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There’s no point in denying it. It’s been a rough four months when it comes to writing for Retronaissance. Not only have I been focused more on other projects – most notably on my personal blog – but to make matters worse, various other concepts have fallen completely by the wayside. For example, I originally came up with a particular idea for my recurring series of “guides to PC gaming” near the…

This was a rough one, not going to lie. I’m not sure why it was so difficult to get through all of the demos I picked up this time around. Hell, I even managed to get outs on some of my usual weekly responsibilities. And despite all of that, I didn’t end up finishing the slate of demos until Monday evening. I’m just lucky that Valve must have decided to take pity on those miserable wretches like…

Of the three recurring articles I use each year to discuss whatever developments in the realm of PC gaming I find appealing, this April Fool’s article feels like the most reliable. While I always switch out topics in August for the sake of experimentation, the big PC port wishlist at the end of the year has been on shaky ground for years now. Yet, when challenged with the prospect of digging up…

While these “Reflections” posts aren’t anything new per se on Radical YMCK, I’ve decided to handle things a little differently this time. As opposed to waiting until after I’ve finishing playing the game in question before jotting down my final thoughts on the subject at hand, I figure that it might be fun to treat this more like a “mini-journal” of sorts. You know, keep track of my ever-evolving…

Again, Spring technically doesn’t begin until March 20th this year… so this still technically counts as Winter. I’ll be honest, I did kind of drag my feet on this one. But the truth is, the delays weren’t entirely born out of my usual laziness. Originally, I wanted to post this right after Ys X: Proud Nordics’ Western release date on February 20th, but then I remembered that Falcom made it a…

Well, it’s that time again. After four months of waiting, Valve finally put on their first Steam Next Fest of 2026. I was a little surprised that they decided to aim for the final week of February… especially since the last day ended up bleeding into March. All things considered, it was probably the best week for me. I didn’t have to worry about a couple of recurring bi-weekly appointments since…

Last year, around this time, I wrote an article where I finally delved into just why I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder about open-world games in general. But if you’ll recall, I hinted at turning that article into a trilogy, one that would tackle two other trends in the industry that always seem to make my eyes glaze over whenever they’re brought up. Originally, I intended to tackle all three…

I remember the first time I saw that episode of Rocko’s Modern Life back when I was a kid. Back then, the idea of being 38 years old felt… so far-flung, the thought that I could get that old just didn’t register with me. Granted, my mother was 36 when she had me and Dad had recently turned 41 when I was born. Either way, back in the ’90s, approaching my 40s felt like an impossibility. I can’t…

Six of one, half a dozen of the other… This will be the sixth year I’ve done one of these gaming journals. I started on Twitter back in 2021… before my original account was banned and I had to essentially move it over to this blog, changing the format in the process. Since then, I’ve done dedicated journals on Radical YMCK in 2022, 2023, 2024 and I just wrapped up the one for 2025 yesterday. I…

Dariwan God… it feels like I just wrote one of these a couple months ago. But alas. Another year as passed which means that 2025 is over now. It was a whirlwind of a year. Lots of delays, cancellations and controversy …but when hasn’t that been the case since 2020? Anyway, here’s a list of games I think are interesting in 2026!Gonna do things a little differently this year. Here’s some awards…

Admittedly, it hasn’t really felt like Fall since Thanksgiving in my part of the country. But I’ve still got a few days left before we officially hit Winter. So I’m going to use them for one last ride before the end of the year. After all, there’s still a little time left for some major speculation. But before we get to that, let’s begin with some Falcom-related developments that have taken…

I was honestly torn on how to title this year’s wishlist article. While “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t” is the title of an actual Christmas film, I was also tempted to use “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, But Then Was” – a parody title taken from The Simpsons – for the simple fact that it seemed funnier. But considering how I’ve stuck to using titles from real-world Christmas specials and…

Five years ago, I wrote Sensed Scareless, an article where I opined that despite my love for the medium, video games just can’t scare me the same way that films, TV shows and books do. Even half a decade later, nothing about my stance has changed. Despite my best efforts, I still haven’t found a game that has managed to get more than a cheap jump scare out of me. Upon reflection, I think the most…

Last year, I skipped October when it came to my bimonthly updates on Retronaissance. While it isn’t much of a consolation, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Throughout most of the month, I found myself unable to brainstorm a suitable topic. Then, when something finally came to me, I was so swamped with other projects that I just didn’t have the time to give it the proper attention it needed before…

Of all the weeks, the Next Fest just had to be this week, huh? Yeah, unfortunately for me, the week of October 13th was actually a fairly hectic one. On the plus side, a few of my engagements got cancelled… but there were still two that ate up far more time than I would have wanted. In the end, I took some pretty late nights on the 18th and 19th to wrap everything up. On the plus side, I didn’t…

Yep, it’s time for another one of these. And just like last year, I feel that I have to remind everyone that Summer doesn’t actually end until September 22nd. Granted, that’s not much of an excuse. But either way, the title is still technically accurate as I’m writing this… and hopefully, that will still be the case by this post goes live. As per usual, I’ll start things out with news on my own…

Well, I can’t deny that this took way longer than it should’ve. I guess that the problem with my plan to aspiration to beat 75 games this year: some things just end up getting pushed around. But now that I’ve finished my usual post-game routine for this one — worry not, Yakuza 2, your day will come — it’s finally time to dig into this much more deeply than the extremely shallow write-up I did for…