The Sunday Papers

Image credit: RPS

Welcome back to The Sunday Papers. It's 2025, which means that this column has been running for eighteen years. What might change here as we move into adulthood? Very little, I suspect. We here are like the chalk cliffs of the South Downs: bright and imposing and subject to inevitable but slow erosion by the sea. Or put another way: I'm thinking about bringing back the bulletpoints to separate different links. How are you?

Felipe Pepe wrote about the gentrification of video game history, arguing that American video game history overwrites more local experiences. "We’re not all suburban kids who got a Nintendo 64 for Christmas."

There are many examples of this — one of the most common is how Europe’s home computer scene in the 80s is often erased and replaced by the events of The Video Game Crash of 1983, an event mostly restricted to North America. The Amstrad CPC, C64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, demoscene, etc… all get replaced by the all-mighty NES.

And if that’s happening to Europe, just imagine the rest of the world.

I have heard that Chinese gamers are extremely tough Steam reviewers, to the point that it's a consideration when developers are deciding whether to translate their game. Translating into Chinese might bring an influx of new sales, but it might also lower your overall review score. In Art Review, Thu-Huong Ha writes about these kinds of regional differences in review culture outside of the realm of video games.

Japanese reviewers do not give 5 out of 5 stars for a service or establishment that is good. If it’s solid, it gets a 3. If it’s really good, it gets a 4. Nothing gets a 5. Japanese reviewers grade harshly on dimensions of service, cleanliness, ‘cosu pa’ or ‘cost performance’, the etiquette of other customers. At a soba shop near my house, low stars are given for the colour of the tempura (black), the smell (ammonia) and the presence of ashtrays (one for each table). On Tabelog, a Japanese Yelp for restaurants, if I see 3.49 stars, it gives me a little thrill. A typical review might read something like, ‘Food was super delicious. Perfect night. The server had messy hair. 2 stars.’ It’s why Shake Shack has 4.5 stars on Google and the best udon you’ve ever had in your life has 3.8: tourists love grade inflation.

The BFI published an easygoing summary of Indiana Jones video games to coincide with the launch of Indiana Jones And The Great Circle. Everyone here already knows about Fate Of Atlantis, I assume, but do you know of Greatest Adventure? Either way, I extend my neck telescopically anytime an outlet outside of specialist media decides to cover games, and how they choose to do it for a presumably less informed audience.

For those who prefer the brawls and booby-traps of the franchise over the history lecture scenes, Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventure (1994) on SNES puts the archaeologist firmly into action mode. In this platformer which comes off as equal parts Castlevania (1986) and Super Mario Land (1989), Indy jumps, rolls and whips his way through levels, swinging across pits and riding mine carts with all the aplomb you’d expect of the films. Players can even duel with the horrifying, fast-ageing corpse from the guess-the-grail scene at the end of Last Crusade.

Sega have been doing a press tour of late, for themselves more than any single game. They want to focus more on transmedia IP they can turn into films, like their recent success with Sonic. That's probably why they've been backing out of the PC strategy genre they invested heavily into ten years ago - divesting from Amplitude, selling Relic. No one asks them about that, but Eurogamer did speak to Sega president Shuji Utsumi about their new focus.

Utsumi: Sega somehow invented - if you compare the game business to music business - Sega's role was to invent rock & roll, compared to Nintendo. Nintendo's like pop music, good music, jazz...

But then Sega comes along and is like Led Zeppelin?

Utsumi: Exactly. Pink Floyd, Abba, and Queen!

I love lists. As a games site, they help communicate our team's taste (and thus values) to readers, they steer newcomers or casual players towards games they may enjoy, and when composed well they have a playful and inclusive spirit. Still, as list season draws to a close, I found things to agree with and think about in Elena Gorfinkel's new-to-me 2019 film essay Against Lists.

Lists pretend to make a claim about the present and the past, but are anti-historical, obsessed with their own moment, with the narrow horizon and tyranny of contemporaneity. They consolidate and reaffirm the hidebound tastes of the already heard.

Speaking of things that have been going since the '00s, internet institution DJ Earworm put out his mashup of all the biggest hits of 2024. Let that be your first Sunday Papers track of the year.