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 time in the making. Like, I haven’t even written up my Otakon experience, and I don’t know if I will, this far out from it? I post final impressions of games and anime when I can make them, but I don’t have a lot of first impressions.

So what I want to do is try something I’m going to call “The Weekly” (not guaranteed weekly), kind of an in-progress report on what I’m up to lately. The Weekly will be a free post no matter what, which might result in some of the longer-form pieces getting bumped into pay country. Anyway, without further ado…

The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. I spent perfectly good money on children's game cards that I'll likely never get to use again for YOU. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more, I'd love to see you become a regular or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get exclusive posts. Thanks for reading the pitch and hope to see you subscribe!

Mahjong ladder report

This is something I’ll probably continue to check in with. I consider myself pretty serious about competitive riichi, probably more than I ever bothered to get in fighting games. If I had more disposable cash I’d be touring the country doing tournaments (hey, uh, fifty more of you subscribe today!!) But don’t expect my online ranked progress to be swift: my last rank-up took a year.

I am presently on 8th dan (in 4-player and 3-player; 4p is my main pursuit, though) over at Riichi City, where I exclusively play at the highest level “Galaxy” table. I’ve been in the top 500 players on the server and I’m ultimately shooting for 9th dan, 10th dan, and finally Legend status. I try to play two full East-South matches (hanchan) in a day.

But lately, I’m on a real downturn. I was pretty ready to make 9th dan on Riichi City— I got within two wins, and it’s just been a long, slow tumble down. In a game like mahjong, you will weather these kinds of losing streaks no matter how well you play: it’s just a matter of odds. The question is always “was it luck?” or “was it you?”, and the answer can be either or both.

Losing streaks are always hard. You never ask yourself if you “deserved it” when you win some completely blessed bullshit first-place game, but you’re constantly trying to judge that when you lose in fourth place playing your best. Did I slip? Did the stress make me play worse? And, before you say it, not reflecting on your play at all is how a player stays weak.

You go over the logs, you pore it over move-by-move with the machine learning model of your choice, and you have to ask yourself, with total honesty but crucially, without the benefit of foresight, whether you made the right move for the situation. The answer might be ever-changing, but most often it does exist.

If you go too easy on yourself, you let bad habits slip by and continue, and if you’re too hard on yourself, you start to play scared, which is even worse. The ranked ladder player has to walk a long and patient middle path to improvement. The ladder is a tool to guide you towards examining and bettering your own game. It’s not the goal in and of itself, I remind myself, so it's pointless to get too frustrated by it. But you will. No game I've ever played is as good at frustrating people as mahjong is. Dealing with that is part of winning.

Training is tough, but the rewards are self-evident. I mentioned it took me a year or so to get from 7th dan to 8th dan. Well, the first time I got to 8th dan I lost it immediately. I was sad, but I fought on… and I made it back up to 8th dan in just a couple of weeks. Improvement is real. You won’t see it until you see it.

Started on Super Robot Wars Y

This was a tough purchase, as you’re basically buying two full retail-price video games. It breaks down like this: the game is $60. The “DLC1 pack”, most of which will not be playable for some time, but just enough of which is playable in-game already, is $30. The “Premium Sound Pack” to hear the original anime theme songs (No way I’m playing without this) is $30: these are some expensive royalties. There is no option to just buy the game and premium sound pack: you have to buy everything all together for right now. Tax and all, I paid $130. And as is standard with the series, you’re punished for not pre-ordering: once again series regular Cybaster is locked behind pre-order exclusivity.

So I ate it, as I always do, and I’m having a great time. I’m really happy to note that SRWY fixes the biggest problem of the recent SRW series including especially 30, which was extreme pushover difficulty. 30 was a loaded toybox, but one with players characters so powerful there was effectively no longer a game to play. The boredom of being One Punch Man set in, that desperation for a real fight.

I dropped SRW30 after 100 hours, as soon as credits rolled (which is not the end of the story at all!), and I didn't want to play any further. It felt like being force-fed delicious hamburgers for so long that they stopped tasting like anything.

Pick Expert mode on SRWY— you don’t have to, mind— and this game will send you back to the 90s. I say that as praise: fighting with lower stats against tougher enemies brings out the differences in the units you command, their “types” finally come through again. Your light Gundam-type robots have strong evasion and aiming, but thin skin: you need to keep them on the outskirts of the fight because just two or three lucky hits will take them down. On the other hand, your heavy Mazinger-type robots are ready for a brawl, but they can’t tank indefinitely, and you can expect them to miss their punches pretty often.

Against strong foes, actual tactics start to become necessary, versus SRW30 in which one unit would easily wipe the floor with entire maps. All the old elements that had become vestigial and useless over the years— like repair and support units— start to mean something here. It’s not brutally efficient or specifically trying to kill you like Winkysoft’s SRW, but it’s challenging and engaging like the best Playstation-era SRWs. Should you be old enough to recall those.

The Dynazenon kids are also a particularly great foil for traditional robot anime heroes. I’m even more glad this game picked a lot of really old retro heroes like Combattler and Reideen because it’s such a blast to see these very modern 2020’s teens interact with 1970’s teen characters who’ve could seriously be their grandpas. And have had their arms blown off by their sworn rival, who they still pine after in a way they cannot process.

GG Strive and Lucy

Since Virtua Fighter 5 REVO came out in December, that's been the only fighting game I really play anymore. So I am breaking that up by coming back to Guilty Gear Strive on the new update with the new character, Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

GGST has gone through just about every imaginable permutation of character type, so it’s difficult for it to give us anything that feels genuinely new anymore even as it continues to pile onto its massive roster. (See also Granblue Versus, a game that now offers players at least 10 different ways to play Ryu.) So Lucy does not exactly feel new, but her one trick is a lot of fun. Taking the best and most obvious concept you could have for this guest character, Lucy can hack her opponent’s brain.

When I started playing the character this move seemed like a novelty, but it’s really her big selling point. If you wanted the kind of mid-range pressure that Lucy offers with her monowire whip, Ky’s right there, and he does it better. The real appeal of this character is creating setups that debuff the opponent and then moving in for the kill.

You can use the hack move safely after knockdowns or during a combo, like you’d normally use a Roman Cancel. If I’m mid-combo, I can choose to either deal extra damage during the combo or instead heal Lucy (for kind of piddly amounts in this high-damage game). If I would rather set up the opponent for when they get back up, I can use hacks that force a counter attack on the next hit— opening up some really cheap attack sequences like full combos off an instant overhead or a low kick— or crank the opponent’s guard meter, or drain their Tension.

This makes Lucy a momentum-driven attacker who hits once and ramps up for a second, more oppressive offensive run. The drawback is you may never make that second approach, and opponents obviously go hard on the defensive once you hack them and they’re seeing all kinds of symbols over their heads. But you know how to work with that, right?

Meanwhile, the ranked mode is a welcome change and has made playing GGST online as seamless as its competitors. I will never go back to the tower, not so much because of the design itself as because of the terrible lobbies and bad connections. I won’t miss the endless glitched “cannot connect” matchups one bit. The ranked tower is still in the game, but I think I speak for all GGST players when I say good riddance to it.

The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. I spent perfectly good money on children's game cards that I'll likely never get to use again for YOU. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more, I'd love to see you become a regular or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get exclusive posts. Thanks for reading the pitch and hope to see you subscribe!