Reconnect Recap, w/e 20th April - They'll de-make anything these days.

Connecting you to incredible games writing.

Apr 21, 2025

Kia Ora folks.

Well for those of us in New Zealand we have a rare combination of the easter long weekend, Friday to Monday off work, and then this coming Friday is also a public Holiday, ANZAC day. Which means smart people like me have traded in 3 annual leave days to gain 10 days away from corporate servitude.

I’ve spent the start of my reprieve with family, eating way too many Easter chocolates, and intricately taking apart my entire Steam Deck and replacing the shell, upgrading the buttons, replacing the thermal paste, and putting a 1Tb SSD inside. The fruits of my handiwork are pictured below.

As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, the sister newsletter to Reconnect. A website dedicated to sharing the works of hundreds of games writers around the world.

If you’re on Bluesky, I’ve made a starter pack so that you can follow all the Reconnect writers in one spot. Not 100% complete yet but I’ll keep adding to it.

The Recap

RetroDodo brings us another one of those cool de-makes. You know where a visually demanding game gets rendered down into simpler graphics. So I imagine you’ll be as suprised as I was to learn it’s a Minecraft de-make. It does look cool though.
Between Music & Gaming has their own take on where Nintendo is trying to go with their upcoming console, and its not all about the music….
TimeExtension has more than one gem for us this week, which is actually pretty normal for them. The 21 one year old GBA is getting a new game, a handful of rare official Nintendo artworks are going under the hammer, and a throwback to when Nintendo warned Americans from importing the Super Famicon into the country.
The Video Game Storyteller
pens a small love letter to the writing of God of War, and the four words that gave them pause.
Superjump Magazine breaks down how harmful algorithms are using Spiderman’s Venom as an apt analolgy.
I really like how
Video Games Industry Memo
writes their newsletters, definitely going to steal some things, but their latest piece, gives a great outline to what’s going on in EU around in-game monetisation and why it’s not as clear cut as we would like.
The Digital Antiquarian has an amazing two part series on the downfall of Sierra. It’s a thrilling read and doesn’t mention Leisure Suit Larry as much as I had hoped.
Scanlines
dissects the current state of sports-ball video games, how their predatory monetisation is under-regulated and that a lot of wasted potential is sitting unused.
Goto 10: Retro Computing & Gaming
explains why the Atari 1200Xl failed to be a successful product.

Something Extra

I’m thoroughly enjoying this new podcast by the MinnMax team called Pew Pew Bang where four women from around the game industry talk games, stories, and life advice.

They’ve been brining some great stories to the pod, and on the most recent episode they talked about interesting merch and then I heard all about the “I survived the 1990 Dragon Warrior Mailing” T-shirt. Essentially Dragon Warrior sold so poorly in the US Nintendo promised to give it away for free, the sheer volume of people wanting a free game destroyed the workers responsible for getting the free games mailed out to the avid gamers. Human war crimes aside, this strategy worked for Nintendo.

Writer Recap

Push to Talk

is a publication focused on the industry. From articles about marketing, to inside stories on game releases, and general all around commentary. Their recent piece on how the industry is fragmenting was one of my favourite articles from the past week.

Go check them out