Squidward eating his first Krabby Patty and shouting "All the wasted years!" . mov

Frank from the season 13 finale of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia saying "Oh my god… I get it" . mov.

Wario puts a chamber pot on his head, is granted godlike powers, and then tries to murder a small child in front of a stadium full of people.

I have never played Mega Man before and this is a great way to start! All of my Discord friends also made fun of me when I said "hey that yellow guy at the end of Wily's Fortress sucks and I hate him" because apparently he's been hated for decades now.

I realize that this game is going to get royally fucked once Nintendo takes down the online servers (something they've already announced and said they were going to do), but for what it's worth, I'm glad to have played this completely in single player, even if I know that the grind for the post-game stuff is brutal. The final boss with the Ghostbusters parody Whisper is one of my favorite gaming moments of 2023.

The children (me) yearn for the mines.

I hate Yoshi's New Island for making me assume that this game would also be mediocre slop instead of what actually is, which is the closest I've seen a post-SNES Yoshi game actually get to being a new Yoshi's Island game. There's actual gas in this Yoshi. They actually did it.
Don't like that I have to turn the game on consistently for 30 days in order to unlock all the cute stop motion shorts.

Very solid puzzle game that completely fucks with my sense of spatial reasoning and calls me an idiot while doing so and I love it.

I do think the Game Boy version of this game is better and the large 3D spaces make this game feel hella empty, but this is a great monster collecting RPG otherwise and the unofficial translation team did a fantastic job. There is nothing more satisfying than having a terrible team member that you later breed into a terrordemon simply by mashing the right monsters together.

I knew I was in for something truly special when one of the cutscenes opened on a breakdancing ghost just boogeying down in Halloweentown.

Like an expanded Kongregate flash game but in the best possible way. You really feel the HAL-ness of this game once the apocalyptic plot kicks in.

You see this game pop up on many "get these eShop games before the eShop closes" lists...and for good reason. It's one of those bite-sized little games where it's best to go in blind and just Vibe with the nostalgia for a 1970's Tokyo childhood.

I'm surprised at how Actually Good this game is when this series had a reputation of just being Mini-Land Mayhem level packs in the 3DS era, and I think changing the entire gameplay style actually worked in the game's favor. They even brought back the Super Mario 64 DS minigames and Donkey Kong will stare at you serenely on the results screen like an awkward mid-30's dad.

Giving yourself the ''dead'' adjective instantly kills you.

The more I play this, the sadder I get because I just know that Game Freak is never going to revisit this idea ever again. They could've really tightened down this idea with a sequel.

Absolutely beautiful sprite work in a 2D platformer/metroidvania that Could Be Better But Tries Really Hard, Bless Its Heart.

I love playing small side games that are very obviously a test to see if a game mechanic can work in a future main title. The very beginnings of Kirby and the Forgotten Land are in this title.
Probably the hardest Kirby to 100% if you count the Platinum trophies.

Decent but short WarioWare clone that can be beaten in an hour and is filled with 72p videos of Patchy the Pirate saying art terms in a crunchy jpeg artifact void.

This one has the best recipes and it took over my life for a solid two days so I gotta give props to this Cooking Mama game, it's probably the best one?

Speaking of Mario vs. Donkey Kong games having a reputation of being just Mini-Land Mayhem level packs, this is just a Mini-Land Mayhem level pack - but with a focus on Miiverse interactions! Guess what doesn't work in 2023!

The first 3DS Skylanders game is also the roughest one but I love the strangely serious tone in this installment. It's probably the closest you'll get to a playable 80's Care Bears movie from the way you see cute teddy bear creatures go "HE'S FOUND US" and fight off an encroaching darkness.

It's simple but might be one of the better examples of how a main character's motivations can be communicated entirely through gameplay rather than dialogue. Doubles as a romantic game if you squint.

It's a bad Baby's First RPG, sure, but it's also so unique and charming that it ended up a highlight of 2023 for me despite it making so many Interesting Choices. It's the kind of bad that you go "wait but I wanna see where this goes" and It Goes Places, mark my words.

"You gained a new transformation!"
"Yay!"
"You have to hold the button long enough to select this transformation because Shantae has to perform a certain amount of bellydances first!"
"Un-yay!"

It's alright, but some of those minigames are hell and it took me way too long to figure out how to stir fry some chopped onions and raw chicken for a pumpkin soup recipe.

Just your basic Dr. Mario game. Hilariously, it's probably the lowest budget Mario game I have ever played because they couldn't even get Charles Martinet to do a single "wahoo!" for this.

haha jonathan we're in a metroidvania (heavenly Jake Kaufman music plays in the background)

It's a New Super Mario Bros. game. They are infamous for being very bland, unexciting snoozefests and this one is no different. At least this game lulls you into a false sense of security by bringing back Reznor and sorta remixing some of the songs before you soon realize "wait a second, I'm playing a NSMB game".

I can now firmly say with full and loud confidence that Olaf's Quest is better than Paper Mario Sticker Star.

You hear that this game is shit but you don't realize just HOW shit it is until you truly play it and bear witness to the many spiteful game design decisions that feel like they're attempting an Earthbound style of game mechanic humor but with none of the talent that made Earthbound work. Kersti sucks. Wiggler sucks. Silent monster Bowser sucks. Everything sucks.

BUT! I managed to finish it.

DID NOT FINISH - love the vibes, game is very unfriendly to left-handed people and I just plain don't like the gameplay.

DID NOT FINISH - did not want to embarrass myself in public with a mediocre puzzle game that made me tilt the 3DS upside down

DID NOT FINISH - they accidentally made a melatonin tablet into a game

DID NOT FINISH - I failed that story mode mission where you have to protect Cheese over eight times, all while this obnoxious critter screamed in my ear, and I had a very stark "is this what I really want to be doing with my time?" moment before deleting it.

DID NOT FINISH - they took one of the easiest Disney movies to make a video game about and made one of the worst beat-em-ups I have ever played.