#rt game crowd

[forest-is-sleepy]

Screaming crying throwing up/ j

#forest talks #rtgame #irish lads #rt game crowd #placid plastic duck simulator #my art #i literally never go on twitter and this happened #emeto #emetophobia

[rtgame-fun-facts]

RTGame Fun Fact #17

RT took my spine

#17 #rt game #rtgame #rtgame crowd #rtgamecrowd #rtgame daniel #rtgame fun facts #rtumblr #hello yes i am mostly back from my surgery <3

[rosie-maybe]

My new RTGame animation!

RT gets distracted.

#rt game #rt game animated #rt game animation #rtgame #noot noot #youtube animation #Youtube #rtgame crowd

[dynamiteghost]

i hate myself

inspired by this part of a drawing by @fluffydancer618 (i apologize for ping/mention) from (one of the?) original rtumblr lore reblog chain(s)

transparent version:

i made this in 3 minutes and i hate myself for it

#rtumblr #rtgame #rt game #rtgamecrowd #rtgame crowd #rtgame daniel #i wonder how many daniels fluffy has stolen at this point. i might try and count- #i also may or may not make an ask blog for one of my/our AUs and co-run it with my online twin

[hccn-overseer]

I 13, 7/12/2 23 - The seer

Issue Masterpost About the Overseer

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very special edition of The Overseer. We would like to begin this week by including a trigger warning for kidnapping and very heavy talk of it. Please consider your own health before reading if this is a topic that is sensitive or triggering for you, and take care of yourselves above all. Normal issues resume next Wednesday, so see you then! - Staff of The Overseer

This week’s issue is accompanied by a PDF version created by the lovely C̴͇͆ẖ̶͂e̶̛̬e̶̜͘r̸͇̀! Pick it up here to check it out!

Now onto othe news n the cut!

W̷e̵e̷k̵l̷y̴ ̴W̸e̸a̷t̴h̵e̸r̷ ̵R̴e̵

The Hermitcraft Charity Event!

By Ỉ̸͍l̶̥͋e̶͚͑a̸̮͠ Zei

Well welcome back to The Overseer™! 

Today’s talk will be about the Charity event that was held here on Hermitcraft server not long ago and specifically about the games that were built for it. 

The games that were built were: 

Basalt Assault by non-other than Tango of The Tek variety  

Battle Bane by Etho Slab (Ethos Lab) 

Bucket Rush by Ex-I-suma-Vojd (Xisuma Void) 

Derailed by ImpulseSV (author definitely didn’t laugh alot about the game name.) 

Dunk Tank by CubFan one tree five (spelling mistake is for a reason. It’s funny.) (One of the game by him was also Total Chaos!)  

Ice Bucket challenge by non other than queen of heads, hearts and body parts! (False Symmetry!) 

The Horse course by The married couple (Etho and Bdubs) 

And the finally, the last but not the least: Panda Rescue by GTWScarrrr (GoodTimesWithScar!) 

Let’s see what some people think of those, shall we?   [Quotes taken directly from subjects]  

“I dropped my popcorn as soon as Basalt Assault started, and I wasn’t even sad! The game was worth dropping my popcorn tenfold. In fact, I’m gonna go home, make some popcorn, and drop it on the floor in *honour* of the game.” 

“I was working in the Entity the day of the event so I couldn’t watch it. But I kept hearing bang after bang outside the window. It was terrifying, but invigorating. It’s impressive how an event can make you excited even if you’re not watching it.” 

“I almost pooed myself when the first bang in basalt assault went off – it was bloody terrifying. But a 10/10 show nonetheless.” 

“The whole charity event was an absolute blast and it was amazing seeing Hermits and the community come together as a whole to raise money for Gamers Outreach, which was the charity they chose to support! It was absolutely a blast how much was raised all together‼” 

“So I will say battle bane because I am an Etho girl and it was great to see it being played.” 

“i don’t know why but i got very much into bucket rush, definitely one of the highlights for me. Its hard to describe the feeling but watching was a mix of being extremely funny, extremely stupid, and extremely nerve racking.”  

“i have got to say i have a soft spot for horse course, it was such a funny game to watch since No One seemed to know what they were doing. A few of my coworkers and i heard of the racket that was leading to the games, and i had seen the games before they were played, i remember myself along with some other people were crowding around to get a glimpse of the games being played. because of that and the non-stop energy i have got to say watching and experience some games up close has got to be a special experience for me." 

Well it certainly seems like people like these games and the Charity event as a whole! I certainly do and I’m glad everyone came around to help with organising and helping the event to happen. 

That would be it for now! Join us again in reading next .

ADV RT MEN S

By J̷̺̚a̴̧͝m̷̖͗í̸͕ê̴̠ Uncle Rob (He is now everyone’s uncle)

—̸—̵—̵—̷—̵—̵—̷—̴—̴—̸—̸—̵—̶—̶—̴—̴—̸

If you’re like me and not artistically inclined, then feel free to stop by Painted Wings. They’ll paint your elytra any colour you want! It’s like tattoos but for wings. Don’t you want to spite your parents just a little?

—̴—̸—̵—̴—̵—̵—̶—̶—̵—̷—̶—̸—̵—̵—̶—̴-̵

Are you good at getting plants to cooperate? Cool! I haven’t been able to grow anything since 9th grade biology. If you want to gather at a totally safe space this Friday the Garden Club will be behind Impulse’s shop. 

—̵—̴—̷—̴—̵—̶-̴—̶—̵—̶—̵—̶—̷—̴—̷—̵—̸

Do you like the Scar Safety Services? Well, I identify as a threat. Be sure to call your local Scar UNSAFE Service office to get your base fixed up and ready for any type of visitor.

—̵—̷—̴—̶—̸—̴—̷—̴-̸—̴—̸—̸—̷—̵—̷—̷-̶

G̸͙̓ă̵̞m̴̖̔è̷̤ŝ̵̳ ̵̭̂à̷̖n̴͎͛d̸͓̉ Fun and Games

By Kidnapper (Fizzello)

What's a better way to appreciate our many contributors this week, by making a word search using their names! The goal is to find all the names at the bottom of the word search. And if you see any "questionable" words in there; do what anyone would do. Ignore it! You can't see them if you don't acknowledge them. 

Good luck, fellow citizens! 

Did you find all of them? Congratulations! Did you not find all of them? There's always next time! Did you find some words you probably shouldn't have? No you didn't!

Anyway, onto the answer key!

Wow, that's a bunch of names! And no other words. If you see anything circled that is not one of the names; ignore it! Those are errors that were not able to be filtered out in time for this week's paper. And nothing else! 

Nothing else.

Weekly Weather Report

By Nes

Due to unforeseen circumstances we are unable to report the weather how we typically do, however you’ll be pleased to know this week we here at The Overseer offer you an indepth look on the weather in a basement! 

Thursday - Basement is expected to be damp in the morning, dew is likely to seep through the cracks in the ceiling. Hopes are high it will dry up during the day so we don’t soil our socks… again. High is estimated to be a cool 5C down here thanks to the air conditioner we were so kindly provided. 

Friday - It continues to be damp in the basement, luckily today there appears to be minimal leakage from the upper floors. However the air conditioner is either broken or has been unplugged, leaving us at a miserable 20C temperature throughout the day.

Saturday - As the days pass I would like to humbly suggest that whoever kidnapped us get someone down here to look at their basement, as there is a lot of leakage due to the rain today. With a high of 17C, we are in dire need of more buckets.

Sunday - Rain continues into the morning and fills the basement to about waist level for most of us. Good news is the air conditioner is back on and gives us a lovely breeze and a high of 10C.

Monday - False alarm, air conditioner was broken by the flooding. While the rain has stopped, what replaced it isn’t much better. It’s rather dry in the basement if you ignore the flood, and we have a high of 30C.

Tuesday - Flood is mostly gone today thanks to the work of everyone tossing buckets out the small window we have. Sun appears to be out, the conditioner continues to be broken, and it is a high of 34C, hopefully that will help dry off our clothes.

Wednesday - It did not help dry off our clothes. Instead they smell rather musty, no one is amused. Air conditioner continues to be broken, skies continue to be clear, and we have a high of 40C today. 0/10 would not recommend staying in the basement.

Editor's Note: Found these scraps of paper lying in my office along with the other articles. Not sure if I'm supposed to print these too but at this point I'm too afraid to ask. At the back of one piece of paper it says 'Astrology Corner'

And that's all for this week's news folks! Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week!

#tw kidnapping #tw kidnap mention #issue #hermitcitizen #hccn fun and games #hccn advertisements #hccn weather #hccn astrology corner

[itty-bitty-mess]

hi, sorry if you've already answered this before but i remember you mentioning having your own bittybones au before and im curious to know what your au is about?

TW: BITTYBONES AB//USE, BITTY WHUMP, BITTY T*RT//URE

Hi, sure thing! I've mentioned my own au before wayyy back when this blog was still pretty new. You can find the original idea in the link provided! I tend to jokingly refer to it as "the underfell of bittybones aus" since it could be considered pretty edgy or at least cartoonishly cruel and focuses, as you can tell, solely on bitty whump. Basically, after bitties became popular, people very quickly caught up on their various flaws (such as their annoying personalities, being prone to becoming spoiled, acting like immature toddlers despite being fully grown "adults", constantly talking like babies, going into heat and acting creepy towards their owners, generating waste, having irritiating squeaky voices, etc.) and realized that bitties actually sucked. Many owners began throwing away their bitties and dumped them on the streets. The now homeless bitties could only do one thing now: reproduce. Soon, the stray bitty population grew at alarming speeds to the point where bitty infestations were now a big problem. Stray bitties now were taking over entire homes and would steal from passerby in crowds. The problem was so big that authorities decided to declare bitties an invasive species, even though they weren’t even recognized as animals, and made it fully legal to dust them in order to decrease the population and solve the problem. Now that dusting was fully legal, people got to work and began reducing the population through various ways such as bitty exterminators, food shaped poison, making up games where people dusted bitties for fun, setting up bitty traps, opening fully legal bitty fighting rings or bitty slaughterhouses, etc. Passerby now stomped on or dusted any bitty they stumbled upon. Now, the bitty population is under control and the owned bitties that still exist must stay at home at all times and must be sterilized to avoid any more reproduction. As loved as they can be, owned bitties must behave at all times or they might end up on the streets or donated as food for animal shelters. If an owned bitty sneaks out or gets abandoned by its owner, they're pretty much dead as they are most likely to get dusted in various horrible ways. To summarize: in this twisted and cruel world, people hate bitties. Sometimes i use this au as a baseline for some of my writing, sometimes i dont, honestly it mainly kind of exists as an idea where i can experiment on various concepts and scenarios such as bitty fighting rings or dusting being legal and how it affects the bitty population and the way they live in this society. It'd also be fun to experiment or write about an owned bitty who lives a comfortable, sheltered life but one day he does something that leaves him on the streets, having to face the horrible, cruel world were his kind is widely hated and dusted for no reason. So yeah, that's my silly little au :)

#bitty abuse #bitty bullying #bitty whump #bitty torture #bittybones #ask

[bringerofdeathandtheapocolypse]

Honestly, having been rewatching the early episodes now, I'm a little annoyed how little what we learned about Ivan and what was going on with him and how horrible his actual debut truly was.

Fantasia set up that Ivan was exiled for an unknown reason (something which is still unknown since Makarov didn't know Ivan knew about Lumen histoire until Laxus asked about it so it wasn't that), that he had some interest in Laxus although again never specified what for or why, that he was the one to give Laxus his lacrima and that Gajeel was working as a double, double agent for him.

Then we learn through a flashback during GMG (I think. I might be remembering when wrong) of Laxus asking Makarov about what he was doing with Ivan and learning that he didn't attack Fairy tail over the 7 years. Something which we do know the reason for, that being no one remaining would have known the information he wanted.

Now I'm not saying that Makarov or Laxus need to info dumb about their pasts or something. It would be quite OOC for either of them unless it was an episode/chapter focused on say Laxus and the thunder legion, you know, the group he is the closest with.

Better ways of dropping small hints would be, even just taking canon events, have Makarov think about things when he's beaten by Hades. Think about how not only did one of his potential father figures turn down the dark path but his son and almost his grandson did too and have him think about what he could have done for that to happen.

Stories can have unreliable narrators. Not everyone is going to see things through the same lens as you do. Makarov thinking he was a good father and grandfather could make sense if perhaps he wasn't entirely aware of what was going on behind the scenes.

If, like I have mentioned before, Ivan grew resentful of Makarov and Fairy tail because it took away his father's attention which started out as Ivan acting out for that attention but it didn't work and got worse then its possible Makarov may not have noticed his son was feeling neglected. And I will stand by my belief that Ivan was an abusive father to Laxus. Maybe not physically but definitely mentally. And its possible that he said something to Laxus for him to be too afraid to take to Makarov about what was going on.

Fairy tail has a mix of villains who you can understand why they might have fallen down the path they did(the seiz with bad guidance, Lyon with becoming obsessed with his goal, Gajeel being raised in a guild that practically praised him for his violenece) while others where they just are evil because (Brain/Zero, Mard Geer and the rest of Tartarous, Erigor) I personally believe Ivan could have been the former. Give more context to it. Sometimes, children who aren't treated correctly by their parents fall into the wrong crowd, that could have happened with Ivan.

And again, his debut and build up in GMG was not good. His whole reason for joining the games was to get at Fairy tail and possibly get to Laxus specifically. So why was it only targeted on the first day. Third I get since there was no way to attack each other although they could have tried to trip up Cana or sneakly hurt Erza or Cana while they stood around.

But there isn't an excuse for day 2. Natsu and Gajeel could barely move. Wouldn't it make sense for RT to go after them while they were down?

And why not attack Juvia as well as Gray? Both are from FT.

And the fact that Gajeel being a double agent is brought up once with Laxus just mentioning that was how they got the info and Ivan being angry about it. Why not bring it full circle to have Ivan order Gajeel to work at sabotaging FT and aiding RT. Maybe even make him attack his own guild members during the night. Gajeel would likely refuse to do this since he at this point cares about FT so Ivan proceeds to threaten one of the members he's close with. It could be Lily or Levy, maybe Juvia or any other member he has an attachment or relationship with (Like how I see him being close with Mira and Wendy) Which forces his hand and makes it a case where the members are sceptical and think Gajeel is falling back into his old ways and betraying the guild.

So then when its the fight with Laxus and Ivan reveals some info to Laxus since he thinks he'll be on his side, it gets Laxus angry that Ivan would be willing to harm any of his guild and breaks what little hope he had for his dad.

Plus, it could lead to a little more chaos if Ivan is questioned by the council because he could try to put the blame on Gajeel and cite his sudden behaviour change. The council bring Gajeel in for questioning and then you could have a moment where Laxus reveals Gajeel was never wanting to hurt the guild and that he was being threatened into doing what he was doing and Makarov reveals Gajeel was a double agent the entire time.

The consequences can vary. It could be Gajeel is arrested because its a 4 to 5 vs 1 and its canon Gajeel has been in legal trouble before or he could be let go with a slap on the wrist and a warning to the FT guild where it could come back up later. (Maybe in a Gajeel centric arc perhaps something similar to the Rhodinite manga)

Or have Ivan cause harm to Gajeel now that he knows he was a double agent, attacking Gajeel and causing him to have a permanent injury. A branding, missing limb, damaged eye. Something other than a basic scar that isn't that noticeable to put out permanent consequences.

What can I say, I just love putting Gajeel in angsty situations.

#fairy tail #Ivan dreyar #Makarov Dreyar #Laxus Dreyar #Gajeel Redfox #Rant #Raven tail

[crimsonxe]

Do people legit just intentionally ignore details nowadays? Like how Barb when talking about RWBY's funding states they're STILL looking to other ways of getting the necessary funds for the show. In other words, they haven't written it off or are saying its not going to happen. They're still actively looking for ways to offset some of the cost. It isn't new that they're lowering costs across the board and seeking out partnerships, this has been stated since the CR deal. So why its somehow shocking people I don't know. In fact I'd wonder if this isn't why Barb felt comfortable mentioning it, because its already news that out.

Also I've mentioned it before, but it needs mentioning again to those rooting for another company to grab the show: "Genlock s2" be careful what monkey paw your ass leans on.

As to anyone talking about RT's finances, funny how pirating + soapbox hypocrits that seek destruction over change will have that effect. They're just as bad as the homophobic bigot incel/dudebro side of things.

Shit like this is when I start tuning out people in the FNDM cause its always a new thing that is dooming the company or the show. If you're that damn worried then:

hand out First memberships to people or if you really need a roundabout to do so you can also do it through Twitch via Tier 2 subs on the technically RT channel but really currently its the Inside Gaming channel as they're the main ones that use it. Cause Tier 2 or above sub = a First membership. Also the IG crew (Blizz, BK, and Jack w/ honorable mention to Griff) are fantastic, so deserving the eyes and subbing.

watch the content w/ ads since the ad revenue goes to RT w/o YT taking a portion of it

promote the shows

if in the one crowd get off the bullshit morality soapbox that is only applied to RT vs. any number of other equally or worse companies. And don't think for a second that I've forgotten either, when s2 of Arcane arrives if I see certain people posting love and praise for it without also making sure to drag up Riot's issues with sexism, homophobia, racism, crunch, etc I will be calling that shit out.

These are active in-audience hands things, which honestly should've already been being done.

So goddamn migraine inducing.

#rooster teeth #roosterteeth #rwby #rant

[omegaremix]

MRKE, 2021.

It’s April. To me, I feel that nothing’s changed. By now I know that all of my favorite businesses to patronize stayed open. Not one record store on the island shuttered. So far, I was proud of myself to visit Williamsburg’s Rough Trade before their relocation this summer. It was the best $417.00 I ever spent. A pinball parlor opened up at my former local mall to my total surprise. It’s something that Long Island never had before. For eight hours and $25.00 I had more than my money’s worth. It’s safe to say that most of the money is coming back again, even if the third stimulus has no face or feelings of how people either benefit or still suffering. Businesses re-opened after New York State’s mandated closures, like my local ticket arcade where I benefit from buy-twenty-get-twenty specials and half-off games on Wednesdays so I’m relieved. It’s been years since I went and I’m long overdue for a night out of a real life 2021 version of The Price Is Right.

My friend M-Ro, brother of archivist and WUSB’s J-Ro, had been out of a job since the cinema-house closed down. He’s done nothing but stay home with his four kids watching infinite amounts of Disney, long-forgotten sitcoms, and other cringy obscurities. Not long ago, he started working again with a friend who later changed career paths and decided to open Pickle Island, a pickle house in Oyster Bay. He offered M-Ro to help run the place and Pickle Island is now a two-man operation.

I hate pickles. I think they’re disgusting, unappetizing, and revolting, They’re an unattractive food to me. I’d never have a reason to buy them ever, ergo be near a pickle house. But when your friend sells part of their CD and video collections there, then you do have a reason to go. I always support my friends with what they do. Snakeskin belts, local shows, photography books, or new ventures. You sell it, I buy it. I haven’t seen M-Ro since one of his final live performances of This’ll Kill Ya’ for his bro-’s bornday at a crowded bar in Hauppauge, so it’s about time I do.

I traveled west on the Long Island Expressway / Rt. 495 and drove past Exit 46, Sunnyside Blvd. / Plainview, where a once-astonishing world of fresh faces and memories that opened up my junior year was an era long dead. Then up north on Rt. 106 / 107. The last time I traveled down that path was when I worked at the Jewish center post-senior year. I got the girl, a Dutch caramel blonde, and also got the job through her father; a mean, threatening, over-protective scumbag who had me on his shit-list for two summer months because I was dating his daughter. I drive up Rt. 106 / Oyster Bay Rd.’s silent, wide-open, grassy roads riding past the stables and million-dollar houses on hills. View the scenic picturesque neighborhoods and one would think how Nassau County sits at the top ten highest-taxed neighborhoods in the entire U.S. Go up North Shore Rd. and see an amazing grandiose view of the harbor’s massive body of water as you coast over the Bayville Bridge and slide into the parking lot across from Pickle Island. I see M-Ro through the storefront, sitting on the couch minding his own as I walk in. He sees me walking towards and waves hello as I come in.

I unintentionally give him a friendly good-to-see-ya’-again hug. Oops. I realized you’re not supposed to do that in a pandemic world. But it’s two weeks after the fact and we’re still alive. After a few lines of conversation, I said to him that it’d be quick and he knows.

I’m not here for the pickles. I’m here to see what CDs he’s selling. It’s already cramped quarters. A Ms. Pac-Man cocktail cabinet sits behind the front window. There’s a few racks of issues of Captain America, Green Lantern, and Wolverine. Another rack of VHS tapes and a shelf of DVDs and Blu-rays. Then the CDs. They’re from his collection. Some duplicates and others he didn’t care about parting, he says. Eight rows or sixteen shelves of discs in total which would take me no more than ten to fifteen minutes to scan…and some neck pain from having to see it all sideways because that’s how he placed them, you  Tetris artist. I’m already positioned in blocking the owner from going behind the front counter. And an all-too-nice suburbanite family of three just walked in; a father and his two kid who are all so fine and dandy to be there. As if they never experienced a bad day or tragedy in their white-winged innocent lives. Nice to know that Dad Of The Year never looked in my direction and wondered why a stranger is twisting over by the shelves.

Seeing his partial stash, M-Ro was never one to shy away from pop. Jewel, Head Automatica, Pretty Girls Make Graves, some pop-punk, first and third-wave ska, Warped Tour bands…no judgment here. Because he’s a solo artist who goes by The Matt Roren Karaoke Experience doing covers and music videos of various popular chart-topping hits. Before that, he was also part of the legendary local pop-punk / ska band The Microwave Orphans and after that the garage-punk outfit The Repercussions which I ended up getting two CDs of. Don’t Fear…and Modern Sounds were the two most expensive discs I bought at $7.00 and $10.00 respectively, still sealed. Come on. You have to support your friends.

As with any receipt, there’s plenty of firsts. This one, however, had the majority of them. Veruca Salt, Faith No More, and The Posies were bands that my alternative circles of friends from both Brentwood and Plainview were into. A low price point allows me to have them now for the first time. Stabbing Westward, as it’s industrial rock, is in my hands. The Presidents Of The United States Of America? Yes. They wrote that song about peaches so that’s valid. Why not get The Stooges first album with a second disc of live material? And being I have their second album, why not get the first from The Specials? It’s one of the very select few ska bands I’ll allow in my collection. None of that too-important elitist third-wave carnival music. I don’t think I have Phil Collins’ But Seriously, and he was someone I listened to feverishly during my Nintendo youth. And Richard Marx? None of you know who he is and if you did you wouldn’t dare mention his name. But I will. My ma’ loved him and once had the cassette. So both middle digits flying high to you all.

As M-Ro counted up the tab, I look to my right and there it was: a Sony Watchman. It’s the third one in two months I seen. My interest in them started when during my Saturday shift, one of my favorite customers, a young 20-ish redhead with glasses asked me for a power bank. On my way of showing them to her, she mentioned about buying some more accessories for her Watchman. I’m not much of a movie person so that kind of flew over me until she showed me an actual Sony Watchman handheld TV. She took it out of the box and turned it on for me. I almost dropped dead in front of her. I read about these things all the time but never saw one in the wild. Now here it was. She recently bought one at Savers for only $4.00 and bought an analog-to-digital converter from us to try and stream it to her flat-screen TV. She even went a step further and told me the manufacture date on it: 1985. The fact that it was her holding obsolete antiquated technology in her hands and was still in working condition made my entire month for me. I told this story to my friends at the radio station and our resident fantasy aficionado Captain Phil offered to send me one from his eBay store, which I’m now a proud owner. Pickle Island had a larger unit sitting on its counter showing a random movie and I’m wondering if some talking head, celebrity, influencer, or magic cartoon kangaroo on Instagram recently touted them for everyone to grab.

This one-and-done expedition was just as quick as when I visited Rosie’s Vintage three years ago, but not the least expensive. $62.00 later, I was the proud owner of a piece of M-Ro’s life. Not a gift, but a purchase. Being Pickle Island is not a legitimate music store by any means, it doesn’t count towards my record-store victory tour. I thanked M-Ro profusely for my patronage and told him to stay in touch which he would. It’s now time to reverse the drive home under partly cloudy blue skies with a playlist of past Springtime discoveries as the evening’s soundtrack. I’ll get to experience the harbor one more time and get an idea of where to take a scenic shoot in the near future. I’m not taking the L.I.E. this time as it’s cramped with traffic but this time the Northern State to Rt. 25, Rt. 345, and Rt. 454 all the way through. I’ll log on to social media for all of my friends and allies at WUSB to hear about because I never shut up about what I bought. I need the assurance and affirmation from everyone which I bought with my money today and, so far so good, it’s favorable. Then I see this posted under my purchase:

“You’re lucky I left some stuff for you.” said his brother J-Ro.

You don’t say! I had no idea some of his collection was mixed in for sale with his brother’s. So which ones, exactly? Unlike his offering, the stuff I left for him from my collection was totally free and not out of pocket. Take that to the bank and cash it in.

Repercussions, The: Don’t Fear…

Stabbing Westward: Wither Blister Burn + Peel

Stooges, The: self-titled

Veruca Salt: American Thighs

Phil Collins: But Seriously

Faith No More: Songs To Make Love To

Lacuna Coil: Karmacode

Richard Marx: Repeat Offender

Posies, The: Frosting On The Beater

Specials, The: self-titled

Presidents Of The United States Of America, The: self-titled

Raveonettes, The: Whip It On

Faith No More: Angel Dust

Repercussions, The: Modern Sounds

#omega #music #playlists #mixtapes #personal #Long Island #ska #industrial #punk #alternative #pop #garage #Stabbing Westward #Stooges #Iggy Pop #Veruca Salt #Phil Collins #Faith No More #Posies #Specials #Eaveonettes

[ryuichirou]

Hello! I'm pretty new to TWST and I'm always surprised at how many antis I find here. It's also confusing because this is a world based off of villains. Villains. That should at least be telling for some but apparently not.

I play Gen/shin so I'm not a stranger to being harassed for liking the "controversial" red-blue ship (ifkyk), but I find myself more scared of making things for TWST since I don't have a circle of support like I do for GI. I'm always worried that anyone I interact with could be an anti so when I found your blog and read your carrd I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.

Anyway, I'm grateful for your art and your stance on the harassment and bullying that are so prevalent online. Thank you!

Hi, Anon!

Honestly, antis pick the weirdest fandoms to be a part of. I feel like one of the popular ones for them is South Park, and this is still bonkers to me. I guess TWST is popular because it’s easy to dive into + is big on tiktok?? Maybe?? I’m old, I don’t know if I’m right about this lol

(Also, as someone who doesn’t play the red-blue ship game but constantly hears about the controversies this ship gets people into, I’m honestly amazed...)

I get what you mean, finding out if the person is open-minded about shipping and weird ships or not could be difficult, especially if you’re new and don’t know anyone yet. Our go-to is to check their RTs and likes, because there could be certain takes that make that person’s position obvious, but honestly it takes time and energy to do, so it’s a huge bummer.

I really hope you’ll find your crowd and enjoy posting and creating things with them. TWST has an amazing cast to play with, and it’s honestly a shame that people whose ideas don’t fit the mold feel threatened and uncomfortable. Our twst posting also started basically from nothing, and people loved telling us how they drop their support because of things we like (like we care lol), but in the end, we’re the winners in this scenario – we’re confident about our audience whom we can show our art to.

Thank you for your support and kindness! People like you make it much easier to be vocal about these things, and I’m super happy if it helps in any way.

#replies

[manofmanymons]

You got any ships that'd have people side eying you?

Uuuuuuh out of any fandom ever? Short answer: yes.

Long answer: it's a little complicated what I would define as a ship for me bc when it comes to ships I actively ship and actually think should kith I have incredibly few. But when it comes to ships where someone else will be like "these two are cute together" and I'll go "yeah I see it" and maybe rt/rb a post about them it's like...almost any ship. Y'all have watched me write hcs for almost every mix and match combination of almost every character in Survive even though I have like,,,two ships from that game. And also what some people consider side eye worthy is different from what I do.

Like,,,for example, I know I've said it before, but I don't think human x digimon ships are inherently weird. I think it varies on a partner-to-partner basis. I've seen a lot of people in gg fandom ship Ruli and Angoramon or Kiyo and Jellymon and...yeah I think that's fine. But no one ships Hiro and Gammamon because that would be weird. And I don't think I really have to explain what the difference there is. But I know for some people it's just a hard no across the board lmao.

Probably the only ship I actively ship rn that people think is weird is, for reasons I will never understand, ThomAya. For those of you not in Genshin fandom they're just a classic cute longtime best friends to lovers ship that some people unironically think is incest because Ayaka told one person one time that Thoma is kind of like a second brother to her. These same people will turn around and ship him with her actual brother tho which...what? Like if you actually think they're related or whatever how would that not, in your eyes, also make him related to her brother I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU PEOPLE. I digress.

OH OH OH NOT TO KEEP GENSHINNING BUT FUN FACT I totally got canceled on twitter for shipping kaether back when it was implied but not explicitly confirmed yet that Aether's an adult so the "Traveler is literally minor-coded" crowd came for my ass. I tragically got blocked by one of my only mutuals who liked Digimon back then over that shit lakfdjak. Like sorry for assuming a character who had "seen the birth and death of stars" but is kinda short was at least 18. I was right though.

I know a lot of my KH ships are side eye worthy because they'll be between characters who have literally never met (i.e. most mix and match combos of the characters who are Nobodies of or replicas of or the embodiment of darkness extracted from the other major characters). Some of them are between characters who, despite literally having entire arcs dedicated to establishing that they are NOT the same person, people will still point at and call self-cest. (i.e. shipping Roxas with Sora or Xion). So again I genuinely don't think they're weird, but I know other people do.

I've seen people say it's weird to ship Pao-Lin and Lara in Tiger & Bunny because of their "age difference." They are 16 and 14. Sue me.

Here's a special segment for things I shipped in middle and high school that no one thought was weird back then but would DEFINITELY get a side eye in 2024.

I was a sebaciel shippper when I was like,,,12. Would I still ship it today? Probably no. But hey it was 2013 and I'm pretty sure the show WANTED you to ship them.

Almost any hetalia ship. I am not even joking, almost every character in that entire show was related somehow or another. It was like 2015. I was not immune to smashing pretty characters together and shouting "now kiss." I also was not doing deep dives into whether or not the immortal personifications of countries were technically related or had age gaps, I'm sorry.

Totally shipped Yoichi and Gekkouin from OnS. I mean my main ship was kimiyoi but multishippping is real. To be honest it was just a classic case of being a teenager and shipping the character I related to with the character I thought was hot. It was not any deeper than that.

TLDR: if any of y'all do now or ever have shipped anything weird, I'm not gonna judge you for it. I literally do not have the right to.

[forest-is-sleepy]

If rt was a toad, would he just have his little hair swoop? Is that all a toad needs? Does he need a suit as well?

#eliza posts #eliza talks #yeah #rtgame #i really need to update my tags #rt game #rt game crowd #irish lads #toad rt is beyond cursed and i fear making it

[rtgame-fun-facts]

RTGame Fun Fact #13

von Karma no!

#13 #rt game #rtgame #rtgame crowd #rtgamecrowd #rtgame daniel #rtgame fun facts #rtumblr #manfred von karma

[dokidokitsuna]

Spoiler-Free Reactions to RWBY: Arrowfell~

I watched a playthrough, so I can’t comment on how it actually feels to play the game, but based on what I saw, my overall grade is C+...which is much higher than I thought it would be.

So although I’m gonna say a lot of nasty things about this game (and there are a lot of nasty things to say about it (o゜▽゜)o☆) I’m also gonna explain why it’s not as bad as I expected.

First, a moment of silence for all the people who thought this game was gonna be secretly * AMAZING * because WayForward and ArcSys were involved. Whoever you are out there...I’m so sorry. ^^;;;;

Love how the ‘towns’ just have NPCs standing in an evenly-spaced line XD Great immersive gameplay experience, 10/10 no notes

The action cutscenes look...good?! oAo Like, Team BRIR’s introduction actually looked kind of cool...maybe RT should downsize and just focus on working with game developers...

Love those little ‘item get!’ animations~

Of course Yang’s semblance ability is the ‘special block puncher’(¬_¬ ) ...all the other girls have some strategic elements to their semblances; even Ruby can be used to quickly zip past enemies when revisiting areas. But Yang’s semblance has only one use; you have very little reason to play as her for longer than half a second. Even when she gains the Burn+ damage boost, it doesn’t mean much when you could, for instance, simply stack Blake with 2 clones and get triple damage...

Speaking of Blake, her clones not only function as autonomous attack turrets, they can block bullets AND act as targets for enemy homing attacks. Far and away the best semblance in the game. ‘_’

Penny is beautiful and cute and deserves the world...honestly, shame on RT for throwing such a wonderful girl in the trash for mere shock value... Anyway, it was a very pleasant surprise to see her in this game, even if it was just as a silly side character.

Side note: Why is Weiss so mean to Penny now?? இ௰இ Almost everything she says to her is some kind of insult...

Ruby and Weiss both have noticeably different characterization in this game, actually: Weiss is a LOT meaner to everyone, worse than she was in V1, even...and Ruby kinda got turned into a stereotypical dopey airhead anime girl. :/ She’s still more entertaining than the canon show version, but...man, I miss awkward nerd Ruby...

Qrow is characterized differently too-- he’s actually entertaining again! o_O I legit forgot his character used to be cool and fun...

BTW, fixed Yang: instead of making her semblance a mere tool to get rid of glowy blocks, they could’ve given her ‘crowd control’ abilities as well-- maybe her special punch could knock back/stun enemies or repel attacks. It’d probably come in handy when you’re getting mobbed during the ‘Ambush’ stages... ...See, this isn’t hard, folks. ^^;

JAMES! JAMES!!! JAMES!!!! (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`) ...Okay, to be honest, Ironwood is only marginally relevant in this game, but it was nice to see him again too. ^^ It’s great that all these ruined and/or murdered characters get to have one last chance to shine here.

Demonizing the civil rights movement wasn’t enough; now we’re going to demonize unions...oh, Rooster Teeth...(╬▔v▔)

And on that note: did RT really not have a hand in writing this game...? Because it really feels like something they would write... Maybe they gave WayForward the concepts and basic story outline to use...it would explain why many things were actually executed well (i.e. ‘everyone can write RWBY better than its actual creators’ strikes again) even though the plot still contains some of their trademark icky writing decisions...

OKAY, so: The game may be cheap and basic-looking, but it’s solid. ‘_’ Definitely feels like something made by people with adequate resources and skill that they just didn’t feel like spending a lot of their time on, rather than the usual “we ran out of budget! DX We didn’t know what to do!” that we usually get with RWBY media. Basically, there’s not a lot there, but what is there is relatively well done. It’d be a good game to give to an 11-year-old kid or something (although idk if there are still RWBY fans that young). ^^;

Spoiler-FULL reactions are on their way, in which I’ll have a LOT MORE nasty things to say. =_= Stay tuned...

#rwby #rwby arrowfell

[dynamiteghost]

[ cw/tw - white bg; (badly drawn) multiple eyes; decent amount of colors (on labeled version) || open tags at your own risk (it’s long) || disclaimer regarding one of my doodles located on the end of this post ]

doodle sheet i did over the course of two days, consisting of some of my RT/lads AUs :]

& of course, as always, i am open to questions <3

labeled version:

concerning the top right corner doodle: headcanon for the character & not the cc!!! it’s a universal headcanon across most, if not all, of my AUs that he’s aroace but it is very rarely brought up or even mentioned. it’s just a little detail/headcanon i thought would be cool, especially since i myself am aroace. i drew that specifically because it’s aromantic spectrum awareness week at the time of drawing that & writing this. cc!dan’s orientation is none of my business nor anyone else’s & this is not meant to reflect his orientation, identity, or anything of that sort. if i find out this is crossing any boundaries he has set, the headcanon will be silently scrapped, taken down, &/or removed. the sk doodle underneath the aroace doodle is not related to this headcanon.

#thai art (real) #doodle sheet #rtgame #rt game #rtgamecrowd #rtgame crowd #rtgame daniel #rtumblr #callmekevin #cmk #rtgame cupcake #don’t tag as ship #<- regarding the awkward position in the third ‘panel’ of the sk home mini ‘comic’ #*cracks knuckles* time to tag all the AUs #watcher!rt is technically a mcyt/hermitcraft au but im too nervous to tag those so #watcher!rtgame #watcher!rtgame au #mlp au #rtgame mlp au #<- ?? weird name but i dont have anything better #stray kitsune au #stray kitsune lads #<- what sk stands for btw #irish lads au #ash & dust au #a&d au #ash & dust lads #a&d lads #<- my irish lads post apoc au #rtbh

[goombasa]

Everything Actiblizz Owns and What's Happening With It

Hey all.

So a big topic of discussion last year, especially near the last fourth of the year, was the fact that Microsoft had successfully acquired Activision Blizzard for around $69 Billion dollars.

Despite what the number might suggest, this is most certainly not nice. Acti-Blizz was far from a perfect, or even good, company, but a single company consolidating power is never a positive.

However, beyond the horrifying, monopolistic implications this could have down the road, this did get me thinking… Activision-Blizzard has been around for a very long time, in multiple incarnations, and they own a lot of different IPs. So I thought it might be a good idea to go over what they own, or rather what Microsoft now owns, and what's actually been done with these series and IPs recently, if anything. Because Activision-Blizzard owns a lot of stuff, but they don't necessarily do a lot with them, as seems to be the case with a lot of larger game publishers who have chewed up and spat out smaller studios.

I'm going to do my best to cover all of what Acti-Blizz owns, but I don't think this list is going to be entirely comprehensive, because beyond the big names that everyone knows about, companies this big often have nebulous piles of acquired IPs that they just quietly sit on and do nothing with, content in the fact that no one else is making money off of them, even when they're just rotting there in solitude. So if you see any sort of omissions that you think might below to Acti-Blizz, or any big, glaring ommissions, please let me know, because I'd love to know what sort of stuff a company this large, and with this long a history, is just letting waste away in their copyright office. I'm well aware of how prolific the company was during the early days of gaming for things like Atari 2600 and DOS computers, but I wasn't sure if I should include them or not, and because of their sheer volume, I decided not to for now.

Also, while many of my personal thoughts in this moment are pretty negative, I would in no way be disappointed to be proven wrong on my personal predictions here, many of which are a bit sour. But hey, the gaming industry itself has been souring on me for a good long while. I love games, I love the people who make them, I just hate the companies that run things.

So, let's get started:

Caesar

First Game: Caesar, 1992 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Caesar IV, 2006 (Developed by Tilted Mill Entertainment, Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Historical RTS games don't feel like they're very prevalent anymore, do they? I don't know how well this series did because, to be honest, I had never heard of it before. I'm assuming it did decently well, as a sequel cropped up every now and then, but consideirng that the last game in the series was  released not long before Vivendi Games, who owned Sierra at the time, got gobbled up by Activision, I'm guessing this is an IP that got lost in the shuffle. Always there, just buried deep in the vault with a majority of the rest of Sierra's back catalogue.

Personal Hopes: We aren't exactly hurting for good RTS series nowadays. Civilization, Anno, Age of Empires, Northgard, Supremem Commander, Starcraft 2, Driftlands, Tropico, we're not hurting for good strategy. While I could potentially see this coming back considering that Microsoft pushes games just as heavily on the PC as they do on console, They'd be wading into a pretty crowded market, and Caesar isn't a name that resonates very strongly nowadays. I doubt a lot of the wider gaming market that Microsoft often targets would even know that it's based on a pre-existing series of games at first glance.

Call of Duty

First Game: Call of Duty, 2003 (Developed by Infinity Ward)

Latest Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfae III, 2023 (Developed by Sledgehammer Games)

Personal Thoughts: I've never played a single game in the series. It is interesting to me as an outsider how it continues to be one of the highest selling series for the company when anyone I ask about it says that the series hasn't been good in years now. Not in any danger of having production ended, but eventually I do think it's going to become a console exclusive. I don't believe a word of what Phil Spencer says when he says they want to keep putting the games out on rival consoles. It might not happen right away, but I'm pretty sure it will happen eventually, even if they have to make a whole new series to justify it.

Personal Hopes: I have no interest in the series myself, but I do hope that those who play the series get some games down the line from here on out that they can say are genuinely good, rather than people buying it out of obligation and just thinking the game is mediocre.

Candy Crush

First Game: Candy Crush Saga, 2012 (Developed and Originally Published by King Games)

Latest Game: I… THINK this is the only game  in this series? Correct me if I'm wrong, but despite how big it is, I think Candy Crush might be standing alone.

Personal Thoughts: What do you want me to say? It's Candy Crush. It basically came pre-installed with Windows for a while. It's one of those things where it's been around for so long and is apparently super popular, and yet I cannot think of anything good anyone has said about it. It's not even that unique of a concept. Match-Three games are so synonymous with mobile games now that there's an absolute deluge of them whenever you look around any app store. Heck, I don't think it's the only candy-based match-three game anymore. And of course, like every game made by King, it's designed to be predatory and push you towards microtransactions for helpful little tools you can use to get past those super hard puzzles that are holding you up, so it's already there on my shit-list.

Personal Hopes: It's Candy Crush. It's going to be fine, so long as it's still making money. If I have any hopes for this at all, I hope it just goes away, along with most of its micro-transaction pushing ilk.

Crash Bandicoot

First Game: Crash Bandicoot, 1996 (Developed by Naughty Dog, originally published by Sony Computer Entertainment)

Latest Game: Crash Team Rumble, 2023 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Personal Thoughts: They had such a good setup for a comback with this one. Activision gobbles up Vivendi, who gobbled up Sierra Entertainment, who had the rights for Crash at the time, they did nothing with the IP for years, then bring it back with the N.Sane Trilogy, a very warmly remake of the first three games. Follow that up with a remake of the equally as beloved Crash Team Racing (subtitled Nitro Fueled), and then they release a long awaited original continuation with Crash 4: It's About Time. And then what? They turn Toys for bob and Vicarious Visions, the studios responsible for this excellent resurgence for the character, into support studios for CoD, release a maligned endless-runner mobile game that barely lasts two years, and take a scrapped multiplayer mode for Crash 4 and turn it into an online only MOBA game. They've squeezed the blood from this stone and they're happy to just put it back into the vault until they need another big of nostalgic goodwill. And I don't think that's going to change now that Microsoft owns the IP either. Microsoft has a few kid-friendly, or cartoonish IPs and they aren't chomping at the bit to do anything with them because those games don't appeal to their primary base. I just don't see this series continuing in any meaningful way under Microsoft's stewardship. It is still early days, though. Crash 4 was only a couple years ago, and despite a rather small player base, Crash Team Rumble is still active and getting updates, so there is a chance that we might see something more substantial in the near future.

Personal Hopes: Well after all that belly aching and my pessimistic outlook, my own home is that if they do continue using Crash and friends, I want to see more like Crash 4 in the future. Maybe do away with the more egregious 100% requirements and just focus on making a fun, straightforward platformer. Make it a smaller, more budget conscious project, something that doesn't mess with the formula laid down by 4 too much rather than trying to make it a big spectacle. And if they decide to remake other games in the series down the line, I would love to see a more complete version of Twinsanity, a version of that game with some of the cut content reintroduced would be real interesting I think.

Diablo

First Game: Diablo, 1997 (Devloped by Blizzard North, PS1 Version by Climax Studios)

Latest Game: Diablo IV, 2023 (Developed by Blizzard Team 3, Blizzard Albany)

Personal Thoughts: Hoo boy. If ever there was an example of a game company's shift in ideology. I have not played the most recent game. My experience mostly comes from the first two games, which were great dungeon crawlers. Never tried the third, or the remaster of 2, and let's be honest, Diablo has not been in the best place as of late. A horribly received mobile game in Immortal was released, which was hideously grindy, and then IV comes out and is just littered in microtransactions, like a disgusting amount. No matter how good the game itself, and I have heard folks saying that the game itself is a fun enough dungeon crawler, you just can't excuse how much is being charged for cosmetics in this game. It's terrible. The game also has battle passes and has an expansion coming out some time this year, so I'm going to watch this one carefully to see how its monetization pans out as it continues to be updated.

Personal Hopes: Look, the game sold really well, and it's apparently great for yanking more money out of people's wallet. I just want to see a diablo free of these nasty monetization practices, but considering that this is becoming part and parcel for a lot of Acti-Blizz's games, I don't see that happening, and I don't think Microsoft has any incentive to stop this sort of practice considering that now, they get a slice of that pie. And if the game can continue to be expanded with more expansions and battle passes and such, I highly doubt we'll be seeing another new Diablo of any form, in quite a while. So for this one? I don't have a lot of high hopes at all.

Empire Earth

First Game: Empire Earth, 2001 (Developed by Stainless Steel Studios and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Empire Earth III, 2007 (Developed by Mad Doc Software and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Didn't take us long to run into another historical RTS series. This one had about just as much staying power as Ceasar, and in fact, most of the games in the series came out in the time between the third and last game in the ceasar series.

Personal Hopes: Most of my thoughts and hopes are pretty similar to Caesar. It's more similar to Age of Empires rather than focusing on a single civilization, but other than that, I feel like it's in the same boat as Caesar.

Gabriel Knight

First Game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, 1993 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra On-Line)

Latest Game: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition, 2014 (Developed by Pinkerton Road Studio, Originally Published by Phoenix Online Publishing)

Personal Thoughts: Ah, our first example of an IP that Activision has acquired and has owned for a good long while now (around 10 years) and has done nothing with it. They've had this IP, a classic point and click series from Sierra, for a decade and I'm willing to bed most folks at the company don't even realize that they have it. Now granted, point and click games aren't exactly flying off the shelves, but adventure games in general have been making comebacks in recent years. We had that King's Quest game that was released piecemeal a while ago, and I think that Gabriel Knight could work in that sort of style if someone wanted to take a crack at it. But let's be honest, this is a series that doesn't have near the reach, fanbase, or history that its contemporaries at Sierra had. It's not a King's Quest, it's not a Leisure Suit Larry, it's not a Quest For Glory, and don't get me wrong, that doesn't make this game any less important than those titles, but it's not a series that has the same draw strength as any of those names, which makes Activision taking a chance on revitalizing this series, even with, say, an N.Sane style remake of the first three games, very unlikely. And despite the original creator, Jane Jenson, stating that she's interested in making a fourth game, she admits that the legal tangle with Activision-Blizzard makes that very unlikely. Doubly so now that Microsoft owns Activision-Blizzard, who ate Vivendi, who ate Sierra.

Personal Hopes: I just want a new game to come out. Again, it doesn't have to even be a lavish production. A small digital-only point and click would be great. Or some remakes of the first three games. Get it out where more folks can see it, already! And this is coming from someone who is garbage at Adventure games. I just want to see what a more modern take on this series and genre could be like.

Geometry Wars

First Game: Geometry Wars, 2003 (Developed by Bizarre Creations, originally published by Bizarre Creations)

Latest Game: Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved, 2016 (Developed by Lucid Games)

Personal Thoughts: I'm honestly surprised that we haven't seen more from this series over the years. You'd think that occasionally dropping a small, arcade-style experience like this would be an assured means of making something comparatively quick and easy compared to the constant deluge of AAA ‘blockbusters’ splurging forth from Activision's maw. Yet the series has been dormant since 2016, since basically every massive game studio only knows how to make massive games now. They don't want to make smaller, more digestible experiences, because those aren't the most profitable or something like that.

Personal Hopes: Considering that this game was originally a Microsoft-made series, a darling of the Xbox Live Arcade, I do think that we're going to see this series come back in some way shape or form. The question is going to be whether or not it's going to be more worth it compared to the indie space, where we've seen plenty of 2D twin stick shooters come out over the years, quite a few of them having a look or feel pretty close to what Geometry wars is. Still, I'd like to see another entry in this series, even if just a little bonus game you can play over on Game Pass or something.

Guitar Hero/DJ Hero

First Game: Guitar Hero, 2005 (Developed by Harmonix, Originally Published by RedOctane)

Latest Game: Guitar Hero Live, 2015 (Developed by Freestyle Games)

Personal Thoughts: All right, this one, I get why it isn't around anymore. Guitar Hero was THE rhythm game series to have back in the 2000's, what with its awesome controller and having a rhythm game based around classic and contemporary rock songs, rather than the typical pop, dance, or house music you saw in series like DDR… and also whatever Donkey Konga was trying to do. But between Guitar Hero, its attempted sister series DJ Hero, and its future rival Rock Band, the genre quickly became very oversaturated, the popular bands were mined clean, and we were drowning in a sea of plastic peripherals. No one is really eager to see this series return, and I don't see how you could easily bring it back. No one wants to have to buy a bunch of peripherals to have an optimal experience anymore, and while you can technically play the games with an ordinary controller if you really want to, the whole draw of the games was being able to feel like you were actually playing something resembling a guitar.

Personal Hopes: None here. Guitar Hero had its time in the sun, it was a fun fad, but I think that's all it was. We have plenty of other rhythm games to play now and the genre has been expanding out into other mixed genres as well. We have rhythm beat-em-ups like No Straight Roads and Hi-Fi Rush, or rhythm FPS games like Bullets Per Minute. And traditional rhythm games are doing well enough too with things like the Theaterythm series from Final Fantasy, or independent and free games that are still decently big and infinitely more customizable like OSU! and Stepmania. And then there are the funny weird ones like Trombone Champ, which lets you experience playing an instrument (badly) without the need for an extra set of plastic in your home. If they could find a way to make the experience still feel engaging without the need of peripherals, maybe there's a chance of it coming back, but I don't have high hopes for this one, even under new management.

Gun

First Game: Gun, 2005 (Developed by Neversoft)

Latest Game: Uh… there's only one game in this IP

Personal Thoughts: I'm kind of surprised with this one. This is an Activision Original, they've had it since before they merged with Blizzard, and during its hayday, it was pretty warmly received, basically got ported to every sku possible at the time, and it's even still available on steam right now. It's certainly a bit on the clunky side, and twenty bucks feels like a lot to be asking for an old PS2 era game… but that's also sidestepping the fact that it also does not have the best portrayal of Native Americans, to the point that it was boycotted by the Association for American Indian Development for the stereotypes portrayed in the game. It's a game that, even in its most recent re-release, still has that problematic element, that was still problematic when the game was released. So yeah, I'm surprised that we haven't seen other games using this IP… but I am surprised that the game is still up for sale in a time where such problematic content is more uncomfortable than ever.

Personal Hopes: I mean, the game might have legs for the future, but you'd have to definitely revamp that image a bit. Go back and start from scratch, with a more sensitive perspective in mind, and maybe there might be some legs to this, but I doubt anything more will be done with this IP. Big publishers don't strike me as really wanting to put the work in to address the insensitive nature of some of the things that were made in the past in hopes of giving such an old IP legs again.

Hearthstone

First Game: Hearthstone, 2014 )Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Same as above, it's an IP with one game to its name… unless you consider it part of the greater Warcraft ecosystem

Personal Thoughts: Hearthstone is one of those games that I remember thinking was real interesting when I first heard of it, but even after trying it, it didn't grab me. It's longevity at this point is a very good indicator of just how ingrained it is to its players, even if at this point it is nowhere near as large as it once was, at least from the outside looking in.

Personal Hopes: This one's gonna be fine. It's still around, even if it is more in the background nowadays. I don't see a lot of big Hearthstone news circulating is all I'm saying, but the fact that it's still around suggests that it's still profitable enough to keep going and I don't see Microsoft changing that. The reason it's never gotten another game or a sequel or anything is because it's never needed one, and I don't see that changing now. Unless of course, Blizzard decides to apply their current philosophy on Overwatch to this game. We might see some issues then…

Heroes of the Storm

First Game: Heroes of the Storm, 2015 (Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Yet again, one game here

Personal Thoughts: The game is basically dead at this point, as Blizzard ended development on it and put it into maintenance mode halfway through 2022. Near as I can tell, the game can still be played for now, but a game entering into maintenance mode is never a good sign. I admit, it had a better run than most live service, battle royale, and MOBA games nowadays have. It managed to make it for a full seven years, and most live service games WISH they could last for the better half of a decade at this point. But it was a game that was entering into an over-saturated market, even at the time, and it just didn't have the same sort of draw power that other big crossovers had. At least in my opinion.

Personal Hopes: The idea does have legs. I say that as someone who absolutely loves big, dumb crossover games. I love seeing a bunch of characters from different universes clash together, no matter how little sense it made. Even so though, if this IP wants to have any legs underneath it, I think it should reconsider its status as a MOBA, which at this point is a notoriously hard genre to break into, and maybe, now that they have Microsoft as a parent company, consider throwing in characters from the big M, or the other companies that Microsoft owns. I mean, I'd play a MOBA where I could play as the Doom Slayer, that's for sure. Probably won't happen and I doubt anyone's chomping at the bit to try and revitalize the storm, but the option is always there, and I would love to see another crack at a large-scale crossover.

Heavy Gear

First Game: Heavy Gear, 1997 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Heavy Gear II, 1999 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Personal Thoughts: Did you know that Activision made a pair of really cool mech games based off an old sci-fi tabletop RPG? I sure didn't! And hey, it's once again an activision original, so it's something that's been with them for a good, long while! However, this one is a bit more straightforward, I think. Since the games are based on a pre-existing, cross-media universe held by Dream Pod 9. So the games were only one piece of a much larger universe, including a tactical war game, an RPG, and even a card game. So it's pretty obvious why this one isn't showing up anymore, the rights are probably in flux, probably not helped by the fact that the second game sold like… horribly compared with the first.

Personal Hopes: I don't think we'll be seeing a Heavy Gear game again, even if Activsion still technically holds the publishing rights to video game adaptations. They'd probably have to renegotiate a licensing agreement with the original publisher, and while they're still around, I think their stuff has become a lot more niche than it used to be. Activision isn't the same company that they were back in the 90's, so doing something this niche just isn't seen as something in their wheelhouse anymore, which is a shame. We need more fun mech games out there, and Microsoft has had some success with their own sci-fi games before. But this particular universe? Yeah, I don't see it coming back in today's climate. It's a shame, but this one seems like it would be more of a licensing issue than anyone's willing to go through.

Interstate '76

First Game: Interstate `76, 1997 (Developed and Originally Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Yet another single-game IP

Personal Thoughts: You know, I'm not sure why this one didn't take off. It was a Windows only game in the late 90's, so while it didn't have a massive audience, vehicular combat games did tend to be pretty popular around this time. This was two years after the oriignal Twisted Metal, and the same year as Carmaggeddon after all.

Personal Hopes: Vehicular combat games are kind of a rare breed nowadays. Not entirely unheard of, but not something that shows up very often. It'd be a good time, especially considering that there isn't a huge amount of competition kicking around anymore. Not much else to say on this one, I just think a modern vehicle battle game would be nice.

King's Quest

First Game: King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown, 1984 (Developed and originally published by Sierra On-Line)

Latest Game: King's Quest, 2015 (Developed by The Odd Gentlemen)

Personal Thoughts: I love the old King's Quest games. While the Moon logic needed in order to get through some of the puzzles could grate on the nerves now and then, it's another quintessential adventure series, and the episodic return of the series in 2015 was a fantastic way, I felt, to modernize the old flavor of adventure games. It's both important to the history of the medium and still a beloved example of early adventure games. The fact that it's been so quiet is odd to me, especially with how well the revival went over.

Personal Hopes: The remake didn't see any great big revival for the series going forward, but I do think it was a step in the right direction. King's Quest is probably one of, if not the most well known of Sierra's old adventure game catalogue, and if the Odd Gentleman reimagining is any indication, there are still a lot of interesting stories that could be told in this world and with these characters, or with new characters here and there. The question is, though, Is Microsoft going to indulge more in the colorful, cartoonish games of this sort? I doubt it, but hey, if they gave Battletoads another shot, if only for a single game, if they let the right creative team handle this one, I think an occasional episodic adventure in the kingdom of Daventry wouldn't be too bad.

Laura Bow Mysteries

First Game: The Colonel's Bequest, 1989 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: The Dagger of Amon Ra, 1992 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: Only two games in this series, and this is one of those IP that I would probably call a ‘deep cut.’ It's something that is beloved by those who have experienced it, but that group is fairly small, and the series itself was pretty short lived compared to other Sierra series of the same era, whcih would often get five to six games. I feel like this was one that was hanging out in the background long before Activision acquired Sierra's back catalog.

Personal Hopes: We're probably never going to see this one again. Like I said, there are folks out there who remember these two games very fondly, but in terms of an IP that would be likely to be revived by a major gaming conglomerate? Hate to be blunt, but no, this one is just going to be shoved to the bottom of the pile and they're not going to touch it again. Thankfully, both of the original games are available over on GoG, so who knows, maybe if there's enough interest shown over there, that might change. As it is now though, I just don't think we'll be seeing Ms. Bow or her adventures again any time soon.

The Lost Vikings

First Game:  The Lost Vikings, 1993 (Developed by Silicon & Synapse and Originally Published by Interplay Productions)

Latest Game: The Lost Vikings 2, 1997 (Developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Originally Published by Interplay Productions)

Personal Thoughts: If anyone knows anything about Blizzard's early days, before the Warcrafts and Starcrafts and such, back when they were called Silicon and Synapse, they probably at least know the name of the Lost Vikings, one of the first puzzle platformers I ever played growing up. I never got very far into it when I was a wee lad, but damn was it fun. And while I knew it had a sequel, I was kind of surprised that we didn't see more of it later down the line. But nope, two games is all we get, and while this series has cropped back up in recent years, thrown into the Blizzard Arcade Collection… which is digital only and feels like it only exists to sort of remind people of some really obscure IP that Blizzard owns? It's strange.

Personal Hopes: This is one that I really hope would be coming back at one point or another. While multi-character puzzle games aren't really unique nowadays. Things like a Tale of Two Brothers, Toodee and Topdee, and of course multiplayer experiences in the same vein like It Takes Two, but I don't feel like it's a particularly oversaturated genre, and LV's take on it with three different characters, or even more given the other characters introduced in the second game, might even make it stick out. I think this is something that could have legs in the future, so I think it's something that could come back, though again, I don't see it being a very high profile production if it does return.

Overwatch

First Game: Overwatch, 2016 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Overwatch 2, 2022 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: I don't think I'll be adding much to the conversation on this one. I'm aware that Overwatch still has its fans, but from the perspective of someone who has watched Blizzard and Activision slowly piss away all of the good will and good press that the game got upon launch, I feel comfortable in saying that this is the first time I've ever watched someone take a diamond and just grind it into dust in front of my eyes. I don't think it's necessarily going anywhere for right now, but it just feels like Blizzard has been slowly removing all of the personality out of this game and this franchise. It bothers me because when the game first launch, it really felt like it set itself apart, and pretty much all of the characters were, at least from an aesthetic and personality point of view, interesting and unique. I can't comment on how the gameplay has changed since then since I never played the game, I'll leave that to someone who knows what they're talking about, but purely from the standpoint of how the game's image has been handled, even disregarding the company's overall behavior (and you really shouldn't disregard Blizzard's overall behavior), man did they screw this one up royal.

Personal Hopes: I'm begging you, just do something with a more coherent storyline. Make a more traditional shooter. Give folks what you initially promised for the sequel's story mode as something like a standalone game or something like that. These designs are too good to just waste away in a hero shooter that I've only heard people describe as aggressively mid since the sequel came out.

Phantasmagoria

First Game: Phantasmagoria, 1995 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: I know that a lot of older media tends to not age particularly well as our understanding of certain social stigmas and the history of other peoples in relation to ourselves comes to light as time marches on, but I thing Phantasmagoria and its sequel are two excellent examples of just how poorly a game's content can age. These FMV games were both made with the purposes of rocking the boat, being very dark and touching on subject matter that games nowadays really don't want to touch upon, especially from major AAA publishers. I haven't played these games in years now, well before I developed any sense of social grace for myself, which probably means I was too young to have been playing them in the first place, so I can't say just how poorly they've aged, but I do know that i think back to my own experience with the games and it makes me shudder a little bit.

Personal Hopes: It's an FMV game series from the 90's that does have some merit to the history of the genre, if only for the risks it took in its subject matter, but the fact that it hasn't aged well, FMV games are seen more as memetic throwbacks nowadays, and the fact that the subject matter the games were famous for probably wouldn't fly today. Horror games in their many different iterations are seeing a big resurgence in popularity and while games nowadays can push the envelope at least a bit in terms of their content, I don't think invoking an actually controversial PC game from the 90's would be something they'd want to do.

Pitfall

First Game: Pitfall!, 1982 (Developed and Published by Activision)

Latest Game: Pitfall! 2012 (Developed by The Blast Furnace)

Personal Thoughts: I had no idea this series… was actually a series. Pitfall to me has always just been one game, the original Atari game that helped to codify the platforming genre, but no, there were several games released, all the way up to the PS2 era, and then it just sort of drifted off into history, with the last game using the IP that I can find being an endless runner from 2012.

Personal Hopes: Again, I don't see this coming back in any sort of big way. While the endless runner is no longer available, the original Atari Pitfall is available on Android at least, but pitfall could maybe make a comeback as a Tomb Raider or Uncharted style game, but we already have Tomb Raider and Uncharted for that and Pitfall has more of a historical legacy than a big brand identity, so not much hope there.

Police Quest

First Game: Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel, 1987 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game:  SWAT Elite Troops, 2008 (Developed by Rovio Mobile, Originally Published by Vivendi Games Mobile)

Personal Thoughts: One of Sierra's classic adventure series that wasn't meant to be more on the comedic or fanciful side of things, Police Quest was well known for being a proper police procedural game; if you didn't follow the rules and proper protocol, you could end up bricking your game for something as simple as not showing your badge before you started questioning a suspect. It was wild, and a hell of a lot more involved than it ever had to be. I applaud the older games for their wish to stay as accurate as possible to the idea of being a cop, but I do feel that it makes the series kind of impenetrable to anyone who didn't grow up with it.

Personal Hopes: I don't think that this series would come back in any form mostly because the series is pure copaganda. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of that in video games and in media in general. Video games in particular have a real problem with fetishizing how awesome the American military is, for example. Now, if they brought it back and gave the series a seedier bent, I think it would be more interesting, maybe something more along the lines of This is The Police. However, I don't see it coming back in its original incarnation. I don't think stories where cops are portrayed as the out and out good guys resonate with a lot of folks of my generation and below, and while we do have examples of games where being organized and filing paperwork can be enjoyable (Papers Please, and Death and Taxes come to mind), I don't think a police procedural where missing even a single step in a lengthy process could kill a run hours beforehand is what folks are really looking for these days.

Prototype

First Game: Prototype, 2009 (Developed by Radical Entertainment)

Latest Game: Prototype 2, 2012 (Developed by Radical Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: Edgy generic duology all about binary good and evil choices as well as some really well done animations and transformations and powers that you can attain as the game goes on, along with a free-roaming map hiding a bunch of secrets. There was an explosion of stuff like this at around the same time when the first game came out. The same year we had Assassin's Creed 2 and the original Infamous, so it simultaneously came out at the perfect time for a game of its type, and yet at the same time, I feel like it was always just sort of in the background and never really did much to stick out. I actually remember thinking for the longest time that this game was coming out of Ubisoft for some reason.

Personal Hopes: The second game, which came out 3 years after the first, apparently underperformed so badly that it was used as the justification to lay off a lot of the people at Radical, and turn it into an assistant studio for their large projects, primarily COD. It's one of those series that I see as a creation of its time, and I can see Microsoft showing some interest in the property given Xbox's perceived base. It's a shame that Radical Design wouldn't get another crack at it, since they're probably busy helping others with their own projects, and while I don't see it happening any time soon, I do think that this might be something that could see some sort of revival under a new regime. Maybe.

Quest for Glory

First Game: Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero, 1989 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire, 1998 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: This is the other big-name adventure series from Sierra, right up there with King's Quest, and while it didn't run quite as long, it has quite a big legacy, and is just as famous for it's many, many quirky death scenes, much like King's Quest, but often with a more personal bent to it with the ability to choose your class and customize your main character a little bit, with stats that can actually effect how you have to approach some of the puzzles, many of which have multiple ways of solving them to account for your stats, but it also allows for a certain level of creativity on the part of the player.

Personal Hopes: I do hope we see another one of these games in the future. We're inundated with a lot of games that have binary choices that affect the game superficially, but what I would love to see would be an adventure game more along what they did with the King's Quest revival, which did something similar, giving players multiple ways to complete a task depending on what sort of virtue you were going for. I think there's more fun to be had here, and while it's been a while since the King's Quest revamp, I think this would be a logical follow-up.

Singularity

First Game: Singularity, 2010 (Developed by Raven Software)

Latest Game: Yep, one game again. One could say that this particular IP is very… Singular?… where'd everyone go?

Personal Thoughts: It's a shooter for the PS3, during that horrid time where the brown and beige shooter kind of ruled the world, where because they could do pretty realistic, for the time, graphics, well, the real world isn't super colorful, so let's make our future-war, realistic world really boring to look at. Singularity, while its looks didn't really set it apart from a lot of the other military shooters that were out at the time, but it does at least have some mechanics that set it apart, with a sci-fi/horror bent to it that seems the main character hopping back and forth through different points in time. But even with that, I kind of see why this one didn't spawn a franchise. It sort of disappeared into the same sea that a lot of other shooters of the time sank into.

Personal Hopes: I think this does have a chance to come back. Shooters are still big business, but we aren't quite drowning in the genre as much as we were back during the PS3 and 360 era. And while we've seen these sorts of time manipulation mechanics before, a fresh start for the series, a shooter that keeps the ability to jump between time and place, that could work. It could be like Bioshock Infinite if the dimension hopping were an actual gameplay element instead of regulated to set pieces or story moments. The odds of it happening are slim, since the IP has languished for 14 years, but hey, there's a spark of an idea there.

Ski Resort Tycoon

First Game: Ski Resort Tycoon, 2000 (Developed by Cat Daddy Games)

Latest Game: Ski Resort Tycoon II, 2000 (Developed by Cat Daddy Games)

Personal Thoughts: The idea behind the Tycoon game has kind of fallen off in recent years. The idea of owning and operating a very specific business as sort of a faceless CEO who makes all the big decisions, fires and hires the people, and makes decisions about how your business operates. There are a ton of these now, from developers of various sizes, and of various levels of quality and seriousness. That is to say nothing of those tycoon games that have their own series in and of themselves. It's a bit of a mess, all things considered.

Personal Hopes: There are. So many. Tycoon games. Don't believe me? Go on steam and just search Tycoon and take a look at how many games pop up, and what sort of themes and businesses and ideas they use. Then think about something as basic as Ski Resort Tycoon being brought back. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but even with the backing of major names like Activision or Microsoft, I don't see it doing much, especially not when there are just… SO MANY alternatives to something like this, and I don't know if a Ski Resort sim would be able to stand up against them in terms of interest. Maybe something niche, but ‘niche’ is a bit of a dirty word in the AAA game industry.

Skylanders

First Game: Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, 2011 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Latest Game: Skylanders: Ring of Heroes, 2018 (Developed by Com2Us)

Personal Thoughts: It's kind of hard to believe how hard Toys-to-Life has flopped in the last few years. Wasn't that long ago that it felt like everyone was trying to get in on this grift, and now we're at a point where no one's really doing it anymore beyond Nintendo, and the only real reason it feels like Nintendo's held onto it is because their characters are recognizable enough that people outside of the game sphere are interested in them… and they can be used across a bunch of different games. At least, some of them can. Point is, they aren't locked down to a single game or series the way that something like Disney Infinity or Starlink or Skylanders was. Skylanders was the first big one that I remember coming out, the first one to really sink its teeth into kids, and while the series basically never changed much from just being a series of basic beat-em-ups for children, they were decent enough for what they were, if a little on the slow side. Each new game tried its best to have a new gimmick with the toys to keep giving people a reason to keep investing in more plastic around the house. The problem was there was just too much plastic…

Personal Hopes: As far as games aimed at a younger audience, they weren't terrible, but there were a lot of them in a very short amount of time. From 2011 to 2018, with the exception of one year, there was at least one new Skylanders game a year, and with them, a deluge of new toys to grab. It flooded the market all on its own, even before competition started to appear. This isn't going to come back, at least not in its original form. It lived on as a mobile property for a while, which as much as I hate the mobile market, it does fit right in with. The multitude of characters and heroes makes it a natural fit for the Gacha style of a lot of those sorts of games, but as it originally was? No. It even attempted to branch out into other genres briefly with stuff like the racing game Super Chargers, and from what I recall, that did next to nothing. Skylanders, I think, is done, and Activision doesn't seem in a hurry to try exploiting kids again, at least not on the console market.

Soldier of Fortune

First Game: Soldier of Fortune, 2000 (Developed by Raven Software)

Latest Game: Soldier of Fortune: Payback, 2007 (Developed by Cauldron HQ)

Personal Thoughts: I'm not really sure what to say about this one. I didn't play it at all, though it was a series that started before the PS3 shooter flood, and I understand that it was pretty well liked for the fact that enemies would react differently depending on which area of the body they were shot in. It did well enough to get a couple of sequels, and a very short lived MMO FPS (only released in Korea), but apart from that, was there anything that set it apart from its contemporaries or the contemporaries of its sequels?

Personal Hopes: Again, I haven't played any of the SoF games, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but from the outside looking in, I'm not seeing anything that would really set this one apart from the shooters that we have today. And I'm not saying that ‘Call of Duty’ is a title that really stands out in a crowd, but ‘Soldier of Fortune’ feels just as generalized and generic, but without the massive sales numbers to keep itself in the limelight. So I really don't think Microsoft would bother trying to pull this one out of obscurity.

Space Quest

First Game: Space Quest I, 1986 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Space Quest 6, 1995 (Developed and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: This series was to science fiction what King's Quest was to fantasy, though I often feel like it somehow managed to be even more absurd than the series that was based around a fairy tale land where magic bridles could turn snakes into horses and sugar cubes could make you invincible. It was fantastic.

Personal Hopes: I would love to see a revival of the main series of this. And again, I feel like the King's Quest reboot would work for it. However, it should be noted that the original co-creators of this series have, after a long decade of development are allegedly close to releasing Spaceventure, a spiritual successor to the series. as it hasn't released publicly yet, I can't say whether or not it measures up to that moniker, and the fact that it took so long to develop doesn't help matters. While I'm always excited to see developers try and give us a well loved, long absent series successor, but I will always hope to see the series itself make a return as well. There is, in my mind, room for all these games to coexist, even if they only reach a niche audience. It's just a shame that Microsoft and Activision think differently.

Spyro

First Game: Spyro the Dragon, 1998 (Developed by Insomniac Games and Originally Published by Sony Computer Entertainment

Latest Game: Spyro Reignited Trilogy, 2018 (Developed by Toys for Bob)

Personal Thoughts: This one is pretty similiar to the Crash Bandicoot situation. Popular series, goes through a lot of hard times, ends up with Activision, they make a few cursory attempts to cash in, including using his name and likeness to help jumpstart the Skylanders franchise, but otherwise has allowed the series to remain dormant, until Crash Bandicoot's successful revival. A few years later, hey, Spyro gets the same treatment with the Reignited Trilogy, which does ‘well’ according to Activision in its launch window. And now… now he and a few of the other characters from his games are DLC for Crash Team Rumble.

Personal Hopes: This is another one that just makes me made. At least Crash got managed to get one brand new game out of the deal after his revival. Spyro? He got the revival treatment just in time for the studios that helped make it to get turned into CoD assistance studios and now for all we know, the series has once again gone dormant. You had a perfect setup to continue that train of success, and you blew it, ActiBlizz. Fuck you. Microsoft could, maybe do something with the series, like Crash, and I pray that they do, but considering their reluctance to do anything with other beloved kid-friendly characters they've acquired over the years (hello Banjo-Kazooie), all I can do right now is just hope.

Starcraft

First Game: Starcraft, 1998 (Developed and Originally Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Starcraft: Remastered, 2017 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: The sci-fi equivalent to Warcraft, and still a major beloved series for Blizzard, despite not really getting a truely new game since 2010. Starcraft II received a LOT of expansions from 2013-2016, and then we got a remaster of the original Starcraft the year after, but that's been it. And why would they need anything else new? Starcraft and its sequel is still played really often, it's doing just fine, to the point where Blizzard even did a good back in 2017 and made the original Starcraft (the non-remastered version), the Brood War expansion, and the vanilla version of Starcraft II completely free, if you download and play it from Blizzard's website over on Battle Net. And guess what? As of my writing this sentence, they are still available for free there! That's honestly nice to see.

Personal Hopes: I don't think that we have to worry about Starcraft going anywhere for a good long while, as its popularity as a competitive RTS game keeps legs underneath it, and ActiBlizz's willingness to keep a majority of the game free for people to play at their leisure (so long as they're playing using their proprietary launcher of course) has no doubt done a lot to keep the game fresh in people's consciousness. However, five years have gone by without any sort of new games or even new expansions for the existing games, and I worry that once people start to get tired of what they have (and they will, no game sticks around forever) that there won't be another new game on the horizon for the series. I don't think that's going to happen any time soon, but it is an inevitability that I think should be accounted for. I mean, they could always try to expand it out to other genres… might be a good time to revive Starcraft Ghosts, yeah? 

Tenchu (Kinda)

First Game: Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, 1998 (Developed by Acquire)

Latest Game: Tenchu: Shadow Assassins, 2008 (Developed by Acquire)

Personal Thoughts: I wasn't entirely sure if I should add this one because technically speaking, Actiblizz, and therefore Microsoft, don't own the Tenchu IP itself, instead, they only own the games that they publushed before they sold the rights to the IP to FromSoftware in 2004. So while they can't make new games, they do have the rights to a lot of the classic Tenchu library. But I don't think they're doing anything with the games that they actually own.

Personal Hopes: I just hope that they make the games that they have the rights to available to find. Throw them up on game pass or put them together in a collection or something along those lines. I did check all of the digital storefronts I could think of (Steam, Playstation Store, Xbox Game Pass, etc.) and I could not find a single Tenchu game, Activision-owned or otherwise, so at least for now, it seems like the entire series is basically locked to physical. If I'm mistaken there, I do apologize, but I genuinely could not find a legitimate place to purchase any of the games in the series digitally at this point in time.

TimeShift

First Game: TimeShift, 2007 (Developed by Saber Interactive and Originally Published by Vivendi Games)

Latest Game: Single game IP again. Lot more of these than I thought there would be, to be honest.

Personal Thoughts: This was another one that came around during that infamous PS3 and 360 glut of shooters all trying to vye for the top of the shooter stack. Considering that this was the only game in its IP, that didn't work out too well. Whatever information I've managed to find on the game suggest that it really did not have the best development cycle, changing publishers, and being delayed multiple times, eventually just dropping out of the news cycle entirely and missing a lot of hype because of that. And after all of that, the game only really managed to do ‘okay’ which is pretty unexceptional when it comes to AAA gaming.

Personal Hopes: I really don't know what to say here. Like other shooters I've highlighted in this list, I just don't think this will be something that comes back. The idea itself does have some legs, and without having to compete with a glut of other shooters, it might have some legs to stand on, but with Gears of War, Halo, and Call of Duty all under the same roof, TimeShift's chances of getting another roll of the dice doesn't seem very likely.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

First Game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, 1999 (Developed by Neversoft)

Latest Game: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, 2020 (Developed by Vicarious Visions)

Personal Thoughts: The fact that the latest release of this series is also a remaster of the first two games kind of shows how much staying power the original formula has, as the series sort of got bogged down in itself as time went on, relying more and more on outlandish comedy and scenarios, or gimmicks like the plastic board controllers for Ride and Shred, the horrible online for Pro Skater 5, or even just getting off the skateboard and running around the environment in several of the later games. Going back to basics was probably one of the smarter things they could have done with the series, but…

Personal Hopes: Given Activision's track record when it comes to remaking or remastering classic or beloved titles, to much fanfare, and then just not capitalizing on that to reintroduce new entries in the series to a new generation, so while I'd love to see more classic style, smaller skating games. I know that the status of the Tony Hawk license name has been a bit in flux as of late, so a rebrand might potentially be in the works as well. Maybe.

True Crime

First Game: True Crime: Streets of LA, 2003 (Developed by Luxoflux)

Latest Game: True Crime: New York City, 2005 (Developed by Luxoflux)

Personal Thoughts: A duology of open world games where you play as law enforcement in the named city. They're pretty close in gameplay to the GTA games of the time, something that the first game actually got favorable comparison for. First game was mixed in reviews, but did financially well, second game wasn't so lucky. Other than that, the only cool thing I can find about the series is that the cancellation of a proposed third game taking place in Hong Kong led to the creation of Sleeping Dogs over at Square Enix.

Personal Hopes: If the failure of the second game wasn't enough to state that this series probably isn't coming back any time soon, there's the fact that we don't really see a lot of GTA-esque games anymore that aren't GTA. Saint's Row did attempt a comback recently and unfortunately that didn't pan out well. Doesn't seem like there's a huge amount of open world city games anymore. There's also the fact, and I'll admit, I don't know how much this would effect their ability to make a new True Crime game, but apparently Activision basically abandoned the trademark for the series. If that doesn't say that they aren't really interested in this series anymore, I don't know what does.

Ultimate Soccer Manager

First Game: Ultimate Soccer Manager, 1995 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Latest Game: Ultimate Soccer Manager '98, 1998 (Developed by Impressions Games and Originally Published by Sierra Online)

Personal Thoughts: I have absolutely no interest in sports games at the best of times, unless they have some sort of gimmick or are more arcade in nature. Closest thing to lrea life sports games I play are things like Mutant League Football or Mario Tennis. Even with my bias, I just don't think this will be coming back any time soon. First, this is a pretty niche idea. Sports fans like the fantasy of playing on their favorite team, or being able to put all their favorite players on one team, but it's a very specific group of people who wants to be more a part of the management side of things. Add to it, making sports games nowadays is difficult mostly due to the fact that Electronic Arts still holds a monopoly on most popular sports league licenses, and if you want a game to sell well, you either need to have the backing of an organization within the sport (NBA, NHL, FIFA, ETC), you need a well known character or franchise that can help draw in people who aren't necessarily sports fans (See the Mario sports games), or you have to have a really well executed gimmick that intrigues people to try out the game. As someone who doesn't travel in sports game circles, I unfortunately do not have a good example of this last one. Maybe the Pangya series? Even though that really is just anime golf… still fun though.

Personal Hopes: Even if this were a game that was aimed at me, I really don't think that it will be coming back because it's a topic that's very niche. Playing a sport in a video game has a certain amount of appeal to it that even folks that aren't necessarily fans of the sport can appreciate, but being hit with the management side of the sport, that is, I feel, much more niche, though admittedly it's a niche without a lot of competition. There's Sega Football Manager, but that's about it, and like… maybe you could branch out into other sports? Maybe? How have I put so many words into this particular game?

Warcraft/World of Warcraft

First Game: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, 1994 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Latest Game: Warcraft Rumble, 2023 (Developed and Published by Blizzard Entertainment)

Personal Thoughts: You all know what Warcraft is, I hope. Out of anything that has Blizzard's name on it, Warcraft, or probably more accurately, World of Warcraft, is what most folk are going to think of when the company is brought up. WoW has fluctuated in both quality and popularity over the years, but it's always been near the top of the MMO pile, and is even still getting brand new updates and expansions about twenty years after its original launch. That's staying power. Or maybe stockholm syndrome depending on how you look at it. The original Warcraft series though, that hasn't been given nearly as much love as the MMO. Last year we did have that tower defense mobile game, Warcraft Rumble, and before that, there was the disastrous launch of the remake of Warcraft 3, but in terms of brand new RTS games, discounting the mobile games and the remake, there hasn't been a new Warcraft game as in a full PC/console game release since 2003. Hearthstone was a phenomenon for a time as well I suppose, but that's also sort of fallen off.

Personal Hopes: Look, WoW might not be quite as big as it once was, but it's still a very big, reliable money maker for the company, but when it comes to the main Warcraft games, I don't think we'll be seeing a new one of those beyond mobile games for a long while, especially with how poorly the whole remaster fiasco went over. I'd love to see the series go back to other genres that aren't just relegated to mobile games that may or may not be around a few years down the line, of course, as things stand, I don't see that happening any time soon, not while there isn't a reason to end the stagnation.

Zork

First Game: Zork, 1977 (Developed by Infocom and Originally Published by Personal Software)

Latest Game: Zork III, 1982 (Developed by Infocom and Originally Published by Personal Software)

Personal Thoughts: I have not played the Zork games. I know them more from cultural osmosis than anything else, and of course that's mostly just that one memetic line that continues to crop up every now and then. Zork was a series of three (or four?) text adventure games, back before even the most rudimentary of graphics was standard for games of this nature, and I think that lack of any sort of visual element to it is what really made it a special series. It was a weird and wonderful story that required a lot of imagination to make sense of what you were reading and seeing, and how best to react to whatever you're faced with. Of course, every text adventure is like this, but Zork's quirky and charming descriptions really helped to set it apart from everything. Again, I'm going off of what little I've seen of the games, as I've never experienced a full playthrough of them, but what I have seen is very fun and clever, if a little bonkers sounding out of context.

Personal Hopes: Zork is a pretty legendary series, but considering how long the IP has existed, and the fact that it perpetually has existed in this one singular for maybe suggests that no one really knows how to bring this series back. A text adventure on its own, no matter how well written and no matter what the attached IP is, I don't think would pull a lot of interest in a medium that's come to be so heavily defined by its visuals, save for a small niche audience. For an indie production, that would probably be enough to be satisfying, but not for a company as big as Activision or Microsoft. Zork is a nostalgia name, but not much else, and I don't see it losing that distinction any time soon.

Closing Thoughts

This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Apparently I couldn't shut up about all this stuff. It was also incredibly sobering to go through as I realized, going through all of these games that the odds of a lot of them coming back in one form or another is pretty unlikely, even re-releases. 

I did my best to find as many IP that activision definitively own as possible, but I would not be surprised if I missed any, and I did make some exceptions like with Tenchu, which they only kind of own and can't actually make new games for. And yet, despite that, they're doing nothing with the games they do own, which is honestly just as annoying. Through my explorations of Actiblizz's back catalog (and there were plenty of places to look, considering that a lot of news sites were quick to put out lists outlining what Microsoft now owned), I did find a few that I wasn't entirely sure about and therefore did not include on this list. The two big ones that came up multiple times in my scouring were the Hexen and Heretic games. These two showed up on lists of IP microsoft gained in the Actiblizz acquisition, and yet when I looked up the series' myself, it seemed to suggest that they were currently owned and developed by Id software, which is currently owned by Bethesda, which is owned by Zenimax, which was gobbled up by Microsoft not long ago anyway. Either way, the games end up owned by Microsoft, so in the long run it doesn't matter, but I'm confused as to why these games kept coming up as something that Activision had ownership of when I couldn't find any conclusive information on whether or not they actually owned any of this.

While it was kind of depressing to see all these various IPs that are just laying dormant, I do have to remind myself that indie games have been picking up the slack. Despite this, one can't help but wonder what the added budget or manpower of a larger developer could do for classic series currently left out in the cold. I hold out hope for a few of these coming back at some point, but with the current corporate attitude of making nothing but absolutely massive blockbusters that have to sell millions of copies to be considered successes, and that are focus tested to hell and back to cast the widest possible net and get as many folks on board as possible, rather than taking a chance on a low-budget niche game… even though the risk would be low if the scope of the game was kept small and it was aimed at a specific audience, but hey who would want a more diverse portfolio made of more quickly produced smaller experiences that reach a smaller audience but overall would serve a wider demographic thanks to the variety?

Me.

I want that.

Do that, game industry.

And pay your fucking workers better.

#Activision #Blizzard #Everything that actiblizz owns #everything that microsoft now owns #Everything they're actually doing something with #My god #this took so long to put together #They own too much stuff they aren't doing anything with