/202308181709

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The weeds upon the hill have been weedeaten and, unlike yesterday, no lifting of riding lawnmowers was required / leaving to play in the poison ivy patch (seems to be a thing this week; haven't gotten it yet), I gave portable Switch RDR a go and LOVED it. Charlie the dog and I took out a ne'er-do-well before he could abscond with a horse at MacFarlane Ranch / finished the edit of the first GROUND LOOP mini-interview, premiering in Sunday's newsletter. Think I enjoy the format / grilled hot dogs await.

/202308180710

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Learned that the sweetest sound ever is the sound of a downpour outside lacking in the accompanying sound of water flooding into the basement. Basement repairs so worth it... Also: started RDR on Switch last night and, other than its janky controls which have carried over from the original and an inability – though maybe I simply haven't found it yet – to doff my hat at passersby, it reminded me why I love the game so much; my crush on Bonnie MacFarlane remains intact – and now, portable... Random notion: would love to have a weekly or bi-weekly or monthly column somewhere else (again). No clue about what but there it is, cast adrift in this, our connective ether.

SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY (Nintendo, 2017)

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The forced wedding is stopped; the bunny wedding planners are crushed; Bowser is, like The Joker after battle after battle, unconscious, somewhere; Cappy and Mario are, at present, hunting for Princess Peach who has once again gone missing from the just-unlocked Mushroom Kingdom – though it seems of her own volition this time; and my first completion of a MARIO game in over 30 years (SUPER MARIO WORLD is still the best) is in the bag.

Why that long? Other than ignoring most of the post MARIO WORLD games on the SNES – CASTLEVANIA and LINK TO THE PAST were my jams – I had a seizure while playing MARIO 64 on the Nintendo 64 (right combo of lights and images at the right time, I guess) and, rightly or wrongly (seems to be the latter) avoided the series out of fear of it happening again until the gateway drug of MARIO KART 8 and the desire to end my niece's reign of terror (read: beating me every race) but the longer version of that particular saga – the seizure, not my niece's reign of MARIO KART terror – is another story for another time.

But ODYSSEY itself.

One of the things that's been asked in the accolades for TEARS OF THE KINGDOM is how did Nintendo make that game – as in "how did they fit all of that and do all of that in a system that came out in 2017?": the answer's simple: Nintendo knows how to make great games without requiring a bevy of onerous cutscenes and/or shallow open worlds with no point beyond window-dressing – narrative or otherwise. They focus solely on simple stories (rescue the Princess / save the kingdom / stop the aliens) delivered in strange, surreal celebrations of the medium – the "flatland" 2D, pixel sidescrolling sections in ODYSSEY being the most wonderful celebration of video games and video game history in recent memory; I cheered every time I got to stuff myself into a pipe and go 8-bit – with an unfiltered creativity and passion devoid of irony and apology; they are and remain the Disney-under-Walt / early Pixar of games.

While I did miss the block-smashing power-up mushrooms – how long have they been gone? – and, though I loved Cappy and his Black-Lodge / Man From Another Place speaking style, found myself rescuing him from that bird only to shut him up (and get on with the game) there's not a lot I can add other than ODYSSEY is pure, unfiltered fun and that I question your humanity if you don't find yourself charmed by it more than once a gaming session. A must-play.