Reconnect Recap - w/e 20th July

A weekly newsletter highlighting some of the best articles to feature on Reconnect in the past week.

Kia Ora folks

Welcome to another week of the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter to the games writing aggregation platform, Reconnect.

I wrongfully thought this was a quiet week but then I got cracking into the newsletter and their’s so much to cover. We’ve got plenty of retro and emulation news, stories about Balatro, Rocket League, and Dragon’s Crown, and a whole serving of industry insights.

Let’s dig in.

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Great Write Ups

• A decade of car football: Rewinder reminds us that we’ve had ten years of Rocket League and recaps their experience and the long running game.

• Just follow the money: No Escape details Valves recent move to ban pornographic games dues to the demands of their payment processor.

• The farce of the second hand market: Im not a retro collector so I had no idea how bad the hobby could be, Scanlines outlines their less than positive experience with dealing with the second hand market in the UK.

• Jokers Wild: You would think that after the games success their wouldn’t be any more to say on Balatro, well I was wrong, in this awesome piece by Push to Talk they outline how stressful the game was for the dev and how the publisher found the game in the first place.

• More Data!: The latest piece of gaming analytics covering the last two weeks by GameDev Reports has sales figure on the Alters, Peak, Rust, and Lords of the fallen plus a big deep dive into mobile gaming figures.

• I can go the distance: I loved the Hercules movie when it came out, I even watched it quite recently because my partner hadn’t seen it, I also loved playing the game, so I very much enjoyed going down memory lane with ROP as they outlined playing the game with their kid.

• A road trip with Dragon’s Crown: Despite not being a Sony person, my love of handhelds extends to the Vita, I loved the two I owned and I still love hearing others experience with them. So I really enjoyed this piece by The Saved Game about their road trip playing Dragon’s Crown on the Vita, I think you might too.

• Celebrity appeal: 1UP Vault talks to us about celebs in video games, that totally has nothing to do with playing Death Stranding 2, whilst its nothing new it’s definitely a trend that is growing.

• Being a hyper-indie in 2025: In their latest interview, Multiplier talks to Tommy McKay creative director behind recently released GNOMES about the industry and how indie games are finding their place in this hyper fragmented market.

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Fun Tidbits

• If you like playing the retro classic, Star Fox, but wish it had a bit more oomf to it, someone has made a rom hack to add rumble to both emulated versions and the original SNES.

• The dual screen of the NDS opened many doors for game, but definitely has hampered emulation efforts, this new retro handheld has stepped in to help the cause.

• If you were a fan of Sensible Soccer, Games that Weren’t has some prototype builds of the game for game boy for you to check out.

• The BBC did a video report on retro games, except they made a fatal flaw that all the fans noticed…..

• An enthusiastic developer has made a video game that is a tribute to Blink 182 named, “What’s my age again”, it’s available to play right now.

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Writer Recap

This week, we’re shouting out ObsoleteSony. Whilst not purely a gaming endeavour, I absolutely adore this newsletter as it wanders through Sony’s long history giving us insights into the PSP, the Vita, and the many playstation. We get behind the scenes on development, marketing and a weird amount of input from Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Check them out!

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Housekeeping

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