We made it, folks. The end of 2023 is upon us. We have a new year upon us, a year that ideally will be full of new opportunities and new possibilities. A year where we can learn new things about ourselves and become better versions of ourselves.
Well, it's also an election year, so any hesitation or mounting dread is definitely understandable.
But as I think what may come next year, I realized a while back that a couple of constants from the past several years will no longer be there. The slate will be much cleaner than it has been in years past without these known quantities coming at some point.
In terms of shows I've followed, both Hilda and The Owl House ended this year to varying results (for me). I went on a while ago about how the former spurred me to watch more animation to see what I've been missing, which has mostly worked out. The latter is one of several shows I've warmed up with and have come to really appreciate from the past couple years.
We might possibly be coming down to the end of The Ghost and Molly McGee, which is another one I've come to really enjoy. Fans will surely keep these alive through fan art and writings, but their absence will be noted.
There was just one movie I was really following since we got the first snippets from years back, being my favorite of the year (shocking no one who knows me) The Super Mario Bros. Movie. You'd think they would have immediately told us about making another one but there is reportedly nothing yet.
Then there was also Nimona, a movie whose previous cancellation made everyone sad but then everyone happy when it turned out to be probably the comeback story of the year alongside Elemental (for me, anyway). I've really fallen off movie watching the past few years, so maybe I can get that back on track next year.
The biggest one: video games! The Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass is over. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom dropped nearly four years after it was first announced. Pikmin 4 dropped after years of wondering whether it actually exists. We got the first 2D Mario in over a decade.
The only MIA from the past six or so years is Metroid Prime 4, which we're all assuming now is being saved for the next system. Aside from a couple of remasters and smaller scale games, it really feels like we're coming up on the end of the Switch's life. That's sure to be another bittersweet day where I'll probably spew a few paragraphs.
There are still several constants. My main show Big City Greens is still chugging along with most of its fourth season yet to air. I've gotten into recent fare like Kiff, Hamster & Gretel, Hailey's On It!, and have shows like the other half of Invincible and the much anticipated season two of Arcane on tap.
I'm sure to play all those Switch games like the remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Princess Peach: Showtime!. And sure, some of the other new things could provide some good times. I guess having become a fan of the series or something this year means I'll check out Persona 3 Reload. Maybe keeping some kind of blind eye to news feeds and being surprised by some new stuff is not a bad way to do things.
But maybe the biggest constant of all will be the company I keep. Sharing my experience with Persona 5 Royal with someone was perhaps the most exciting thing I did all year. I've begun to participate a bit more in some areas because maybe it could pay off with new connections. Then while nothing is set yet, I'd like to think it's a strong possibility that going to visit someone may be in the cards...
I've shared a bit of myself every day since July with my daily reports, and I'm happy to say those will not be going anywhere. It's interesting to look back at them months later and see what I was doing and wonder how I've changed since then. Another year of doing those is sure to provide more enriching opportunities and guide me with anything I want to do.
Thank you all for reading this year. Here's to 2024!
Well I did say I would return to the subject of shows I’ve watched ending since Mario Kart 8 dropped back in 2014, so this is the continuation of that dropped point.
I have watched television animation for as long as I have conscious memories. I grew up with it. I define the stretches of my life based on the big show I watched during each of them: Rugrats, Hey Arnold, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom, The Mighty B!, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe. I was mostly a Nickelodeon kid as you can see, because that was largely the only channel we had around here when I was growing up.
I’ve dabbled in many other shows that aired at the same time as these, but there was always the one I focused on. But each of these shows either ended, whether by its own accord or not, or frankly went to pot and I jumped ship. It was the time when things were stewing in the latter show in 2018 when I decided maybe I’d have my fun elsewhere.
There were several months when I didn’t latch onto any show out of lack of interest, I might say. I watched some but I wouldn’t say I engaged with them.
That all changed in October 2018, when, at the suggestion of someone I used to know along with a forum I frequented, I checked out Hilda on Netflix. I’d never read the comic it was based on, nor did I have much experience with a show designed for streaming.
But despite all that, I loved it. It felt like a rejuvenation into a medium I’d followed since youth. It opened my eyes to the potential of a series made for an online service.
Perhaps as a way to fill in a void left by season one ending, I decided to see what else I’d missed in my admittedly narrow-minded viewing. This led to my current favorite (remaining) show, Big City Greens.
My slate grew to those two. And then there was She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Carmen Sandiego, Amphibia, Victor and Valentino, Infinity Train, It’s Pony, The Owl House, Glitch Techs, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, The Midnight Gospel, Kid Cosmic, Centaurworld, City of Ghosts, Invincible, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Inside Job, Arcane, Tear Along the Dotted Line, Maya and the Three, Dead End: Paranormal Park, Hamster and Gretel, Bee and Puppycat, Pantheon, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Kiff, Hailey’s On It!, and a couple others I’ve checked out some clips of.
Granted, I like some of these shows more than others. I wouldn’t call any of these perfect because with enough time I can find things in each of them that irk me. But I certainly feel I have a stronger awareness of shows that have aired in the past five years than I have for the rest of my life. Gaining a lot more online awareness probably also helps in that regard. I feel like I’m learning more about myself as an artistic person and writer by thinking about these and wanting to write about them.
With the end of Hilda, I feel it also marks the end of an era. Nearly every show I mentioned above has ended, whether by its own terms or not. Some have questionable conclusions, some were cut short, and a handful are ongoing or even just begun. But 2024 will mark the first year in some time where the big show that got me to get further into animation watching will not be on the horizon.
Now, I don’t think Hilda is going away forever. We’ve likely all seen Luke Pearson is already writing a prequel comic. There are more supplemental and side books being released faster than I can keep track of. Most of the shows I mentioned that have ended are still with us in a bevy of ways. With some networks looking for the next big hit they feel content to keep on reminding people about the stuff they already love to keep them engaged. For instance, for all their corporate shenanigans, Disney is doing a good job at keeping people aware of Amphibia.
I think the process of shows going away has been made easier by maintaining a broader range of shows to watch. Even with Hilda finished, I have the remaining episodes of Big City Greens along with the shows that just premiered and have more episodes on the way. Then there are all the upcoming shows that could grab my attention in the ways many of the previously mentioned have.
It does feel bittersweet, knowing we’ve all watched this show and came together for it and may be left wondering where we go now. I regret not engaging with you all more in the past, but who’s to say that can’t change now? At the end of the day, a show like this and many others extend far beyond what’s on the screen.
We’re all here to celebrate a show that we enjoy and that inspires us to create, to tell stories, to meet new people, to reflect on who we are and where we can take ourselves. Looking back, I have mixed feelings on the last season of Danny Phantom, but it was the first show where I talked with folks online about it and looked at fanart and read stories, and it is in this way that I met some of my oldest friends. Some of the most genuine, wonderful people I’ve known for over 15 years. That’s the beauty of an artistic creation like this or any other show.
Looking at the upcoming slate of shows and seeing just a bunch of stuff I don’t recognize does add to the hesitation. It’s easy to think that nothing new could live up and this empty feeling will persist. The strongest sense of “emptiness” I felt recently was when Amphibia ended, but this one is also up there because of what its end brings with it. But looking ahead, who’s to say we won’t all find a show that will enrapture our senses and inspire us the way our past favorites did?
I certainly didn’t think I could move on from Danny Phantom or Gravity Falls or Amphibia at those moments. But with some time, I’ve been able to keep moving forward and find new things that inspired me in all new ways. It may take time, but I think many of us will do the same here.
I’m sure I’ll keep reading the stories, and seeing the fanart, and thinking of my own ideas of stuff to share. To paraphrase Star Trek II, it’s not really gone so long as we remember it.
A lot can change in a decade, can’t it? I’m certainly not the same person I was ten years ago.
For as long as I have conscious memories, the Mario Kart series has been a part of my life. In many ways, I grew up with it. I was a bit young to fully appreciate Super Mario Kart at the time but I’ve come to like it as the first entry. Mario Kart 64 is a game I can recall asking for and receiving. Mario Kart: Super Circuit was one of my must-have games for the Game Boy Advance. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! provided hours of chaotic laughs with my siblings. Mario Kart DS was another big reason I wanted a DS. Mario Kart Wii was one of the games that dominated my life in 2008. Mario Kart 7 allowed me to play online with a distant friend for the first time and is associated with a lot of happy memories.
Then came Mario Kart 8 in 2014. It dropped after a bumpy first half of the year for me. A bevy of personal crises mounted that resulted in me staying home for the first quarter of the year. It led to me having to make some choices that I’m still paying for a decade on and is the middle of a part of my life that I reflect on a lot because it’s led me to this point.
The game dropped and I had a lot of fun with it. It carried me through that summer and into the fall. Then came word that it would be getting what now feels like a modest number of extra tracks and characters. It brought the total up to 48 tracks, a mix of new favorites and old picks with a fresh coat of paint.
Then it looked like that was it for the game. I had my fun and was probably about to move on. This was the time when I even felt like I began to drift away from games as whole for a bit, looking for something new and engaging to latch onto. But then I would be brought back to games as a whole when the last part of 2016 went to total pot. All the bad things that mounted led me to seek out comforting stuff, and video games were the big thing to bring that.
It was around this time that we learned about the Nintendo Switch, and one of the games shown in the announcement video I watched on a loop was a new version of Mario Kart 8. It was a chance to breathe new life into it. The January unveiling of the system rolled around and we were graced with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
At launch, it felt like a modest revamp. There was a new battle mode, several new characters, but not much else beyond that. Some people probably felt it underdelivered on what a rerelease could do. While I felt I had played my whole time out on the Wii U game, I inexplicably felt this one become a must-play as well. It would become the second game I’d get when I finally got my system.
It felt like a repeat of my feelings of the base game. I liked it a lot and I played it a lot over the following years. The portable nature of the Switch along with my enjoyment quickly made it my most played game in the series. I had found a new appreciation for it over the following years.
But alas, it looked like its time had run its course again. 2019 rolled around and we got Mario Kart Tour on mobile. This is certainly the most hot-and-cold I’ve been on any game in this series because while I did like the tracks and all the twists on characters and items, actually playing the game often got more annoying and grating than anything.
But I’ll give it this: when I picked it back up in 2020, it became one of the constant sources of entertainment for me in a very not fun year. I think there was a lot of talk to accept that this was all the new Mario Kart we would be getting until the next system so to savor it. But as the months went by I found myself falling off it more than once.
The game removed the gacha features just a year or so ago which should have made things more tolerable, but as of this writing, I dropped the game about a month ago and have not looked back. Judging by how it’s also stopped getting new stuff, it’s probably looking to go the way of Miitomo, Dragalia Lost, and Dr. Mario World.
So that could have been it. We’d be left with just the mobile game for several more years. I might have been fine going back to the Switch game from time to time on its own but perhaps wondering when the next one would actually happen.
Then February 2022 rolls around. It was certainly one of the most colorful years of my life. Three months removed from my father having heart surgery and looking for more reasons to look forward and be excited about upcoming things.
I’m watching the Nintendo Direct that gave us a new Fire Emblem Warriors, a new Mario Strikers, a new Xenoblade, but looking back it’s become clear what my highlight was.
The (inhale) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass for the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe game. Got to write the full title out in these sometimes!
This was perhaps what many people felt the base Deluxe version should have been. Another 48 tracks to bring the total to 96. Less than six months removed from the end of the Smash Bros. speculation, a new type of speculation roared to life. What tracks were worthy of making the cut?
The first wave dropped in March 2022. Seeing the Tour tracks brought over to a game I could tolerate playing for more than five minutes was exciting, and every new arrangement brought the happy feelings every time. A game I had liked a lot was getting a new lease on life, which felt surreal.
Given they dropped the tracks in batches of eight, this is a cycle that would repeat six times, in August 2022, December 22, February 2023, July 2023, and now November 2023. From the release of the Wii U game to the end of the course pass, we are looking at just shy of a decade.
This has led to people on Twix posing a question: how have you changed since the original release? I’m lacking on photos of myself from the time, but I can say this much:
In 2014, I was an undergraduate English student heading into the final year of my degree.
I graduated in 2015, and would begin an admittedly aimless point in my life where I was wondering what I would do with myself. I worked briefly for a local paper but would then search an opportunity would await elsewhere.
In 2016 I began a master’s program and finished that in 2018. It led to me getting a job with a different local paper that kickstarted the writing (sort of) career I have now and has led to me becoming a four-time award winning news writer for the New Mexico Press Association.
I have been at my current position as an information officer for the local education department for just over three years now.
We had that whole global pandemic thing in 2020 that brought an unprecedented amount of anxiety and worry to my life. And I am confident I actually had COVID last November and two members of my immediate family did have COVID at one point.
I made it through that, er, colorful administration from 2016 to 2020 and am making it through the sort-of less colorful administration to now.
The relationship I was in in 2014 did peter out by 2016 (for good reason, looking back) but I’ve remained on amicable terms with this person. It was the decline of this relationship and a number of other factors since to think that perhaps I’m not interested in that stuff and so I now identify as aroace.
The biggest personal downfall for me did come in 2022, when my years of toxic treatment and behaviors were brought right to my face. It came with a lot of introspection and wondering how I can correct myself going forward. It’s not an instant process, but it’s one I look to keep doing every day.
So yes, a lot of challenges have sprung up. Some large and some small that I didn’t mention, and a number of them in the past two years. But through all of that, the thought of new tracks to play remained a constant reminder of the good times I’d had with the various Mario Kart games that have popped up in the past several years.
With all this in mind, the game itself almost feels like an afterthought. But with things like 200cc, different settings for items, and dozens of combinations to try out, it’s the most packed game we’ve received. The sense of speed and handling have kept me coming back for small bursts for years now, which grew to marathon sessions as we got the tracks in the pass.
Is it perfect? No. Perhaps the settings are not quite deep enough for some people. While most of the tracks are great, there are a handful of duds (side-eyes Koopa Cape). Maybe some single-player stuff besides the grand prix and VS Races could have been done. Then maybe the item balance can be off for some folks.
But it hasn’t taken a lot of thought to conclude that not only is this my favorite game in the series, my favorite racing game, and one of my favorite games on the Switch, it’s one of my absolute favorites of all-time. I concoct a list of the most important, influential titles in my life, it’s going on there along the likes of Super Mario Bros. 3, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Fire Emblem Awakening, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Metroid Prime, Pikmin, Star Fox 64, Fallout: New Vegas, Stardew Valley, the OG Resident Evil 4, Celeste, Paper Mario, Punch-Out!! Wii, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Ring Fit Adventure, Persona 5 Royal, Resident Evil VII, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and a bunch of others. But this is some elite company to be among.
In all, a lot of stuff happening lately really does make this part of my life I’m recalling feel like the end of an era. All this realignment stuff in college sports means teams will have new conference opponents. A bunch of shows I’ve watched the past several years are ending or have ended (more on that later…). But much like how I felt a mix of emotions when a show I loved ended last year, I know at some point I’m bound to move on and maybe find something new that I could possibly enjoy just as much.
We’re bound to get another Mario Kart game someday, just as we’re bound to get another Smash Bros. someday. But just as I feel with Smash Bros., I have no idea how they’re going to move on and top what came before them and I don’t envy who has to try. Until that day comes, I’m sure I’ll keep this one in my rotation and the soundtrack on a loop.
Here’s to you, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Thanks for all the fun.
