Back during the heyday of the Nintendo Wii, there was no shortage of creative swings being made by software developers, both large and small: Attempts to stretch the boundaries of what video games could be. Since the console was appealing to just about every age range, it was a great period of opportunity to take chances, make mistakes and who knows? Perhaps even stumble upon some new type of interactive experience that actually worked. This resulted in plenty of bargain bins filled with what came to be known as “shovelware.” Games that were essentially quick cash in jobs attempting to capitalize on the motion control craze. And a couple of titles which stood out as arguably successful examples of experimentation in that overpopulated sea cough crowd, were the Endless Ocean games.

Being a little idiot, I’d always written off the Mega Man X games as some kind of lame spin off from the main series, like Battle Network or Soccer or whatever. But turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong! I mean I could try, but I would not be successful. Mega Man X is a totally awesome extension of the franchise and as close to a perfectly balanced gaming experience as I can imagine. On one hand I certainly deserve to feel all of the shame for such a massive oversight during those years growing up, but on the other, that’s one hell of a solid past me did for now me because what a game!

Let’s have a little playthrough, shall we?

DORKSIDE’S JOURNAL. MARCH 22ND, 2024: It has been 3 weeks since this…card game was downloaded onto my Nintendo Switch. And even after already plugging in roughly 70 hours of playtime, a full understanding of the core gameplay mechanics continues to unravel before me. What began as an innocent curiosity evolved into an uncontrollable habit which has now spiraled into full blown obsession.

My family looks up and shouts "Please! Stop playing Balatro!"... and I look down and whisper "no.”

Directed by William Shatner himself, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is for the most part universally agreed upon as being the worst cinematic outing of the entire franchise. But since all throughout this year we’ll be taking a look back and honoring the 35th anniversaries of that great string of 1989 genre releases, I at least wanted to acknowledge this movie in some way. Admittedly I am a pretty big fan of Trek as a whole, but I still couldn’t bring myself to do an entire write up here because berating it is such low hanging fruit. Instead, let’s have a look at a behind the scenes clip that all by itself almost makes this fifth big screen entry’s existence totally worth it. Almost but more like kinda…

…actually not really, though it’s still fun.