What Digital Eclipse began with Atari 50 and continued into the Gold Master series is one of the most positive impacts on games history in a long time. This is how you create an interactive museum of information and context. The Making of Karateka solidifies a template that promises boundless potential for what it means to be "the Criterion Collection of video games". It's also just an absolute masterwork in and of itself, and I'm immensely grateful that Jordan Mechner has kept so much of these materials over the years. Prior to this release, my only experience with Karateka was goofing around with the C64 port in an emulator and thinking "this seems ambitious". But there is SO MUCH here, and it's deepened both my interest and understanding in Karateka, Mechner, and an entire movement of 80s PC game design that I've largely only explored the surface of.

Wonderfully beautiful spiritual successor to Echo Night, one of my all time favorite games. Déraciné exists primarily in frozen snapshots of time, where even the river is eerily still. It feels just like an early CD-ROM game like Myst, but as haunted as Saturn games like Lunacy or Enemy Zero, the way you teleport from point to point like moving screen by screen in those games. There is something, however, about exploring a haunting old building in the woods as the only inhabitant, that also reminded me a lot of Gone Home's very specific mood.