Oof, late one today because I fully and completely forgot it was the end of the month. Still, October next month! Means I’ll be dedicating the entire month to spooky games! Something to look forward to.
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This Month’s Soundtrack
exp. Magazine: we work for you. At the end of August my buddy Justin Decloux did one of his legendary 24 hour movie mind melters, and late in the evening he played Anders Häger Jönson’s Places That Were Anime To Me, a beautiful video essay of critical nostalgia about the early days of anime fandom in Sweden. You can read all about it here, and you’ll see in the review I complained that the soundtrack wasn’t available on Bandcamp, and… now it is! So give this track a listen, be bewitched, and then pick it up. And pick up the movie too—it’s only $3 on Gumroad.
This Month On exp.
Subscriber Post:
Mouse: P.I. For Hire (Fumi Games, 2026)
Here’s me beating up on a new release (again) but at least I got to link Bryant Francis’ excellent Narrative Notebook where he analysed the game’s narrative.
Unlocked Posts:
Wanted! Monty Mole (Harrap, 1984)
Denshattack! (Undercoders, 2026)
Door Door (Chunsoft, 1985)
I think my two retro pieces are really good this month, digging into two separate pieces of under-discussed history. Surprisingly, there’s quite a lot of Chunsoft in the site’s future, funny how things work out.
From The exp. Archive:
LocoRoco (Japan Studio, 2006)
Ristar (Sega, 1995)
Super Hang-On (Sega, 1987)
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft, 2012)
Man, you can absolutely see how I had no system in place to choose what I played next back in the day. [Looks at last few months of exp.] Er… there’s a system! I promise.
exp. Du Cinéma
Toxic (2026)
It’s probably a bit out there to make a point of front page reviews of movies which are obscure outside of India, but the heart wants what it wants. Not that it wants this awful, awful movie.
This was a pretty big(-ish) month for movies for me, as I packed in a bunch of films that I didn’t get around to such as Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Coyote vs. Acme where I wrote stuff that could have worked as full articles on the site but I… forgot to do that, and then a smattering of the Toronto International Film Festival, which I finally got to go to again after three years of being sick every September. So you can check out reviews of Half (a far better slice of ultraviolent Indian action) Arrested Memory and Rogue Trooper, all selections from the Midnight Madness programme, aka the one bit of TIFF that still feels relevant.
Also reviewed: A Face In The Crowd / To Beep Or Not To Beep / Everyone Is Lying To You For Money / Resident Evil
Zine News
Pixels and Polygons Quarterly 2026 Q4
“This issue’s theme is “The Shadow Knows…” The games covered inside this new issue are: Shadow of Destiny, Okage: Shadow King, and Star Wars Shadows of the Empire!”
Oh man! I feel like I meant to make a bigger deal of this. There’s an exclusive essay here by yours truly, a piece on the somewhat obscure early PS2 adventure game Shadow of Destiny (aka Shadow of Memories.) It’s available digitally now, and on Gumroad too! Pick it up when grabbing Places That Were Anime To Me!
We Love Mystery Dungeon
“This unofficial and completely unauthorized look at the Mystery Dungeon games is penned by John Harris, whose groundbreaking Game Developer column @Play helped spread the word of the roguelike genre’s greatness (and of Mystery Dungeon’s excellence) in the days before the genre had become a part of the medium’s mainstream.”
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And Finally…
Days since Xevious mentioned: 0.
Next week on exp.: It’s true, we do love Mystery Dungeon. But…
