My Top 115 Favorite Video Games (110-106)

Click here for the introduction!

110. Shantae (Game Boy Color)

Compared to its smoother-playing sequels, the original Shantae is a little wonky, but it’s nonetheless an imaginative platforming adventure that is still probably the most unique game in the series. Released late in the handheld’s life, it’s probably one of the prettiest Game Boy Color games out there and is packed with big colorful sprites and charming animations. Structurally, the game is sort of like a cross between Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, Zelda, and Metroid, but Shantae definitely has its own original flare that makes it stand apart. The world and storyline is wacky, involving genies and pirates and roaming zombie caravans, and the whole experience has a distinct sense of humor about everything. I also adore the game’s unique and detailed belly-dancing mechanic and Shantae’s transformation abilities. The original Shantae GBC cartridge is notoriously rare and expensive, but the same experience can be purchased for a mere $5 on the 3DS eShop.

109. Shantae: Risky’s Revenge (DSi)

Risky’s Revenge carries over a lot of what made the original Shantae special and, in a quantifiable sense, improves on that game in just about every way. The combat and platforming mechanics are much more satisfying, Shantae’s dancing has been streamlined (though a bit of the charm has been lost in the process), the world is more enjoyable to explore, the music has been kicked up about ten or twenty notches as Jake Kaufman truly begins to hit his stride, the quirky writing is even stronger (this is actually one of the funniest games I’ve ever played), and the spritework is even more fantastic. The one big drawback of Risky’s Revenge is that its adventure feels a bit cut short and in order to get the full story, you’ll need to play Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse. Still, even though I still find a lot to love in the original Shantae, Risky’s Revenge is much more playable and currently my favorite in this charming and creative series. While it was originally released as a downloadable title on the Nintendo DSi, Risky’s Revenge has since been ported to a bunch of other places, including 3DS, PC, and even smartphones.

108. Gone Home (PC)

I only just played Gone Home last year but it was a strangely nostalgic and personal experience with all of its references to the 90s and a shy, artistic, relatable protagonist with a large imagination and aspirations of being a writer. It also combined a fantastic central voice performance and intelligent environmental design to tell a gripping and human story that hooked me from beginning to end.

107. Super Smash Bros. (N64)

The original Super Smash Bros. was a bizarre and exciting game when it released in 1999. There was even something inherently exciting about the colorful, hand-drawn boxart that immediately captivated me, even though I barely knew who Samus Aran or Fox McCloud were at the time. I did recognize Mario, Kirby, and Pikachu though and I fell in love with this surreal mishmash of Nintendoverses almost as soon as I started playing. It was a blast playing with friends of course, but I also have fond memories of rushing home from school to smash targets with Donkey Kong by myself. The original Smash also has something that the newer games in the series largely lack: atmosphere. From the strangely toned-down main menu music to the meta narrative of a child playing with their toys to the eerie music that plays after defeating the final boss, there’s just something special about this game that I feel was lost as the series went on to become the flashy monstrosity that it is today.

106. Unravel (PC)

While a clever and charming puzzle-platformer on its own merits, what makes Unravel particularly special to me is how much I relate to it. As I wrote here, it feels uncannily like the game was made specifically for me between the beautiful, nearly photorealistic appreciation of nature’s small wonders, the theme of a small creature exploring our gigantic world, and even the fact that yarn has a special nostalgic quality for me because my Nana loved to knit. Heck, the dang thing even released on my birthday. While Unravel’s narrative impact admittedly could have been stronger, it’s still an experience that spoke to my heart and enchanted me thoroughly.

---

Join me next time for #105-101! Hope to see you then!

Unravel Was Made For Me

Released on my birthday, Unravel is some kind of miraculous cosmic gift. Rarely is there a work of art so tailor-made for me, so informed by my own passions and imagination, so uncanny in the way that it keenly reflects the inner workings of my heart.

On paper, Unravel is a physics-based puzzle-platformer that stars Yarny, a tiny sentient creature made out of a single strand of red yarn, but to me it’s an incarnation of my inner childhood. As a child, one of my favorite games to play was “little character explores big world”* (*unofficial name I just came up with). Using some kind of avatar, usually a small plastic toy of some sort (the character was never really important; it could have been anything from a tiny plastic triceratops to Hamm, the piggy bank from Toy Story), I would use my imagination to transform the ordinary world around me into something extraordinary; or perhaps even more accurately, into “levels” informed by my video game-fueled brain. The Christmas tree would turn into a labyrinthine forest, the snow bank into a great mountain, the gravel walkway of my grandfather’s house into...something. It’s one of the prime reasons I loved Playmobil as a kid and making construction sites with it in my living room and backyard. It’s why I love Toy Story, The Borrowers, Pikmin, and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. For as long as I can remember, I have been completely infatuated with the idea of little people inhabiting our big world, and with transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Unravel is all that. Like, that’s what this game is. It’s the epitome of that theme and it’s my childhood imagination turned into a game. It’s me. But there’s more. This is a game made by people who not only understand the beauty of nature, but the beauty of detail. Nature is not just beautiful in the obvious ways, the sunsets and the distant mountain ranges, but in so many other more subtle ways: the puddle nestled in a dirt road, the hidden grottoes full of spiders and critters beneath mossy tree stumps, the way grass grows around a forgotten boot…Unravel puts a magnifying glass on our world to find the wonders that we take for granted lying right under our noses, all around us.

 
It’s not just nature that Unravel and I find beautiful though, but rust and metal as well; even the “ugly” parts of the world are beautiful. I was surprised by the amount of industrial locales in the game, something that I feel the Pikmin series is lacking in. One level has Yarny traversing an old railroad bridge on a cliffside, its fence clamped with locks inscribed with the initials of lovers. Another sees them visiting a snow-covered junkyard filled with overturned rusted hunks of automobiles. This latter area is probably one of the most beautiful environments I’ve ever seen in a game. Wait, no, that’s not accurate…this whole game is one of the most beautiful environments I’ve ever seen in a game. The photorealistic visuals are so lifelike at times that I often had to sit back and marvel at the fact that I was interacting with this world. Yarny themselves only heightens this believability, as watching the lovingly crafted little character’s detailed animations and the way they interact with the world around them makes Unravel often feel less like a video game and more like a window into Yarny’s world. Every single location is also crammed with detail: a hedgehog bumbling through the tall grass in the background, a snake slithering through Yarny’s path, some deer grazing in the distance; the tiniest weed and mushroom is brought to life in loving detail. Then there are the grander moments, like a moose suddenly stomping through a marsh, its comparative immenseness giving the whole proceeding a delightful and magnificent sense of place and scale. Complementing all this is a beautiful dynamic soundtrack that smoothly transitions throughout a level, from slower pieces in more relaxing scenarios to higher tempo ones in tense, frantic moments.

Thematically, atmospherically, and tonally Unravel hits all the right notes, but its level design also speaks to me as well. Unravel is a side-scrolling platformer, one of my favorite genres. Something that many of my favorite platformers share in common is great context, a world that feels like a living, breathing place, that has reasons for its obstacles and goes to painstaking detail to tell a story of sorts through its level design. Unravel’s level design is borderline poetic in this regard. These aren’t levels; they’re real environments that Yarny has to travel through. The “puzzles” in the game are all merely a means to an end and they are all made of components that occur naturally in the world. They merely involve using yarn to manipulate the environment in some way so Yarny can move forward. The way Unravel turns apples bobbing in a puddle, waves rolling beneath a wooden pier, and snow-covered tree branches into level design is utter genius. Nothing feels out of place here. The game’s singular yarn mechanic is novel, creative, and put to excellent use throughout the journey, and puzzles often have a logic to them that requires real-world thinking instead of abstract “video gamey” thinking.

My other favorite video game genre is adventure, and first and foremost that is exactly what Unravel is. It starts out as a peaceful stroll through nature, but Yarny soon finds themselves leaping through tree branches, stumbling down into caves, being chased by guinea pigs, lassoing fish in a miniature boat, and running through a frost-covered field while crows try to carry them off. The game displays not only the beautiful, joyful side of life, but the dark and gruesome side as well when peaceful meadows transition into rainy toxic wastes. The amount of horrific ways Yarny can lose their life really surprised me, from falling into a trash compactor to being mauled by cockroaches. This is another reason why I love the numerous industrial areas in the game, as the construction sites and machines that Yarny is forced to tumble through provide an interesting contrast to the more pristine natural locales. I love industrial themes almost as much as natural ones, and Unravel delivers on both fronts. The ever-present danger and tradeoff between calm moments and harrowing ones makes Unravel a well-rounded journey, an odyssey of sorts, and one that could take place in your backyard.

Does Unravel have flaws? Yes. For one thing, while I love the minimalist approach to narrative and think it was absolutely the right way to go for this game, I do think some narrative context could have been better weaved into the experience. Each level plays out like a separate vignette of sorts and while there might be an overarching narrative I’m just not really seeing here, the narrative seems a bit disconnected and scattered. I like the idea of Yarny encountering the memories of humans throughout the places they travel in and piecing those memories together, but I question whether a more focused, personal story would have worked better than the game seemingly being a story of humanity as a whole. The chapters involving environmental decay by human hands particularly stuck out, not because a man vs. nature theme doesn’t seem appropriate here, but because it just came out of nowhere and doesn’t fit in with the more family and relationship-driven stories that Yarny encounters in the other levels. What I appreciate about Unravel though is that, similar to other minimalist masterpieces like Shadow of the Colossus and Journey, it never falls into pretentious, heavy-handed territory. The focus here is on the experience and the narrative is really whatever you make of it; but even open-ended narrative can have some kind of focus and I think Unravel’s lack of one does hurt the game’s emotional punch and keeps it from striking the same kind of sublime balance that those aforementioned works achieve. In other words, the level designs in Unravel have great context, but the context of Yarny’s journey itself is unclear.

Perhaps that’s ok though, because Unravel captures the spirit of a little character running through our big world so well, and brings its world to life in such stunning detail, that the experience is captivating nonetheless. Unravel is not only a brilliant concept for a game, but a game that was clearly made with love and passion.  Passion for nature. Passion for art. Passion for video games. Passion for every fiber that makes up this experience. At the end of the day, I can’t help but love Unravel. It feels very personal to me. It is just too entwined in what inspires me creatively and imaginarily. It’s simply a lovely, lovely game, and I thank Martin Sahlin and his team from the bottom of my heart for giving me this wonderful birthday gift.

My Favorite Games from E3 2015

I tell myself that E3 is nothing but a week long commercial, a hype generator cooked up by business people in business suits engineered to make me want to give them money and treat them like gods and the games shown like holy artifacts, each trailer a hallowed gift. I tell myself to sit back, to be measured and aware of what E3 really is. But there was real emotion last week, there was genuineness, and there were games no one thought would ever see the light of day, games that look refreshing and imaginative, nostalgic games, and games that look like they are really taking the medium to a new level. Sure, the usual onslaught of cars, guns, and bloody killing sprees were there, and yes, all the corporate shilling was intact, but for me all of that was overshadowed by some of the most exciting video games I’ve seen get the spotlight at E3 in a long time.

These are, in no particularly ranked order, the games that stood out to me the most this past week. Whether they were extensively demoed or simply teased, it doesn’t matter. As long as it was a game that was announced or shown off in some fashion at this year’s E3, it’s applicable for this list. There are other games not present that I’m very interested in, but they didn’t make the cut either because I’ve already known about them for a while and didn’t find out much new, or because these ten games just eclipsed them somehow in term of surprising me or leaving an impact on me this particular year. These are the titles I’ll fondly remember from this E3, and the ones that I’m just really jazzed about right now.

Super Mario Maker (Sep. 11, 2015)

Nintendo had a rough E3 this year. Many people, myself included, were a bit underwhelmed by their Digital Event, people are complaining about Star Fox Zero’s controls, and some misguided individuals are petitioning for the cancellation of Metroid Prime: Federation Force. But if there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that Super Mario Maker just looks swell. Easily Nintendo’s star game for me this E3, Nintendo’s celebration of Super Mario’s 30^th anniversary looks to be delivering on its full potential with robust and easy to use level creation and sharing options in addition to pipe-loads of quirky charm. It hits all the right nostalgic notes, but it’s also an innovative and spectacular idea. On top of all that, it’s kind of like a direct sequel or expansion to Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World all in one (like a new “Lost Levels”, except for all three games, and with not necessarily all brutally tough levels). Super Mario Maker feels to me like an apology for that lazy Super Mario All-Stars port Nintendo released for the series’ 25^th anniversary back in 2010. It had a very strong showing at the 2015 Nintendo World Championships before the show even started, and continued to make me smile all throughout the week. Like seriously, I can’t not smile watching this game.

ReCore (Spring 2016)

In the past, I’ve railed on CG trailers and how their abundance at E3 always annoys me. I’d almost always rather see actual in-game footage instead of just a pre-rendered movie that tells me nothing about how the actual work is going to turn out. This E3, however, I’ve realized that CG trailers have their place, and they can be done well. Right from the get go, I was interested after seeing “from Keiji Inafune and the makers of Metroid Prime” (umm…yes, please!), but even beyond that, the music and art design of ReCore immediately set a tone that pulled me in, evoking the likes of both Kino’s Journey and Metroid itself, while also being something fresh. The trailer for ReCore also does a great job of telling a succinct little story that effectively gives me an idea of how the game’s central mechanic is going to work, and the reveal of the title at the end drives this “core” concept home (sorry, I had to). ReCore, you have my attention.

Cuphead (1936 plus eighty years)

Do I even need to say anything? I think Cuphead’s footage speaks for itself. Shown for all of one second during an indie montage at Microsoft’s conference last year, it was the kind of thing that made me lean forward and say, “Hey, wait! Wait! What was THAT?” The description for the E3 2015 trailer on YouTube reads “Inspired by 1930s cartoons, the visuals are hand drawn and inked and the music is all original jazz recordings”…now that is how you sell me a video game. I love visually-creative platformers as a general rule, but Cuphead really stands out to me because of just how utterly seamless it looks. There is nothing about Cuphead’s presentation that gives away its status as a video game; it’s just a playable cartoon.

Beyond Eyes (Summer 2015)

I love seeing small indie developers with hugely creative ideas get the spotlight at E3, and this trend has become more and more prominent in the past couple of years. One of the most unique and special things about video games, and one of the many aspects of them still brimming with potential, is their ability to let us inhabit the role of anyone or anything, to let us walk in the shoes of someone or something else. The potential here to explore different life experiences other than our own and build empathy is enormous. In Beyond Eyes, the player steps into the shoes of a young bling girl looking for her lost cat. As she moves through her world using her other senses, the landscape and objects within it materialize around her, like watercolor paint expanding across a dry canvas. In one scenario, she might hear some rushing water and think it’s a fountain, only to get closer and realize that it’s actually a sewage pipe. Not only does the game’s art look beautiful and the concept show a lot of promise and originality, but this game is just one example of the power and potential of video games as a unique artistic medium, something that I really like to see at E3 in-between all the gun scopes and improved car textures.

Unravel (TBA)

…Speaking of which. Partway into the EA press conference, of all places, out onto the stage comes a shy, visibly nervous man with a tattooed hand and small doll made out of red yarn in his shaking hands. He goes on to explain that he got the idea for his game, called Unravel, about a small creature named Yarny that traverses beautiful environments inspired by Northern Scandinavia and leads a thread that connects all of us together, or something poetic and beautiful like that, when on a camping trip with his family. Unravel is a game aimed directly at my soul and my sensibilities. Saying in an interview that he doesn’t believe in “heavy-handed storytelling”, the game’s creative director, Martin Sahlin (the aforementioned tattooed man) says that he believes in "filling the world with interesting things, with clues, with details” that the player can discover on their own, adding that it's also fine if they don't because "it's more about the atmosphere and the feeling of the whole thing". So Unravel takes what I love about the Pikmin series (a small character running around huge photo-realistic environments) and presents a puzzle-platformer with reason and context for its level design, all wrapped up in a minimalist presentation? I think Martin Sahlin might be my soulmate.

Yoshi’s Woolly World (Oct. 16, 2015)

The yarn genre has really been taking off recently, hasn’t it? I love colorful Nintendo platformers, so naturally I anticipate playing and enjoying Yoshi’s Woolly World. But what sets this spiritual successor to Kirby’s Epic Yarn (which is one of my favorite platformers from the last console generation) apart from the likes of something like New Super Mario Bros. is just how much handcrafted effort seems to be being put into this game. Obviously, the game’s artistic design is a huge draw, with everything being crafted out of wool, fabric, and giant knitting needles; it truly looks like something I can reach out and touch and feel. But I just love that the developers actually crafted real-life Yarn Yoshis during the game’s development. In addition, the composer for the game, who is trying to have a different song for every level, actually took up guitar lessons to make sure the soundtrack was up to par. I’m really looking forward to finally playing this during the cool autumn months later this year.

Horizon: Zero Dawn (2016)

One thing that made this year’s E3 stand out to me was a theme of change, of growth, of this medium and this industry finally beginning to take the first steps of reaching maturity. Sure, there was the usual onslaught of sense-assaulting cartoonish violence, cheers for particularly brutal digital decapitations, and all the familiar faces and concepts present, but there was also creative-looking new worlds and ideas, more of a focus on narrative and how games can evoke emotion. The words “emotional narrative” were uttered onstage at Sony’s press conference, as opposed to another bland, self-defeating joke about “f*cking blood and guts! Video games, am I right?”. In addition, there was a very notable effort in making games and the gaming scene more diverse, to reflect a growing and diverse audience. There were more female presenters on stage and a surprisingly ample amount of new games featuring female protagonists or at least a woman in a strong central role.

Then there was Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game starring a woman that takes place in a world unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The game’s extensive and fantastic trailer/demo begins with a well-acted narration over beautiful panoramic landscape shots that tells the story of a modern civilization like our own falling and eventually being reclaimed by natural forces. We then see hunter-gatherer tribes emerge in a “post-historic” world that tells tales of the “old ones” that went extinct. We’ve seen this tale before, but it’s told so well through visuals, narration, and some truly gorgeous music that I was completely immersed and already on board with this game. Then the twist came: “…for this world was never ours…we’ve always shared it…”, the female narrator suddenly says as we see otherworldly mechanical animals enter the scene, first in the form of a few small scavengers, and then followed by massive robotic dinosaurs with disks for heads that come stomping across a stunning, sunlit prairie, like some kind of cyberpunk Jurassic Park. It’s wonderful, and the juxtaposition of the natural elements and the unnatural, metallic creatures makes for an immediately intriguing and fresh-looking world. That would have been enough to get my interest, but then the trailer seamlessly transitions into a lengthy gameplay portion where the familiar narrator, now fully revealed as our player character, starts creeping through wonderfully-rendered plants as she hunts mechanical deer in order to harvest some kind of green canister attached to their backs. Before reaching her prey, she kills a smaller beast, after which she subverts every law of E3 by expressing remorse and actually apologizing to the life she’s taken. It all culminates in a thrilling Shadow of the Colossus-esque battle with a robotic T-Rex thing. In a word: it’s breathtaking, a genuine surprise, and I can’t wait to see more (ok, more than a word).

…did I say Shadow of the Colossus?

The Last Guardian (2016)

It’s real, and Sony opened their show with gameplay of it.

I know I said I wasn’t putting these games in any significant order, but I obviously saved these last three for a reason. After years of rumors, cancelation scares, and many dashed hopes, The Last Guardian’s long-awaited, often doubted, and always hoped for return kicked off an hour of dreams. I said this E3 was special for showing signs that this troubled and stagnant industry is changing, but it was equally as special for how it spoke to a generation. How it resurrected old legends and made me cover my mouth in stunned disbelief. I just don’t even really need to say it, do I? The Last Guardian. It’s one of those games, those ones I sigh about at the end of every E3 press conference cycle because once again it didn’t show up. But this time it did.

The spiritual successor to a work of interactive art that defined an era of video games for me and remains one of my most cherished interactive experiences, The Last Guardian also just looks like an incredibly touching and ambitious game, and it’s central “mechanic” revolving around the bond of a young boy and his giant gryphon-cat-bird friend has me enchanted all over again. Sure, there have been many games since The Last Guardian was first unveiled back in 2009 that have aimed to capitalize on the emotional potential of interactive art, but The Last Guardian still excites me due to its promising concept and its masterful pedigree. It also just makes me tear up every time I see it (why does Trico have to look so much like my own dog?). I don’t even know if I’ll be able to handle this game when it hopefully, oh please hopefully, releases next year.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (TBA)

So they opened with The Last Guardian? I mean, what could they possibly have if they…Oh. Ooooooh. Even though it was set up by Adam Boyes beforehand, Final Fantasy VII fans have learned better than to trust a smug presenter promising the world. Even as the trailer went on and a recognizable Midgar began to be more and more slowly unveiled, with talk of “reunions” and “promises” accompanying the proceedings, I still wasn’t convinced. At first I thought it was a proper, full-fledged sequel to FFVII, then perhaps another movie. Even at the end of the trailer, at first only a logo appeared with no title. Well, in order to dissuade any confusion, to make things perfectly, perfectly clear, a single word appeared with booming fanfare afterword:

“Remake”

Now this is how you use a CG trailer. And what a fantastic trailer it is. Every word spoken, every shot, just designed to evoke specific emotions in those watching, just toying with all the fans hoping and anticipating. Now, I like Final Fantasy VII a lot, and there’s plenty of things that I admire about it, but I’ll admit that I don’t have as emotional a connection to it as many others, due to me not playing it when it was in its prime. I still remember how huge it was at that time though, and still have a lot of nostalgia for finally playing through it myself one summer years ago (though, I must shamefully confess, I never finished it, stopping just before the crater and Sephiroth; I hope to go back and run through the whole thing again sometime, this time to completion). I realize how massive the FFVII remake’s announcement is, and I think the way it was announced and the trailer itself is all brilliant, but it was almost immediately followed by an announcement that was my personal moment to start shouting things at my computer screen…

Shenmue III (When it’s ready)

Even as I write this, as I continue to look at the kickstarter (and yes, I backed it, of course I did) and the title: “Shenmue III”, I still can’t quite believe it, and I laugh to myself. Let me back up. I received a Dreamcast on Christmas day of 1999, right after it launched, and it blew my mind. Way ahead of their time, the games for that console delivered experiences I’d never dreamed of (heh…) in video games before. Sonic Adventure’s clean visuals and sense of speed made my jaw drop, Jet Grind Radio’s pioneering cel-shaded visuals and unique style were unlike anything I’d ever seen, and then there was a little game called Shenmue that made me realize the potential of video games. Never before had a game felt so real to me, had so much to interact with, and transported me to a place like the way Shenmue did. At the time, its detailed, fully interactable world, voice-acting (now notorious), and potent story-telling fully transported me, and not only cultivated my love of eastern culture, but cemented my love of video games.

I could go on. But suffice it to say, when Shenmue II was released in the west as an Xbox (at the time I only had a GameCube) exclusive, I was pretty bummed. I never played it, but I always, always wanted to. Well, now it’s finally time to get on ebay and pick up an original Xbox, I guess.

What made the announcement of Shenmue III (or to be more exact, its kickstarter) all the more potent was not only just how long it’s been since the release of Shenmue II (fourteen years), but because the continuation of Shenmue has long been nothing but a dream: the series’ continuation has become a joke, and has always been something I never thought would happen. But in front of a bewildered audience still recovering from Final Fantasy VII’s return, a shower of flower petals and Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki showed me that nothing is impossible, and that the legacy of Shenmue lives on, long after those enchanting Dreamcast days met with an all too abrupt end.  

Bonus! GameTrailers’ Live Stream

While not in fact a video game, I had to mention the always entertaining and somewhat revolutionary live stream that GameTrailers put on this year. Filled with genuine human moments and giving off the vibe of a bunch of friends hanging out and talking about E3, GameTrailers’ stream was the cure for the stiff, PR-fueled interviews and more “professional” streams that litter the internet during E3. Their stream was a constant highlight throughout the week for me, as I would dip in to see what they were up to, only to see Brandon Jones’ hilarious impersonations of his colleagues, Michael Huber crying about Shenmue, and more serious conversations about the potential of video games. The GT crew feels like a family and I just loved seeing their shenanigans all throughout the week. Also, their reactions to Sony’s “Triforce of Dreams” are simply the best thing on the internet.

Honorable Mentions: Dishonored 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, No Man’s Sky, Dreams, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Star Fox Zero, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, Earthbound Beginnings, The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, Fire Emblem Fates, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, FAST Racing Neo, Typoman, Kingdom Hearts III, Below, Edge of Nowhere, Soma…a lot of great and interesting games this year.

Some disappointments from Nintendo aside (that were, honestly, tempered by some great times with the still awesome Treehouse Live and some definitely fantastic-looking games on display; also puppets and Miyamoto visiting shrines and Mario courses on graph paper), this was a great E3. A legendary E3 even. And even though I tell myself it’s just a big, loud, silly, week-long corporate magic trick, hell if it isn’t a lot of fun, and hell if I’m not just excited for video games right now.