I remember one year at summer camp. R____e, a few other scouts I don’t remember the names of and I walked around the lake. As we walked, they all roleplayed like they were inside of a role-playing videogame.
I hadn’t even played Final Fantasy VII yet.
Wasn’t long until friends coming and going out of the group started getting referred to as ‘party members’ for the rest of the week. Earthbounds humor and overamericanized affect might come the closest to replicating the way that summer felt. More so than any other RPG out there.
12/22/2025
Coffee Break
“Fear is the mind killer”
“You haven’t been yourself lately. Head twitching. Aimless fear and anger. Can’t speak in the company of long acquainted allies. It seems like when you're in the company of found family, you recoil same as you would with blood.
Sometimes, we trap ourselves in prison. A prison that keeps our brains and our bones chained to our memories. How dark it can be, there.
You’re halfway through your time with this “game.” This mountain of memory swelling up through the keys on an old laptop. Maybe this wasn’t your territory that you planted your flag in, but I feel one thing as a plain truth. A truth that you seem to be pained by.
You were there. R____e showed this to you. He showed you Katamari. You saw Giygas. You learned of his origin in the mind of Itoi-san. He was there, in that theater.
You were there, at your computer. In that house right off I-20, J____e’s house, reading about it on starmen dot net.
A boy then, a man now. Don't be ashamed. It is all a piece of you. Hold on to it.
Every memory. Those you remember, those you don’t. They are your blood. Your water. Your coffee. Your mac and cheese. Your unsweet iced black tea. All experienced by you.
I empathize with you. For running. But I want you back to yourself.
Be a light, my boy.
Feel everything.
Stop thinking.
Touch people.
Speak freely, with truth.
Care for your body.
Reconnect.
Be that, boy. Keep everything, but don't let it corrupt or cover up your vision.
I can feel it when I see you in those moments. Those of anxiety or stubbornness or rage or shutdown or embarrassment. You have the keys, the tools. It’s been said to you, of you. I see it too. A thing to do or say to unchain yourself from whatever prison. And loves you can stand beside, when the going gets tough.
Never lose sight of that. Know as well, I too will always look out for you. As long as I remain here, my boy.
Now, drink this. And when you’re done, wipe your tears.”
—-------
A patch of muddy rain, collecting amidst the snow. Plipping and plapping.
The sound stone reacts.
The other day, a lady I met saw right through me, into me.
She spoke, with no inhibition, motherly words. She spoke things of my cultural heritage from across the pond, things I’d never heard.
She offered advice to help with my stutter. Said it helps to learn, and often slip into different accents. I wondered then, silently, if I had ever stopped doing some kind of voice, like I’d do as a young boy after watching and loving any given John Wayne flick.
I wonder today, less than a week away from meeting that lady’s acquaintance, what she saw in me. It felt different than usual. Less of that pesky seeing what the beholder wants to see, more an X-Ray view of a piece of my soul.
I felt naked. I wanted so badly to be held by someone warm in that moment.
Memories falling down like rain.
Enough for tonight, our fourth melody.
12/24/2025
Christmas eve. The sky runner has been remodeled to take us to the next town, Summers.
I’m feeling homesick.
Night before last, I slept horribly. Kept waking myself up with torturous nightmares. Spent the whole next day after my last session sad and sleepy.
In the most vivid of those nightmares, me and T___a stood at the edge of a swimming pool. Had the place all to ourselves. We both jumped in at the same time. Everything slowed to a crawl.
As I fell, I noticed the pool was empty, aside from some small puddle of rain water at the bottom, and a few dead leaves. Falling slowly, I look up to see T___a, she’s floating at the fill line. As I see it, there’s no water anywhere.
As she levitates above, wiping fake water off her face and looking around for me to resurface, I feel my head shatter into the hardness of the bottom. I feel myself dying.
Blood flows out of my nose, billowling above me like smoke. Floating in that water I can’t touch.
—-------
Huh… some Tony guy just called me, and wants my real name… MGS2.
1/4/2026
Earlier today, T___a was over-the-shoulder spectating the game. I said:
“Sometimes, battles get interrupted because Ness gets homesick, and you gotta call his mom.”
Her response was…
“ ‘cause he’s a kid.”
Love this.
—-------
“Ness saw a baby’s bottle, but just for an instant.”
My fifth sanctuary.
My first memory floats to the top of my mind.
Laying on my back, looking up at the ceiling. The bars of my crib in my peripherals. I look out the bars and see R____e. Emotionally agitated, while watching his favorite show on a wood-grain CRT, Barney.
As I finish writing this, T___a calls out from the kitchen
“Dinner’s ready!”
1/5/2026
My sixth sanctuary. Aloft on a swirling pink cloud.
“Ness had a short vision of seeing his Mother when she was young.”
A horrible memory comes to me.
My father sent us outside of the house in anger. Not at us, for once, but at our Mother. We had seen him put hands on her by this point, but only slaps and painful squeezes. That afternoon was different.
Me and R____e walked around to the back of the house. Across that exterior wall was the pantry/laundry room. Through the thin aluminum back door, we heard clearly.
The violence. Pounding and screaming. The desperate pleading of my fathers name escaping her mouth between blows.
“Ron. RON. Please… stop. Ron…”
I later learned that particular beating ended with my father brandishing the steel fire extinguisher. Stopping just before bashing her skull in with its hefty base, then retreating.
I look out westward from the pink clouds' edge. Only Ness can see the view, nonetheless I soak it in. Oh, how long have I dreamt of getting this close to my beloved clouds… I’m almost jealous of Ness.
1/11/2026
Back home, sleeping in my own bed with a belly full of moms Mac and Cheese. Just ate a cartoonishly big bowl of Kraft in real life earlier today. Next, to the library to get the book about loneliness for the Tenda.
Curiously, when I visited the neighbors house, Pokey’s parents were missing. His little brother there, alone, saying he doesn't want to check out the meteor anymore.
1/12/2026
Deep breath.
Woke up at home.
Last night, I had a dream that I was at some family function. I was there with my Aunt and my Mother. I was eating gross food, but was too hungry to care.
Uncle R___y called out to me.
“What was that thing you were saying I needed? A retroblink?”
“A retrotink.” I replied.
He spoke in M__e’s voice. I’ve completely abstracted my family in my brain.
I woke up confused.
“Hi! Nice to meetchya! I’d really love to sit down and chat with you someday.
I’ll talk about my adventure, and you can tell me about all of your mistakes.”
A shiver shoots down my spine.
—-------
“I have a happy little question for you…
Daniel…
Daniel,
Are you sure this is the correct player's name?
If it’s not right, you can change it…”
Another chilled spine, followed by tears welling.
I change my name to Danny.
My brain is spilling.
—-------
“I wish you luck…”
Face wet with tears, I put the cup of Tenda Tea back onto the stone table, then retreat to the hotel. Three gut punches in less than thirty minutes. I’m a mess now.
“Recently, everyone is able to talk a lot, so I’ve lost my identity.” Says the once only outgoing Tenda. I decide, as Danny, to love this little friend. Seeing as I often feel listless as he does. But he isn't any realer than my uncle in my dream.
I still felt love when I hugged my mother for the first time in years last night, even if she was just some disambiguified piece of me, puppeteering her likeness.
—-------
“Soon, I’ll be…”
Ness’ inner monologue spells itself out on the dot-matrix wall. Unsure of himself, of the very moment he’s living in.
“Ness saw a vision of his father holding him.”
I’ve been dreaming so much recently. Some scary, but some sweet, like one the other day with my dearest T___a. Rollerblading in a recurring date spot we keep going to on odd dreamy nights. Leaving the plasticine, rigid, guided roller-blading tour through a break in the fence, exploring the dream streets we’ve visited in past versions of this date night delusion.
Getting up to no good, with magic butterflies in our stomachs.
Some scary. I think of the recurring nightmare I would have many times as a child, laying in my white rod iron bed, at that house in Terrell. Dreams like these you don't forget when you wake up, yet time has conspired to work away at those memories.
I often think of those many haunting dream sequences. The parts I remember, I guess.
The bedroom dresser, it’s pull out drawers filled with skeletons of family members. So vividly, my mother’s sister’s bones, curled up fetal. I hugged her last night. In dream.
The college campus. Bustling crowds, standing with a pack on my back. Streets of brick. Older, a strong sense of foreboding. One that I think kept me from ever feeling comfortable on any real college ground I ever visited.
Tonight, this game reminded me of a long forgotten fragment of that dreaded, recurring nightmare.
Before waking, when I ran screaming and crying away from the dried bones that stood in place of my clothes. Running through the door to the right, close to the dresser. Turning right, running down the hallway. Past the upright piano to my left. Into the living room. Only one person there, in a recliner. His recliner.
I leap into my fathers arms. He holds me tight, and kisses my wild, frantic little head. Asks me “what’s wrong?” but im so out of my ends that all I can do is cry scream, and try my best to be safe in his big arms.
And there I would always wake up.
1/13/2026
“It’s no biggie darling. I lean on you a lot, it’s fine if you lean on me”
—-------
My eighth, and final, Sanctuary.
A single note. Resolution.
“Ness had the feeling that he was being watched by himself as a baby.”
My second memory.
Looking down past my feet at a crude step of weathered, raw lumber. It sat in the brown grass and dirt, right outside the back door, serving as a step down to the yard. This was, according to my parents, ath the house in Dallas. I have only those two memories of that house, and they’re fuzzy, hazy things.
Unsure and unaware.
My third memory.
Standing within the blue-tiled walls of the bathroom closest to my soon to be bedroom. We had just moved into the house in Terrell. I was looking down at what would be my toilet for the next decade. There was a massive rust stain on the baby blue seat. My 3 year old self looked at it in disgust, assuming that dark brown mark was a big poo stain left by the old owners.
We didn’t have water from the city in that house, we had a well. We didn’t have plumbing either, not in the modern sense at least. Behind the house, we had a septic tank. That house had already been around for some ~100 years by the time we moved in.
I played Legos and Cops and Robbers on that land, in that house. I fed my animals. I rode my horse. I played MS-DOS games.
I played Ocarina of Time in that house.
By 13, the dam broke. My mom decided to stop asking my brother and I if she should call the cops. She picked us up early from summer camp, and we stayed at a battered women's shelter. When she picked us up, we had to duck down in the backseat, because as we were leaving the campgrounds, Dad drove right past my Mom’s car.
The last time he put hands on me was three years later, when I was sixteen.
One day, when I was eight years old, I was running around the corner of the front of the house.
In that moment, for some reason, I realized. I realized something was wrong, something was very wrong.
That day forward, my smile started to fade.
My baby was dead.
—-------
Ness takes control away from me. He takes the sound stone, brimming with completion, and listens to it. The melody takes him into a memory in greyscale. A path barely there, he follows it with his own drive. No longer needing my thumb-push.
As he grabs the doorknob of his house at the end of the path, he loses his body.
“I’m just a faint memory. You usually don’t remember me.”
1/14/2026
I’m not Ness. I don’t understand why I keep slipping into seeing his life and experiences as my own. Maybe that’s intentional.
Pokey sits in a simulacra of his living room, close to the conga line of Ness’s old friends and classmates.
“Ness, you’re so lucky…
I envy you.
…
I have no luck
-
Let’s be friends forever, all right?”
1/15/2026
A Mahi Mahi statue shines at the end of the Sea of Eden. Is it merely a visage, or has Ness carried this powerful evil in him this whole time? If the latter, is this the source of his power, or is it something he suppresses with his own, vastly immense power…
“(I’m the evil part of your brain. You can’t beat me.
Because you are the one who forced me into being...)”
—-------
The dream goes dark. Ness turners to me, then… All the power he had gained from the sanctuary spots, our sanctuaries, rushes into him. Massive stat boosts, and 200,000 exp…
A chill runs down my spine, then warmth. I’m… proud of my boy.
Level 78.
“It is time to get up.”
Our friends watched over our slumber. When we come to, our friends know that we know where to go.
US. OUR. WE.
This is mine and Ness’ journey. Danny and Ness.
—-------
Andonuts asks for Ness’ hat, and then works at separating the four children’s Ka’s from their Ha’s.
“Ness! Paula! Poo! Jeff… my son…
There is no turning back now.”
Ness and Danny activate the Phase Distorter 3, and then we go to The End. The place I’ve chased. The place I’ve seen.
R____e… Ness… Jeff… Poo… Mother… J____e…M_____e…
Danny…
We fight.
—-------
Here it is, this awful, wretched room. It’s very floor moves like it has a pulse. I down a handful of PP restorative items I prepared, and push on.
I know this place
R____e…
Pokey
“He is the Evil Power.”
My heart races. Goosebumps.
The chiptune. R____e. Itio-san.
Giygas.
I don’t act until the real song begins. Focusing on Pokey, I eventually brainshock him, the beat the hell out of that prick.
—-------
“So, isn’t this terrifying?
I’m terrified, too.”
It’s like I can hear his voice tremble through the text box.
We have arrived. The looming rock in my shoe. Now, we must pray…
—-------
Ness, Paula, Jeff, Poo… Pray…
Call upon our allies. What Binds Us To Earth.
Prayers: IIII IIII
The Saturns. Runaway Five. Polestar. Snowman. Dalaam. Frank. Ness’ family.
Darkness. Me.
Giygas loses his form. A million twisted faces.
“Friends… Friends… Ness…”
“It hurts… It Hurts…”
“...go…b..a..c..k…”
“I’m...h..a..p..p..y…”
The screen a blur. The speakers wailing. Giygas cries.
A slow, brutal comeuppance.
Finality.
“Paula and her friends’ calls touched the heart of D••••”
“Danny kept praying.”
—-------
Paula
“I’ve gotta go back to being just a regular kid…”
—-------
One last loose thread. Alone, Me and Ness go grab a bike.
The shopkeep passes over a rental for free, like he takes pity with me for neglecting to ride it when I could earlier in the game. I have Ness hop on, and we head north, to Onett.
Ness, his expression happier than I’ve ever seen him, does a few victory laps around Onett. Glad it still plays the OST. I can almost feel the wind on my face as he goes along.
We ditch the bike around the library, then, like my old horse Socks when he saw our house from far away, we dash towards home. Homeward Bound.
Earth Bound.
My body turns to ice one last time when I see the front door. I’ve done it…
Ness’ mother sings words of praise. She wants to hear the whole tale, but doesn't want to overwhelm me before we’ve had some rest.
The photo man has left us an album to check out, when I’m all rested up.
I would imagine that the vast majority of people on this site have seen this image. There was a time where thousands of people had it pinned in their camera rolls to ship out in the replies of any and every social media post about any and every type of game. It was a veritable rallying cry for a community of people to openly yearn, to mourn and to dream.
To dream of a better future for games.
To mourn an era from long before.
To yearn for a return to that era.
But, no matter how prevalent this post was, it never sat right with me.
There hasn't been a year since, like, at least 2010 where a low budget indie title hasn't been a massive success. This is great! A lot of these game's creators over the years have achieved their success through hard work, sensible compromises and financial risk even. This isn't news to anyone, I hope. The work that goes into these things we love is extremely convoluted and volatile.
This is precisely why I find this image to be so cynical, flippant and reductive. Now, with zero irony, I'm gonna get real granular here and break down a stupid meme piece by piece. I intend to do this purely hypothetically, and will avoid bringing up any game examples. Why would I do this? No idea. Let's begin.
"I want shorter games"
This is probably the least criticizeable part of the statement. However, I will say this. If a game justifies it's length, then I don't see the issue with the creators intent being followed through on. I don't think it makes sense to only want short videogames to be made, unless you think only your specific interests should be catered to.
"with worse graphics"
We immediately dive off a cliff exactly here. What does this mean? No seriously, what does this mean? A lot of people who would spread this image around a few years ago were either retro gamers, or indie devs that made modern games that evoked retro game art design.
It was disheartening to see so many people openly admit here that they see old graphics as "worse" than whatever the AAA scene puts out. There have been some incredible games from so many sources over the past two decades that have less-than-HDRRTXRAYTRACING tier graphical presentations, yet their loudest advocates were simultaneously saying those games looked straight up bad.
"who are paid more to work less"
This on it's face is fine, but if you pay attention to the conversations about games enough, you notice the massive contradiction from the public.
I'm gonna break my rule I set about not being up examples. Team Cherry.
Hollow Knight was, and is, a masterpiece. Quite possibly the greatest of all time in it's genre. Beloved by millions, and organically built itself into a household name.
Team Cherry deserves a thousand handshakes, and a thousand hugs. But that's not really what they got, at not a few years after the release of their first title. If you went into any gaming press conference live chat between the years 2020-2025, the number one thing you would see was 'where's silksong' 'drop silksong' etc. etc. What was a bandwagoney attempt at keeping the spotlight on a highly anticipated new game, became exactly that, a spotlight.
Have you ever been on a stage, under a spotlight? Its harrowing, it makes you feel sometimes like your stomach is going to fall out off your butthole. It sucks. Yet that pressure was all the general audience could muster. Instead of being patient, people kept tightening the pressure day by day. Intention doesn't matter, imaging being a worker at Team Cherry, and seeing those incessant comments.
Following the release of Silksong, there was a great article by Jason Schreier about how the team took 7 years to make the game mostly because of how much fun they were having making it. This owns! But when I saw this, I couldn't help but think about how rabid the fans were while they waited. Frothing at the mouth, screaming out for a thing that was always coming, and was just taking exactly as long as it needed to finish being cooked. All the while, its devs got 'paid more to do less' like so many people feigned like they wanted. The dichotomy there is baffling.
"and I'm NOT KIDDING"
The nail in the coffin. When I would push back against the reductive message of this image back when it was getting spread like wildfire, people would often counter by saying "its not literal."
Maybe I'm a fool, maybe I'm missing some essential part of normal human communication, but when someone says they're not kidding, that usually means the preceding statements shouldn't be taken as jokes or hyperbole. Thats what gets me. If the meme poster actually doesn't mean some of the negative things that are implied with the meme, then how can they assert that when the meme itself says it's not a joke?
I don't think irony is a sin. I don't think saying any odd PS1 game looks like toilet water is a sin (on principal, at least. deep inside I find that spiritually bankrupt.) I don't think advocating for better work conditions for game devs, or anyone for that matter is a sin, obviously.
I'm just trying to say, I think we need to be a little more considerate with how we talk about art. Dumbing down the conversation into snippy image macros rarely serves a positive outcome, and I really hope someday we can level out, and start talking about games in a more productive way, as a whole. I'm saying this to myself too, by the way. I've definitely at times fallen into the same trap, I just hope I'm able to avoid it in the future by thinking a bit deeper before I speak on something or demand something.
