arcade games
The Weekly: 10/27/25
It is good of the developer to let us imagine what “catlike reflexes” would really be like.
David Cabrera
video games
The Weekly 10/13/25: Virtua Fighter at TGS, Ridge Racer On Switch 2 - Friends, it's 1994 again
This has actually been nearly in the can from a while ago, but I took an actual nice long break– the real kind, where you don't look at anything, even if you finally got a good idea for a Kawaiikochans comic– last week. Also, the thing I came
anime
Spoiler Space: Turkey’s opening-credits shock had me speculating all season. Now that it’s over, I have an answer
(One of the things I really like about Turkey! is the way it doesn’t shy away from the “nasty, brutish and short” of ancient life, even though it’s at heart a “cute girls have fun” anime.)
The Weekly: Sept. 18th, 2025
This morning I watched Japan Railway Journal and thought about the impermanence of our social order. The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more,
Sonic Racing Crossworlds beta is Mario Kart 8, not World, but for arcade sickos
It’s messed up that just a couple of newsletters ago I was tricked into referring to Mario Kart 8 as “perfect”, because I spent hours this past weekend playing an arcade racer that seems set on nitpicking Mario Kart 8 (not World!) and improving on its all of its
video games
The Weekly, Sep. 10, 2025
I’m going to try something new today. I find I don’t always get around to talking about the stuff that I enjoy— which would be fine, except at this newsletter it is kind of my job— without writing a very long piece that usually spends a lot of
In Animal Kaiser, the Circle of Life is when a polar bear shoulder-checks a lion directly through a mountain
I spent a bit of Labor Day over at the Brooklyn Bandai-Namco showroom. When I first visited, I wrote it off as a tourist trap I didn’t really need to visit again: Bandai toys and model kits were on sale for market prices, but gashapon toys and arcade games
mahjong
Bonus: Tournament Report - Riichi Nomi Open 2025 but mostly it's about how 1500 point honba are a stupid rule
"I'm not worried about winning stuff from two opposing business rivals. That just means I'm decorated."
A Virtua Fighter nerd explains the New Virtua Fighter EVO teaser at length
After months of buildup, the Virtua Fighter staff came up on stage at Evo this weekend, dropped about a minute of actual gameplay footage, updated us on continued support for VF5 Revo, and went on their way. This is a clever way of handling things; we’ve started to expect
The thing where you watch a bunch of first anime episodes and talk about them - Summer 2025
I haven’t done one of these in a long time, and I don’t want to commit myself to it on a regular basis because it often takes time I could be talking about more interesting stuff— like actual finished series which I could give a proper review to—
What, specifically, looks so bad about the new Fist of the North Star TV series?
I had been quietly excited about the upcoming TV series revival of one of my all-time favorites, the post-apocalyptic kung-fu melodrama Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken). It’s certainly been long enough— the original Toei TV series is over 40 years old!— and with a high-end production
Mario Kart World is new and messy. That's okay and, ultimately, it's necessary
Nobody wants to have to follow up perfection, and Mario Kart 8 nailed it. Ten years and two consoles ago, the game refined the arcade kart racer into the very best version of itself. Rather than bothering with a sequel, Nintendo simply kept adding content to it until it was