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Category: The exp. Dispatch

  • The exp. Dispatch #6

    The exp. Dispatch #6

    In this week’s Dispatch: after playing Wheels of Aurelia, I decided to look at its main inspiration, Il Sorpasso. And a capsule review of Luth Haroon’s INSERT/DATE/HERE.

    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!

    This week on exp.

    Subscriber Post: DAIVA Story 6: Imperial of Nirsartia (T&E Soft, 1986)

    Even I wonder why I wrote about this one but it is on Switch Online in the west!

    Unlocked Post: Cyrano (Popcannibal, 2025)

    Unlocked Post: Wheels of Aurelia (Santa Ragione, 2016) 

    Wheels of Aurelia is now delisted on the App Store, though in some respects the story of the control tech companies have over access to art has evolved in the face of both Steam and itch.io delisting/deindexing NSFW games under demand from payment processors reacting to the pressure of far-right activists. There’s a great resource here that can help you pressure the payment processors in return.

    From The exp. Archive: Threes (Vollmer, Wohlwend, 2014)

    I made myself sick of Threes before 2048 was even a glimmer in a cloner’s eye, and I think it’s important to reflect that the things that ultimately stopped me playing it were very deeply considered: there’s a great Wired article that goes into just how deeply they thought about it all.

    exp. Capsule Reviews

    INSERT/DATE/HERE (Luth Haroon, 2025)

    Play INSERT/DATE/HERE and then come back, ok?

    How do you feel? Did you keep clicking? Did you stop? Did you just close the window after it said game over, or did you continue? How long did you click?

    …

    When INSERT/DATE/HERE was shared by friend-of-the-zine Mare Sheppard, it was made clear what it was about–and I don’t think when you start playing, that you can really have any doubt what you’re doing from the first click anyway. It made me think of the “Death From Above” sequence from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which (in a reading which absolutely requires the author be stone-dead in your mind) I always read as a meaningful juxtaposition of how some people kill by pushing a button vs. the gritty reality of on-the-ground warfare. A touch of nuance with your exciting Hollywood-style story where any action is justified by the fact you’re fighting “real” baddies.

    But the reality of this kind of warfare is the person pushing the button doesn’t even really think about if they’re fighting baddies. They aren’t thinking about them as people at all. And if they did, they wouldn’t care. 

    In INSERT/DATE/HERE we face a genocide that has been streamlined into a series of clicks, likely performed by a drone operator, miles away, sitting in a chair in front of a computer just as you are. What they are doing has been so disconnected that it is as if they are poor, special Enders, allowed to do what they’re doing without ever really having to understand it. So disconnected that the clicks you just performed could very well have been as real. The perfection of dehumanisation. 

    I clicked. I clicked until I hit my quota and then I watched what that actually meant. And then I clicked, over four hundred times, to symbolically bury every single person I killed–until it was clear that not every one could be found. Because of course, many of the murdered will never be found, or counted, or their existence will simply be disputed, whether we have seen it with our own eyes or not. As I write the window remains open, knowing that there will be no closure, there is nothing I can do, and that tomorrow the same thing will happen again.

    Free Palestine. Donate: gazadirect.com (verified direct aid campaigns) / UNRWA / PCRF / MSF

    exp. Du Cinéma

    Il Sorpasso (1962)

    Claimed as an inspiration for Wheels of Aurelia by Santa Ragione, I was interested to discover the influence to be less straightforward than the setting of the Via Aurelia, with both game and film using the beautiful setting to try and dig more deeply into the Italian society of their era.

    Italy is in the honeymoon period of post-fascism in Il Sorpasso, while in Wheels of Aurelia, the characters have already lived through a decade of the “Years of Lead.” In some respects, both works lull you into a false sense of security that they really aren’t about much more than what you see. In Il Sorpasso, it immediately feels… expected. Almost formulaic. A shy student lets a brash character, Bruno, use his telephone, and seems to end up kidnapped out of politeness. Their adventure, of course, opens him up. Maybe he’ll start to believe in himself?

    Well… no. In retrospect Il Sorpasso is prescient in theme: that trying to be carefree in the face of your failures may ultimately have a cost to those who believe you. Bruno is charming, insightful, but his failures are not that he’s blunt or that he’s incapable of taking anything seriously. It’s that he’s a would-be rapist and an absentee father, one who returns to find his teenage daughter in a relationship with an elderly pedophile* and after realizing his own irrelevance does his best to at least get some money out of it—but ends up abandoned, with only his mousey thrall left to impress. But his lesson has worked too well, and as always, it’s the next generation that suffer.

    If you’re unfamiliar with commedia all’italiana (Italian-style comedy)—and listen, I was—that something called a “comedy” could be not just so annoying (Bruno honks his fucking car horn a million times in this) but so deeply bleak comes as a surprise. The cinematography is stunning, the women are beautiful, but Il Sorpasso says: don’t let it fool you. As Wheels of Aurelia explores, for many, it did.

    *I had to look this up, the age of consent in Italy is fucking 14 even today. Christ.

    Other Zines

    8 Things You Can Do To Stop ICE

    A free one-page trifold zine by CrimethInc. that you could print out and just leave places (if you’re an American.)

    Palestinian Family Fundraiser Zines

    A huge collection of free zines focusing on individual Palestinian families seeking support that you could just print out and leave places (whether or not you’re American.)

    And Finally…

    Matt Farley’s 2013 film, Local Legends, is streaming for free on Youtube for the next week (until the end of July) and it is, arguably, the best, most honest statement on how it feels to make art–to make anything–in the modern world. You should watch it.

    Next week on exp.: A trip to paradise.

  • The exp. Dispatch #5

    The exp. Dispatch #5

    Two subscriber articles this week, and a surprisingly successful trip to the archive.

    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!

    This week on exp.

    Subscriber Post: Cyrano (Popcannibal, 2025)

    It’s always surprising how little you actually know the classics, despite feeling like you’re always submerged in references to them.

    Subscriber Post: Wheels of Aurelia (Santa Ragione, 2016)

    This post has some urgency, as Wheels of Aurelia will be delisted on iOS on the 25th, so rather than make this the regular weekly post I thought I’d make it a bonus post so it can be unlocked a day before it’s delisted (though you can pay just $1 to support and read it now.) I suppose unless Apple decide to not delist it (they won’t) and if you don’t want to pay anything, you can just download the game now for free, skip reading my thoughts on it and just get stuck in. That’s valid!

    Unlocked Post: Pro Wrestling (TRY, 1986)

    Although I posted this with the western cover, I regret not sharing it with the Japanese cover so… there it is! Gaze upon the chibi-adjacent Inoki!

    From The exp. Archives: Fable III (Lionhead Studios, 2010)

    Thanks to a wee repost from Sasha’s Retrobytes, this one got some traction on Bluesky, with lots of people sharing their own bitter disappointment in Fable III. Including someone saying their brother almost “puked from rage” at the ending, which is like… steady on!

    exp. Du Cinéma

    Detour (1945)

    A beautiful example of what you can do if all you’ve got is a couple of sets, a rear-projection screen, a fog machine, and Ann Savage. Admittedly that last one is really important.

    Feels like it ends too early, but there’s also something really funny about our down-on-his-luck shmoe main character going “alright, I’m beat” and walking out of the movie.

    I wrote this short, quippy review of Detour (1945) on Letterboxd this week because I went to see it as part of the “Important Cinema Club Classics” series at the Fox Theatre in Toronto, and that gives me the opportunity to recommend listening to the Important Cinema Club, the best cinema podcast you can listen to, hosted by my friend Justin Decloux, and Will Sloan, who is also a person I know.

    Other Zines

    KNIFE

    “greetings i have made another zine, this is about how i got my hands on a knife at age ~9” 

    Queen’s University Library has digitized a collection of rare, self-published sci-fi & fantasy fanzines, making long-lost voices from 1940s–1980s more widely accessible.

    “The thirteen titles chosen for our project are periodicals with multiple authors. Most can be loosely classified as self-published, small print-run fanzines or zines within the science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction genres … published in Canada featuring predominantly Canadian authors.”

    The Ipoh International Zine Festival (25 – 27 July, 2025)

    “The Ipoh International Zine Festival takes place in #poh, Malaysia from 25 – 27 July, 2025. Location: Aras B, Pasar Besar Ipoh, time: 12 pm – 6 pm. Includes: Zine bazaar, Workshops, Zine launches, DIY craft tables, Panel discussions, Exhibitions.”

    And Finally…

    Obviously normally I want to end the newsletter on something funny or cute, but I think it’s important to, at least briefly, discuss the recent controversy over Modretro releasing Wayforward’s licensed Sabrina game for GameBoy Color. I’ve been posting a thread over on Bluesky about it, where I note–accurately–that Modretro is arms-dealing zionist Palmer Luckey’s gamewashing arm. Wayforward first openly publicised the release, then deleted everything because it was bad PR, and then had to make a statement to Time Extension probably because they got told off by ModRetro. But it’s clear now that they were deeply and happily involved in this whether or not they see any money from it, so fuck Wayforward. Do better.

    Next week on exp.: The sixth game in a franchise you’ve never heard of.

  • The exp. Dispatch #4

    The exp. Dispatch #4

    This week on exp.

    Subscriber Post: Pro Wrestling (TRY, 1986)

    I have (generally) been unimpressed with Nintendo’s black box output, but along with Golf, this one was a really nice surprise.

    Unlocked Post: Despelote (Cordero/Valbuena, 2025)

    The only article you’re going to read about a video game that includes a reference to Jeanne Dielman and Fishing With John. Probably.

    From The exp. Archives: Gunhouse (Necrosoft, 2014)

    I don’t do these that often, but when I feel like I know the developer really well–maybe too well to honestly critique their work–I cadge an interview with them. Here it’s a really deep design interview with Brandon Sheffield that’s probably obsolete because it’s so specific to the PS Vita(!) version of Gunhouse. Looking forward to another round when Demon School comes out (wishlist now, etc.)

    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!

    exp. Du Cinéma

    Thunderbolts* (2025)

    The main issue with Thunderbolts* isn’t really the film’s fault: it is, of course, the MCU’s. Because—and I think this is borne out in how fatigued and almost indifferent the positive reactions to this movie are—if the MCU is a banquet you can never leave, Thunderbolts* is like receiving a perfectly delicious hotdog after being forced to down a cup of cold sick. It’s a good hotdog! But you still sort of wish you were anywhere else.

    You can feel the weight of the MCU machine—gotta advertise those future movies—but they actually work to get you on side rather than relying on that alone. That they were able to immediately and unceremoniously kill a character no one likes? Unbelievably funny, gives you just enough to make you go “oh, maybe this was made people who actually like movies.”

    Not only that, that they might actually want the images you see on screen to be cool and enjoyable? The action is clear (they do a fun riff on some iconic Terminator imagery) and it even hits the comedy beats well enough that I actually laughed out loud at points. There are even… themes! And it manages to tell a complete story!!!

    Christ, that kind of praise really is grim, isn’t it? But I suppose that’s where we are. Ultimately, I liked it! But I kept thinking “please don’t make me drink any more sick.”

    Follow Mathew on Letterboxd.

    Other Zines

    Kill Or Be Killed: A No More Heroes Fanzine

    “Preorders for KILL OR BE KILLED ZINE are OFFICIALLY OPEN! They’ll be available until August 5th.”

    BreakSpace – Issue 2

    “Our scorching Summer issue features 38 reviews of new ZX Spectrum games, Type-ins, interviews and loads more.”

    And Finally…

    Mikolai over at Forgotten Worlds wrote a cute blog about their experience of publishing zines using the JRPG as a metaphor, er, a few months ago. But it came up in my feed recently and is an interesting manifesto/guide if you’ve ever considered it yourself. Give it a read!

    Next week on exp.: “You don’t have to put on the red light.”

  • The exp. Dispatch #3

    The exp. Dispatch #3

    This week in the exp. Dispatch we’ve got an exclusive PICO-8 capsule review, an exp. Du Cinéma that didn’t feel long enough to give its own post, as well as all the usual week’s round-up and zine links. Incredible value!!!

    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!

    This week on exp.

    Subscriber Post: Despelote (Cordero/Valbuena, 2025)

    Panic would probably not be best pleased that I turned another article on something they published into a rumination on the place of AI in creativity, but I’m proud of this one. I really think it’s worth subscribing for!

    Unlocked Post: Super Xevious: GAMP No Nazo (Namco, 1986)

    Last call on this meme. Last call!

    From The exp. Archives: Thomas Was Alone (Mike Bithell, 2012)

    On one hand, I think it’s good I have this record of games I’ve played. On the other hand, I have no recollection of playing this at all, so does it matter that I did?

    exp. Capsule Reviews

    Dino Sort (Adam Atomic, 2025)

    I wrote about getting into PICO-8 games recently by way of Adam Atomic’s Prince of Prussia and owning a Chinese emulation handheld (a subscriber exclusive) and Adam recently dropped Dino Sort which I don’t think I can justify an entire post for, so isn’t it brilliant I have this newsletter now?

    Anyway, Dino Sort is a brilliant wee game where you shuffle around dinosaurs to get them into the right positions based on their personal requirements (e.g. “don’t put me next to a predator”) very much in the style of Rush Hour. There are 26 designed puzzles which will probably take you, I don’t know, forty-five minutes to polish off or something, and though it will require some logic and lateral thinking, it’s good because at least I never ended up in one of those situations where untangling all my dinosaurs was going to be annoying or impossible the way it would be in a Sokoban game or something (god I hate Sokoban.)

    Also as someone who actually hates when a puzzle game has a billion puzzles–the “infinite pizza” problem, you eventually get sick of even pizza–I loved that this was something I could pick up, play and put down, but if you really wanted to keep playing this, you can because it generates a daily puzzle every day. They’re of varying quality, but just think, you could play it every day instead of doing a Wordle, because The New York Times can fuck off.

    exp. Du Cinéma

    Pee-Wee As Himself (2025)

    Pee-Wee—or should I say, Paul Reubens—has had an outsized influence on culture more than people give him credit for, deeply affecting the brains of a generation of millennials (my brain included) and helping define kitsch as a force in the 80s and 90s. He deserves his flowers, and as praised as this documentary has been, I can’t help but find it a bit… slight.

    Archive footage is catnip for me, and there’s absolutely hunners of it here, but you get the sense here that either due to the loss of Reubens or his intransigence they couldn’t quite pull this together into something that feels complete. It limits itself to a chonological telling of Reubens’ life and struggles to make connections to knit anything close to a statement together.

    (I wonder if they had plans to build to Reubens walking around a museum of all the things he’d collected as a physical representation of his life, but even that I question.)

    For someone with as complicated a life (and who is actively passive aggressive here!) the attempt at haigography comes across as disingenuous. It just seems wrong to portray (for example) Phil Hartman in such a one-sided fashion, or to gloss over the idea that people might be fair in feeling that the original Pee-Wee show was created by a collective and Reubens maybe didn’t treat a lot of people well on the way up.

    But in turn, his personal and legal troubles aren’t given the depth you’d expect either—especially considering his final statement makes it clear how one in particular so deeply coloured his later life. It almost feels as uncomfortable as Reubens in discussing it. He was stitched up! You may have to go into uncomfortable detail to exonerate him, but why hold back? Interrogate it!

    Maybe it’s fine. Like all of us, Paul Reubens was messy and incomplete, so it makes as much sense as anything for this documentary to be the same. This is just what people are. They leave us, and maybe you try and dig through what they left and try and make sense of it. But better, I think, to enjoy what they gave you while they were alive.

    Follow Mathew on Letterboxd.

    Other Zines

    Did you know it’s International Zine Month? Well it is.

    Between the Scanlines – Issue Thirty-Three

    “Wi-fi connected C64s, epic 90s sci-fi 4X, Dreamcast 9.9.99 memories from James Webster, and John Bunday l shares his love for Streets of Rage 3!”

    BreakSpace – Issue One

    “Presenting issue 1 of the World’s Cheapest ZX Spectrum magazine … This inaugural Springtime edition covers games released in Q1 2025.”

    And Finally…

    Doujinshi are essentially zines, so I suppose I could just have put this in the “Other Zines” section, but I tremendously enjoyed reading this ROMchip translation of Hiromasa Iwasaki’s 2024 doujinshi Legend 7: Why Do 2D Games Usually Go to the Right?

    It’s really one of those things that, if you know anything about video game development, actually seems really obvious, but you’ve probably never thought about in detail before. Officially sad now that I didn’t know about this zine before so I could have been hunting out copies of it (though I’d struggle to read much of it in the original language.) But better late than never.

    Next week on exp.: I jump a little bit forward from GAMP No Nazo in 1986, and a winner is me!

  • The exp. Dispatch #2

    The exp. Dispatch #2

    This week on exp.

    Actual Journalism: I Asked Panic About GenAI in Playdate Season 2​

    An unusual week on exp. because I did some actual journalism. I’m really not sure why more outlets didn’t pick this up in the first place–isn’t it news that there’s a game that uses AI in Playdate Season 2? I think it is! Anyway, I got some quotes. A few people have mentioned maybe I should have followed up with them to nail down if they’re going to allow AI on Playdate in future or not–and they’re right. But this kind of thing isn’t the focus of the site! If I end up having to do this again, I’ll put some more thought into it.

    (To be fair, also, they made me wait two weeks for a response.)

    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!

    Subscriber Post: Super Xevious: GAMP No Nazo (Namco, 1986)​

    I thought this meme I made was very funny. I guess lots of people didn’t see it, it was a busy news day. Yeah… that’s it.

    Unlocked Post: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, 2025)​

    Clair Obscur has stayed in the headlines a bit, this article on Digital Trends begging people to be normal about it then when discussing good criticism of the game, somehow forgetting to link this epic article. It’s ok, I’ll forgive them.

    From The exp. Archives: Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sega, 1992)​

    Old me’s tone of voice annoying me in this one. The iconoclastic wee twat.

    Other Zines

    ​This Queer Online Zine Can Only Be Read Via an Ancient Internet Protocol​

    And here was me thinking I was being old school by having a website. I’ll need to try harder. This newsletter is moving to, uh, Gopher.

    ​Rulebooks for Radicals by Greg Loring-Albright​

    “If games can’t change the world, why bother to make them? I lay out my answers in zine form, including some tips on how to get started making games if you haven’t before.”

    And Finally…

    Friend of exp. Raigan Burns pointed out after reading our article on Sky Kid that Sopwith, a Canadian MS-DOS game, actually predates it by a year or so and is extremely similar. I think it’s sort of unlikely that someone at Namco saw this and decided to rip it off, but it also seems so close to be as unlikely to be simultaneous invention either. Mr. Namco, if you’re reading this, get in touch!

    Next week on exp.: Footy Footy Footy, Ball Ball Ball!

  • The exp. Dispatch #1

    The exp. Dispatch #1

    Hello and welcome to the very first exp. Dispatch! A little later than I expected for a variety of reasons. But at least with the delay I fixed the mailing address so this doesn’t just go immediately into your spam box, like the confirmation emails for, uh, about half of the people who have subscribed, who therefore won’t be reading this in their inboxes. Oops!

    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!

    This week on exp.

    exp. was on rare sale at the Toronto Games Week Indie Game Emporium last Sunday the 15th! There’s a decent chance if you’re reading this you signed up for the newsletter while there, so thanks!

    Subscriber Post: Clair Obscur (Sandfall Interactive, 2025)​

    Really proud of this one, and I think it speaks for itself. It should do—it’s four thousand words long. If you aren’t a subscriber, you can subscribe on Patreon to read this right now!

    Unlocked Post: Sky Kid [NES] (Namco, 1986)

    I’ve updated my way of titling posts, and it’s here I was like… “er…” because I forgot sometimes I write articles about games released in specific versions after I’ve written about a “primary” version. This doesn’t really matter for anything modern–everything comes out on everything–but it does when I’ve got, like, four versions of Ghosts n’ Goblins or something on the backlog. Anyway, I settled on square brackets. Yes, this kind of thrilling peek behind the curtain is what you’re going to get if you’re subscribed to this newsletter.

    From The exp. Archives: Saints Row III (Volition, 2011)​

    While I get the archive up and running on the site properly, I might as well prompt people to read some really, really old stuff, because not all of it made into Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24 (buy now! etc.) This has since been remastered, though I’m sure these ancient thoughts hold up. Thoughts that mostly made me now go “would be nice to replay Sleeping Dogs, I never wrote that one up.”

    exp. du Cinéma: Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning​

    Good joke at the start of this one, IMHO.

    Other Zines

    ​But what can I do? How to fight the trans panic by Ruth Pearce​

    “The zine is written particularly with allies in mind. It provides some background information on the UK’s anti-trans moral panic, and offers some suggestions for easy things people can do.”

    ​Secret Passages #2​

    The Secret Passage #2 Kickstarter is almost over, but there’s still time to back it!

    Mutual Aid

    ​CRT Pixels is a Bluesky account I’ve been following for a while who shows off why I’m such a stickler for playing retro games with CRT shaders or on real hardware when I can–it’s how the art was supposed to look, innit. Their partner was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and a gofundme was started for support because, of course, America is a hellzone. If you know me personally, you’ll know I lost my best friend to a shock stage 4 cancer diagnosis, so this one hit home. Support if you can.​

    And Finally…

    Hey look! A mildly viral post on Bluesky!

    Next week on exp.: A return to 1986, to write about a sequel to a game that it feels like we mention in 90% of our essays.