Great Bundle. Holding the Huge Box and walking back from Wal-Mart, slowly peeling away the tape on the box... opening each piece... turning on my Wii U. Then eventually the whole thing collecting dust when the Switch game out. This box was kind of big, which is why I can't give it 5 stars. But who doesn't like Mario and Nintendo Land Bundled together? Isn't there something so great and tactilely satisfying about unboxing and plugging in some new device? Those were the days. Now everything is FILES on my HARD DRIVE!

I'm lying, I never bought this bundle. But in 2014 Marina and I did both buy New Fancy Refurbished Wii U's. Fresh out of college... feeling like hot shots after releasing Anodyne 1... a year into the (3.5 year!) development of Even the Ocean, a monolithic game that is both remarkable and plodding.

Analgesic Productions's baby mode...

Anyways, the Wii U led to a few fun years of checking out most of the major releases via GameFly's rental service... eagerly checking my mailbox every day for something to come in the mail. Walking out into the freezing Chicago winter to go drop the finished games in the return box. The disappointment when a game was bad and I'd return it immediately. The gigantic, huge honking controller and bizarre screen and controls. My stupid development set-up with a laptop stuck on top of an ikea table.

Getting RSI from Bayonetta, playing all those Mario's, etc... anticipating Captain Toad's release. Coming home, cooking a Blue Apron recipe, popping in some Wii U game before hacking away at a bit of Even the Ocean development.

Kind of a fun time to think about. Consoles still felt like they had at least a little reason to exist due to the uniqueness of their hardware. Ah... 2014. Actually, a lot of terrible things happened in the world in 2014. But... I guess there were fun times....

another throwback unearthed... man january 2014...I remember I visited Nina at her apartment in NYC alongside Marina then - when we went there to show a VERY early version of Even the Ocean at the indiecade festival, as well as to watch a speedrun of Anodyne 1!

nina freeman did a lot of 'narrative vignette' games that focus on very specific and short sorts of moments, in this case, a girl experimenting with dolls and undressing them. My relation to this game (other than knowing Nina) is that Marina also did the art for this game. I did music and sfx for some of Nina's other games, in particular I did some sound effects for her longer game Cibele!

This game in particular took off a lot in 2014, i remember it got a good amount of coverage. What a time for games journalism! I think since then we've seen similar games be released on Itch.io, I always think of this period as kinda the beginning of that sort of solo dev/small team game-jam 'self-narrative-exploration' kinda game.