Update: I played another tournament and this time I voted for no contest in a Wi-Fi match. I was still the loser. I have no idea how they decide these things.

Bluesky once again punishing me for using transparent images

But my opponent did vote for no contest. And so the game was over. Nobody won. Except, per the tournament bracket, my opponent won. Voting for no contest is a win, apparently. I lost because their connection was bad.

My opponent, a King-playing Wi-Fi Warrior, had a pretty bad connection. I could have voted for a no contest ruling but I didn't know what that would mean for tournament placement, so I held off. The match seemed winnable anyway.

Yesterday, I played a tournament with only four players. In the single-elimination, best of one format, I only had to win two games. Sounds easy, and easier still because my first opponent was a no-show. Automatic qualification for grand finals.

For context, there are regular PlayStation Network tournaments for Tekken 8 and you get a special avatar if you win. I don't plan on changing the Uncharted 2 Victor Sullivan avatar I've been using for 13 years but I enter for fun sometimes.

15 writers, actually. I forgot that Onyx and Ice Cube were also sampled in the Notorious BIG song that was sampled by Travis Scott

The modern version of this is extremely strict sample credits, eg Sicko Mode by Travis Scott having to add ten songwriters to the credits because of a sample of exactly three words

Please, I can't handle another round of "who is the main character of Final Fantasy XII"

Didn't even include Pikmin 2, the true best Nintendo game

I'm hoping to get back into the habit of writing regularly. I have another piece in progress that I'll hopefully finish soon. Still, when I launched this blog/newsletter/thing, I hoped to write one post per month, and even with my long hiatus, I've done a lot better than that overall.

The people yearn for Mach Rider

Our protagonist is recovering from her last outing but finds herself in a similar circumstance soon after, including her greatest opponent returning. She is accompanied by a military unit, one of whom is secretly a traitor who is assassinating the other members.

Obviously most games won't have a Kojima/Sony budget but it's the principle of recognizing the right actor and the right role (CotW fumbled both immensely)

Yeah, there are a lot of factors at play (eg casting an actor to play a character vs dropping a celeb cameo into the game) but I don't trust producers to thread that needle. Kojima did well, casting well-known but decidedly not A-list actors, leveraging star power but prioritizing the performance.

"I sure hope Metroid Prime 4 isn't a barren open world with 100 micro-dungeons scattered around"