Reconnect Recap - w/e 11th May
A weekly newsletter highlighting some of the best articles to feature on Reconnect in the past week.
Kia Ora folks
I write this weeks newsletter with a much more positive tone having just found out that Giant Bomb is going independent, its always good news to hear new people, established or not joining us on this independent media journey.
It’s been a busy week for me, i’ve been frantically planning a last minute trip to Tokyo with my partner. We took advantage of some free time and a sale to bite the bullet and in less than four weeks we’ll be exploring all that Tokyo has to offer. Any recommendations please yell out!
Regular readers might notice a different format today. I’m trying to balance the different kinds of content on Reconnect and to prevent this newsletter from hitting its maximum character limit and people getting bored.
As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. This week we’re diving into some old classics, discussing fitness, music, voice actors unions and so much more!
Let’s dig in.
Great Write Ups
The answer to better music in games is curation, not AI or algorithms: New partnerships in the gaming a music world have
giving us their thoughts on these musical endeavours and whether it solves the problem.Fitness and games: Phil Bothun over at 70% Complete, gives us their experience with fitness based games and asks, where are all the good fitness games?
What do wet pants have to do with a new console generation? As we near the next round of super powerful consoles from the likes of Sony and Microsoft,
ponders what will the new ‘ah ha’ moment be?Does RNG ruin a good game? If you’ve played the popular Blue Prince game, you will know that it has a fair amount of random to it, and
has thoughts on this as a design principle.When screen time means relax time for Mum: Another
guest post by a mum who has been on a journey to realise that screentime isn’t bad for the kids, its actually good for mum.Polygon wasn’t built in a day, but it was killed in one: A week after the untimely news of Polygon,
takes us down memory lane of how Polygon came to be.Sex, Drugs, and a whole lot of violence is calming to some: In an ongoing series by
we are faced with the question, is Cyberpunk a cozy game?How indie games work with VO Unions: A really insightful piece from Laura Michet, who works with their team on Skin Deep. Laura explains what it took to work with voice actors on an indie title.
Getting better story out of deck building games: In an interview with the co-founder of Summerfall Studios,
discusses how deckbuilders can have players experiencing more of a narrative impact.
Fun Tidbits
A retro store, that has its very own retro game, via TimeExtension.
Lovers of Elite Dangerous (me) will love this 1992 unreleased Elite game for the NES, via Games That Weren't.
Want to buy a GBA coffee table book to show off to your friends? via Overkill.
Someone made a concept of what a new Wii U mini should looked like, it’s very sleek, via RetroDodo.
The hardship of getting FSR4 running on linux, via Maister’s Graphics Adventures.
Fans of Star Wars (me, again), will love these images of books and prints from the early 200’s Star Wars MMO, via
Housekeeping
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That Polygon feature is so good.
Oh, and when you're in Tokyo, the store Super Potato in Akihabra is an absolute must for retro games fans.
Thanks as always Alex - you're going great work in keeping the gaming community here alive! Have fun in Japan, try not to go bankrupt buying old games haha.