Been thinking about this one a lot since I saw it, rolling it around and considering if it’s worth giving my take on it, but I keep coming back to my frustrations with it in the face of what feels like a weirdly universal uncritical praise, so I guess I can’t keep my mouth shut.
The thing I keep thinking about, really, is how incredible the middle of this film is. The entire segment where we see real community action at work, as Benecio Del Toro’s Sergio St. Carlos leads us through their worst case scenario–an aggressive immigration raid–with efficiency, thought and care right down to his interactions with individuals. It is beautiful, moving, a masterful piece of film-making, and I think almost certainly going to be one of the very best things I saw this year.
It’s what makes it so frustrating to me that the rest of the film’s treatment of activism and fascism is so… hacky, and that it’s been given such a pass. Paul Thomas Anderson is a filmmaker who doesn’t mistake setting for story, but here I do think he does our current moment a disservice, whether or not the reflection is mere happenstance.
I feel like Anderson views (for example) the opening sequences of revolutionaries as “inspired by” or within the spectrum of the blaxploitation era, but I find something so… unpleasant about a well-off, successful white man writing black revolutionaries as largely ineffectual thrill-seekers who get off on their notoriety, considering the actual era contained movies of revolutionary power such as The Spook Who Sat By The Door (a movie Anderson must be familiar with.) I’m not offended by the image of him giggling behind his MacBook as he writes out a character called “Junglepussy” but isn’t it just sort of… embarrassing to sit there watching the result, however well made?
Potentially not as embarrassing for all involved as his later treatment of the “revolution”. Look, I know we all hate two-factor authentication but the password stuff has to be some of the direst “student revolutionaries should get a job” hack comedy possible. Absolute fucking baby food for the smug middle-class cunts that are the general audience for a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. And the “Christmas Adventurers Club” stuff isn’t much better. We were all happy to see Kevin Tighe, but abdicating the responsibility for fascism to small groups of white men in hidden backrooms when we know it happens via large groups of white men in front of our fucking eyes sucks. As many people have pointed out, the most chilling character in the movie is the military guy who dispassionately, chillingly dismantles a group of teenagers, and he’s a non-professional actor who was actually in Homeland Security.
[takes breath]
Anyway, while I’m at it, and while you’re potentially rolling your eyes at how humourless I am, facial disfigurement as a punchline can also fuck off. And the ending being our main characters enjoying consumerism and a weak sort of “it’s up to the next generation” beat? What was I saying about baby food for middle-class cunts?
It all, ultimately, makes the claim that this film is some sort of actual political statement feel like wish-casting from both the leftist cinéaste and the right wing chud. It’s the setting for a story about family, and that’s about it. I wish it wasn’t so ironic and detached, but at least it’s not about how much he wanted to fuck his art teacher again.
But as I said, I think about the middle of this movie all the time, and I loved the payoff in the climax (even if I did get a little tired of the undulations, sorry.) I respect the craft, but I guess with PTA for me it always comes down to if I’m buying what he’s selling rather than just appreciating what he’s doing. Here? Not so much.
Writer and developer Mathew Kumar guest hosts the panel, covering the Balatro of coin flips, Bitmap Books bad decisions, and especially crude actions performed by Rabbids.
With my podcasting setup warmed up, I make my triumphant return to the Insert Credit Show… as host!? Highlights include actual coin-flipping and bending the show’s format to my evil whims by making the panel design games based on the names of Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh films.
They’re here, and they’re gorgeous. Apologies to everyone who has been waiting for a dispatch notification for exp. 2602 or the reprints, but due to a Canada Post strike I’ve been unable to send them out. It’s been unfortunate timing, but I support the strikes—the workers are standing up to a predatory capitalist political class undermining an essential public good. Issues will begin being dispatched next week, though delivery may be slow due to the continuing rotating strike. The PDF/ePub editions will be sent out at the same time (though those will be instant, obviously.) Thank you so much to everyone for their patience on this.
If you haven’t ordered yet, now is the perfect time! Pick up exp. 2602 or the full set over at the shop in the next couple of days and they’ll be included in the first batch of orders sent out.
Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry!
Decided I wanted to celebrate the Halloween season the same way I celebrate the Christmas season: by adding yet more fucking obscure games to my backlog and then writing way too much about them.
My Halloween theming began with Castlevania, though Pipistrello is a bit of a edge case (there’s a curse, and you play a bat?) Worth mentioning that as I write this Elechead is 50% off on Steam and well worth it.
Quite a grab-bag here again, with the Wipeout 2048 article that was at one point the most popular article I’d written for exp., a look at a game I wished was a Roguelike-like before we all got tired of everything being a Roguelike-like, and then that weekend where I played both Castle of Illusion games and thought they were… fine.
I was invited on to the Still Loading Podcast to talk about the Fast & Furious franchise (specifically the currently final film), and the host Josh let me share it with my own Patreon patrons as well. So if you’ve got a hankering to listen to me waffle for nearly three hours, go wild!
“A zine of three recipes, developed over the last eight months, for a breakfast, dinner, and dessert cooked exclusively in an 8-inch cast iron skillet.”
As a vegetarian I can’t recommend all of these recipes, but I can recommend skipping the meat or subbing in your favourite alternative. Plus there’s a pretty neat tofu dessert here.
Mutual Aid
Legendary game developer Rebecca Heineman, whose work includes The Bard’s Tale (which I only wrote about recently) but honestly just so many things, has been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma and is facing huge bills for her treatment, because… America. Support if you can.
And Finally…
A couple of things this week. First up I’ve been obsessed with with the big strong boys of Haha, You Clowns since I discovered it, and with a HBO Max show hitting next week, the best time to get caught up on creator Joe Cappa’s original shorts is now. It would be easy to say “the joke is that there is no joke” but what makes the shorts so captivating is how they explore just how strange it is to try and act normally while living with grief, and it ends up very, very funny as a result. I love it.
Secondly, I adored Majuular’s ridiculously long retrospective on Ultima VII: The Black Gate, and he just put out a video on the sequel, Serpent Isle. I have a tremendous warmth to these two Ultima games in particular, and I think Majuular explains very well why they’re so unique and special, so I loved getting to spend another 6-odd hours(!) in the world with a fella who seemed to love them as much as I did.
Next week on exp.: The scariest thing of all… more of my voice.
Developed/Published by: Unknown / Tandy Released: 1982 Completed: 02/10/2025 Completion: Well… I saw all three levels.
Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!
It’s October, which means it’s a time of spooks, Draculas, werewolves, and finally getting to wear that light coat you love. Since writing about Castlevania, I thought it might be fun to spend the rest of October with a bit more of a focus on the Halloween season the way I do for Christmas, but I was quickly struck by a key difference between the seasons: in the Christmas season, everything “Christmassy” actively relates to, or features, Christmas. A “Christmas movie” has Christmas in it–even if it’s completely tangential to the plot, it’s at the very least set during the season. But during the Halloween season, we really don’t need everything to relate directly to Halloween. Sure there’s your, well, Halloweens, your Ernest Scared Stupids, but no one is making a case that you include films that just happen to feature Halloween as “the best Halloween movie” that everyone should watch every year–well, unless there’s someone out there with Die Hard-like passion for Marriage Story, or something.
What we instead require is that our Halloween content be, well, scary. Or at least a little unsettling. So it felt like it wouldn’t really make sense for me to limit anything I played this month to things that were directly Halloweeny, and instead just nose around the horror genre and pull up anything I found interesting or surprising. Which is how I ended up playing Poltergeist for the TRS-80 Color Computer.
I’ll be honest–I know absolutely nothing about the TRS-80 Color Computer. In fact, I assumed it was a version of the TRS-80, which would make sense, but it’s actually a completely different system. So it’s not the system that made me think to boot up Poltergeist. I decided to look at it because I think like many people, I particularly associate this season with horror movies, and it just seemed utterly surprising to see that one of the biggest films of 1982–directed by Tobe Hooper, produced by Steven Spielberg–somehow had a game exclusive for a computer that, at this point, is pretty poorly remembered.
It gets even more surprising when you consider that 1982 is pretty much ground zero for the movie tie-in. Sure, there have been licensed games before–read all about Superman in exp. 2602!–but in 1982 suddenly movie tie-ins, and Spielberg tie-ins specifically, become big business, with Raiders Of The Lost Ark and (unfortunately) E.T. showing up.
It wasn’t just Spielberg getting in on the action: we’ve got The Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600, Star Trek: The Motion Picture for Vectrex, multiple Tron games, even an adaptation of Fantastic Voyage, a movie from 1966! Poltergeist really is an outlier, however, by being released on a home computer where the market lent far more hobbyist. The TRS-80 Color Computer–known fondly as the CoCo–would eventually be popular enough to have several magazines that covered it, but at the time of Poltergeist’s release only The Rainbow would exist, and it really wasn’t much more than a fanzine (no shade!)
I can’t find anything about Poltergeist in it, or anywhere else, so the game, outside of my direct experience of it, is a bit of a mystery. What I do know is the game is an early example (maybe the earliest) of the bread-and-butter of the movie tie-in: the “each level is a minigame that reflects something you know from the film” thing that most famously Ocean Software would run into the ground.
On the first level, you’re running around what looks like a Mondrian but its actually a suburb, with the goal of collecting the things that will allow you to rescue Carol Anne (sorry, I didn’t go over the plot of Poltergeist: a wee lassie gets sucked into a telly and she needs to be rescued. There.) It would be over-selling this segment to call it a maze game–it’s no Pac-Man, not even Head On, as you run around the grid avoiding cars by ducking into driveways to grab items like towels that maybe have some importance in the film (can’t remember.) I suppose it’s the early 80s so there aren’t speedbumps and signs saying “Twenty’s Plenty” everywhere, because every car is going maximum speed and will kill you, which, I mean, I think I’d probably want to move out even if there weren’t ghosts. Especially with a madman running around stealing very ordinary items from people’s houses.
Thankfully, if you just hold down the fire button when the level loads and keep holding it the cars never spawn–up to you if you want to abuse it, but it can be quite annoying to get killed by a car because you have to go near the edge of the screen.
The second level is sort of a Frogger-a-like, where you (some disembodied footprints) have go up the stairs, avoiding, uh, holes, pretzels(?) and the poltergeist itself, which makes a direct line for you. You basically just have to roast it up the stairs, and be lucky–you can’t hang around waiting for the right opening.
The third level is… confusing. Is it supposed to maybe represent, like, flying through the television? (It’s just described as an “energy field” in the manual.) Faces fly towards you that you have to shoot before they pass you using an annoying gunsight that fights you, and that you can’t shoot too early because one of them will be Carol Anne (represented by a wee stick figure) who you obviously can’t shoot. And that’s it.
This is, obviously, rubbish. And barely representative of the thing it’s based on. I suppose we could be impressed by the last level, but it’s barely the level of Starship on the Atari 2600, and close to impossible (for the amount of effort I wanted to put in, anyway.) I find it really hard to believe this could have entertained anyone for very long at all–and if you do get good enough to finish the third level (something it looks like only one person on Youtube has ever managed) all you get is a bit of text saying the house is clean–which is at least a direct reference to the film, I suppose.
Poltergeist feels like a film that if you were going to adapt it you’d rather do something like a text adventure in the era, but it does seem (from my little research) that games on the CoCo tended towards arcade experiences, which probably explains why this is what it is. I suspect, also, that each level is just whatever the programmer had lying around that they’d been noodling on with the explanation bolted on after. I can’t imagine Spielberg was too impressed–if he ever saw this–and to be fair, neither am I.
Will I ever play it again? My promise to you: I’ll boot this up if I’m ever hanging out with Steven Spielberg.
Final Thought: Weirdly the era was not just Spielberg adaptation heavy but Hooper-heavy, with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre showing up on Atari 2600 within months!
Developed/Published by: Pocket Trap / PM Studios Released: 28/05/2025 Completed: 25/09/2025 Completion: Finished it, though with a caveat that will be explained more or less immediately.
Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!
Don’t really have a good reason why I chose to play this above nearly everything in my to-play list recently other than, in a weird sort of bloody-minded way, I just wanted to play something that wasn’t Silksong, but you could conceivably pick up because you wanted something like that… without being like that. And hey, it says “cursed” in the title. That’s sort of spooky-adjacent, right? Fits the pre-halloween mood? Maybe?
Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo was actually the perfect antidote for someone who was burned out on Silksong discourse without ever having touched it. Because feast your eyes on this:
Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo has the greatest difficulty settings I’ve ever seen. It’s genuinely amazing that it’s this granular. The game has a default difficulty and then you can just decide what parts are too much of a ballache for you. I know there’s been so much discourse over this–even before Silksong, John Walker has loved wading into it, god bless him–but here at exp. Towers we side with the idea that you should be allowed to play a game however you bloody well like. As much as I love thinking about and dissecting authorial intent in video games, as soon as the fucking thing is out the door you can treat it however you like.
If there’s one thing I’d possibly have wanted, it’s for the developers to include their own easy/medium/hard presets, but I actually think it works well enough that you can start the game, play for a bit and then realise what’s causing you unnecessary pain–and it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the game. It think it can be quite interesting to discuss, for example, when, where and how “runbacks” or other punishment mechanics can be a design choice that enhances, rather than detracts from a game, but I like that here they accepted that possibly you can just decide if it’s something you want to bother with or not, without fiddling with other levers if you don’t want to. I think you’re going to know pretty early if a mechanic like losing money on death feels fun or even legitimate to you or not–for me, I quickly turned it off because I was dying enough it was just going to lead to having to grind for cash, pointlessly bloating the playtime, and I’m, honestly, too old for that shit.
(About half-way through the game I would also turn off fall damage, because the platforming challenges get extremely finicky, and the extra reload time was enough to annoy me. The game’s upgrade mechanics include upgrades specifically to reduce fall damage and cash loss, so this felt perfectly within the spirit of the design. Just a little extra edge.)
Anyway, Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo is described by Pocket Trap as a “Yoyovania” but that’s not really what it is–it’s more clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda in the Link To The Past milieu. You play Pippit (weirdly not Pipistrello, that’s their auntie?) the yoyo obsessed failchild of a family that holds a monopoly over all the energy in the city where the game takes place. Due to the monopoly squeezing every last penny from the city’s companies, the leaders of the four biggest companies decided to kill the matriarch, Madame Pipistrello, by sucking her soul into four big batteries which will provide limitless energy for their capitalist dreams (this makes sense, for reasons.) But Pippit intervenes, a fifth of Madame Pipistrello’s soul ends up in their yoyo! So off you go on a pretty clear quest: head to each company, beat up the owner, steal the battery, then once you have all four, put your auntie back together.
This is all done via a charming, chunky top-down Zelda-a-like; designed almost exactly look like it’s being played on a Game Boy Advance (the game even opens with a 3D model of a GBA-look-a-like, and you can play the entire game on it if you want, with an LCD filter and everything.) When I started to play Pipistrello And The Cursed Yoyo, I was loving it. It’s bright, the controls are responsive, battles are fun, and there’s a great sense of progression as you explore the map collecting coins and finding new areas. But unfortunately, as the game loads on more mechanics, it starts to get… unwieldy. The bright and colourful graphics don’t have a lot of good clean “tells” on what you can do where, and while that might be because they want you to puzzle it out and experiment, it’s not so great when you’re in the middle of chaining traversal abilities to then have to work out what the next one you need to use is. And then actually executing traversal… well, it has the double whammy of the individual moves often being awkward to execute with the design expecting a high degree of competency. Every move has you pressing at least two buttons together, and moves only chain in certain ways, so when you reach the point–as you will–where you’re having to do something like six actions in one go or start again, it can get absolutely frustrating. (Again here, that the difficulty settings allow you to actually half the speed of the game is a life-saver. I won’t lie: I did it two or three times.)
The ultimate problem is that often you find yourself finishing a challenge and wondering–was that the way I was supposed to do that? Did I cheese it somehow? They can be so hard, or difficult to parse, that you never actually get to the point where you feel mastery, and that’s a problem. It’s even more of a problem in a game that feels like it should be open like its inspirations. Areas are obviously gated by traversal abilities, and it seems to limit you to two “dungeons” available at a time as a result, but each time it felt I went to the “wrong” one of two first and had to double back to the other one to actually progress. I really can’t tell if that is as designed, or if I just never understood traversal as well as I should have.
Battles are mostly fine–a good range of enemies, and intentionally designed encounters–but I think it’s here that the designers make arguably the strangest decision of all. The upgrade system is fairly normal–badges that give abilities or passives that you can equip, and permanent upgrades that you unlock–but the permanent upgrades require you to engage with a “debt” mechanic where you “pay off” the upgrade while suffering a hindrance. So, for example, you might have less life, or enemies won’t drop health.
At best this is just annoying. While I get the idea, the implementation just means that you spend the entire game weaker than you actually are (and you can enter certain situations completely screwed–nothing like facing a boss with one health and not being able to do anything about it unless you want to return the upgrade and get less money back than you’ve paid in.) If the permanent upgrades had designed hindrances, like “you must use this loadout” or “yoyo can’t be separated from string in battle” (just off the top of my head–not specific recommendations) it could be interesting, forcing you to play in different ways than you have, but it’s usually just “the game is harder” which should make you want to just go to the difficulty menu and make the game… not harder. Again, it’s just holding you back from any rewarding feeling of mastery.
These aspects–that the traversal is tuned towards extreme competence, and that the upgrade system means you never feel powerful–mean that Pipistrello And the Cursed Yoyo starts to outstay its welcome before you’re done with it. You can be done with the main path in something like 12 hours, and I really didn’t want to give it any more–which is sad, because when I started it I really had it in mind that I’d be searching out all the badges and unlocks, but the main path is so seemingly linear you don’t have much reason to go back on yourself with new abilities, and I just ended up wanting to push through to get it all done. It’s really only thanks to those difficulty settings that I could, honestly (if I had been stuck grinding for cash for the upgrades, I’d probably still be playing it.)
Was it worth getting to the end? For me, yes, because I had to see where the narrative went. Not because I was loving it, particularly, but because it’s so… odd. The game has you as heir to what is basically a capitalist crime family that’s led by an awful person bleeding people dry, and then the other companies are even worse? I mean it’s not exactly Bioshock Infinite’s “If a cow ever got the chance, he’d eat you and everyone you care about” but let me just say they hardly plant any seeds for the face turn that you’re expecting will show up. I’m not sure quite what they were going for–I suppose it’s supposed to be some sort of commentary on capitalism, but it’s muddled.
Anyway, here we have one of those classic examples of a game where finishing it kind of just put me off it, because the flaws just became more and more apparent. If it was half as long, or if I was the kind of person who was fine only playing half of something, I’d probably be raving about this. Oops!
Will I ever play it again? There’s a new game+, which probably gives you a reason to go through the early areas again with all the abilities, but… to what end?
Final Thought: I feel like I’ve been harsh on this one, so one thing I do want to say is that even if I did think it outstayed its welcome, it’s not for want of the designers trying. They go to extreme effort to make sure every area you visit has a new concept for you to deal with. Fans, lasers, switches, moving platforms, dark areas… each time they take an idea they leave no stone unturned, and so you’re always engaged. If you gel with this game–particularly when it comes to traversal–you really get your money’s worth here, and it’s even possible that if you’re just a little more aggressive with easing the difficulty settings than I was, you’ll hit a sweet spot either way. And for what it’s worth: I can see the counter argument that the team should have worked harder to tune the game to “avoid” having to include all these difficulty options, but the game’s issues are not ones that could be fixed by that.
If you like the look of this, I’d still consider giving it a shot. Just… don’t try to be a hero and stick to the defaults. I don’t think it’s worth the pain.
Developed/Published by: Konami Released: 26/09/1986 Completed: 09/09/2025 Completion: Finished it. I did do a save state before Dracula though, to avoid repeating an exploit.
Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!
I’ve been in the trenches of 1986 for such a long time by this point that I feel like, sometimes, I lose a bit of perspective, so as I reach Castlevania, released within two months of Metroid (and also on the Famicom Disk System) it’s good to take a minute to reflect again on the strength of the release calendar for the Famicom. It’s not just Nintendo’s groundbreaking output, for example, it’s also incredible arcade hits such as Gradius and Ghosts n’ Goblins coming home in solid ports.
And with the influence of The Legend of Zelda and especially Metroid going to take more time to disseminate, I think it’s important to consider Castlevania within the post-Super Mario Bros. milieu where the arcade still reigns supreme as the state of the art. You went to the arcade and wanted to play games that good at home, and developers wanted to sell people on their “arcade quality” experiences, even if there was no arcade title attached.
I’m assuming you can see where I’m going with this, but the interesting thing about Castlevania is as much as it is tied to the Metroidvania genre–and would begin dipping its toes into that within a month–the first game is no more attempting to create an expansive, “home” experience than Konami’s earlier port of Gradius is. If you’re being generous, you could claim that Castlevania is Konami’s attempt to make the style that’s already worked so well for them in the scrolling shooter for the arcade–short, hard games with impactful, unique levels and standout bosses–translate to the side-scrolling action game/platformer for the home. If you’re not being so generous, you could say this is Konami’s rip-off of Ghosts n’ Goblins.
That one probably works better.
I don’t think it’s unfair, really! Ghosts n’ Goblins is a good port, but it looks weedy. It’s hard not to imagine Konami, given the extra power of the Famicom Disk System, thinking that they could simply do something better, and the hallmarks are all there. A spooky setting. A stiff, inflexible hero who struggles with platforming. Limited power increases and different weapons to collect, which all have important situational uses. When you look at the original Japanese titles it looks even more sus. Ghosts n’ Goblins is “Demon World Village” Castlevania is “Demon Castle Dracula” (to not get too into the weeds on this, Demon isn’t spelled exactly the same, but they do both use the kanji 魔.) And if you don’t consider that case closed? Well, there’s also the difficulty.
The bloody difficulty.
Unlike Ghosts n’ Goblins, Castlevania absolutely lulled me into a false sense of security at the start. There’s no Red Arremer here as a harsh wakeup call, and the first boss, a bat (which does have a bit of the Red Arremer about them) is easily dealt with if you have the axe subweapon, which is literally in a candle right before them.
Once you’re in the second level, however, all bets are off, as you’re suddenly facing the dreaded medusa heads paired with the fact that you lose a life if you fall into a pit (easy to do as you get stunned and knocked back on getting hit) and it only gets worse from there. There are some absolutely hair pulling moments.
Really, Castlevania feels like a game that shouldn’t work, because hero Simon Belmont is so slow and it’s such a challenge to react to anything. But the game has a weird sort of pleasure in its heavy, exacting feel. Simon slowly moves forward and really feels like he’s absolutely thumping the enemies in front of him, and a bit like a shooter it’s all about finding your racing line through the game, collecting the right subweapon at the right time and learning where the meat Dracula has stuffed in his walls are for safety (good poll if they ever add polls to Bluesky: would you eat Dracula’s wall meat? Yes / No / If I was really hungry, I guess).
There’s also an intriguingly vestigial sort of hidden, sort of experience system–if you use subweapons a lot enemies eventually drop upgrades that let you have up to three on screen–but it’s foiled by the fact you want to switch subweapons a lot and you lose the upgrades when you do (why!!!) but if you can master it you can absolutely cheese some of the bosses–I mean, it’s how I saw the end of this…
I even like that Dracula’s Castle sort of makes sense as a layout. I mean, it doesn’t really, but I like that they made the drop that happens after you fight the mummies sort of the correct length, and then you might be surprised that the “clock tower” section of this game is so short, but it’s tall and thin… like a clock tower!
The brutal difficulty of Castlevania makes some sense on the Famicom Disk System because you could save at any stage(!) and when the game was re-released on cartridge in Japan it got an easy mode–although it removes knockback on hit, which just seems weird (if you’re interested, it’s included in the Rumbleminz SNES port, the method by which I played this.)
Ultimately, if Konami set out to best Ghosts n’ Goblins… well… they did!
Will I ever play it again? I will play its many, many remakes and… side-makes?
Final Thought: Yeah, so, the weird thing about Castlevania is that it came out on Famicom Disk System just a month before it came out on MSX2 (a version generally known as Vampire Killer, as it was titled that in Europe.) Although Vampire Killer shares graphics, enemies, and is still a trudge through Dracula’s castle, individual level design differs completely, as levels are non-linear and you’re expected to search them for a wider range of items, upgrades and keys to unlock doors to the next level!
Annoyingly, I can’t find good information on why the games are so different, outside of pretty generic speculation (“now, PC games drive like this [mimes driving like a huge nerd] and Famicom games drive like this…”) so it’s really hard to say what concept “came first.” if the MSX version was the original idea, then my Ghosts n’ Goblins hypothesis–my Ghosts n’ Goblothesis–is incorrect.
I do feel like it would be a bit unusual if both games weren’t directed by the same man, elusive series creator Hitoshi Akamatsu, and Castlevania II would go on to be much more of an adventure, which would be a mark against my goblothesis, but weirdly according to an amazing shmuplations translation, Akamatsu was inspired by The Maze of Galious, which is itself a post-Vampire Killer design, so who knows. I guess I can get closer to finding out if I play it, so let’s see how long I can avoid that for.
“My understanding, from delving into this era of Konami, is that the two versions of Castlevania were developed in parallel, with the teams possibly sharing ideas with each other, and so neither game is “first” nor the “real” one. See also MSX vs. FC Goonies, which laid the groundwork for this game … While it’s possible that Ghosts N Goblins inspired some surface elements, my personal theory is that the foundation of Castlevania can be found in the computer game Aztec, which was fairly popular among a particular generation of Japanese game devs.”
Well, very funny to say in the last dispatch that I’d go to biweekly and then not actually send out another one for three weeks. Well, I’ve got a good excuse.
Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry!
Said excuse! I suppose I did send this out to all subscribers at the start of the week. exp. 2602 has been in the works for a while, but it was put on hold when I rebuilt expzine.com, and then actually launching it got delayed even longer because I was so dissatisfied with ecommerce options like bigcartel and ko-fi (ko-fi in particular badly screwed me recently) that I decided to self-host—after all, I already have the website. I somewhat understand why people just pay to have someone else handle it all by now… but at least so far it seems to be working. Also—please consider pre-ordering! This is the last weekend before I absolutely have to get it to the printers, and your orders make sure I know how many to print!
This week’s subscriber post showed up a little late because of the announcement, so I hope people don’t overlook it. Namatakahashi is doing something really special in indie games right now.
Man, when you see the games listed out like this I really grasp how some people find it hard to hook into what I’m doing here. But my tastes are too catholic for me to limit myself to being, like, only an RPG or retro blogger or something. If you only want to read one of these, please read about Many Nights A Whisper—there’s only a few short months to find out if it stays at the top of my games of 2025 list. But uh… obviously read them all.
A couple of really throw-away articles here but I still think what I wrote about Cart Life hits. A “compelling and thoughtful critique” according to Eggplant‘s Rob Dubbin, so that’s nice. Surprisingly on Twitter, the website where linked articles go to die, I got some feedback on Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny too. @Yoshicookie, apparently a Kilik main, let me know it’s “actually the better version of [Soulcalibur IV], if it had proper multiplayer.” Good to know.
exp. Capsule Review
Blobun Mini (Cyansorcery, 2025)
Didn’t really pay attention when downloading this because it looked so cute when it showed up in my feed–I guess I assumed it was a Crush Roller-a-like, or something. However, it turned out, concerningly, to be more of a “hard” puzzler, where you’re trying to fill in every square in a map with your cute little slimy bunny and you lose if you need to backtrack to do it. It’s not Sokoban, exactly, but it (maybe unfairly) raised memories of every game I’ve ever played where you do a complex chain of things but have fucked it up at one point in the last 100 moves and have to try and make sense of it.
As a result I was initially considering putting this down completely, but I decided to stick with it for a bit as it’s a free PICO-8 game, so I was able to pick it up on my Trimui Brick whenever I had a spare moment (don’t leave me with my thoughts! I need to be doing something, please don’t leave me with my thoughts!) and Blobun Mini won me over for several very good reasons.
Firstly: every part of it glows with polish, from the charming UI through the responsive movement. Secondly, the game has an unbelievably smooth difficulty curve. It introduces new concepts carefully–and it has many for a game with just sixty levels–and every map is short enough that you never have too much to fix if you screw up. And thirdly, the game is unbelievably forgiving, with a complete rewind and even hints to start you off on each level.
Much like Dino Sort, if you’re looking for a charming puzzler that you can pick up and put down and eventually finish you can’t really go wrong with this (I mean, it’s bloody free) and if you like it so much you can go ahead and play the “full” version of Blobun, which does look like it’s too much for me, but that’s fine.
The only problem I have with this, actually, is that I finished every level but the last level didn’t “tick off” so it looks like I haven’t. A bug, maybe? But it’s a minor quibble.
Something something, catholic tastes. This is the second time a Motern Media production has shown up in this newsletter, so I assume you’re all complete converts already.
“Middle-Aged Teenage Angst: The Zine is now available to buy in print or as a PDF. 52 pages of new writing by me on forgotten TV, old mags, radio, wrestling, growing up, badges and, of course, music.”
“This is a magazine that explores gaming as a lifestyle (think Nintendo Power meets curated fashion and lifestyle magazine). The book features 60 pages of my artwork alongside photography and featured community projects.”
This is absolutely beautiful but I’m sad to note that it’s also fifty-nine dollars. I think it’s neat that there are higher-end zines and journals out there—think the amusingly similarly titled ON and [lock-on]—but I have to admit that I don’t have the funds to keep up. Maybe they’ll be up for a zine trade?
Moheeb Zara’s free zine making app now works on mobile! Make your own zine and then charge sixty dollars for it. That’ll show ’em.
And Finally…
This is a fun one. I’d put off watching this until I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as I’d heard the book this talk (from two years ago!) was about heavily inspired it. When you watch this you’ll be absolutely shocked as to how much of a, well, complete rip-off Clair Obscur is, and of a book that was apparently a huge success in France! I’d be fascinated to read what French fans thought of the game—if they were just completely nonplussed by the things international audiences found fresh and exciting. Maybe that’s why the game makes such, er, big swings at the end? To differentiate it?
Anyway, I’m absolutely gasping to read La Horde du Contrevent now. Considering I moved to Canada anyway, I should have really bothered to give a shit about French in high school. I guess if I can sell more copies of exp. 2602 I can be taken seriously as a publisher and try and get the rights? There’s an English translation sitting there waiting!
Developed/Published by: Namatakahashi, Tsuyomi / Namatakahashi Released: 14/10/2021 Completed: 31/08/2025 Completion: Hard to say if the game has a “good” and a “bad” ending, so let’s just say I saw one of the endings.
Before we get into the article: you can pre-order a copy of exp. 2602, my brand new zine, right now. If you haven’t picked up any issues yet, there’s a discounted bundle of all three zines! Patreon members get an even bigger discount: subscriptions start at just $1!
Saw people talking about Öoo, the latest Namatakahashi game, so of course I had to look up what they’ve made before that, saw that they’d made a game called Elechead, and played that instead.
And I’m glad I did!
I talked a lot about process in my recent essay on Many Nights A Whisper, and I think Elechead represents a more expected way of centering a low number of game mechanics (or especially, single game mechanic) in a video game: not focused on the player’s process toward a singular mastery, but on playing with the player’s believed mastery, taking the mechanics and bending them, requiring lateral thinking and moments of inspiration to progress.
In Elechead, it’s something so simple and clever that I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before. It’s actually described wordlessly in game and even on the Steam page (perhaps, originally, to avoid localisation issues–even the settings menu relies on pictograms). You’re a wee robot with an electric charge. Anything you stand on is powered. So, for example, if you stand on a platform that moves, it moves. If you stand on a platform with some bulbs attached, those bulbs light (in game, creating a dangerous barrier.) As soon as you jump, everything turns off; when you land again, everything turns back on. Instantly.
The game plays like that for a bit longer than I expected it would, before it introduces its main twist: your head is what holds the charge, and you can fling it off and run around as a headless body for ten seconds. So where previously you might face a barrier and just have to jump to break the connection to get through it, now you might have to throw your head across to make a connection somewhere else–and then get there in time.
The thing that stands out about Elechead is that it sucks the bones of its concept, and that it does so with a thoughtful difficulty curve (well, to an extent). There’s always a new way at looking at your abilities or how they interact with the world, and what you will be able to do can be surprising. It’s generally deeply satisfying when you work out what you need to do, but if there’s an issue, it’s that the game relies on a couple of (in my opinion) bad mannered “tricks” to stymie you: hidden paths with no “tell” (in walls, or off screen) and a final upgrade that’s completely hidden behind one of them (my understanding is that you can beat the game without it, but I struggled even with it…)
It’s a bit of a shame, because the game leads to a climax that I really loved. If you’ll allow mild spoilers, the game is a linear trip through a series of puzzles (outside of some side paths to collectibles) and when you reach the end, you simply get a few hints to where you were actually supposed to go. But heading backwards requires you revisit puzzles you’ve already seen and solve them in entirely different ways as you reach what appear to be the game’s tutorialising “one way” valves!
So I don’t love that this game stretches the player slightly beyond what’s fair, but that does mean it fits into the milieu of Japanese video games inspired by Xevious and Tower of Druaga.
What, you thought I was going to get through an article without mentioning them?
Will I ever play it again? Probably not, but I enjoyed this so much I’m having to pace myself to not just start Öoo immediately.
Final Thought: Weirdly, after I beat this, I looked up some playthroughs on YouTube, and everyone skips showing the trip backwards, my favourite bit! They do the collectibles ending and take an unrewarding shortcut to the other ending. You’ll only have yourself to blame if you do this. Just remember that things can be hidden in walls and off screen and you’ll be fine.
Following the successful relaunch of the exp. website, http://expzine.com, I’m proud to announce that the latest issue of exp. Magazine is now available for pre-order, in advance of debuting at Just Zine Things, to be held at Interesting Things (173 Baldwin St, Toronto) Saturday 27th September, 2025.
exp. 2602 continues my exploration of the 1970s releases for the Atari 2600, with context provided by essays on 1979 and that year’s arcade hit Asteroids.
As with the previous issues, exp. 2602 is being published in a signed, limited numbered edition, and will also be available in PDF and epub. However! I have also made the decision to republish, in unnumbered second editions, the first two issues of this series, exp. 2600 and exp. 2601, in order to align the design language, fix some errors and allow anyone who missed out a chance to buy one, two or all three issues. And if you buy all three, you’ll automatically get a $4 discount!
Damn, that looks so clean! Is it annoying that Atari didn’t keep their box art in the same scale/frame? Yes. Yes is is.
Pre-orders open today, and issues, physical and digital can be pre-ordered at our new online store at expzine.com/shop. Digital copies will still also be available on Ko‑fi or Patreon for Ko‑fi or Patreon subscribers. Patreon subscribers can find their shop discount code here. Ko‑fi supporters will receive theirs via DM.
As a pre-order, issues (digital included) will not be dispatched until the week of Just Zine Things.
As all three issues are in stock, I am open to orders from shops and distributors who would like to purchase for resale, with a discount for bulk orders. I am also open to donating copies to zine libraries! Get in touch with me here.
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