I used to review video games and still review board & roleplaying games for Who Dares Rolls, and sometimes I find myself with a few things to waffle about in a bit more of an informal manner. This year, I’m going to try to intermittently write about media I’ve been reading, watching and playing.

Mario Quest 2025

I love a good quest and have generally set myself reading-based quests in the past few years. This time, I’m going to be trying a quest I’ve been wanting to do for a little while. I love the Mario games, and I think I have all of the core ‘canon’. Most of these are on the Switch, but there are a few on the DS/3DS and the Wii U, which I’ll need to set back up later in the year. 

I also want to play all the Zelda games, but that’s going to take ages.

So far this month, I’ve completed Super Mario Bros using the Switch and the SNES Super Mario All-Stars version. Looking online there’s barely any actual difference between this and the original, which is the main way I’ve played this over the years.

I played and completed Astro Bot over Christmas which was a real joy, and it was fascinating going back in time to this ancestor of it. One thing I’ve been too used to in Mario games and platformers in general is constantly running and in this playthrough of Super Mario Bros I started to wonder why I kept falling to my death so often. It turned out I’d been constantly running through the levels which made the game feel more uncontrollable. Trying to speed through the levels was ultimately making this a lot harder for myself, so when I slowed down things got better.

I did use the rewind function the game has relentlessly, and will do so for all of the Super Mario Bros trilogy as I’ve played them before a bunch of times. That said, this is the only one I’ve finished, so we’ll see how the other games go.

Ren Faire

I’m a basic HBO bitch, I love The Wire and Sopranos. I loved Succession.

This documentary by HBO feels like Role Models meets Succession. It’s another story about how a wealthy man who thinks and acts like he’s immortal will burn everything else down around us. But it’s in a place where Americans make weird fake historical performances involving sword fights, beefeaters and a lot of corn.

The documentary is only three episodes and is compellingly produced. King George is the ruler of a Ren Faire and even acquired the surrounding town, commanding a cultish loyalty like people imagine their love of a benevolent feudal lord. Only he isn’t that, he’s old, weird and surrounded by people who won’t call him on his shit. One main aspiring inheritor is the king of corn, who runs around like he’s in a manic episode all the time, constantly on his earbuds to people, skulling energy drinks and talking a million miles a minute. He wants an EDM night, sounds horrendously mercenary and like he’d make a lot of enemies. The other contestant for the throne is Jeff, who is desperate to please, doesn’t have much money and is torn between hoping to take it over one day or just being King George’s underling forever in the deluded hope that he is immortal.

There’s a lot of talk of legacy, of the role of being king, all while King George just huffs, won’t listen to anyone or let any decisions get made as he’s too impatient for anything, and visits a ‘sugar daddy dating site’ to try and pick up young women. There are others who are more organised and more aware of the situation, or people like Jeff’s wife who he needs to fire when the idea of nepotism being bad is sent in King George’s direction even though he’s done a lot of that in his time.

It’s weird and kind of lucky it’s three episodes, I don’t know how much I’d have been able to take of it. Ultimately, the conclusion isn’t perfect, but while this is filmed in a highly narrativised fashion, it’s still a documentary and won’t cleanly fix everything or let either man who’s been gunning for the throne have a win.

Vampire Survivors

I love Vampire Survivors. It’s a game I’ve bought four times now on different devices, and find incredibly moreish to do. I first played it on the iPad, then the Switch, the Xbox One and now on the PS5. This time was the realisation that I could probably pretty easily platinum it. And then I did, over the span of a week and a bit. I also realised I could use PlayStation Remote Play with my ageing iPad and sync a controller to it, so I could play when we were watching the television.

For those who aren’t aware, Vampire Survivors is a Castlevania-looking reverse shoot-em-up. You control a character who’s in the centre of the screen, constantly firing off different weapons. You move the character around, trying to position yourself so they go off and kill enemies. The weapons each have unique quirks, level up and ‘evolve’ when mixed with the right passive power. A whip lashes out to the sides, then a hollow heart increases health. When both are levelled up enough the weapon evolves into a red whip which is massive and heals you. There are challenges to complete, characters and levels to unlock and even new menu commands which will open up as you go. As I said, it’s very moreish.

Comics

I’ve been reading Dan Da Dan on the Shonen Jump app on my iPad and been enjoying it. I decided to start Sakamoto Days just in time for the anime’s beginning. On the Viz App I’m still reading Call of the Night and Rainbow Days.

• Dan Da Dan is about a girl who believes in ghosts and a boy who believes in UFOs, both of whom realise they’re both right and things get weirder from there. It can be crude, daft and also hits really hard when it needs to.
• Sakamoto Days is about a retired hitman who runs a newsagent after getting married and settling down. He meets a psychic fan who has to kill him. It’s kind of like functional Sexcastle or John Wick.
• Call of the Night is about an insomniac who wanders his town at night and ends up falling in with a vampire. He wants to be turned, but they need to be in love for it to work. Both characters and the supporting cast are messy, and there are some fun moments of wandering the quiet streets at night.
• Rainbow Days is about four kids at school who are best friends, and their messy relationships. It’s not really The In-Betweeners, but it has a bit of that energy at times with how rubbish the teens are.

I’ve been keeping up to date with new releases for Marvel, too many of which are Venom event comics and Venom’s never going to get over with me. I’ve been neglecting the DC app and my 2000 AD marathon, so I’ll need to go back to them soon.

I’m currently thinking about slicing up my 2000 AD marathon articles and going year by year instead of a hundred issues at a time, as that’ll be shorter and easier for me to do while I remember the issues instead of getting an ever-increasing backlog.

My X-Men marathon’s reached late 2009 and the Utopia crossover, the second time there was a big mutant island community. I’ve been enjoying Matt Fraction and Mike Carey’s work on the core titles. X-Factor’s not aged great, but I don’t know how much of that is me being tired with current Peter David. X-Force is better than I thought it would be as the pivot to murder the team’s had. Cable’s been an enjoyable Lone Wolf & Cub in the far future. Young X-Men didn’t feel like much of anything and New Mutants has reminded me how much I love Zeb Wells’ writing.

Big News!

My days of working full time are over! I’ve managed to reduce my hours at my day job and now I’ve got a dedicated day a week to write. I’ve already been making a list of things to do:

Prose: Finish Embers & Knights, proofread Mistbirch Mythos and rip apart Lightning’s current draft, adding in some new bits.

RPG: Learn Affinity to lay out my Blades in the Dark heists.

Comics: Sort out an artist for Amnesiac City and Let’s All Kill Mark Larkin, finish scripting A Forest in the Sky, start scripting Red Rails, pitch Explosion High and work out what I’m doing with Past Futuremann.

Speaking of which, here’s a coloured page of Past Futuremann, drawn the the Legendary Lane Lloyd!