Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 24 – The Samurai, The Lantern, and The Bastard

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

The words don’t come easy sometimes, and other times they just flow out of you to the point where you can put the cork back in the bottle. The right words are even harder, and that is where the true work of writing rests. Even when the right words come easy, the writer’s brain can tell you a lie that they’re wrong, that it’s not conveying your thoughts and feelings in the way you imagine it in your mind. Sometimes this whole Books, Games, Wrestling project is that, like when a wrestler you love passes away, and you don’t know what exactly to say that’ll feel right. Sometimes you just gotta get to it, so let’s get to it.

Games – Big Walk and Onimusha

Big Walk

Since it came out, Big Walk has been a magical experience playing online with my friends. I honestly feel it has brought me closer to them, especially after playing Big Walk nearly every Thursday. It has been some of the hardest times I have laughed playing a video game, solving puzzles, chanting egg as we get the little red things that open up the towers, and uncovering the mysteries of the game. Big Walk is the definition of fun video game design, especially if you’re lucky enough to have a great group of friends like I do. It balances simplified character design

There are a lot of big games coming out between September and the end of the year, but I don’t know if any of them can compare to the experience of playing Big Walk with friends. I just enjoy hanging out in the game with them even if we aren’t making progress, just walking around, listening to the radio or the sounds of our weird bird/ant players walking. This game was on my radar the moment it was announced, and I knew it would be something special, but I didn’t think I’d have any idea how special it would be.

Based on the vibes I hear about the two endings, one for finishing it and one for 100%, it might make me very emotional when it’s all said and done (Edit: It did). If I were to put my analysis hat on, maybe it’s not just the game but the friends you choose to play it with. The game has a ton of personality, but part of that is the personality that you put into it. It’s the personality you can instill in your characters through simple gestures and the setting’s chill aesthetic that adds to what makes Big Walk special. Everything in it just feels good to do: pressing a button, kicking an item far away from you, picking up your friends, turning a light on and off, lifting your arms up and down while chanting egg when you unlock the red items you need to put in the towers.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword

Enter Onimusha: Way of the Sword, which has now dethroned Pokemon Pokopia for my number two spot on my Game of the Year list. The original Onimusha 1 and 2 were games I borrowed from a friend and thought, “Neat, Samurai Resident Evil,” and never gave it much thought beyond the fact that sucking up orbs was cool. This new Onimusha is still Samurai Resident Evil and sucking up orbs, but has thrown in what has made the RE Engine so good for Capcom games, along with the best flavors of Sekiro and other Soulslike games. When I tried the first demo when it came out, the game didn’t grab me like the earlier Capcom games this year, Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, did, but the high praise the game was getting from certain reviews, the nostalgia I had for the second PS2 game, and a ten percent discount for a Steam keycode on Fanatical made me pull the trigger on buying it. I’m glad I did, because it has shot up to number two on my game-of-the-year list.

The versatility of the combat is stellar; choosing between parrying, blocking, deflecting, and dodging against enemies as you get your attacks in is a joy. With bosses, learning which one is best suited to use against them and which ones are best suited to use against certain attacks of theirs is so much. One boss will attack relentlessly with a weakness to deflection that makes that the best course of action, while another has you choosing between parrying and dodging to get your two meters up to take that boss’s quick slices and kicks. The common enemies start out simple at first, but as you progress and unlock new abilities, so do they, with more complex moves to use against you where button mashing just won’t cut it. The protagonist, Miyamoto Musashi, is my favorite Capcom protagonist, probably since Leon Kennedy, with a sort of Goku- or Luffy-like attitude of not really being in it for the heroics but is always looking for a good challenge to his swordman’s skills and wanting to be the best; that’s what’s fun for Musashi about being an Onimusha throughout the plot. Whoever decided or mocapped or designed Musashi’s facial expressions in this game should win awards, as he comes off sly, confident, with a roguish quality that reminds me of a Han Solo type. The main hub area of Kyoto reminds me of Komuracho in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, with not so many mini-games to play but people to save, side missions to complete, and treasures to find while you travel to more linear locations when the plot demands it.

The feeling and flow of combat can be so important for games like this. The Leviathan Axe in God of War (2018) wouldn’t be the same if not for how great it felt swinging, throwing, and catching it was, and Onimusha is no different with the way swords clash and Musashi slides his enemies’ weapons down and away when parrying just right. When you unlock more abilities, it doesn’t feel like piling on system after system but new ways to turn your enemies’ strikes against them.

The final boss is the best boss of the year, hands down. I love shades of grey villains who think they’re doing what’s right, but sometimes I want a straight-up evil guy, and that is what Yoshitsune is. He’s just interested in drowning the world of Onimusha in blood, and you’re the only one standing in his way. Gameplay-wise, you have to use everything you have learned to beat him with a pattern that is the most difficult in the game but not unlearnable. I used Issen through Onimusha: Way of the Sword, but Yoshitsune really pushed me to learn to use it well, especially in Phase Two. The ending is satisfying but leaves it open for sequels, which I would love to get. An Onimusha 2 could really improve upon the sidequests and make the hub world a bit more interesting, plus I want more of Musashi as a character and more boss fights. Even though I’m finished with the game, I’ll boot it up just to replay the boss fights; they’re that fun.

Books – Green Lantern Comics

I’m not going to make a whole thing of it, but I was apprehensive about the Lanterns show on HBO Max, then decided to give it a shot. Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan may be one of the best superhero castings ever, and Aaron Pierre made John Stewart interesting to me in a way that the comics and other adaptations often failed to. The dynamic between Hal and John carried the show for me, where often I was craving more Green Lantern mythos and abilities in the show. I was willing to go where it was going, but ultimately the finale disappointed and the more I thought about it, pissed me off. It was a huge letdown, but it led me back to the Green Lantern comic books that got me through a traumatic experience I went through in 2005 and rediscovering my love for Green Lantern.

So I’ve been reading all my Green Lantern comics I managed to save from the house fire, from Green Lantern Rebirth to Blackest Night. I originally stopped reading after Geoff Johns’ final arc, finding Robert Venditti’s run on the series afterwards disappointing and generally just running out of money for comics. Now I want to go to my local comic book store and finish my collection of the Geoff John’s runs, as well as try for the first time Grant Morrison’s run on the book, which I know is very different but Liam Sharp’s artwork looks incredible. I lost all my Peter J. Tomasi run on Green Lantern Corps, so I’d love to read those again somehow. Al Ewing is a comic book writer I’ve come to really enjoy over the last couple of years, so I want to check out Absolute Green Lantern also since most of the Absolute run of DC Comics I’ve really enjoyed, especially Wonder Woman.

I don’t know what’s going on in the current run of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps, but what I’ve seen of Jeremy Adam’s run doesn’t look terrible but doesn’t look too appealing either. I think I will wait before diving back in.

Wrestling – Remembering Ben Satterly aka The Bastard PAC.

It’s weird when a public figure you admire passes away, and you’re left sad about a person you don’t really know, especially with wrestlers that comes with this veneer of kayfabe separating you from that person even further. It has probably been the hardest a public figure’s passing has hit me since Robin Williams. Since the announcement of his passing on the 27th, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship fans have to wrestlers. I didn’t really know Ben Satterly; I only knew The Bastard PAC, a character he played, and yet there is this sadness I feel not seeing him on my screen on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and eventually future PPVs. I started writing this around the time I saw a tweet from Will Washington, someone who worked at AEW who went from knowing The Bastard PAC to knowing Ben Satterly. The Tribute to PAC episode of AEW Dynamite might be their best AEW Dynamite ever, with everyone putting their heart and soul into their matches in dedication to their friend, but it was also the hardest episode to watch, seeing the grief on the faces of all the roster. I want to watch it again, and yet I can’t; it’s too much. One day I will. I’ve had these same words Will Washington wrote on my mind since his passing, he’s not supposed to be gone.

There was a time I gave up wrestling, and what got me back was watching certain matches on YouTube that I think were recommended to me on Twitter or Reddit. I don’t remember which it was, but what was included that I sought out was Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi, any Young Bucks vs. The Briscoes match, the rise of Daniel Brian in WWE, CM Punk’s pipebomb, and The Bastard PAC in Dragongate.

When AEW was announced, and PAC showed up in full gear saying he was going to be the first AEW World Champion, I believed him, because I was not fully bought into Hangman Adam Page yet. When he beat Kenny Omega at All Out 2019, it was a shock victory that propelled PAC further up the ranks in my mind as being a future world champion. It was PAC, along with Jon Moxley, that started the Kenny Omega and Hangman Page tag team that would be the driving catalyst for Hangman’s character with the Elite, and it was Hangman’s feud with PAC in the early days of AEW Dynamite that not only gave us Cowboy Shit but made Hangman Page one of my favorite wrestlers in the company. For the longest time, if you asked me what the best matches ever were in AEW alongside Hangman/Kenny vs. Young Bucks, I would say the iron man match between Kenny Omega and the Bastard PAC that happened just the week before. If you were to ask me what match I’d show a person to get into AEW or to get into wrestling in general, it would always be The Bastard PAC vs. Orange Cassidy from Revolution 2020.

In 2020 during the height of the pandemic, I remember Tony Khan promising a huge surprise for Dynamite and fans online being disappointed when it turned out to just be the return of PAC. For me, though, I was thrilled to see PAC return after what felt like forever in lockdown without seeing him wrestle on my screen. I much prefer a 1v1 match on pay-per-view for the world title, as WWE had kinda soured my view on three-ways, but The Bastard PAC vs. Kenny Omega vs. Orange Cassidy was for a while the best three-way match I had seen in wrestling for many years. When Hangman finally won the world championship at Full Gear 2021, PAC was someone I fantasy booked having a feud with him as a return to their earlier feud in 2019 and possibly a potential winner against Page, but it was not to be. What was to be, when PAC became the All-Atlantic Champion, was returning to a feud with Orange Cassidy, in which I saw their match live at AEW Grand Slam 2022 at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Trios Best of Seven with The Elite, finally getting his Wembley moment, winning the trios titles with Claudio and Wheeler Yuta, doing a sneak hurricanrana on Will Ospreay to set up their match at All Out, one final match with Orange Cassidy at their old stomping grounds in Jacksonville, Florida. It was incredible to see PAC and Darby duke it out on a golf course.

Maybe it’s because of the relationship I have with watching AEW closely during the pandemic, but it feels wrong that, after seven years that he’s gone and now we just have to move on with our lives. It’s a strange feeling, being sad about a guy I watched on a screen being gone, knowing his friends and coworkers are suffering even more. I didn’t know Ben Satterly, and based on the testimonials of his friends, family, and coworkers, I’m the worst off for it, but I knew The Bastard PAC. This section was the hardest to write out of a confusion of feelings about what the right words were. I finished Onimusha the day his death was announced, an announcement that came out while I was in the middle of watching Lanterns on HBO Max with a friend that led me down getting my Green Lantern comics out. I ended up just trying to write the memories that stand out to me of what he did in AEW that I watched and was there for. It’ll never feel like the right words, because I don’t know what the right words are, but I have an 8×10 photo of PAC on my wall, an autographed trading card in a fireproof container, and lots of good memories watching his performances together, performances he always put his all in. The memories might grow dimmer over the years, but I’ll remember the Bastard PAC. That’s all from me for now, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 23 – Mastery, Mysteries and Omega

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / 1 Comment

This one is a bit late, like three weeks late. I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts more in these pocket notebooks I carry with me before I transfer them to this site. I already have my September one written out on those notebooks, but I didn’t want to skip over what I felt were, well, important isn’t quite the right word, but significant observations about my hobbies in July and August. The subject of Retro devices, RetroAchievements, FromSoftware games, and the build to All In are subjects I could write extensively about and may do individual posts on here separate from this format. For now, here is the latest from me on books, games, and wrestling once again.

Games – RetroAchievements and FromSoftware

I’ve been playing the original Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on my Retro Pocket 4 with RetroAchievements, a platform that provides achievements for classic games you legally own by purchasing them. This is one of my favorite video games ever (landing at #11 on my ongoing and ever-evolving Backlogged My 100 Greatest Games Ever list), and it has been so fun unlocking achievements for this game as I did with Super Mario 64 and Super Mario World previously. The game still looks and plays amazingly, to the point that I underestimated how much of a visual upgrade the remake is, so I couldn’t help but boot it up again on my Switch 2 just to compare them. As a wrestling fan, Chapter 3 is my favorite, and Vivian/Goombella are my favorite companions in that game. I eventually moved my save from the RP4 to my new Retroid Pocket Nova with an OLED screen, and it looks amazing.

The first time I beat Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC was during a Steam Sale, so wanting to satiate my FromSoftware need further without going into New Game+, I bought Dark Souls II at a reasonable price. I hated it almost immediately. Nothing about Dark Souls II felt right to me, to the point I bounced off it fairly quickly. Over ten years later, after finishing Dark Souls Remastered this year on my PC and purchasing Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin because it worked on Steam Deck, I decided to give it another chance thanks in part to this Chris Person editorial on Aftermath, which I thought was excellent and pretty convincing.

Dark Souls II still rocks and the haters can suck it. aftermath.site/dark-souls-ii-…

— Aftermath (@aftermath.site) 2026-08-01T01:01:24.171660+00:00

https://aftermath.site/dark-souls-ii-is-good-actually

I can now say I’ve upgraded it from a game I didn’t like and bounced off of to one that’s pretty good but not my cup of tea. I still think it’s the worst of the FromSoftware Soulsborne games. The combat and the hit boxes feel off, the sound direction is not great, and some of the bosses are poorly designed visually and mechanically compared to their other games. Yet after playing through it, I think it’s still better than most action games. It still has a lot of bullshit, like adaptability as a necessary skill for dodge rolling being a near deal-breaker for the game, and they do not take the opportunity to balance it out with good shield mechanics. Most of the time I was playing Dark Souls II, I really wanted to quit playing it to play a different Souls game, and more than any other, it’s the one I’ve needed a guide for the most, not to find specific items but to just figure out where I was supposed to go next. It’s not that the game was overly frustrating; failing and learning is part of the fun of FromSoftware games, but it just doesn’t feel fun to do a lot of things in it. That being said, I do think a lot of the criticisms toward it are ill-conceived. The story is fascinating, Majula is an all-timer hub world, and Drangleic Castle is one of the sickest locations in this series of games. While I did technically beat it, I didn’t beat it in the way I would normally play one of these games. I rushed through it just to say I did it. I don’t really feel the want to go back, but Dark Souls II is definitely not a bad game, as most have said.

A feeling that could not be even more apparent when I immediately started playing Dark Souls 3 from the beginning afterwards. I do think so many hours of playing Elden Ring have made me better at these games because both Aldrich, Devourer of Gods, and Lothric & Lorian bosses I’ve struggled with in my last four or five playthroughs I fought with relative ease this time around. My latest playthrough may be the fastest I’ve ever gone through Dark Souls 3. I’m right at the end, about to fight the final boss and play the Ringed City DLC, when I had the intrusive thought of “Yeah, this game looks just as good as Elden Ring,” only to boot up Elden Ring to confirm my suspicions.

Yeah, I’m playing Elden Ring once again. Maybe playing too much, in fact, as not only was I wrong about Dark Souls 3 looking just as good, but I’ve got three playthroughs I’m switching between: my very first character when the game came out, a Dexterity build in NG+, a new playthrough on PC that is a Strength build with Greatswords, and after glowing reviews and some extra digital currency lying around, I picked up the Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition and am playing that all comfortable on the basement couch on my Switch 2. Playing through their previous games has given me a new appreciation for not only the scale and size of Elden Ring but also how they contained the magic of Souls gameplay into such a large, expansive world. Also, man, the game just looks so beautiful that you can really miss it when you’re fighting for your life and the runes you want to keep. There are still so many builds I’ve never done in Elden Ring before that’ll eventually lead this game to trouncing the original version of Skyrim as my most hours played on Steam.

Reading – Ana and Din Mysteries

My co-host Christina on No Page Unturned has been ringing the Robert Jackson Bennett bell for a couple of years now, but his books have never really drawn my interest. Then, when my other co-host Steph started reading The Tainted Cup just as Christina was reading the third book, A Trade of Blood, I decided fuck it and started reading the first book just as Steph was getting to the second one, A Drop of Corruption. I’ve been intrigued by the genre mixing of mystery and fantasy for a while, and was enthused with The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan and the characters of Sir Konrad Vonval and Helena solving mysteries before the books became about something else. The Ana and Din Mysteries are more of what I wanted in that. The world is fascinating to me; it’s walled in like the world of Empire of Exiles by Erin M. Evans, but with the threat of giant leviathans rather than changelings. Din as the Dr. Watson type but far more active with enhancements that give him perfect memory, plays off well with Ana, easily overstimulated due to the enhancements she was given that give her beyond-human deductive reasoning over the cases they solve throughout the empire.

I quickly devoured all three of these books, which is unusual for me. Often if I read too many books in a series back-to-back, I get restless partway through the second or third book and have to put them down. Now I’m highly anticipating the next Ana and Din mystery, which often start out with cases that seem like small incidents Ana can easily solve but quickly unravel into information that could have dire repercussions for the whole empire. Meanwhile, the worldbuilding around the empire as more information is unravelled points to a larger narrative arc and mystery that Ana and Din are slowly racing towards. Their dynamic does a lot for my enjoyment of the series starting out in that more familiar everyman dealing with an eccentric genius like Watson and Holmes, but Din’s character blossoms into more than just being the narrator telling Ana’s story. He gets exasperated with Ana’s proclivities, she gets annoyed at his disobedience with his free-time activities, and they both grow closer over the actions of the empire they live in. I could read one of these every year, and more fantasy authors should take the investigative approach for the plot.

Wrestling – ALL IN 2026

Let’s talk about builds. Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay was amazing, maybe one of the best AEW matches of all time, and because of that, no one is going to remember how weird and messy the build was, and it’s a damn shame that this is not the only instance of that happening. The character of Will Ospreay in 2026 has been weird all year since his return. I straight up have not liked his character, nor have I liked his story with the Death Riders, ranging from stupid to not making any sense to a waste of my time. When they dropped it after Redemption, I was enjoying the callout that Kenny Omega did to Ospreay’s behavior and was hoping for some kind of reckoning on that front, but Kenny was making too much sense and was risking getting cheered at Wembley, so they made him the Green Goblin once again with the belt. I hate that this mess is not going to be remembered and we’ll have to deal with the ebbs and flows of AEW sometimes having great builds and sometimes poor ones, with resulting PPV quality not being affected by the poor ones.

I hate that, but goddamnit, though, it was such an amazing match. Kenny Omega’s intro with You Say Run, and the Japanese voice of All Might from My Hero Academia brought tears to my eyes. I knew Ospreay was going to win, we all did, but I wish I could have gone into the match with more enthusiasm for him like I did in 2024 and 2025. What’s even more frustrating in just one promo leading up to All Out that Ospreay cut on Jon Moxley, he seemed back to that guy I cheered for in previous years. I’ll forever be frustrated with everything leading up to the All In main event from Kenny Omega’s loss to MJF, Ospreay riding with Moxley and the Death Riders, the title win not being at Redemption because [redacted], and the overcomplication of the Omega v. Ospreay build to get Ospreay cheered. That being said, I too am getting old and may also forget all about this in lieu of how great the match was.

Meanwhile, Mercedes Moné vs. Willow Nightingale killed it. This had a fantastic build that really made it clear these two are tied together in AEW history, but also that they don’t like each other for good reason. They certainly showed it in their match because these two women beat the shit out of each other. If it was anyone else besides Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega, I would have said this should have been the main event (like, for example, if it had been MJF in Omega’s place). These two are going to be eternal rivals in AEW. I will say, it does feel kind of bad that this has happened to Willow twice, one with the TBS title and now with the World Championship. Still, I am pretty confident Willow will get her time as the top babyface of AEW sooner rather than later.

The less said about Cope & Christian beating the Young Bucks, the better. Once again, old timers are going to find their way out of getting pinned, and if you’re aware of the Tag Team Championship match at All Out, they’re still not going to get pinned. So far in AEW, Cope has been pinned or submitted by three people in singles action: Jon Moxley, Christian Cage, and Dax Harwood. That’s it. I can’t wait for these two to retire now. That’s all from me, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 22 – Live from NY

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

Wrestling – Live posting AEW Redemption

The following paragraphs were written live while watching AEW Redemption

I’m writing this live. I think opening with the ladder match for a shot at the International Title is a good choice. Speedball Mike Bailey has to be winning this, right, considering he’s Canadian? That was a pretty fun ladder, but a standard AEW ladder match. That sounds so entitled, like it was just another good AEW ladder match, boo hoo, but it makes it harder to write about, to be honest.

The Young Bucks’ tag match is up next. I’ve made my opinions on this Ospreay/Moxley story very clear, but I know when it comes to wrestling, this is going to show out. I am curious who is going to win if the Bucks are going to face Cope and Christian at All In, and Ospreay is going to face Omega, perhaps Moxley should take the pin. Jon Moxley pinning anyone in this match if he doesn’t have a match yet at All In would just be weird. Perhaps this match will end with a returning Swerve involvement? I’m not sure. The match started off a little slow, but it’s really starting to pick up the speed of what I tend to expect from a Bucks match. The story of the match seems to center around Nick Jackson taking a lot of abuse, being out of it, and Will Ospreay being unsure how far he’s willing to go. Personally, I’ve said my opinion on tweeners and Opsreay leaning that way is no different. The ending of the match was exactly what I wanted. Moxley took the pin, and less waffling about whether Moxley is heel or not. The seeds of descent between Ospreay and Mox are what this has needed the whole time. Young Bucks save Jon Moxley’s stories once again.

I know Bandido and Kyle Fletcher is going to be incredible, but do we really need Bandido losing again? I like the way Bandido and Fletcher’s gear sort of feels counter to each other. This match is starting off a lot slower than I expected, but my friend is distracting with bad Bandido puns. I might need my own hydration break soon. Bandido’s dead lift suplex is a thing of beauty. I could see Bandido versus Kyle Fletcher being a future AEW World Championship match within the next two years. They seem to have good chemistry. I thought the power bomb to the outside was intense until Bandido did a frog splash on him from the top rope to the Kyle below. A lot of people predicted these two would steal the show, and so far, they’re not wrong. Owwww, Bandido just slammed Kyle’s face into the mat. This match has done a great job of convincing me that Bandido could really win this, and that is when wrestling is at its best to me. One of those matches where I go this is it for a pinfall and then someone kicks out. The crowd is with Bandido, and I know this won’t be their last match together. I just love saying Michinoku Driver. I knew Kyle would, but I still feel slightly deflated. Bandido has lost again. Fantastic match though. This should be Bandido’s last loss on an AEW PPV for a while.

Bang Bang Gang vs. The Dogs? Hydration break time. I don’t think Jay’s cowboy boots go well with his pants. I say that observation causes this match isn’t really doing anything for me, even with the chain. Someone mentioned two chains on commentary, and this is how I found out 2Chainz left Def Jam. Clark Connors and Juice Robinson have done more for me in this match than David Finlay and Jay White. It looked like Finlay dropped Jay White right on his neck at one point. I really am trying to feel something for this match but damn this might be really bad. Wait, nevermind, Wheeler, Yuta, and Daniel Garcia are here to get beaten up by the Gunns and let Marina hand Finlay the Shillelagh, wow. If this cements the Death Riders as more heels than tweeners, I’m happy with that, but what the fuck was this chain match? What was Jay White wearing? It felt like Clark and Juice cared more about this match than their partners.

Will Ospreay referencing a winning bonus, hell yeah, love it. See, this is another reason why what Mox is doing isn’t working for me. He gets on the mic and says this championship doesn’t matter, or this match doesn’t matter, then why should I, the viewer, watch anything Mox does?

Since Shida’s return, she has felt significantly slower and less graceful. I was pretty disappointed by the Queen Aminata match, so I have low expectations for this Maya World match. Maya World has improved with every match I’ve seen her in, and I hope she’ll get to bring something out of Shida and win the TBS title. Shida has had exceptionally bad-looking gear for a while now, but this most recent one is a much-needed improvement. To me, selling a hurt body part during a match would be one of the more difficult aspects of wrestling, so Maya selling her injured leg that Shida is targeting is working for me. This match has been better than my expectations, with Shida getting overconfident and trying to bully Maya, only for it to be her downfall. The right result in the end.

It’s Cope and Christian time which means it’s look at my phone or play video games time. I love The Bastard PAC, and like Claudio, but it’s not enough.

The Painmaker is so funny to me. I thought Ciampa vs. Jericho at Beach Break was actually good and Jericho’s best match since returning but this probably could have ended with Ciampa just getting the win and Jericho facing someone else in Canada. Jericho always needing to get his win back has always been a detriment to him trying to get people over. He’s already getting some points, though, for pocket sand. The plunder in this match has really heightened how much it rules. As my friend said in the group chat, as this was going on, I do love it when a wrestler does a move on a plushie. The sandpaper to the face had me cringing in phantom pain at the spot. Oh my god, Jericho has a tac in his head. This mirror spot Jericho is setting up as I type this is rad as hell. I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying a Chris Jericho match in 2026. ANOTHER MIRROR? A PAINMAKER MIRROR? MIST? A Judas Effect with Ciampa’s own weapon and Ciampa kicked out, WHAT? A drill to the head submission for the ending? Wow, what a match.

I got distracted and missed some of this Andrade v. Mark Davis match. It seems hard-hitting now that I’m focused on it again. I did really dig what I think is new music for Andrade with the how you know? worked into it. I was having trouble getting into this match at first, but Mark Davis and Andrade are just too good to ignore. Andrade’s spinning back fist cannot be matched. It rules. I hope Andrade takes the belt to other promotions like CMLL and NJPW, too, as it was originally envisioned.

I’m excited for Willow vs. Thekla. Thekla’s entrance jacket looked more like nacho cheese than fire to me. Thekla’s hair looks strange without the part, but I love her red and white gear. Willow’s pink and gold gear is magnificent, though. Canada is on Willow’s side, and who I expect to win. Whoops, spoke to soon, the Thekla fans in the crowd have since let their voices be known. Oh shit, she’s biting the injured ear on Willow, hell yeah. Thekla had a lot of doubters when she won the world championship, but I think she has done an excellent job with no Mercedes Mone and no Toni Storm to either heighten her run or take some of her spotlight. She has one hundred percent earned her spot, but I’m ready for Willow to take her place as the top women’s babyface (and possible top babyface in the company) with the World Championship. This match is hard-hitting, and I’m loving it so far. Willow is so great at getting the crowd behind her; she is so easy to root for. I would have preferred Willow win with her finisher, but that was an excellent reversal into the pin. I’m so looking forward to Willow vs. Mercedes III. Willow Nightingale has deserved this for quite sometime and I am glad they finally crowned her here.

Main event time. Kevin Knight, how dare you interrupt Kenny’s entrance! Kenny Omega silencing the crowd and yelling at Kevin has been fun for me. I love it when Kenny is a nice guy outside of the matches, but then turns on the Best Bout Machine button when he wrestles. It’s the kind of intensity and in-match storytelling that has always fired me up when watching him wrestle. Kenny has earned being cocky in the ring, even if he is the babyface. Kenny catching Kevin with a dropkick on the outside was awesome. I was hooting and hollering at the sunset flip from the top rope from Kenny, followed by the V-Trigger, what a move. I’m disappointed Kevin Knight got out of the top rope Snap Dragon Suplex. I really wanted to see it. The switcheroo with the two belts by Knight was nicely done. One Winged Angel for the win. That match was incredible. This is why I love Kenny Omega and, oftentimes, All Elite Wrestling.

…and then Jon Moxley and the Death Riders have to come out, of course. This sucks. Is this a Will Ospreay story or a Jon Moxley story? Is this a Kenny Omega v. Ospreay story or a Kenny Omega v. Moxley story? Enough. Ospreay is not a great storyteller, to be honest, but I’m glad he made some kind of choice there (but I still think Kenny should retain at All In.) Just as I type this, though, oh my god, Kenny, thank you so much. I laughed maniacally when Kenny Omega One-Winged-Angeled Ospreay, he deserved it.

Post-PPV Thoughts: Ospreay got what he deserved at the end of the main event. He may have hesitated to take out Kenny but he thought about doing and Kenny knew it. I don’t think that was a heel turn, but more teaching Ospreay a lesson for trusting the Death Riders and listening to Mox in the first place. As many others have said about the situation, and other wrestlers have said to his face, he’s thirty-three and shouldn’t be surprised the ruthless guys are ruthless. The booking has done no favors to persuade me to root for Ospreay to win at Wembley, and that is kind of a shame. If Ospreay shows up to Dynamite saying he can’t trust Kenny, well Will maybe it was you who broke that trust first.

Books – Decision Paralysis

I don’t really have an update as far as reading is concerned. I’m kind of having decision paralysis on what I want to read next, but I’m still read The Thrice-Bound Fool and Jade City. What I’m really reading is my email waiting for Lit Escalates to ship my The First Law New Edition Hardcovers that I contributed to Kickstarter for. Not that they’re late, they’re actively shipping them with 4000 orders already on their way, but when is it gonna be my turn? I’ve already seen they made the shipping label recently so fingers crossed my editions ship soon.

Games – Backloggd My Personal 100 and Bomberman 64

I believe it was either Dan Ryckert or Mike Minotti of Giant Bomb who discussed creating their own list of the one hundred greatest games of all time, so as an active Backlogged user I decided to do the same.

It’s an interesting task to do. At 41 years old, the top five are likely cemented with a little wiggle room, and that wiggle room grows as the list goes from 6-10, then 11-25. 26 – 100 is a lot more maleable. The difference between whether Batman: Arkham Asylum is above Spider-Man (2018) is sometimes down to how recently I’ve played it. It’s become a fun thought experiment for me about recency bias. For example, I haven’t played The Witcher 3 or Yakuza 0 since 2018, so they’ve fallen to around the fifties on my list. However, I wonder if I play them again, whether they’d stay in their positions. When I think about The Witcher 3, I worry that I won’t like it as much as I did when it first came out, because my taste in games has expanded. On the other hand, it might remind me of all the fond memories I had playing it originally, which may raise its ranking on the list.

This brings it around to what I’ve been playing on my Retroid Pocket 4, Bomberman 64, which I now have as ninety-seven on my list. I was surprised how much I still love the Adventure mode after all these years, finding all the different customization parts, unlocking gold cards, making bomb staircases to get to secret areas, and pumping up bombs to hit bosses on the head with. I kinda wish Bomberman had stayed on this track for future games or go back to it, because both the story and the gameplay in single player are so much fun to me. The only downside is I know what framerate is now, and this game chugs when you have too many bombs on screen, but I have a lot of fond memories of bringing my custom Bomberman to a friends hosue via the N64 control pack and playing multiplayer for hours. If whoever owns the rights to Bomberman released a remastered collection of the N64 Bomberman games, I’d cop that instantly. I still have the commercial for this song ingrained into my memory more than the actual Spider-Man theme it’s based on.

A month ago, this game wasn’t on my list at all, a beloved childhood game, so what else am I forgetting? There is a lot of the PSX, PS2, and PS3 staples that I completely missed being a former Nintendo fanboy and Xbox 360 owner. I do find myself having difficulty going to older games on my Retroid that are new to me, probably as an ADHD side effect, where I’ll lose focus and retreat to a game I know better. It feels like now is the time to play old games, though, because Autumn is loaded with new games that might end up on this list in the future. My biggest curiosity is whether the Ocarina of Time remake could possibly enter in the top ten or even rise above the original, which sits at number seven on my list. That’s all from me, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 21 – The Way It’s Meant To Be

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I like books. I like wrestling. I like video games. I like writing about those things. Let’s just get into it.

Wrestling – Hangman’s Back, Moxley’s There, Redemption Soon

It was announced late that Hangman Page was going to return on AEW Collision, much to the excitement of multiple group chats I’m in. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he returned or what he’d say, but I thought he did a great job of setting up his character arc for the foreseeable future. He made it clear that the stipulation he’d never challenge for the World Title was an oath he swore on a handshake deal only, meaning that the only person holding him to it right now is himself. He makes an impassioned speech about his journey, continuing to go after the other singles championships. All that sounds tantalizing for match-ups, but we’re all in agreement he’s a big fat liar who is big fat lying to himself. I don’t know which of these belts he’s going to win, if any, but the Hangman is going to find it unsatisfying. The question is what it will take for him to break the promise, when it will happen, and whether it’ll be as a face or a heel. I think people who assumed it was going to be a heel turn weren’t paying attention to the audience when he said he wouldn’t break the stipulation; they were not happy. Hangman’s character has always had a connection to the crowds, so will Hangman finally snap on a babyface and break the stipulation, or will a threat of a heel world champion on the rampage convince Hangman that breaking his word will be for the greater good? It’s going to be fun to see.

I’m going to try to keep this short because it’s easy to be negative, and it’s easy to nitpick wrestling storytelling, but I am so tired of Jon Moxley and the Death Rider’s storytelling. Let me be clear, Jon Moxley has been one of my favorite wrestlers for most of AEW’s history and a lot of times as Dean Ambrose in WWE, but this shit sucks. It’s nonsense, and it’s boring, and it has made me uninterested in Will Ospreay as a world champion. If Jon Moxley is just going to win every match, there has to be a good story to go with it. Jon Moxley used to give promos straight to the point that he was the toughest motherfucker in the room, and it was going to take everything you had to beat him. Now, he cuts promos like he’s second billing in Léon: The Professional when he’s actually coming off as second billing to Gerard Butler in Gamer. It doesn’t help that ninety percent of tweeners in wrestling have 1. not worked, 2. sucked, and 3. never helped anyone involved get over. Every time the Death Riders come out during a Will Ospreay segment, I find myself groaning. Dynamite was the worst of it because they had just come out to jump Cope and Christian (babyfaces), and now they’ve come out to fend off the Don Callis Family (heels) for Kenny Omega and Ospreay. You can deep dive into what you think Moxley is doing beyond the bounds of babyface and heel with the Death Riders, but that doesn’t make it interesting.

I’ve seen some people who are fans defend the Death Riders in 2026, and it feels like what they’re describing and what is on screen do not match up. How exactly has the Death Riders formation helped any of the members since their formation, and what does Jon Moxley beating everyone and offering a handshake do for his opponents? The most exciting the Death Riders have ever been was the lead-up to Moxley’s match against babyface Hangman Adam Page at All In. The group was spinning their wheels with the AEW World Championship before then, and then had a disappointing feud with Darby Allin that did not help Darby get over at all. Now, since the C2 Jon Moxley as a tweener has found a way to not get anyone over. Not the Death Riders, not his opponents, and not Will Ospreay leading up to what is supposed to be his biggest moment after a severe neck injury. Now here come the Elite, specifically the Young Bucks, to inject some life into this storyline once again, just as they did after Dynasty 2025. Pick a lane, Jon, so the Young Bucks don’t have to keep saving your storylines for you, and kill the Josh Barnett groundwork, Jon, this isn’t MMA, and you’re not Bryan Danielson.

Phew, got that off my chest. That being said, the card for AEW Redemption actually looks sick as hell. I would have preferred a big defense for Kenny Omega at Redemption, considering all signs showed that was originally going to be the MJF match, which was moved up for whatever reason, but Kevin Knight versus Kenny Omega is going to be awesome, and it’s going to be something to look back on when Knight reaches the top guy level sooner rather than later. I’ve loved Thekla as AEW Women’s World Champion despite beating one of my favorites, Kris Statlander, but it’s Willow’s time now, and I’m hoping for her to go all the way, beating both Thekla and Mercedes at All In to crown her as the top babyface of the women’s division. Kyle Fletcher vs. Bandido might steal the show, but I’m not looking forward to Bandido losing on pay-per-view again (see also: complaints about Jon Moxley’s current run). I thought Ciampa vs. Jericho on Beach Break was Jericho’s best match since his return, and the two of them seem to have great chemistry, so I can’t believe it, but I actually might be looking forward to Painmaker Jericho vs. Ciampa’s No Holds Barred match. I do remain a little skeptical that they can do better and may, in fact, do too much. Young Bucks on PPV are going to Young Bucks on PPV despite my misgivings about Mox and Ospreay’s story. Mark Davis vs. Andrade will be good. Claudio, Christian, and PAC will do their best to make Copeland look good. I hope Maya World beats Hikaru Shida for the TBS title because, unfortunately, Shida has gotten really slow and messy in her matches, which makes me sad as she used to be the highlight of the women’s division.

Books – Hodgepodge

This section is going to be rather short because I’m just like, unfocused, in my reading right now. I’m all over the place. I started reading Gareth Hanrahan’s The Dungeon Book, which seems like just the right kind of fun fantasy book I could use right now. Reading those special edition hardcovers of the Green Bone Saga for the podcast has me wanting to reread The Bloodsworn Saga by John Gwynne, which I bought some fancy hardcover for that series as well. A.K Larkwood’s The Serpent Gates duology is also calling to me, as it’s world buidling is not weird but unusual enough that it feels refreshing.

Games – The Mermaid Mask, Control, Vampire Crawlers.

I think it was February 2021 before most people, including me, got the vaccine, and because of the pandemic, the release of new games was, to put it lightly, in fucking chaos. I asked on Twitter if anyone had any game recommendations because my backlog was so much smaller back then, and a fellow Josh in the GeeklyInc community recommended Tangle Tower to me on the Nintendo Switch.

I fell in love with it almost instantly. Grimoire and Sally have a fun dynamic as a duo that balances each other out between being funny and effective detectives. The art style is tremendous, with stand-out character design and animation that make the cast’s personalities clear to the player. Except for one or two, the puzzles are fairly easy. The mystery itself is so intriguing, with an ending that left me just slightly deflated, but overall, I loved Tangle Tower.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1696770/The_Mermaid_Mask (You should buy it.)

I’ve been following The Mermaid Mask closely since it was announced, waiting and waiting and waiting for more information, and now, finally, it has been released. I devoured this game with all the free time I could muster. Everything I loved about Tangle Tower feels leveled up in The Mermaid Mask, with an ending that had me glued to my Steam Deck. This cast of characters is all in this cramped submarine with a murdered captain and an open cauldron that had previously never been opened before. Everything that was in Tangle Tower is here, but the animation and voice cast have been especially upgraded. I generally read much faster than most voice actors read the lines, and sometimes I can be impatient, skipping over dialogue before the voiceover is finished, but not with The Mermaid Mask. I would listen closely to each character describing who they are, why they are on the submarine, the murder, and their thoughts on the clues Grimoire and Sally discover closely, and watch the animation of the characters, so beautifully done. I struggled with some of the puzzles, in a good way, that I generally didn’t with Tangle Tower. From what I’ve gathered from social media, this game wasn’t easy to make but I would generally buy one of these Grimoire games every year, and as long as SFB Games keeps making them, I will buy them for the rest of my life.

With Control Resonant coming out, I reinstalled Control because I never finished. Last time I played it was in 2021, when it fried my coolant system for my CPU and killed my computer for like a month before I had a friend come over and help me install a new cooling system and redo the thermal paste because I did a terrible job. So I never played it after that on that computer out of a suspicious fear it would do it again. Now my latest computer laughs at the requirement for Control, so I decided to restart it from the beginning, only to encounter a game-breaking glitch in the year 2026 for a seven-year-old game that kept me from progressing. Luckily, Control has Mission Select, so I can technically go back to where I left off in 2021, but that isn’t what I wanted to do. I’m going to try to restart it again to see if I can get the mission I need to work on, and if not, I might just put Control away once again.

Speaking of that old computer, I’ve been using it as a home for a lot of smaller, less graphic powerhouse games that I connect to via Steam Link on my Retroid Pocket 4 when I’m outside or away from home, and the game I’ve invested the most time into that way is this year’s Vampire Crawlers. That game is just fun as hell, and it’s so satisfying following the combo patterns of picking the 0 mana card, then 1, then 2, and so on. I’ve been using my Retroid Pocket 4 a lot more since I came up with this idea, and I preordered the Retroid Pocket Nova, which comes out fairly soon. That’s all for now, until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 20 – Deltajuly in the Summer of Kenny Omega

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

There have probably been four or five of these in my drafts since April, when I last updated, maybe more, nearly fully written, but a combination of things has taken my attention away from finishing editing. The Knicks in the NBA playoffs and winning the NBA Championship, the weather is finally getting warmer, and my carpal tunnel in my right hand is acting up. So in the different sections, I’ll give a brief summary of my April through June before I get to the main events of each section. I’m writing this one somewhere else rather than in front of my computer, which sometimes helps me focus through my ADHD. Let’s hop right into it before this becomes another draft I don’t publish. It’s been so long that I originally got the volume number wrong.

Books – In Between Several Books

Summary – Shadows of the Daemon Realm manga, from the author of Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa, is excellent, though I’m only on Volume 5 so far. I got all my cohosts to read The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson; they enjoyed it, and we’re going to do an episode on it, to my delight. I have an ARC copy of The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman I’m working through, and it’s nice to have Kinch as the main narrator again even though I loved Galva in The Daughters’ War

I’m usually reading two books at once, but besides The Thrice-Bound Fool, which I’m making through slowly, I’m actually in between books. For my birthday, I was gifted a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time manga just in time for them to announce the remake, so I’m thinking of starting that. It’s always interesting to see how game stories are changed in manga versus how they stay the same, such as in the Persona 5 manga adaptation.

Also, since Alecto the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir’s publishing date is nowhere in sight, we’re starting our series on the Green Bone Saga for the podcast, so I’m excited to do a close reading of Jade City and the rest to really get into the nitty-gritty of that series, which is far different from A Chorus of Dragons and The Locked Tomb. It also allows me to read the special editions I bought last year that are so nice. I am expecting some big book mail this summer from Backerkit and Kickstarter so I’ll probably post about those as soon as I receive them. The whole *gestures to everything happening in the world* of it all has delayed a lot of that stuff but I’m hoping it comes soon.

Wrestling – A Kenny Omega Summer

Summary – Despite my misgivings of Darby Allin’s promos, person, and character work, he had an excellent title reign with some of the best AEW TV matches. I usually switch between Knicks in the playoffs and AEW TV the last couple of years, sometimes watching both of them at once, but this Will Ospreay and the Death Riders story and MJF’s third title reign has been so fucking boring to me that I skipped most of the Dynamites and Collisions before Forbidden Door to watch the NBA. The Swerve/Ospreay interactions were the most I’ve enjoyed Ospreay since his return. Despite all that, Double or Nothing was an all-timer and Forbidden Door was an excellent show, as most AEW PPVs not named World’s End are.

A JJ Williams photo

Kenny Omega, The Cleaner, The Belt Collector, The God of Pro Wrestling, and The Best Bout Machine is once again AEW Men’s World Champion and it feels so good. I woke up the next day bright and early for someone who works overnights and was productive the whole day. You can probably thank Kenny Omega for winning the Men’s World Champion for this post right now. Let me be perfectly clear, I do not like MJF and probably never will again, and will not waste time with the details of why. However, he was excellent in this AEW Dynamite main event, keeping a lot of what I normally find frustrating with his matches now to a minimum. The idea of having this match here rather than on AEW Redemption has opened up a lot of possibilities for a Kenny Omega defense there that I’m excited for. I saw Rich Latta of One Nation Radio and the Social Suplex Network post an idea I can really get behind.

I think the match from All In: Texas was great, but it didn’t quite reach the heights I thought the two of them could, so the idea of running it back with a Kenny Omega victory in Canada sounds good to me. My ideal defenses if Kenny is going to have a short reign before dropping it at Wembley Stadium to Ospreay would be Kevin Knight, Andrade, and Bandido. We’ll see what happens, as I often say about wrestling.

On top of the Kenny Omega win, we got the Willow Nightingale return from injury after she had to drop the TBS title and bounce from the Owen Hart Tournament which was disappointing. Now she’s won the Casino Gauntlet and is going to face Thekla at AEW Redemption. It’s time to give Willow that big top star babyface push. That’s right, I think not only should Willow Nightingale beat Thekla at AEW Redemption but she should then go on to beat Mercedes Mone at All In. I can see the pathways they might be heading towards, Willow having the same struggles she had as TBS Champion. She wins the big belt, loses to Mercedes, then gets her redemption later on, and if they go that way I won’t be mad or upset because I do think Mercedes is up there with Manami Toyota as one of the best women’s wrestlers of all time, but lets switch it up with Willow as the victor before we eventually put the Women’s World Title on Mercedes.

Games – Deltajune becomes Deltajuly

Summary – The Wind Waker and Tears of the Kingdom are still excellent. I think I like Tears of the Kingdom even more now than when I originally played it in 2023 because that year was so stacked with games that I felt I had to finish it before all the other games came out. The Wind Waker is still my second favorite Zelda of All Time and having never experienced the HD version on the Wii U I’d be willing to pay for it on Switch 2. Star Fox (2026) adds a lot of great character development to the main characters, not in the original game, plus Star Fox 64 has always been excellent, hope this leads to more Star Fox games in the future. I’m really excited for the Ocarina of Time remake and Persona 4 Revival, but I want to see more of the Ocarina of Time remake.

Deltarune‘s Chapter 5 has been released one year after Chapter 3 and 4 and it is equally excellent. It has some of the best gameplay in any chapter yet. Emotionally, it doesn’t quite hit as hard as Chapter 4, but to say it has none of those hard-hitting story beats would be lying. Some of the reveals are devastating, but Toby Fox really sold this as the Fun Gang’s (The $!$? Squad in my save) So we’ve finished watching a movie, show, wrestling, etc and I ended up streaming the end of Chapter 3 to them one night. It was compelling enough that my friend wanted to see it from the beginning. So that’s what I’ve been playing in July, allowing them to choose most of the choices that Kris will get, which has led to me seeing scenes and dialogue I’ve never seen before, as I tend to make the same choices over and over again. Hearing the excitement about the story from someone else has been so much fun. We are at the beginning of Chapter 4 now, my favorite chapter, and I’m looking forward to them seeing even more of the game. I’m ready for Chapter 6 to wreck me with heartbreak, and if I have to be devastated, so do they. Until next time.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 19 – The One About An Ocarina of Time Remake

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

To be honest, this one is going to be more about games than books or wrestling. More hits than misses, leaker Natthehate shared a lot of Nintendo’s 2026 plans with Video Games Chronicle, backing it up with confirmation from their own sources. One of those plans includes a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and now that the info is spreading around, the people with sources seem to imply it is a robust remake far beyond what the 3DS version did.

Sources: Nintendo is planning a new Star Fox and a major Zelda remake this year, but no 3D Mario

Ocarina of Time isn’t even my favorite Zelda game (it’s my fourth), but it might be the most important Zelda game in my life. A Link to the Past introduced me to fantasy as a genre, and it was my first RPG, even if it was an Action RPG. Following that and getting a Nintendo 64 in 1996, Ocarina of Time was the first game that I ever followed the news about its release, both in magazines like Nintendo Power and on the internet in message boards on America Online. Back then, the idea of a game taking three years to come out was crazy, and each time Nintendo Power introduced a new delay to the game, it drove my childhood best friend and me crazy.

It was the first game I ever bought with my own saved-up money, not for my birthday, not for Christmas, or any other occasion. I don’t remember what kind of tree, it was either a Douglas Fir or a Norway Spruce, but we had it in our backyard near our pool, near my treehouse, so I’d often climb in it. The same year Ocarina of Time came out, the tree got very sick. It was already shading our pools, so my parents wanted to be rid of it anyway, but my dad didn’t want to hire someone to cut it down. When he did, he needed someone to help cut branches off it, and I needed the money for Zelda, so he generously offered me $10 for every hour I helped. I don’t think he expected me to make it very long, but I kept at it until I earned at least forty to fifty dollars. I got my dad to take me to Toy’R’Us and preorder the game, which involved grabbing a ticket off the wall where the title was and putting a payment of ten dollars down. If you pre-ordered the game, you’d get a special gold cartridge, but I had school the day it came out. Ocarina of Time was also the first time I can remember vocalizing being angry with my sister and my mother, who brought home a regular cartridge even though I had pre-ordered the game with my own money. I was the only one among my friends who didn’t have the gold cartridge. I can’t remember exactly what my mother said, but I remember she was exasperated with my disapointment as if I was lucky enough she had picked it up from the store for me because the store was swamped, and she didn’t think it was a big deal. I was lucky, but it was a big deal to me. I have more memories tied to Ocarina of Time, but I’ll save those for a later date. Here’s books and wrestling.

Books – Green and Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons

Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons slipped through my fingers. For some reason, maybe it’s because most of the Advance Reader Copies of books I actually am super invested in all come out in May I had assumed this also came out in May, as Jenn Lyons is one of my favorite authors currently. Nope! This came out March 3rd, and I had barely read the first chapter. Now, I’m halfway through, and you can expect this book to be covered on No Page Unturned soon enough. When I started it, I was comparing Mathaiik to Kihrin from A Chorus of Dragons, but he’s really more of a Brother Qown-like. My one criticism of the books I’ll share here is that I wish it were a multi-POV book rather than just Math the whole time. Math’s inability to accept that not everything Idallik Knights have taught is true, still halfway through the book, is a little annoying, and Kaiataris’s point-of-view, who is from a thousand years ago and seeing a new world born from her own world, would have been a breath of fresh air. It’s still a great book so far, but that’s just my two cents.

Wrestling – AEW Bullet Points

Just some quick bullet points on my current thoughts going on in AEW

  • If Kenny Omega beats MJF at Dynasty to become AEW Men’s World Champion, and only if then will I buy tickets for Double or Nothing in New York.
  • I used to say if only MJF wrestled as much as he took up time talking in segments on AEW television, I would like him more, but I don’t even like his wrestling anymore. He does way too much goofy shit in every match of his when he used to, if rarely ever wrestling, actually try. I feel like I’m watching Triple H in his prime, and I hated the way Triple H wrestled, even when he was good. I feel like this entire championship run has been carried by AEW having the best roster on the planet as his opponents. Bandido, Brody King, Hangman Page, Kevin Knight, and Speedball Mike Bailey have all done tremendous jobs to make him look good. If he’s beating Kenny and someone like Darby Allin, who feels very stale right now, is going to be his Double or Nothing opponent, then let’s see how that goes because I’m not feeling confident.
  • This Jon Moxley v. Will Ospreay feud isn’t really working for me, mostly due to how aimless and pointless I feel the Mox and the Death Rider’s story has become, cemented by how dumb Moxley beating Takeshita was.
  • Jack Perry, being a white-meat babyface right now, is really working for me, and so is his current wrestling style.
  • Some of you are weird about Kenny Omega’s enthusiasm, projecting a lot of your own feelings on a dude you don’t actually know.
  • I thought I’d be more annoyed that Chris Jericho is back, but I actually don’t care all that much until he actually does something. I’d rather see Chris Jericho than Adam Copeland.
  • Speaking of him, if it wasn’t for Christian Cage, Cope would be entirely intolerable.

Games – What I would like to see in an Ocarina of Time remake.

When the news first broke on this remake, I wasn’t quite sure what I would change about the game, but I have had almost a week to stew on it, so I have some ideas. The big one is Hyrule Field. Often in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, you can see NPCs walking from one place to another, taking paths on foot or horseback to different places, making it feel more lived in despite the Calamity and Upheaval. That is something I’d like to see in Hyrule Field when you’re young Link. It would make a drastic change when you become Adult Link, and Hyrule Field is now not just Stalchilds attacking you at night, but soldiers and monsters aligned with Ganondorf attacking you, and even maybe hunting you down like guards loyal to Agahnim in A Link to the Past hunted you down in that overworld.

A lot of what else I’d add is just a little more details on a lot of information that is given in this game. After you finish the Forest Temple as Adult Link, the Deku Tree Sprout reveals Link’s mother escaping the chaos of the Hyrulean Civil War. She flees into the forest with Link as a baby and gives him to the Deku Tree to care for. Give me a face to that mother and more about the Hyrulean Civil War that Deku Tree Sprout mentions. Likewise, we see Ganondorf for the first time kneeling to the King of Hyrule as Zelda and Link spy on him through a window. Give me a face to that King of Hyrule and maybe even a name. The game is littered with things like that. I would like just a little more detail on. The Shadow Temple and the well in Kakariko Village are another example. The Shadow Temple served as a place for the Sheikah to torture enemies of the royal family of Hyrule for information, and one day Impa, one of the few remaining Sheikah, sealed the Shadow Temple boss, Bongo Bongo, beneath the well before it escaped in Ocarina of Time. Give me more details about what links the bottom of the well, which has its own undead and torture chambers with the Shadow Temple, and how Bongo Bongo relates to all this tortured history of Hyrule’s imprisoned enemies. Honestly, just give me more about the Sheikah in general. The bosses of the Spirit Temple, Kotake and Koume are said to be hundreds of years old and have been leading the Gerudo tribe in secret, and also served as the surrogate mothers to Gandondorf. Give me more details on that! That’s just the lore I can remember. Now, like I said, just give me a little more. Don’t go crazy with it. Oh, I just thought of a big one I’d like to see more details of: Ganondorf’s betrayal and attack. I missed it so many times as a kid, but when you head back to Hyrule Town after getting all the Sacred Stones, you get that wonderful scene of Zelda and Impa escaping, Zelda throwing the Ocarina of Time into the moat, and your first confrontation with Ganondorf. At this time, Ganondorf has presumably killed the King of Hyrule and the royal soldiers with his own force. The part I missed the first of many times I’ve played it is the soldier in the back alley of Hyrule Town who warns of Ganondorf’s treachery before succumbing to their injuries. I want more details on that, even if it means exploring Hyrule Castle again.

Speaking of lore, back when Ocarina of Time came out, the developers said this was to serve as the earliest point in the Zelda timeline at the time. Since then, Skyward Sword is now the earliest game in the timeline. Maybe give some nods to that, like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom did with the Master Sword healing itself, making the same noises Fi did. Just like a hint of Hylian once living above the clouds or something. One thing I believe they are one hundred percent going to lean into is the Goddess Hylia having a more prominent mention in the story, especially in the telling of Hyrule’s creation as told by the Deku Tree to Link, which details how the three golden goddesses created the world. Right after he tells Link how the Triforce was creted Nintendo can just add in the line about how the Goddess Hylia was entrusted to protect the Triforce, which was evil, and Zelda’s family line is connected to that.

Skyward Sword, you know, the origin story of the Master Sword, has me thinking, let’s finally give the Master Sword something more. It doesn’t have to shoot a beam at full hearts like it did in A Link to the Past, but there should be something special about the Master Sword when you get it, beyond just doing more damage. Even if it’s a new quest to add some kind of ability to it, let me do something extra cool with the sword that is evil’s bane. On the subject of gameplay, let me use the boomerang as an adult. You get the boomerang, defeat the boss in Jabu-Jabu’s belly, then if you follow the story, you’ll end up at the Temple of Time and an adult fairly shortly, giving you barely any time with the boomerang. Sure, you get the hookshot shortly after that, but let me use the boomerang as an adult. Also, since we’re remaking the game, give a more important role to some items, specifically the fire and ice arrows. Make them important to the game rather than just extra items of some convenience against enemies and certain puzzles.

I wonder if they’ll give Link some kind of parry ability like in the two Switch Zelda games. What if young Link can do the reaction attack like Link in Breath of the Wild, but adult Link, facing stronger enemies, can shield parry like Link from Breath of the Wild? If we’re adding things, I’d like there to be Sheik fight after you do three temples as adult Link, just for fun. Sheik comes on all like “I’m here to test what you’ve learned if you’re really worthy of being the Hero of Time, and maybe hint at the reveal that happens later, both the Zelda one and the Triforce of Courage one. If they want to expand upon Zelda/Sheik’s character and role in this game, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I’ve loved what they’ve done with Zelda as a character in Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom, so I welcome getting more Princess Zelda. I also wouldn’t mind Ganondorf getting different hair, maybe.

The biggest change I’d like to see to the game is a bigger impact to the areas Link brings hope back to as an adult when he rescues/reveals/revives the Sages in the different temples. Biggest of all, Zora’s Domain must finally melt and bring the Zoras back besides the king but do this in all the other regions also. I want to see these places in despair thanks to Ganondorf’s rule and then see the light, and hope brought back to the same places once Link is done with them. I want Mido to acknowledge that Adult Link is the Link that he knew and see the Kokiri change as a result of the birth of the Deku Tree Sprout. I want to see Daruna’s son Link take Daruna’s place as leader of the gorons and, like his father become a sworn brother to Link. Maybe introduce a new NPC in the Geurdo Tribe that becomes their leader, with Kotake, Koume, and Nabooru all gone. I’d like to see the carpenters that appear in the game slowly change Kakariko Village as the game progresses, even more so after you’ve completed the Shadow Temple, maybe even Gerudo’s Fortress too, as the carpenters eventually go that way.

I’m not sure what style the game should look like, but I’d know what the wrong choice was if I saw it. It shouldn’t look like any other Zelda game to be perfectly clear. I don’t think it necessarily needs a new style, but it should look beautiful with as many frames-per-second as the Switch 2 can do. The music has to be fully orchestrated as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has some of the most iconic music of all time in a video game. In a way, though, this is like fantasy booking wrestling. If you do too much of it and it doesn’t happen, you can end up disappointing yourself when you didn’t need to. With Ocarina of Time widely available on NSO, 3DS, and other means, it seems like a good opportunity if you’re going to remake it to give a little bit more beyond what the Nintendo 64 was capable of. One last thing, though.

It was just for a demo of what was called Zelda 64 at the time, but it shows Link opening a weird blue chest and the full Triforce being revealed. On the message board, it was rumored this would finally come to fruition in a quest after the main quest of the game for the 64DD, an add-on to the Nintendo 64 that came out in Japan, failed, and never came to the United States. In this new quest, you’d go to the Sacred Realm and take on new challenges that eventually led to seeing the full Triforce together. This later turned out to be nonsense and the Master Quest, a remixed, harder version of the game you’d get if you preordered The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, is what was originally planned for the 64DD. Now, however, is your chance Nintendo. I don’t care about a quest after the main quest of anything else I just want to be able to unlock in some way Link, the Hero of Time, finally getting a chance to make a wish on the full Triforce.

Maybe this is how you fix the timeline of Zelda. This brings up a good question of whether Nintendo will change the ending. Adult Zelda sends Adult Link back in time to when he was a kid again. Then that young Link, after supposedly meeting with young Zelda, saving Hyrule in the original time by revealing Ganondorf’s plot, grows up to find the Triforce and wishes for the timeline he is no longer in to be saved. There I go, fantasy booking again. I’ll just have to wait and see.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 18 – Bye, Winter

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

This winter has been too damn cold with too much damn snow. It has also been difficult at times to get out of bed. I’m so ready for Spring, maybe I’ll even go to Double or Nothing in May.

Wrestling – AEW Revolution

Overall, I think last weekend’s AEW Revolution was entertaining, but some weird choices overall. I’m not even talking about the main event as the possibilities in Hangman’s story going forward are interesting to me. I imagine this will likely be the story for Hangman the rest of the year, considering it was basically a verbal/handshake agreement to not challenge for the men’s world championship again. There are going to be multiple temptations to break his promise, and we’ll see how he navigates that.

The Young Bucks losing in front of their family to FTR, whose title run has been carried by this match and the Brodido match, just to set up the return of Adam Copeland and Christian Cage doesn’t feel great. However, the possibility of FTR dropping the titles to Cope and Christian, then C&C choosing the Bucks to retire against instead of FTR once again, will be hilarious to me as an FTR hater. Plus, even as an FTR hater, I have to admit that the match was incredible (thanks to the Young Bucks).

It’s Jon Moxley beating Konosuke Takeshita for the Continental Championship that really makes no sense to me. What the fuck are we doing with either of these stories? So Don Callis Family and the Death Riders have a feud where the Death Riders are the tweener babyfaces, and the DCF are the heels, setting up the Takeshita v. Moxley match, where Moxley wants to make up for his loss in the C2 and the time limit draw. Takeshita wants to beat Moxley without ganging up on him before the match, a fair fight if you will. The path of this story is clear to see. Kazuchika Okada screwed over Takeshita at World’s End, but loses the C2. He remains International Champion, so obviously, after screwing Takeshita, Takeshita would win the Continental Championship, then face Okada to unify those belts again. Oh, what’s that? Takeshita lost and looks like a nerd now? Jon Moxley just won clean?

At the end, Mox and Takeshita shake hands, then Will Ospreay returns looking for revenge on Moxley from his attack at All Out. Moxley and Death Riders allignment since the C2 has been confusing. Moxley himself has been more of a babyface, while Claudio, PAC, and Danny have been more like tweeners then Marina and Yuta have been leaning more heelish. So now what, with this Ospreay feud, is going to happen? It is unclear in a kind of negative way, as while Hangman’s future seems unclear with many possibilities, the future of the Death Riders seems unclear in a what-the-fuck-are-we-doing-here? kind of way.

Everything else on the card went pretty much how I thought it would. I do think everyone should check out Bandido vs. Andrade El Idolo. Since returning to AEW, Andrade has been incredible and this match is no different. I’m excited for where this Swerve Strickland / Kenny Omega feud is going with them having their rematch on AEW Dynamite next week already. I suspect Kenny is going to win but who knows?

Book – Super Nintendo by Keza MacDonald

I heard about this book on the Aftermath Hours podcast the author was on. It made me realize how different video games are to my age versus nearly everyone younger than me. The NES came out just six months after I was born. I basically grew up with Nintendo, so some of the events detailed in this book I just experienced as a part of video game history. There is an extensive chapter on the struggling development of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, whose delays is my first experience with getting video game news and might have been my first online message board experience discussing the delays on America Online’s video game channel. Back then, a game getting delayed for three years was an astronomical delay, and Zelda 64, as it was called in the beginning, kept getting delayed over and over again. I learned about this through issues of Nintendo Power, which my grandma had gotten me a subscription to as a birthday gift. The book provides more details about the causes of those delays, including quotes from developers I had never seen before. That’s pretty much the balancing act of the book I’m experiencing as someone deep in the weeds of Nintendo knowledge; the book reiterates a lot of what I already know or have lived through, but also new insights. I’ll have more to say when I finish it.

Games – A Hodgepodge of Switch games.

I’m reaching a wall in Pokémon Pokopia where I’ve done all the regions and am near the end of the story of the game, but don’t want to quite finish it yet. There are still some habitats in the city area I’ve yet to devolop and the enviromental level there is still kind of low. I don’t want to rush to the end now that I’ve been in each biome so I’m taking my time.

Pokopia has made me go back to other Switch 1 & 2 games I’ve been meaning to play again. It’s the 40th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, but I likely would have been playing Skyward Sword HD, Wind Waker, and Tears of the Kingdom regardless. I really hope by the end of Switch 2’s lifecycle that all the 3D Zeldas are on it.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a weird one for me. It came out just days after Skyrim and felt like the beginning of Nintendo’s worst period to me, where their games were constantly hand-holding in games with menus and pop-up instructions that interrupted the flow of games on both the 3DS and the Wii. It was also the first Zelda game that I’ve ever DNF’d before. Wii Motion Plus just did not work well for me at all, whether it was my distance from the TV due to my poor eyesight or something else, playing Skyward Sword just felt like a chore. It was the last game I ever bought for the Wii, and I pretty much played exclusively on Xbox 360 after that until 2016-2017 when I bought my first gaming PC and the Nintendo Switch.

Jump to 2021, everyone was flabbergasted when they announced a Skyward Sword HD for the Switch, and no Wind Waker or Twilight Princess HD. I wanted to give the game another shot, and I remember July being pretty barebones. I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember my original thoughts on the game when I first played it, except for the fact that I liked it, I finished it, and then immediately accidentally saved over my completed game. I hadn’t touched it since then, not because of that, but simply because there have been a lot of great games from 2021 – present coming out. The pandemic might also have something to do with it.

Now, as I’m playing it, I’m thinking about its role in the connective tissue between Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild. Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess are, in a sense, spiritual successors to Ocarina of Time, building on the foundation that the original 3D Zelda started, but Skyward Sword feels like balancing the line between trying something completely new and continuing what has always worked with 3D Zeldas. Also, this version of the game looks beautiful. I don’t remember the original looking this good. I think perhaps because I’m playing on a screen with a higher refresh rate, I can actually notice the consistent FPS the game has now.

Metroid Prime Remastered is also another game I’ve returned to. I didn’t finish it when it came out because I was so annoyed by the Chozo Ghosts constantly respawning when I leave and reenter a room. Now I’ve returned to it progressing to my first encounter with metroids in the game, getting the power bomb, grapple beam, and the plasma beam. I don’t know how mucb more of the game I have left. I believe there is maybe two more powerups I need to get and all of the Chozo artifacts that unlock the final boss.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 17 – Seasonal Affective Disorder

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I’m doing something a little different and writing about all books, games, and wrestling together, rather than in separate sections, for a particular reason; you’ll see why in a moment.

I don’t know if it’s SAD, depression, or just the state of the world, but I’ve found myself retreating into games more and more over the past year. Recently, though, since about January, I’ve found myself less excited to read or watch wrestling, and I’m struggling to figure out if it’s me or not. I’ll watch a great match or an exciting turn of events on AEW Dynamite, which my brain will register as a great match or a good part of a feud or story, and I’ll just feel no excitement when I think about it.

Two examples I can think of are this MJF/Hangman Page feud going on. I feel like it’s going well. Hangman has set stakes that feel important while giving me a stipulation that I actually want to see MJF in. On the other side, MJF feels like he has been on his best behavior, avoiding anything too edgy or obnoxious. I’m curious to know what MJF in a Texas Death Match is going to be like and how violent it’ll actually get compared to Hangman’s previous TDMs with Swerve and Moxley. Yet, I’m feeling just like, not excited for some reason. If Hangman loses, which I think he might, I’m very intrigued where they could go from there and how they can write themselves out of that corner. Yet when I sit back and think about it, I’m just kind of feeling nothing. Everything leading up to AEW Revolution 2025 is feeling similar. I am anticipating Jon Moxley vs. Konosuke Takeshita to be a killer match, and the possible fallout if Takeshita wins, within both the Death Riders and the Don Callis Family, has story threads I’m interested in. Yet, that usual feeling of anticipation isn’t really there.

A more recent example just happened on Dynamite this week. Speedball Mike Bailey and Kyle Fletcher have this unbelievable chemistry in the ring, and the match they had this week was incredible, and I knew it was incredible. I even said to my friend in the voice chat, “Oh my god, this match rules,” but it didn’t really hit me like I knew it should. This has been happening to me a lot. My brain is saying, “I like this,” and then basically not feeling kind of neutral about it. My attention span has also taken a massive hit somehow. Fingers crossed it is just how fucking cold it has been here in New York this winter.

I’m in a similar situation with books. I have a lot of great books on my plate right now, I know, a great problem to have. Oh no, Josh has a lot of books that are good before they come out, but besides what I’m reading for the podcast, I’m struggling to sit down, read, and stay reading. Maybe now that spring is practically here, that’ll change soon, fingers crossed. One thing I am reading and simultaneously listening to is the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. It’s one of the okayest series I’ve ever read, basically how I feel about it. I can feel an underlying righteous anger in Carl, the titular character, over the entire dungeon-crawling system and the corporations in charge of it. Brief aside, that is another reason I’m struggling reading books as gigantic mega corporations controlling society and making it horrible for everyone seems to be an ongoing theme in a lot of new books recently, and it doesn’t exactly feel great, don’t know why, hmmm. The jokes, specifically the jokes in the achievements Carl and friends unlock, are so fucking bad. Each time they pop up it makes me want to stop reading the book or turn off the audiobook for good. I’m trying to stick with it cause it’s what I read or listen to at work, but I don’t love it. It’s pretty okay and has some fun moments and fight scenes.

I finished Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth on PC right before Resident Evil Requiem came out. It’s basically my second playthrough, even though I stopped at the temple on PS5, but this second time around, and experiencing the final act has me completely reevaluating not only how I feel about the remake trilogy. When I finished it I felt an emotional gut punch that left me unable to play any other game with any enthusiasm for a day or so. Not the way I was talking about earlier, but sort of the residual emotional drain afterwards when something impacts you deeply. It made me really want to go back and play the original again, though, as the first time I experienced it was sneaking into my sister’s room when she was out to quickly play it on the PlayStation her then boyfriend had gotten her (which she hardly ever played) at an age where I didn’t really appreciate the story.

Finishing Rebirth also has me reevaluating where it sits on my top 2024 list. I’ve edited my backlogged list to put it above Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth now at #2, just below Metaphor ReFantazio. This year, I hope to finish my second playthrough of that game, and then we can reevaluate if I still believe that was my number one game of 2024. Less on that and more on 2026, though. Let’s start with the negative. After all the drama around Yakuza Kiwami 3, I returned my preorder to Steam and used that money to buy Resident Evil Requiem instead. Maybe I’ll play Kiwami 3 in three years when I buy it for fifteen dollars on a Steam sale, but right now, not spending my money with RGG is the only real power in this situation I have. It was the right choice because if not for one other game, RE9 might be my game of the year.

Requiem feels like a love letter to a lot of the previous Resident Evils. Grace’s section feels like they included a lot of what was best from seven and eight. Now, while I don’t hate Ethan Winters, Grace might be the best Resident Evil character in many iterations, and her as a protagonist in the more survival horror section was excellent. As someone whose first Resident Evil game was four, I’m a huge Leon fan and was excited to see him return in the action-oriented sections. The Leon sections feel like a combination of the remakes of two and four. My one criticism of the game is that just as I’m getting into the groove of one character, it switches to the next. I wouldn’t want a Resident Evil game to ever be long, but maybe an extra half-an-hour to an hour for each character would be good. The way it ends has me really curious about both the direction of the story of DLC they have planned and where the next game is going, as this feels like closing the book on a lot of the series’ past.

The game that supplants it and has been eating all my time, my surprise game of the year so far, Pokémon Pokopia. Combine Dragon Quest Builders, whose team worked on this game, Animal Crossing, and Viva Piñata with Pokémon. There is an element to this game that I think is missing in the main games. There is always a mini game that has you interacting with your Pokémon in the main games that is supposed to increase your bond with them. They’re not really characters or your friends, though. In a away the Pokémon are more like toys or tools that you use. This game makes them into real characters, since you’re a Ditto transformed into a human, you can talk to them. The premise is quite sad. All the humans have disappeared, and the Pokémon are missing. As a Ditto, you wake up and miss your trainer, so you transform into them and go around restoring Pokémon habitats where all of them seem to have been sleeping for a long time. A lot of them are talking about natural disasters hitting certain areas and humans running out of food or having to leave. I don’t know quite how it ends yet, but I get the feeling it’s not going to be one hundred percent a happy ending. I don’t think the humans are coming back, to be honest. It’s up to the Pokémon to rebuild the world, and rebuild the world I have been doing so for many hours. It’s now my most-played Switch 2 game, not counting the upgraded versions of Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild, and New Horizons.

The one thing I will say about it is I don’t know if I feel the pull of creativity with it as much as I did with New Horizons. Everything I do is to facilitate getting more Pokémon or putting my favorite Pokémon in a house I built. Once that is over, I don’t know if I’m going to want to just keep building and editing the towns for hours like I did with Animal Crossing. The effect both Resident Evil Requiem and Pokopia have had is to make me want to play the other games in the series. I interact with the Pokemon and I want to battle again. I visit Racoon City as Leon and want to be young Leon again on the first day on the job.

Say goodbye, Hornet.

Books, Games, Wrestling Vol. 16 – Lords, Links, and Lulls

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

I haven’t written on here in awhile and the format in draft form is all wonky now. I have no idea what is going on. If it looks weird, font and size-wise, it’s not my fault.

Wrestling – Truckin’ along.

Here’s the thing. I thought MJF as World Champion was going to eat up a lot of time on TV and have a lot of edgelord bullshit that made me not want to watch the show. Instead, he has, ultimately, been super boring, and the least interesting part of any feud has been in it. Surely he has something else right beside the two poles of problematic and boring, right?

Honestly, I don’t have much to say about what is going on in the world of wrestling at the moment. Tanahashi’s retirement match against Okada was very emotional. I’m happier that Yota Tsuji has brought back the V4 IWGP Heavyweight Championship than I am the fact that he is champion. I think he’s good, but his matches don’t quite excite me as much as bringing back my favorite championship of all time. I’m still watching AEW and enjoying it, but it’s like, just my little show I watch every week with friends. I am excited about Kenny Omega wrestling more singles matches and going after the AEW World Championship, but I think I’d have more to yell about it if I thought he had any chance of winning. All the stuff involving Hangamn, Swerve, Andrade, and him is fun. It feels like the ranking system back without actually showing the rankings on screen (I will always wish we still had the rankings and AEW used them better for storytelling). That’s just sometimes how it goes.

Books – The Boys (Fellowship) are back in town.

So, I don’t know how it started, but my friends and I started watching The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition movies, and I was giving little commentary about information that is in the books but isn’t in the movies at their request. I think I wrote on here that around December, I used to start Fellowship a lot because Christmas Day is the date the Fellowship takes off from Rivendell. Well, I did start it last year, but didn’t commit. Now I’m committed as I’ve already finished Fellowship and moved on to The Two Towers. I even broke out my pocket editions, which I usually keep in my car. It’s a nice feeling when you have a niche interest in something, and your friends are like, “Yes, let’s hear it. We want to hear it.”

This is just an aside, but I prefer volumes of The Lord of the Rings to be three separate books rather than just one large volume. In hardcover form, that is few and far between, but still, that is my preference.

Games – A Bundle of Swords

All the jumble of games I’ve been playing feel sword themed. I put in a lot of hours into the remastered Oblivion, completing all of the Thieves’ Guild, the Mage’s Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood. All I have left is the Main Questline and the Fighter’s Guild before I go to the Shivering Isles. I’ve finished all of Silksong Act 2 for the second time, and I’m trying to beat Grandmother Silk while cursed for probably the last achievement I’m going to go for in this game. The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is available on the Nintendo Switch Online service for the Switch 2, and I’ve been surprised how well that game’s look has held up. Whatever upscaling they’re doing, if they’re doing any, makes the game look amazing on my Switch 2. However, I’ve never played the Wii U’s HD remake of that game and, in fact, have barely seen it. I wonder how that looks?

A Keyblade is a kind of sword, and I’ve set up a Steam Deck Dock near my treadmill and have been going through Kingdom Hearts 1 while I walk. There was a game I started on Steam Deck on the treadmill that I had to stop because I wanted to play on my good PC, Lies of P, a game I bought on sale but have had on my backlog for a while. I think I’m past the point where it’s like, emulating Bloodborne too much and has become its own thing. The last sword game I’ve been playing is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on my PC which, man, that game looks a lot better on PC than my PS5, especially the faces, where sometimes on the PS5 the lighting made their faces look weird. I get people being mad about some of the open-world aspects, but I love this game. The battle system is definitely my favorite of the new non-turn-based battle systems Square has tried to use recently in FF games.

Books, Games, Wrestling 15.5 – Continuing Games of 2025, Games of 2026, and Games of the Other Year

/ Joshua S. MacDougall / Leave a comment

So, my current favorite game podcast, Into the Aether, because they don’t just play games from the current year, has come up with this idea called Games of the Other Year, where they rank games they played that year but were from other years. The rules are more fluid, but I generally make my own list by following two rules: I have to have either played it for the first time or finished it for the first time, and then I rank them. I’m not going to do full-blown write-ups, but I wanted to post this anyway.

  1. Sekiro – I’m amazed I went so long without playing this game. So difficult, so fun.
  2. Bloostained: Ritual of the Night – More Metroidvania goodness.
  3. Dragon Quest III HD-2D – Continuing from 2024, this game is brilliant.
  4. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle – A better representation of what made Bethesda great than Starfield
  5. Tunic
  6. Metroid: Zero Mission – Since it was a remake of Metroid, and I like Fusion more I never picked this up before now
  7. Perfect Tides – I started this when it came out and never went back to it til now. I’m so glad I saw it to the end. Meredith Gran is one of my favorite writers.
  8. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 – Like I said about 3+4, I am bad at this, but it is so fun.
  9. Risk of Rain 2 – Megabonk brought me here, and it is better. Playing this with my friends in November has been a lot of fun.
  10. Yakuza Kiwami 2 – I wish Tiger Punch didn’t get nerfed from Kiwami but I really enjoyed this part of Kiryu’s story

There are some games from 2025 that I wanted to get around to playing more but plan to play more of in 2026.

  1. All my PS5 Games of 2020 – 2023 – Since getting a Steam Deck in 2024 and a new PC in 2025, I’m kind of done with my PS5. A lot of the games I loved on there I have bought for much cheaper on Steam and will either play on Steam Deck or on my PC where they’ll run even better than the console (Maybe even a Steam Machine if the RAM prices going up doesn’t make that impossible.)
  2. Surprisingly, Monter Hunter Wilds – I know people have said it runs poorly even on really good PC but I was basically done with that game before I got my new rig so I want to see the game in action on it plus by the time I get back to it, they’ll be enough new content updates to get me back in the loop again.
  3. Final Fantasy Tactics / Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D – I just know if I were to play more of these games and revise my GOTY list, one of them would definitely be in my top 10
  4. Pipistrello and the Curse YoYo – An original indie game that is an homage to the best of Game Boy Advance. It can be punishing sometimes but I really want to beat it.
  5. Unbeatable – I’m not really a rhythm game kind of guy but I want to be and this game is so much fun with a really weird story going on.
  6. Demonschool – Tactical demon fights in a weird high school on an island with a calendar system, sign me up for more.
  7. Lumines Arise – Lumines is one of the best puzzle game series, period, and I want to get into this one even more because the music is awesome.
  8. Once Upon A Katamari – Katamari was a game series I heard about on one of the first gaming podcasts I ever heard, maybe from IGN, but I didn’t own a PS2 until about 2006. So this is only the second Katamary game I’ve ever played
  9. Constance / Possessor(s) – I want to finish both of these Metroidvanias that I really like but don’t love as much as Silksong. Still a while before that DLC, for it comes out
  10. Sektori – I used to love Geometry Wars, so this is right up my alley, it just came out really late into the year.

In 2026, I can’t wait to play as Leon Kennedy and Kiryu Kazama again. I’ve never played Dragon Quest VII, but I can’t wait to see how exactly they have reimagined it because I’ve heard nightmares about how long the intro takes. Pragmata is a Capcom game I am looking forward to, maybe not buying it exactly when it comes out because I want to see how others feel about it first, but I am intrigued by it. A visual novel series I really like, Coffee Talk, is going to have another entry set in Tokyo that I am highly anticipating. Control Resonant looked really cool, so I should probably finish Control before playing that.

In general, I want to know more about what Nintendo is doing for 2026 because right now the only Switch 2 game I am anticipating is Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave but FromSoftware’s Switch 2 exclusive game, The Duskbloods, might also come out this year, and I tend to check out everything they do, even if Elden Ring Nightreign was not my thing. ArcSystem Works desperately needs to reveal new characters for Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, cause right now my anticipation is waning on that with so little information. I don’t really know what’s going on with Mina the Hollower, but I was looking forward to that in 2025, and hopefully it comes out relatively early in 2026. The return of Onimusha in Way of the Sword, I’m frothing at the mouth to try, while Wolverine, I am keeping at a slight arms distance because it’ll come to PS5 first, and I might not get it until it comes to PC.

I played the first game of Perfect Tides just in time for the sequel to come out this year, Perfect Tides: Station to Station, and hopefully, that early access for Slay the Spire 2 launches this year. I’m not sure if I’m going to play The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon when it comes to the U.S. or keep playing in order as I wait for Trails in the Sky Chapter Two remake. There are definitely other games than this that I am anticipating for 2026, but these are the ones currently on my mind.

My most anticipated game through is just part of one with Deltarune Chapter 5 set to come out this year and the Hollow Knight Silksong DLC: Sea of Sorrows set to come out in the spring.