Reconnect Recap - w/e 1st March

Reviewing the week that's been over on Reconnect

Kia Ora folks!

I’m writing this ‘on-the-road’ per se, I’ve packed up my entire life into two suitcases and travelling for the next few weeks before settling into my new country. For the first time in my adult life, I’m homeless and jobless.

Suffice to say i’ve not had too much time for games. My partner and I have managed to squeeze in some Baldurs Gate time, we completed Act 1, and I’ve been playing some Pokemon Rom Hacks on my iPhone. Though I accidentally lost a bunch of progress and that’s always a bit disheartening.

If you’re new here, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. It refreshes several times a day and has words written by nearly 300 different blogs. Feel free to drop by any time you’re in the mood for some great games journalism.

This week, we’re talking about character design, January’s numbers, mobile games, music and much much more.

Let’s dig in.

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• ⌛️ Check out the archive to see older issues.

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

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• 🔗 Hit up my Linktree to see my other work

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Great Write Ups

• PC-FLOP: The PC-FX was a Japan only console, which naturally makes us in the west curious, however, the PC-FX wasn’t as successful as its predecessor and flopped pretty badly, TimeExtension gives us the run down.

• Insider Trading: Aftermath plays a new game all about gaming the stock market and still can’t make heads of tales of how the market works.

• Advertising works: The GameDiscoverCo newsletter explains how indie darling Gun Nose improved their fundraising with a well executed advert.

• Pass the numbers: The Alinea Insight newsletter has the numbers for Game Pass from January and I’m very happy to see a game I liked that everyone was shitting on get nearly 600k new players.

• A long nose: What does Pinocchio and Baby Steps have in common? Bullet Points Monthly explains.

• Going back to a galaxy far far away: As part of their MMO a month series, The Game Enjoyer dives into SWOTOR, which I just remember how amazing the cinematic trailers were for those games and how disappointing the actual game’s visuals were.

• All the answers: Every month I get an urge to write a tell-all article kinda covering off the common questions I see uttered every where about where the industry is going. SuperJoost has done what i’ve been too lazy to do and has published an epic document really looking at some of the ways we know where the industry is going.

• The small screen: Given i’m travelling, i’m a bit more interested in mobile gaming. Whilst I do have a ROG Ally X Its not always what I can fit in or are in the mood for, so I was very much in the mood to read Hello Loops mobile game recommendations.

• What ya playing?: Dmitriy Byshonkov of Game Dev Reports has the January numbers and how well it’s doing in comparison to last year, is this year doing better than last?

• Peak behind the curtains: Practice Flip shares how they are designing the characters in their current game, and a peak inside the technical side of the process.

• Studying Games: Evan C. Moore is a game studies scholar and is answering some questions about what its like to teach gaming in academia.

• Blue Point, what does it mean: ObsoleteSony breaks down what the closure of BluePoint means amongst Sony’s efforts of preservation.

• The difference a sound makes: Game Sense reminds us how important and impactful music is in games. How impactful the well thought out those specific choices were.

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Fun Tidbits

• This Long-Awaited Mega Man-Inspired Metroidvania Is Getting Its Own Free Tie-In For Game Boy

• Inspired by the classic DOOM RPG, the Dungeons of DUSK demo is out now

• Mortal Kombat Made An Unexpected Appearance At This Year’s Winter Olympics

• Widelands, the open source Settlers-like, devs plan to ban all AI generated contributions

• The Turrican Collection (Evercade) - A Proper Anthology

• Death Stranding 2 PC specs have been revealed, along with a “Portable” preset for handhelds

• “This Is What AI And Greed Does” - Video Game ‘Preservation Service’ Myrient Is Shutting Down

• Vampire Crawlers from the Vampire Survivor dev is promising but not quite there yet

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

• Lost Atari 8-bit Harlequin Software artwork recovered!

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

• Atari 8-bit version of Trap recovered

• Wanderburg is a delightful twist on Vampire Survivors

• Reanimal climbs the UK chart while Mario Tennis Fever loses its grip

• Paint your way across a pretty pastel landscape in platforming puzzle game Colorbound

• Segagaga has Finally Been Translated into English — Here’s How to Play It (and How it was Achieved!)

• snakes.run: multiplayer snake over ssh