying deliberately here to not defend a company, I don’t feel comfortable blindly defending anything for profit, i’m trying to defend the essence of the game, at it’s entertainment value. Sure every single one of us players will have a grip or two about the game and I’m not saying those aren’t valid, but no game is perfect and we need to learn to look at issues within context.

What I’m trying to defend here is that Destiny didn’t deserve the hate that it got. It was never a ‘dead game’, it was a success story that only Bungie could pull off and yet despite their accolades, the industry denied them their flowers at every turn.

We all joke, whenever NMS releases yet another free content update that “chill guys, you’re forgiven, you don’t need to keep giving us new stuff for free.” Maybe studios like Hello Games, look at how unfairly a game studio can be treated and thinks redemption is not an option. Once you’ve committed a crime in the public eye, you’re forever bound to it.

Good on everyone who worked at Bungie through all this turmoil. They continuously took punches and consistently delivered fun and engaging gameplay for nearly nine years. They garnered a player base that returned consistently and grew to love the game and the universe. Not many games can say they’ve done that, and hopefully in a better world, a more healthy one, those workers at Bungie will be recognised for what they achieved with new roles on other exciting projects.

Destiny was a good game, but it seemed like it was the popular thing to shit on. It was ‘cool’ to deny it any recognition and brand it as a dead game. For that, we didn’t deserve Destiny, it tried its hardest, did more than many other games ever did and it simply hit the end of its natural life. I appreciate my time with Destiny, I’m not sure many did.

It’s been a bit of a whiplash week in the industry wouldn’t you say? Destiny 2 shutting down, the Steam Deck is back but more expensive, but we’re getting a Witcher 3 DLC, and a slew of new game announcements in the new few weeks, but not Fable as that’s been delayed. Le Sigh, that’s the industry for you!

Welcome to another edition of the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for my website Reconnect. Reconnect aggregates nearly 300 video game related blogs into one easy to use location, meaning you don’t have to go hunting for some good content to read, you can simply visit my website and the works been done for you!

This week on the Recap, we’re talking about games that nearly got inappropriate names, Bungie, MMOs, tinkering, home servers, and much much more!

Let’s dig in!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Thanks for Memories: reminisces over their time with Destiny 2 and what the ending of the game means to them.

• It’s a marathon, not a sprint: Meanwhile, This Week in Video Games writes about how Destiny’s closure makes things harder for Bungie’s remaining title, Marathon.

• Reclaiming the right to game: talks about her experience with falling off video games in her twenties and finding her way back to it later in life.

• Tagging: Steam updated their tags for the first time in a a few years and has some tips and tricks on how to properly tag your game.

• Testing out the guild: continues their mission this year of trying a new MMO every month, this time they tried out Guild Wars 2, and were pleasantly surprised.

• Hidden Sadness: dives into the classic Katamari and asks, if under all of that whimsy, was there a more somber tone?

• DIY Server Woes: This week SuperJump Magazine explains why running a local server on an old PC sounds like a great idea, but in reality can be a huge hassle, and what to do about it.

• Accolades down under: gives us a look behind the curtain on how Australia determines its Game of The Year by getting the judges experience first hand.

• Building the Vault: takes us into the vault of the Embracer Group Archive, one of the latest efforts to preserve gaming history, and how the project came together.

• Tinkering is the game: Some of us just play games, some of us tweak gpu profiles, spent 7 hours installing mods, or aggressively alter settings until the game feels just right. The latest piece over on Jank celebrates that for some of us, tinkering is as much the game as the game itself is.

• Age is but a number: uses their latest survey numbers to gauge the median age of who is playing certain games, what does age influence when it comes to marketing a game?

• Childhood Memories: recounts their formative gaming memories and the influence it has on their nostalgia.

Fun Tidbits

• A Handheld MiSTer Is Coming, But This Darius-Playing Widescreen Prototype Isn’t It

• Xbox CEO Says Game Pass Price Drop Improved Acquisitions and Retention

• “They Had No Idea What They Were Doing” - Amico Teardown Sheds Light On Doomed Intellivision Console

• Catch up with all the reveals and trailers from our annual Thinky Direct presentation

• “You Don’t Need To Commit Piracy” - It’s Now Possible To Dump N64 Carts Using Your Flash Cart

• There Is Still Good In This World, Because It Is Once Again Time To Enjoy Famicase

• Lenovo Wants To Find Out Why Its G02 Emulation Handheld Comes Loaded With Nintendo, Sony And Sega Games

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Has Now Sold 65 Million Copies

• “The Most Miserable Person I Have Ever Worked With” - This Former Sega Exec Has A Dim View Of Yuji Naka

• Retrostalgia on adding USB-C support for Sega Master System controllers

• “I Am Not Making Up This Story” - You Won’t Believe What Yuji Naka Wanted To Call Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg

• Rocket League in Development using Unreal Engine 6

• Sonic The Hedgehog Comes To The ZX Spectrum Next - In An Unofficial Capacity, At Least

• SN Operator from Epilogue brings SNES carts to modern PCs and its now up for order

• A Closer Look At Pearl Abyss’ 23.1% Stock Crash After The Fenris Creations Divestment

Welcome to another issue of the Reconnect Recap! If you are new here, the Recap is a companion newsletter for my website, Reconnect. Reconnect sources articles from nearly 300 different video game blogs and aggregates them all into one easy peasy location for users to access. Meaning if you are even in the mood to read some great video game blogs you don’t need to go hunting you can go straight to Reconnect and take your pick! The site updates several times a day and then at the end of the week I write this newsletter giving you a collection of the highlights from the week that’s been.

And boy has it been a busy week! There was honestly an absolute deluge of great articles to pick through this week. Today we’re covering exclusivity, getting funky with electronic music, hard hitting narratives, indie success stories and much much more!

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• The pendulum swings: dives into the latest swing towards console exclusives and what this means in the grand scheme of things.

• What drove the decision: But why did Sony change their minds and go back to exclusives? explains that the decision was driven by a lot more than we think.

• Wise Words: Museum of Screens wants to impart some advice to hobbyist game makers, as someone with over a decade of experience.

• Silence is golden: shares an often overlooked benefit to retro gaming, and why for many people its the preferred way to play.

• The pieces don’t fit: SuperJump Magazine reviews all the different ways games can offer DLC and issues a cautionary warning against those games that bombard you with DLC options.

• Raising Funds: Money is hard to come by for funding video games, now more than ever, TWIV via our own , talks to developers having to explore alternative funding routes and strategies.

• Four little success stories: looks into four unheard of indie games that performed well in April and analyse what each one did that made them stand out.

• Combating Anti-Semitism: talks about a new tool built to assess games and game platforms for hateful content, which rates 10 popular games for how their policies and tools handle antisemitic hate.

• Romaaan!: GTA has always been a commentary on American Society, I think what many people missed about the fourth instalment was that it was a very honest story of what it’s like to be an immigrant in the USA, and explains it very well.

• Worn out it’s welcome: We all know the feeling of loving a game for a while then utterly tuning on it, explains the games that they can no longer stand.

• A different story: We all know a narrative game can tell a truly compelling story, but what about when it’s a multiplayer game and the crux of what you are doing in the game doesn’t lend itself to easily telling a great story, how do you progress the plot then? explores how current multiplayer games tackle this issue.

• Shooting the landscape: recounts the history of the photo mode in games and how it helped grow them into a budding games photographer, and the coolest part is the fact that the majority of their photos on their posts are from them.

• Externalising Rhythm: takes us back to Rez, a game that wanted you to connect and feel it’s music, during a time where electronic music had lost its way.

• Shooting Gallery: takes us on a trip down memory lane, explaining how shooters got here, from a very doomed beginning.

Fun Tidbits

• Our Thinky Direct returns on May 28th with dozens of reveals and announcements, kicking off the Cerebral Puzzle Showcase on Steam

• Trio of Ex-BioWare Developers Form New Indie Studio

• Castlevania: SotN And Animal Crossing Get Miniaturised For Game Boy Color

• The Team Behind This Motion-Sensing Box Think It Can Match The Sales Of The Nintendo Wii

• Thanks For The Memories! Analogue 3D Just Got Its Most Significant Update Yet

• Fafling Optimizes Saturn Doom Even More

• DSpico - This Insanely Cheap Open-Source Nintendo DS Flash Cart Is Utterly Essential

• My 1993 Atari Mega STE Retro Battlestation

• “I’ve Never Seen A Legacy Product Have Cutting-Edge Features Like This” - RetroTink 5X Gets “Quasi-4K” And HDR10 Support

• Subnautica 2 passes 4M sold and $100M in revenue in under a week

• “You Won’t Want To Miss This” - Hilltop Is Gearing Up For A “Major Fan-Translation Announcement”

• “It Was Honestly Not That Hard” - This Nintendo 64 Emulator Lets You Play Online With Rollback Netcode

• These Photos Of Old Japanese Arcades Remind Me Of What We’ve Lost

• This Mega Man Hand-Drawn Game Guide Is A Delightful Human-Made Antidote To AI-Generated Slop

• A Sega Rally Nintendo DS Prototype Has Been Discovered

Well it’s finally starting to get cold down here in the southern hemisphere, so I’m getting a bit more time to play some games. I dove into the first Subnautica this week, apparently I had purchased it quite a while ago and never gotten around to it, and the hype for the new game piqued my interest.

If you are new here, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for my website Reconnect. The only place on the Internet actively collating nearly 300 hundred blogs writing about video games and putting it in one handy dandy spot for readers to find great articles and new writers to follow.

This week is a big recap, with so much content for you to enjoy so I hope there’s something for everyone here. We’re covering game analytics, cancelled games, Fallout drinks, RPGs, my new favourite sentence, and much much more!

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Our Furry Friends: I love following Games That Weren’t, as the names suggests its games that never came to fruition, and this weeks gem was a game about our favourite furry creatures from the 3rd (6th) Star Wars Movie.

• Rescue Me: In Elite Dangerous, the simulation will have the enemy attack certain space stations and then you can take missions to evacuate people off the station. It’s the only game I can think of with a resume mechanic, Laura furthers this point to ask why aren’t their more Search and Rescue games.

• Breaking Through: delves into all the different ways Australian Game Devs are pursuing to break through the noise and stand out from the crowd.

• Helping the brain: Resident Video Game Scientist Professor Nobel-Nominee and all around smart guy explains what research could open an avenue for figuring out what gameplay could help people’s mental health. Though I note that naming a Sim after my ex and leaving them to drown in a swimming pool wasn’t on the list.

• More Numbers: has the latest figures on Clair Obscur, Vampire Cralwers, and how the mobile market is going.

• Success Story: We all know the games industry is in a bit of a flunk, with big studios shutting down and laying people off. Just imagine how hard and scary it is for an individual developer. is that individual developer who noticed the slow down impact them in March of last year and has written about how they took that slow down and turned it into one of their best years ever.

• Remembering the Joy: writes about how the cultural malaise of the industries current state is hard to ignore, but chooses, even if for a few hours to focus on the parts, and the games, that can bring her, and maybe you, some joy.

• Pushing Forward: reminds us that we are all on some journey, and what we’ve made before will help what we make in the future. If you're deep in the zone on your current creation, whether it be a game or not, it doesn’t have to be perfect, and your next project will benefit from it.

• Ode to a great man: Two years ago, Roy Ozaki passed away, but only now has the family allowed TimeExtension to report it. This touching piece recounts the mans achievements, his games, his amazing personality, and what he wanted for the future of his company.

• What’s in a name: breaks down the question of what is an RPG, how the genre got its start, how its splintered and evolved over the years, and asks that whilst you may have your own preference of RPG, that you don’t disparage different RPG styles (I agree).

• Profundity of my disappointment: What happens when an extremely eloquent and talented writer dislikes a game, you get this amazing sentence “The profundity of my disappointment was the most coherent thing the game produced.”. To be honest i’ve been cackling ever since I read this. apparently really didn’t like Xenoblade 2, and after reading this piece i’m inclined to agree with their reasoning.

Fun Tidbits

• Step Aside Phantasy Star Online, Another Dreamcast MMO Has Been Resurrected

• Defold is Now a Full 3D Game Engine

• M2’s ‘Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark’ Is Finally Heading To The West Later This Year

• Silent Hill, Dragon Quest, FIFA, and Angry Birds Inducted to Video Game Hall of Fame

• “My Goal Was To Create Something I Wanted For Myself, But Did Not Exist Yet” - The Nintendo 3DS Family Is Getting The Clear Shell Treatment

• Sega Cancels 'Super Game' Project, Pulls Back on Free-to-Play

• “An Unparalleled Experience No FPGA Console Could Come Close To” - SuperSega Is Back, And It’s Even Crazier Than Last Time

• Former Netease Exec’s New Company To Fund Casey Hudson’s Star Wars Game Studio

• “I Want This Title Packaged!” - Superdeluxe Wants To Know What Games You’d Like To See Get Physical Releases

• 12 Indies Heading To The 2026 Tribeca Festival Revealed

• Capcom Reports “Record-High” Operating Profits for Ninth Consecutive Year

• “The Cost Of That Error Is Roughly $15,000” - The Future Of The Panzer Fight Stick In Doubt

• Nintendo Switch 2 Sales at 19.86 Million Units With Nintendo Switch Sales Pushing to 155.92 Million Units Finally Surpassing Nintendo DS

• Web Game of the Day: Vaskange World

• Original Football Manager Creator Returns To The ZX Spectrum, Just In Time For The 2026 World Cup

• This Reddit post shows how you can turn the Anbernic RG 476H into a “2D Steam Pocket” with GameNative

• Analogue 3D’s Latest Update Makes Your Carts Look Colourful In More Ways Than One

• FALLOUT JONES SODAS

• Piko Interactive are bringing back the GBA’s Blender Bros.

• Mario & Chill 3 brings instrumental lofi to the Super Mario Galaxy

• An incremental game that’s also a platformer

It’s definitely that time of year again, where the entire industry holds their breath in anticipation of June madness. The release schedule gets a bit quiet and so the hot news of the week tends to shift and content gets a little bit more diverse.

I mean you couldn’t go two steps on the internet this week without a story about the sold out steam controller that everyone said was too expensive. But on the flip side it creates room for indie games to shine a bit more, Mixtape for example. It’s definitely a time of year I enjoy.

If you are new here, welcome, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect, the only website that aggregates every video game blog, and their articles, on the internet. It serves as a one stop shop for the public to always be able to find something interesting to read in the world of video games. This newsletter, recaps the articles that caught my eye in the past week and is delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday.

This week we’re talking about emulation, overhyped games, console prices, niche genres and much much more!

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• 30 days of PS1 Emulation: Wavelenghts finally got their hands on a Superstation One, the emulation console that looks like a PS1, and gives their thoughts after a month of tinkering.

• Top four in April: has the numbers for the top four selling games across all platforms in April.

• Overhyped: has a way with words, a way that I thoroughly enjoy and find very humorous, I absolutely giggled my way through their run through of games they felt were overhyped.

• Book Club: is running a book club and has a slew of recommendations for gamers and developers.

• I feel old: reminds me that I am old as the Wii celebrates its twentieth birthday, and dives into the thinking behind the consoles design, Nintendo really didn’t want it to look like a games console.

• Going Casual: has a small rant about live service games, how they struggle with being friendly to casual players whilst catering to their dedicated group.

• Soooo random: Game Wisdom explains how randomness is effectively used in video games.

• Bombarded: gives us a look behind the curtain of how many PR emails video game journalists get, and the impact that has on their lives.

• Silence is golden: talks about how important the quiet moments can be in games.

• Fox and Friends: dives into the recent Star Fox announcement and what the future of Star Fox could entail.

• Necessary Experimentation: Nearly every product is the result of constant experimentation, however, most companies don’t allow for enough experimentation and explains how game companies that do allow this, benefit.

• Money Money Money: and team up to talk about the price of consoles and how their strategies have influenced the audience.

• Pale Ale: uncovers a very profitable gaming niche and explains how it’s done so well, but so quietly.

Fun Tidbits

• “A Hollow Victory” - ‘100% AI-Generated’ Smash Bros. PC Port Comes Under Fire

• Here’s the top Steam Deck games for April 2026

• “We Jumped At The Chance” - Industry Veteran Launches Rocket Books, And Its Debut Is All About Ridge Racer Type 4

• Steam Survey for April 2026 shows Linux still trending well

• Donkey Kong, Battletoads And Killer Instinct Artist Kev Bayliss Is Attending This Year’s Nottingham Video Games Expo

• Valve released the new Steam Controller and Puck CAD files for modders

• The LEGO SEGA Mega Drive is out in June for a surprisingly low price

• Web Game of the Day: Cursor Camp

Welcome to another issue of the Reconnect Recap, your companion newsletter for Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. If you missed it, on Thursday I published an article explaining the backstory of how Reconnect came to be, how I run the platform, and my thoughts for the future.

It’s been what I call a typical week for the industry these past seven days. Spiders Studio announced they would close up shop, we’ve got a new piece of gaming hardware to be excited over, and GTA 6 got delayed again. Rumour has it they are just waiting until Bethesda announces ES6 so they can take a shot at the only other game that could possibly steal their thunder.

This week we’re talking about walking on the ceiling, the respective strategies of Playstation and Xbox, a lost chicken little game, games in movies, and much much more.

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Clean up! Aisle Earth: SuperJump Magazine checks out a new cleaning game, all about cosplaying as Wall-E and learning about how to look after Earth.

• Walking on Walls: explains how the developers of Alien Rogue Incursion handled pathing for an Alien who needed to be able to walk on walls but remain unpredictable.

• Babel Fish: TimeExtension sits down for an interview with, Takuya “Tom” Shiraiwa, a man who was effectively Capcom’s only localisation employee during the companies formative years.

• A helping hand: The latest guest post over at guides parents through how to effectively use accessibility features to assist your young children in playing games.

• Lost Chicken: In 2005 Avalanche Studios released a Chicken Little video game, however, Games that Weren’t has gotten their hands on footage of an unreleased Chicken Little game, from another studio.

• Who are you?: looks into what Playstation has turned into in recent years, are they at the top of their game by choice or accident?

• 07, CMDR: I’ll never skip an article about Elite, so imagine how ticked I was when penned a love note to the game that started the series.

• Silver Screen: dives into the movies that are set in video game worlds and the impact they’ve had.

• Cheats galore: decries the loss of cheat codes in games and makes a compelling argument as to why they should return.

• Righteous Gemstones: Whilst my first Pokemon game was Gold, my favourite was Ruby, and agrees, claiming that, that generation was the peak of it’s era.

• Toyoto’s Teachings: recounts how Toyota helped turn General Motors bad culture around and explains how modern game studios can learn from this.

• New Green, Same Green: analyses the new Microsoft strategy and asks the question, is anything going to change?

Fun Tidbits

• Crafty Tomodachi Life Players Are Making DIY Styluses

• Almost 30 Years After Its Official Version Was Scrapped, Someone Is Porting Tomb Raider To The N64

• Final Fantasy 10’s 25th Anniversary Website Just Launched

• “I’m Sorry” - Legendary Castlevania Composer Confirms She’s Not Working On Belmont’s Curse Or Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement

• Game Boy Save Manager lets you back up and restore GB save files using a Link Cable

• “The First-Ever Stoker Family-Authorised Dracula Video Game” - ‘Dracula: Dark Reign’ Is A Castlevania-Style Title For Your Game Boy

• TheSpectrum and TheC64 handhelds announced for October, sporting a clamshell design and 25 built-in games

• An Iconic Tokyo Game Store Is Being Forced To Move Location Later This Month

• Here’s the top Steam Deck games for April 2026

Hi there folks.

I got the urge to just write a bunch of stuff down about Reconnect, so enjoy!

The Origin Story

In 2023 the team at Waypoint Games, specifically Rob Zacny, Chia Contreras, Patrick Klepek, and Ren lost their jobs and frantically scrambled to go solo, creating Remap Radio in June of the same year, though Ren decided to go her own way.

Many similar stories had been happening around that time. When Giant Bomb East closed, we got Nextlander. When Kotaku had a rumble we got Aftermath, one of the many Gamespot layoffs helped create MinnMax, and some people like Jeff Gertsmann went solo.

An industry that used to be so well contained under these big names, was scattered to the winds, and every single one of them needed crowdfunding to stay afloat.

But it was in August of 2023, on one of the early Remap Radio episodes, that the spark of what Reconnect would become, was formed.

See I had dabbled in a bit of games writing in the years prior. I had been blogging for over a decade about a variety of things, PC’s, Space, Mental Health, I even had a semi-successful blog about Management, but it wasn’t until I started writing for SuperJump Magazine I got my first taste of what the behind the scenes of games writing looked like.

For the first time in my life, I had an editor who gave feedback. I was in a discord group with other writers who all asked, and answered questions, gave feedback, and collaborated on ideas and articles. For nearly an entire year, I had a dedicated column where I interviewed indie devs who had games that were about to come out. I was finally ‘in’ the industry.

But it wasn’t something I had the heart to pursue. I have quite a successful career that takes a lot of my energy, and truth by told my writing wasn’t good enough and my brain always has about fifty other projects I want to get done. So I continued to write for fun, and if I didn’t have time or an idea, I simply did not write.

But that’s where I met those who were really good at what they did, the up-and-comers. These writers were good at what they did, had an amazing point of view and churned out amazing articles. That was the pipeline.

Before the carnage that was 2023, these writers would write for free at SuperJump and then a few months later would start getting freelance work at bigger named websites. It was so awesome to see these people grow their craft and eventually make it into the industry.

But back to the podcast. On this specific episode, Patrick and Rob were interviewing the founders of 404 Media. Another crowd funded solo venture from some people who had also lost their jobs.

As they discussed the new venture, Patrick and Rob started to talk about the industry at large. Now with everyone scattered to the winds the industry had lost the ability to discover each other. More importantly, those up-and-coming writers had lost their pipeline. Overnight the career of becoming a games writer was practically annihilated.

See, for the likes of Patrick Klepeck, Steven Totilo, Jason Schreier, discovery doesn’t impact them too much. They are already established names, with social media followings big enough to allow them to yell out “hey, i’m over here” and at least ten-thousand people with subscribe overnight.

But for everyone else, the pipeline was gone, and the ability to go solo, either in a funded or non-funded capacity just got a whole lot harder.

And that really stuck with me. Whilst I had no interest in continuing to write articles myself, I still had such a deep respect and interest in the wider community. A community I had seen ripped apart in a very short amount of time.

So I set out to make the Hacker News yCombinator of video games writing, because If I could centralise everyones writing in one spot, and make the website a success, then writers would find readers, and readers would discover new writers to follow.

So I took my mediocre IT skills, and got to work.

Development Blog

After months of researching all the different ways I could make this happen and experimenting with different platforms I eventually landed on building a Django app.

Django is a python-based framework for creating web apps that are driven by a data model, which as a data-professional in my day job, I knew this was going to be driven by a huge database of blogs.

So I taught myself Django, brushed up on my HTML and CSS skills and in February of 2024 launched the first iteration of Reconnect. What I lovingly call, “The Yellow Monstrosity”.

Version one was an eye opening experience. The code was messy, the design was naff, and I foolishly put two contact forms on my site that were quickly picked up by bots and spammed relentlessly.

Of course in the early days I didn’t have a lot of blogs and I also didn’t have a lot of visitors.

I would spend my weeks combing through google, reddit, Hacker News, Substack, Medium, finding gaming blogs to add to the site. Then I would find that half of them had been abandoned with no new content for months or years, or would find that they didn’t have an RSS feed I could use to bring their content onto the site.

I was also trying to find the balancing point. I wanted primarily editorial writing. People who were writing about games, not pumping about 20 articles a day that was just the news and reviews.

In the early days I was adding about 1 out of every 5 sites I could find. Honestly, it felt dire, it felt like the industry had truly died and maybe I was too late.

It was around this time I got the idea to make the newsletter, it wasn’t until February or March that the idea had even occurred to me, so I started to look into Substack a little more.

As we all know Substack refuses to have a gaming category, and so it took a while to get my footing here, which was fine, the newsletter needed some time to cook. I knew what I was trying to emulate, which is the Verge’s Installer Newsletter, but It took some time to get it right.

Version 2

In February 2023, just after I launched Reconnect, I lost my job. The company I had been contracting for had royally fucked up the project I was working on and decided to clean house.

I decided I needed a break. I hadn’t just lost my job. I was going through a divorce at the time, I was dealing with the house my ex-husband and I owned that was bleeding me dry, I had recently had three deaths in the family and after years of struggling with my mental health I finally got the correct diagnosis for what I was going through, but that meant trialling a plethora of different medications with very fun side effects.

So for about two months I ignored applying for jobs and I got working on Reconnect version two.

I knew I had a bunch of bugs to fix, I knew I wanted a more mobile friendly design, and I really wanted to remove those contact forms that the bots were spamming me with.

Luckily at the time, I had just started dating, my now partner, who was a designer who helped heaps with the new design and the logos I needed.

In about June of 2024 I relaunched the site and gave the newsletter a bit of makeover, I had also found a job.

Version 2 contained a bunch of new features

• Automatic posting of featured Articles to Bluesky, 1 post every hour.

• Removed the vote button, as clicking on the article would equate to a vote

• Added an age-out to the articles rank, allowing popular articles to slowly drop down in rank over time rather than living on the top of the popular page

• Added a page for every individual blogs RSS feed incase the user wanted to sub to a specific RSS feed, as well as there being a RSS feed for everything on Reconnect.

• An age counter that tells me how long it has been since a site has posted a blog allowing me to remove dead blogs.

• Keyword filter allowing me to automatically hide content I don’t believe in supporting. This is mainly for anything related to trans / queer hate speech.

• Improved the thumbnail code to get a more relevant image and failing getting an image defaults to a code generated image that uses a gradient background and the blogs title.

• Added a rude cow to my import scripts that screams MOOOO and stops the script if it gets stuck on a particular site for too long. Which happens from time to time and burns all my compute and can cost me extra money.

It was around this time I looked seriously into advertising. I went both broad and targeting. I used Facebook Ads to run campaigns that I don’t think were all that successful for the money I invested, but I also used targeted channels, like MinnMax allowing you to pay for a certain Patreon tier to advertise on their videos. I think in the future I’ll stick to targeted channels, meeting our niche community where they are likely to be is the best bet.

How I run the platform

Thankfully I have gotten the job of Running Reconnect down to the fine art.

Everyday I:

• Log onto the back end of Reconnect and run through all the newest articles and most I flag to be automatically posted to Bluesky.

• I’ll open and personally read any that take my fancy

• I’ll then jump onto Substack, give every article in my subscriptions feed a glance through, a like, a retweet (is that what we’re calling it?), and maybe a comment if I’ve got something to say.

• Then I’ll jump over to Bluesky, where I had a feed of everyone who is on reconnect who i’ve been able to find and interact with what people are posting there.

Can easily get it done in 30 mins maximum.

The newsletter which I try and write on a Sunday, but If I’m too hungover which is often the case will happen on Monday, is a bit more of an involved effort and I’ll be looking to implement systems in the future to make it easier for me to do.

But because every article I like the look of during the week gets posted to my Bluesky, I just open up my Bluesky page, go back a week and open every single link. Then I’ll quickly jump back to my Substack subscription feed to see if I’ve missed anyone (the Bluesky automation can fail sometimes) and also quickly scan through the newer articles on the site.

Then, with easily over a hundred articles open I set about picking what I want to put into the newsletter. I try and avoid anything too much like the news, I tend to veer away from the depressing stuff like “4000 people lost there job at X studio”, if the article is fully paywalled I’ll also skip that, though I’ll allow some partials through.

Then I start dividing up the newsletter into its two sections, Great Reads and Fun Tidbits.

I aim to get at least ten in each bucket, will do more If I’m feeling generous, pick the images for the blog, write my silly blurb at the beginning and schedule the post.

What makes it into each newsletter is honestly something I can’t explain. It’s a bit like a fever dream. Sometimes there will be a bit of a theme when a bunch of people write about the same thing, other times I’m looking for maximum diversity because I love, and I mean REALLY LOVE, that there are so many people writing about different things.

Please never feel upset that your awesome article didn’t make it into the newsletter, after reading through a hundred different articles my brain does turn to mush. It’s not a reflection on your work, it’s very random.

I’m also not gaming the system, I almost never look at analytics, I don’t care that some articles may have gotten more clicks, I’m never going to try and tailor the newsletter for the algo, I’m just here to highlight awesome work and if one newsletter is a dud, that doesn’t bother me.

In terms of finding new blogs, I take more of a relaxed approach now. Whilst before I was actively hunting, I now basically let the new blogs come to me. People reach out on social media or the amazing substack community here tags me in posts of new blogs which I really appreciate. Some people are shy, which I understand and just follow me, hoping I’ll see their new blog whilst others are a bit more brave and reach out directly. Either is fine, I don’t presume that everyone is falling over themselves to end up on Reconnect.

Then I normally wait until I have a handful of new blogs to add, go through the process of adding them to the site’s backend. Generate a new image for them, do an initial import of their content then normally do a Substack post announcing the new arrivals.

Closing thoughts and the future

It’s been a really fun ride, and I’m so immensely proud of what the community has accomplished.

It really feels like we are bringing games writing back, but like any normal person I do feel a large amount of imposter syndrome. I don’t really write about games any more, I don’t have the time, and running Reconnect can be as little as a ten minute task for me, so there are weeks when i’m not thinking too much about it.

Then I see the awesome comments, the way the community engages with new writers and how you all support each other’s work, and feel so proud and a bit guilty I’m not doing more.

To be a bit controversial here, the one thing that has saddened me on this journey is the lack of engagement from the big names. We are all in this together, and maybe the big popular writers have too much on their plate keeping their business afloat to spare a thought for the up-and-coming writers in the industry, but it still saddens me that they never look back and think about how they could help those in the early stages of their journey. I feel icky just writing that.

But exposure matters. When the Verge featured Reconnect traffic quadrupled, article clicks sky rocketed and I suspect so did subscriptions. More exposure can help the community, it’s just so hard to break through the noise.

So where to next? Well I said in June of last year I wanted to rebuild Reconnect, I still do, it’s suffering under the weight of its success. I want to redesign the website so it’s less a chronological feed, because articles that were written a year ago will probably still be worth a read and at the moment they are hidden deep inside Reconnect. I’ve got some other ideas I want to implement, some to improve how people use the site, others to help me run it more efficiently.

I’m also thinking about how do I incorporate a bit of advertising, so this is your warning that I’m considering it. I don’t believe that page ads are worth the return on investment so don’t worry I’m not spam the page with ugly ads. More think the way Reddit makes an ad look like a post. At first, the only advert will probably be for the newsletter, then if the right opportunities come along I could be advertising new indie games or other relevant industry content. It will probably only earn me enough money to pay for the hosting that I pay out of my own pocket every month, but like I said, this is your very advanced warning.

Beyond a Version 3, i’m open to what Reconnect could become in the future. I could in theory expand it to other game genres, ‘s yellow pages has blogs about board games and TTRPGs and whilst that isn’t my personal cup of tea, that doesn’t mean Reconnect can’t host those blogs. Though I would probably want someone else to write a Reconnect Recap for board games / ttrpgs.

Well I hope you enjoyed my brain dump, I guess after a few years I just wanted to share a bit of my world, what i’m doing, and how I’m doing it, I do like being transparent and its your hard work that makes Reconnect as awesome as it is.

After proclaiming that Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best game ever made, having played it four times, I finally got up the courage to play the original. Thankfully the PC version of Red Dead 1 isn’t too jarring to play and I’m quite enjoying it, though it is making me want to do another play through of the second game and is reminding me of how Rockstar games used to be made.

Other than that, I start a new job on Wednesday. After being in the country six weeks and having applied for forty-five roles, someone finally wanted to hire me so thats a big relief for me and my journey in my new home.

As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform boasting nearly 300 active blogs and forty thousand articles.

This week, we’re all over the show! Game analytics, cozy games, the 80’s, questionable funding, AI, sequels and much much more!

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Blood Money: With the return of the Neo Geo, TimeExtension explains the moral quandary of supporting the new console, given who is funding it.

• Sausage Roll: Thinky Games celebrates the ten year anniversary of a game that changed puzzle games forever.

• Post Merge Review: Fergus Halliday at Multiplier sits down with ex Kotaku editor Alex Walker to do a bit of a post-mortem on how the big Activision-Blizzard merger played out.

• Rage against the machine: discusses the common feeling of getting angry at a video game and how we find self-regulation.

• Shaken not stirred: dives into the last Pierce Brosnan appearance as James Bond in the video game Everything or Nothing, and provides their verdict of how good the game is.

• Child Labour: sits down with game director, Chandana Ekanayake, of Dosa Divas and talks about how his relationship with his son changed as he came onboard the development process as a QA.

• Pico-demake: walks us through their experience using the Pico-8 to make their own Mario demake.

• In the 80’s: takes us back to the 80’s to highlight the most impactful moments in video games from that decade.

• Following up: has some thoughts about which games truly deserve a sequel, and I agree with all of them, especially Sunset Overdrive.

• Touching virtual grass: explores how studies have shown that playing some games can give you the same stress release as being in nature.

• Reading the signals: looks at the tea leaves and explains some hard truths of the industry.

• A different pace of game: explains why cozy gaming works for them.

• April Numbers: has the latest numbers, including, how many copies Hazelight has sold of their very popular co-op games.

• Multilingual: has an interesting point of view, being a speaker of both Dutch and English, and what media, especially video games, has left their impact, linguistically.

Fun Tidbits

• “Prepare For The PS2 Fanboy Meltdown” - Here’s Resident Evil 4 Running On Dreamcast

• Australian Government Orders Steam, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox to Outline Child Grooming and Extremism Prevention Measures

• SNK’s Street Fighter Rival, Fatal Fury, Is Getting Its Own ‘Ultimate’ History Book

• Build A Rocket Boy Staff Are Taking Legal Action Against The Studio Over Data Privacy

• “I Don’t Know Who Failed Due Diligence Here” - Sigma Star Saga DX Updated After Violating GBA Emulator’s License

• Capcom's 2026 Steam Revenue is Already Above $300 Million, Analyst Claims

• ‘Space Moves’ Revives A Classic Run-And-Gun Series Which Dates All The Way Back To 1986

• Blue Prince Developer Says He Will "Always Claim There Are Still Mysteries in the Game"

• “No Emulation, No Compromise, No Comparison” - Everything You Need To Know About The $250 Neo Geo+ AES

• Stop Killing Games Receives Support From Politicians in European Parliament Hearing

• Playdate Has Had Enough Of All This Generative AI Nonsense

• Starfield Sells Estimated 140,000 Copies on PS5 in First Week, Analyst Claims

• Godot 4.7 Gets HDR Support

• You Can Now Check Out The Advance Wars-Inspired ‘Tiny Metal 2’ For Free

• AI Is Not “Of A High Enough Quality” For Use In Video Games Right Now, Says Peter Molyneux

Hope you’ve had as fun of a week as I had! Getting more settled into my new home, finally got some furniture and got to go see Project Hail Mary which was of course Amaze Amaze Amaze!

Welcome back for another issue of the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. I added a handful new sites to the platform this week, so there’s now, more than ever, plenty of variety for whatever you are in the mood for.

This week we’re travelling the world a bit, talking about Indies, more gaming handhelds, and much much more!

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Flooding the charts: The latest in industry figures from shows that the Triple-I initiative paid off in terms of wishlists, and they break down how latest hit Hozy did so well.

• Face off: has teamed up with to face off on some bad games, this weeks edition has them both pick and game and try to convince the audience which game was worst.

• Portugal: has started a series focussing on what’s happening in the Portuguese Game Development space, and I really love hearing about how games are growing in the non-expected places like Canada, and America.

• Home Sweet Home: delves into what makes RPG towns so memorable and special in games, and why some fall short.

• God of Thunder: is living my dream and got their hands on an AYN Thor and gives their personal thoughts on the device, and by proxy, is sending my FOMO into the atmosphere.

• Chuck another game on the barbie: As someone who grew up in New Zealand, Australia’s shadow, I often wondered why NZ was out pacing Aus in terms of game dev. I mean I remember a time when there was a Rockstar studio in Sydney, so what happened? Thankfully has the answer.

• Under Pressure: interviews a Cuban Indie developer to get the low-down on their upcoming Horror game, but to also understand what development has been like in a country that faces many issues, a major one being power cuts.

• Finding the right words: Dialogue is no joke, it’s not easy to write lines for video games and have it feel correct. explains the thinking that goes into selecting the right words, to avoid the feeling that makes you think somethings off.

• A little to close to home: plays Fishbowl a cozy game she thought she could relax into, but alas the game tackles some great, but very real topics that hit a bit harder than expected.

• Defining Luigi: Thrilling Tales of Old Video games, who always has the best deep dives on how things came to be, breaks open how Luigi got to look the way he does today, because originally he was just a cooler swapped Mario.

• Nature is healing: Amongst the rising GPU prices, and the industry giants crumbling under their own hubris, writes about how the Triple-I initiative is a sign that Indie games are leading the way, even if he does get a bit too caught up on what Triple-I means…..

Fun Tidbits

• 2026 Continues To Be An Awful Year For Retro Handheld Fans, As AYANEO Hints At More Price Hikes

• Giving Graveyard Keeper Away for Free Generated $250,000, Says Publisher

• Anbernic’s ‘RG Rotate’ Reminds Us Of The Gloriously Crazy Phone Design Boom Of The 2000s

• Strongly recommend returning to Timberborn

• Hopes Of Neo Geo Hardware Revival Triggered By ESRB Rating

• 17 Gardening Games on Switch that are Giving Spring Energy

• Obscure Mega Man Game Given The Game Boy Remake “Nobody Asked For”

• “No Point In Keeping It Under Wraps Any Longer” -This New Emulator “Ports” Game Boy Titles To The GBA

• This Popular PSP SNES Emulator Is Getting Revived After Eight Years Away

• “Ultimately, It Was The Customer Who Spoke Up” - How The Spectrum White Edition Celebrates Sinclair Lore

• “The Folks In Japan Perceived US Devs As Being Fat Or Spoiled” - How Final Fight Revenge Bloodied An Entire Studio

I’m back, sorry for missing last week, but I’m back! (Barely I was taken out with food poisoning for the past few days).

Other than doing a bunch of moving chores I’ve been keeping an eye on Crimson Desert, a game I won’t play but respect, being chilling out to some Dome Keeper, to which I’ve hit that annoying point where the base game doesn’t challenge me but I can’t complete any of the harder quests, and watching the Artemis mission.

As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to the website Reconnect, an aggregator of hundreds of different games writers work.

This week were looking into Game Dev tips, hot moments in games, the Triple-I initiative, Burger King, and much much more.

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Home of the Whopper: Ephemeral Enigmas takes a look into a long forgotten Burger King video game.

• The I’s have it: For those of us who have had a busy week this week, its very much appreciated that Seasoned Gaming has given us a recap of everything that came out in the III Initiative this week.

• Political Change: Guest writer at TWIV, Maddie Agne, explains that the biggest appeal of a cozy game is the political setting that it is nestled among.

• Garlic Fun: Josh Bycer, who we normally know from Game Wisdom, pens a guest article over on SuperJump Magazine, about one of my favourite all time video games; Vampire Survivors. Josh looks into the success of the game and development choices that led to it.

• Penny Pinch: Sidequesting is here to remind us that no matter how expensive all game electronics are right now, they ain’t going to go down in price in the future. As someone who really wants an Ayn Thor and has no money to buy one this makes me sad.

• Pico Development: provides a useful guide on how to develop an easy game on a custom linux operating system before jumping to something bigger like an engine.

• Learning from the real world: continues their discussion on what its like to teach video game development in the real world and answeres one of the most commonly answered questions.

• Hunting for the number: reminds us the true purpose of a review and how to wield it most appropriately, don’t just look at the number.

• Travelling Eight: explains the process on how Octopath Traveller was converted into a TTRPG rule set.

• It’s not about the wins and losses: muses on the sorts of games where the fun is derived from what you achieved and experienced along the way rather than whether you won or not.

• Vroom Vroom: has the latest in game analytics and new car game is surging to the top of the wishlist charts.

• Brain Burn: reached out to his community to collate a piece about gaming moments that people can’t shake from their memory.

Fun Tidbits

• DSpico, The World’s First Open-Source Nintendo DS Flash Cart, Is Now Being Sold Commercially

• Split Fiction Developer Sells 50 Million Copies Across Three Titles

• Looking for a unique challenge? Check out this cryptic image-puzzle game inspired by LOK and 0PLAYER where the puzzles are only 5 pixels wide

• “I Will Always Cherish That Chapter Of My Life” - A Million Subs Later, One Of Retro Gaming’s Most Famous YouTubers Calls It Quits

• GUNNAR Fixes Itself A Cyberpunk 2077 Collab

• Various Super Mario games bounce around the UK retail chart thanks to movie hype

• Relax in Orbit with Piano & Sleep: Mario Galaxy

• Linux smashes past 5% on the Steam Survey for the first time

• Script Editing Tool Aids Magic School Lunar Fan Translation

• Cancelled Game from 2008, Fairy Tale

What a crazy week, huh? This industry sure does know how to set fire to itself for both entertainment and misery.

Well, it’s not my job to dwell on the bad stuff, in fact my role is the opposite, time to lighten up your day with some interesting gaming content.

As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. A website with over 40,000 articles written by videos game enthusiasts.

This week, we’re covering game consoles that whisper at you, sailing the seas In your browser, Nintendo games, and much much more.

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Make it Ten: Big Nerd Gaming muses, what if the Game Awards had the same amount of Nominee’s as the Oscars and what that might have looked like for years prior.

• Bangers and Mash: Whilst the UK isn’t probably who you immediately think of when imagining games being made, they have had a long history of making some of the biggest games in the industry, has their top ten best games to come out of the UK and I’m very happy to see Elite on the list.

• Whispering sweet nothings: The PS1 boot up sounds is iconic, but explains that the sound was going to be something a lot more creepy….

• Try before you buy: Games aren’t getting cheaper, and so we all would love to have the ability to try a demo before sacrificing our first born child to play a game, makes the argument for why all Switch 2 games, specifically, should have demos.

• PFlower?: Thrilling Tales of Old Video games, investigates why early Mario Flower spell had a P in it and what other old iconography causes the head to scratch on further inspection.

• Tri-Forced-Opinion: muses over a history of Zelda games and how the commentary has changed over the years.

• Scaring the millions: The latest piece by details how well Resident Evil and Silent Hill have been doing.

• Game Training: explains why some skills can be taught through video games, and why some shouldn’t.

• D-LSS-Rama: One of the big dramas of the week has been the new DLSS-5, and has a really insightful piece that cuts past the obvious outcry to examine what this issue is at its core.

• Everything could be cheaper: beleive’s Nintendo could be selling games for less and still be making money, tbf thats the case of more capitalist companies, but they have a good point with ole Nintendo.

• Child Prodigy: SuperJump Magazine, interviews 16-year old game developer about his up-and-coming game, Astrolander.

Fun Tidbits

• Japan-Only Sequel To “Crap In A Box” Action RPG ‘Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest’ Is Now Playable In English

• HYTE’s Collaboration Involving Honkai: Star Rail’s Firefly Is Now Live

• Classic Cute ‘Em Up Series ‘Cotton’ To Celebrate Its 35th Anniversary With New Japan-Themed Entry

• Basketball Classics Brings Backboard-Breaking Retro Hoops To All Modern Consoles Today

• The ZX Spectrum Classic ‘Jetpac’ Has Been (Unofficially) Remade

• Lies Of P Franchise Celebrates 4 Million Copies Sold

• You Can Now Sail Zelda: Wind Waker’s Oceans In Your Web Browser

• Alan Hazelden’s Thinky Third Thursday — March 2026

• “I’m Officially Debunking The Myth” - Homebrew Dev Thinks A “Faithful” SNES King Of Fighters Is Possible

Well it’s official, I live in Melbourne, Australia now! It’s been a busy and stressful few months, and I have a few more ahead of me with finding a job and an apartment etc etc, but I’m already loving my time here, and have met some truly amazing people.

If you are new here, this is the Reconnect Recap, a newsletter dedicated to recapping some of the best articles to feature on my website, Reconnect, over the past week!

Reconnect is a video games writing discovery platform boasting nearly 300 blogs and nearly 40,000 articles, so if you’re ever in the mood for some light reading head on over and check it out.

This weeks issue has us celebrating the return of video game magazines, thoughts from IGF, the history of crash bandicoot, relaxing on the road and much much more, so enjoy!

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Subtle Pause: explains that an Ico game isn’t minimal to save on processing power, but as a deliberate exercise in design.

• Brewing the Bandicoot: TimeExtension has the deep dive history on the artists who brought Crash Bandicoot to life and what lessons they learned the hard way.

• Is Print back, down-under?: talks about CONTINUE, an Australian video game magazine that’s absolutely smashed it’s funding goal, is print back?

• IGF Retrospective: AuraRambles was judging the Independent Games Festival this year and has some thoughts that might help you out of you are looking to submit for next time.

• Casino-Core: We hate loot-box gambling, but we love Balatro gambling, what gives? Game-Wisdom explains the indie scene made gambling the new trend.

• Reminds me of the PS3: This week played a new JRPG that reminded them a lot of how those style of games used to be back in the PS3, X360 era.

• Huntin’ Nazis: The Indie Informer got a look at an upcoming game all about killing Nazi’s, this isn’t your classic Wolfenstein it’s got more heart.

• Making the most of the Music: What happens when a band that broke up years ago, does a one time concert in Fortnite? What’s the point? What’s the impact? takes a look at Daft Punk’s post retirement tie in.

• Loving the run: Seasoned Gaming is having a surprising time with Bungie’s Marathon, and like many people are hoping for a bright future.

• Country Road, take me home: As someone who used to unwind flying spaceships for hours on end in Elite Dangerous, I can relate to ’s relaxing experience in Trucking Simulator.

• What is perfect?: Chasing perfection can be a fruitless endeavour, but it’s a concept in gaming that is often explicitly outlined for you. walks through some of the common tactics games use to get you to ‘perfect’.

Fun Tidbits

• “This Time, You Are Dracula” - ReVamp Is “Castlevania In Reverse”

• NVIDIA Release RTX Powered Godot Fork

• “The Sega Saturn Was Truly Ahead Of Its Time” - Here’s Why Modern Games Use ‘Dithering’ Instead Of Transparency

• 35th Anniversary Sonic Dreamcast Shells

• “That’s My Fault” - If This Elder Scrolls’ Dungeon Made You Want To “Tear Your Eyes Out”, Here’s Who To Blame

• Want to Feel Old? GameStop Says PS3 and Wii U are ‘Historic Artifacts’

• “We Know People Love It. We Know They Want It” - The Simpsons Showrunner Doesn’t Rule Out ‘Hit & Run’ Remake

• ASUS ROG Flow Z13 — KJP Review — For Ludens Who Don’t Care What They Spend

• Bleem Creator Says Sega Was “Thrilled” At PlayStation Games On Dreamcast, But Didn’t Want “A Big Legal Battle With Sony”

• “I Could Not Give Less Of A S**t If Anyone Else Plays Them” - Developers Behind ‘Pointless’ Homebrew Ports Defend Their Work

It’s been a week of console news, Sony is probably not going to release on PC anymore, and Microsoft is going to become a PC, more so than ever. Nintendo, on the other hand just caused a bunch of people to FOMO buy their console whilst simultaneously suing the government over tariffs.

Me, i’m still on my little road trip visiting family before I make the move to Australia. Which is a reminder that there won’t be a Reconnect Recap next week, i’ll be nursing a hangover from Linkin Park in Sydney and landing in Melbourne trying to get my new life set up. I’ll be back the following week with a vengeance however, so don’t fret.

As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, your weekly newsletter that gives you the lowdown on some of the best articles to come out in the week that’s been. As a reminder, Reconnect is a website, stand-alone from Substack. It operates like a mini Reddit, aggregating nearly 300 blogs work for you to load up and look at anytime you like.

This week we’re diving into Police Raids, DMCA take downs, AI, James Bond and much much more.

Let’s dig in.

• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

• 🧠 Read my occasional thoughts on the industry, here.

• 🦋 Follow Reconnect on Bluesky

• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

Great Write Ups

• Sonic Raids: Remember when Sega utilised the police to raid a shipment of SEGA dev kits going somewhere they didn’t want? GamersNexus did a documentary on it, and it’s pretty cool!

• The Cookie Troll: For some odd reason, a copyright troll was wreaking havoc on any content about an extremely obscure game nearly none of us have heard of, abusing the UK’s DMCA automated systems. The Video Game Foundation actually stopped this person in their tracks.

• Dopamine Farming: Game-Wisdom explains how nearly all games are built to target our dopamine receptors.

• Ubi-oops: At this point we’re all looking at Ubisoft and going “HOW???”, a notoriously poorly run company with a release strategy that hasn’t made sense for a decade, explains how we got here.

• More Cat Fucking: Sorry, I can’t help myself whenever Mewgenics comes up to not say “Cat-Fucking” but has more restraint than me and gives their early impressions on the game.

• I walk a lonely road: goes DEEEP into the Breath of the Wild well, giving us an insight into what the game means to play and experience. It’s a great read for those who loved the game.

• Ninten-don’t-care: takes us back to when Sega was actually a player in the console market and their advertising campaign that targeted Nintendo directly.

• Silent Running: I didn’t realise that was a fellow SuperJump alumni, but I love their recent piece on a retro submarine game because my dad was obsessed with these games. He was ex-navy and got me into video games, our first proper gaming rig was so that he could play the latest Subhunter game with proper graphics.

• Making Money: has the latest figures on what games are making the most moolah in the early months of this year.

• Empty Words: If an AI said some words in a forest and no one hears them, does the water still get used? Silly analogy but drives home the idiocracy that is AI writing game reviews, and my motto with AI has always been “If you are not going to put the effort into making it, i’m not going to put any effort into consuming it”.

• Shaken not stirred: We’re getting a new Bond game soon, but the franchise has a rich history of titles, just none in the past decade, so looks at one of the games they feel is the best Bond game.

• Graduation Anticipation: answers the question, should you get a degree in video games?

• Blank Space: enjoys an old-school RPG, and the reason is not what you think.

Fun Tidbits

• “We Need As Many Hands As Possible” - There’s A New Volunteer-Driven Effort To “Preserve Myrient’s Legacy”

• The delicious conundrums in Where’s My Egg? will make a believer out of even the most cynical Sokoban sceptic

• Japanese PlayStation Exclusive ‘70’s Robot Anime Geppy-X’ Is Coming To Modern Systems

• The developer of Strange Jigsaws and 20 Small Mazes has announced a new game, and you’ll never guess the title

• Hyper Sentinel Fusion Ships On A “Floppy Disk” And Is Now Live On Kickstarter

• Show Report — Bristol Video Games Expo 2026

• “Lara Is Coming Back Home” - Tomb Raider II Is Coming To Sega Saturn, 30 Years After Sony Blocked It

• Why I Finally Understand Why Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Are $19.99

• “Why Bother If You’re Not Going To Do It Properly?” - Why SEGAGAGA’s AI Translation Is Upsetting So Many People

• PicoIDE – A New Open Source IDE/ATAPI Drive Emulator For Vintage Computers

• This Dreamcast VMU Supports Wireless Game Boy Multiplayer, Because Why Not

• Duke Nukem: Zero Hour’s Work-In-Progress PC Port Just Got A Promising First Person Mod

• Shigeru Miyamoto Predicted Animal Crossing’s Appeal Over A Decade Before It Launched