2023's Games of the Year, Part 1

Yes, this is a retro video game publication, but I find plenty of time for new stuff, too.

It’s Game(s) of the Year season baby, games are good again. Awoouu (wolf howl)

Eligibility rules! For one, I had to have actually played the game, and in a meaningful way. That seems an obvious point I shouldn’t have to make, but I’m making it so I can follow it up by saying that if a game you love from 2023 isn’t here, it’s most likely just because I haven’t played it yet, not because I hated it. I had to decide between Baldur’s Gate 3 or playing like 10 other games instead, so I went with the latter. No offense intended, time is simply time. Second, I’m skipping console ports of games that have been out for some time on Steam et al, but making concessions to, say, itch.io titles that are now on Steam, especially if the new launch brought major changes. And last, this is a remake-free zone: 2023 was loaded with killer brand new releases, and as amazing as Resident Evil 4 (remake) was, as much as I appreciate what’s clearly the definitive Star Ocean: The Second Story, there simply wasn’t room for them here. A re-release that made its way to North America for the first time is eligible, however. This is a retro games newsletter, you know.

We’re still doing three parts, all publishing this week, but instead of five per day for 15 total, we’re looking at splitting 20 up three ways, and 10 honorable mentions instead of five. It’s just been that kind of year. Let’s get to it.

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The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure

Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: NIS America
Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Windows
Mar. 14

Originally released in Japan in 2011, Trails to Azure is the sequel to Trails from Zero, and the end of the Crossbell duology. It’s also the game that had me pulling out an extended comparison to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, so it has that going for it. Key story spoilers below:

Walking away wasn’t an option: KeA, in this form, could change fate all over the continent, and as you’ll learn, had even done so previously in a pretty meaningful way. This was going to be life for everyone, whether they agreed with the cost of living in this world or not. Lloyd Bannings and Co., and their allies around Crossbell, wanted to free KeA. They wanted a free Crossbell, too, one that didn’t suffer at the hands of Calvard or Erebonia, and they certainly didn’t want to open Crossbell up to invasion by Erebonia following the repeal of their bid for independence, as had been threatened. But they knew that this “free” Crossbell promised by those who set this plan of self-determination into motion wasn’t free, that there was a cost, and that it was one they couldn’t abide. So, rather than walk away from Crossbell, they stayed, and they fought. It’s not just a story of love for KeA, which the party, having adopted her into their “family” following the events of the first game, certainly had. It’s also a story about what’s right, morally speaking, and the prices we should be willing to pay for our own happiness and fulfillment, and which we should reject as too costly, philosophically speaking.

If you’re into the Trails games, this one won’t disappoint. And if you’re not into the Trails games, well, I’m covering 29 others in this space this week, and most of those aren’t also Trails games, so you’re covered, too.

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Pikmin 4

Developer: Nintendo EPD
Publisher: Nintendo
Nintendo Switch
July 21

I had my issues with Pikmin 4, to the point I wrote a whole piece for Paste Magazine about them. Here’s the thing, though: those issues were all relative to how Pikmin 4 followed up one of the greatest games Nintendo has ever made. In comparison to just the rest of 2023’s games? Pikmin 4 is a legit banger.

This all sounds harsh, but the criticisms are more about what Pikmin 4 is not instead of what it is. What it is is deeply charming, and the kind of game you can very quickly lose yourself in over a few days until you realize that you’ve played a lot more of it in a short span than you meant to. Nintendo might have tried to simplify and streamline to boost sales, and in some ways that’s to Pikmin 4’s detriment, but we’re not talking about a disaster of Metroid: Other M proportions or anything of the sort. Pikmin 4’s greatest sin is in not building on the greatness of Pikmin 3, which is even more of a shame because it’s not like the lack of the Wii U’s GamePad is what caused the shift: Pikmin 3 Deluxe already proved you could more than make do without it. And this is what the lament is for: that Nintendo zigged when they could have stayed on the path they were on, the path that led them to the complexity, the depth, the challenge of Pikmin 3. And they did it to appease and attract hypothetical Pikmin players more than existing ones—understandable, but regrettable.

I spent 40 hours with Pikmin 4 and also achieved 100 percent completion, so, you know. I can be right about its problems while also recognizing game, and you should, too. As is, it’s the best entry level version of the game out there, especially for players who are less experienced in general.

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The Making of Karateka

Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Digital Eclipse
Xbox One, Series S|X, Playstation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, PC
Aug. 29

I can’t say enough glowing things about The Making of Karateka. Digital Eclipse debuted their “Gold Master” series with it, which is set to go behind the scenes to the point of bringing you back in time, step by step through a development process for a classic and/or vital work in video game history, contextualizing it all along the way. It’s not just a video game — though there is plenty of that there, and even multiple ones to choose from beyond just Karateka — but an interactive documentary, a slice of a museum in your living room showcasing an exhibit you’re allowed to touch.

Image credit: Digital Eclipse

I try to contextualize games with my own experience and available sources through this newsletter, and Karateka is that on another level in no small part due to industry buy-in, but it’s also because the people at Digital Eclipse very obviously care about this very thing, too. And they’re in a position to put that caring to good use, helping to both share their knowledge and this history with the world while preserving it. I love collections of classic games, I love series like Arcade Archives, but we can do more to make people understand the games that came before, which giants' shoulders the games of today are standing on. And Digital Eclipse is giving that a whirl, with great results so far.

I knew of Karateka, but after playing through The Making of Karateka — after watching the interviews, reading the scans of letters written by creator Jordan Mechner and publisher Brøderbund, after hearing his father, Francis, describe the process of composing music for the Apple II and other platforms, of how rotoscoped animation in video games came into use here, through the Mechners… well, now I have a completely different relationship with this game, and an understanding and appreciation of its importance that I didn’t have before. Excellent stuff, and I’m already looking forward to the next Gold Master release.

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A Space for the Unbound

Developer: Mojiken Studio
Publisher: Toge Productions, Chorus Worldwide
Xbox One, Series S|X, Playstation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, PC
Jan. 19

This game was not what I expected from it. It’s not that I was waiting for what people would refer to, due to its looks and style, as a “cozy” game, but A Space for the Unbound felt like a coming of age-style game. And it is! It’s also a dark game, however, that hones in on depression, suicide, and a number of other themes that receive trigger warnings at the start of video games.

And it’s a great game, too, one that’s going to stick with me. It’s an adventure title in every sense of the word, but where it starts, where it goes, and where it ends through that lens? Well, you should play to see what I mean. It’s devastating, and worthwhile.

Mojiken Studio developed a game based in Indonesia that very much captures a different setting than people who aren’t familiar with Indonesia will be used to, but in the kind of way that also reminds you how similar the problems, the interests, the concerns, the values, the capacity for love and for evil, people worldwide can have. The game reminded me very much how lucky we are to be playing games at a time when they can be used to connect cultures separated by geography together in a way that, when development was more localized, when it had to be less niche in order to surive retail, it couldn’t necessarily be.

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Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Publisher: Sega
Xbox One, Series S|X, Playstation 4/5, Windows
Nov. 9

I’m just going to come out and say it: the brawler Like a Dragon (or Yakuza, as they were previously known) games are better than the role-playing game that blew peoples minds a few years back. Like a Dragon is fine! It has real issues with pacing that are a bit unforgivable to me, someone who has lauded the pacing of Yakuza/Like a Dragon games again and again, but in the end it’s still a good game. The Man Who Erased His Name, which brings previous protagonist Kazuma Kiryu back to the series in a playable role, is better. It’s one of the best entries he’s had, even.

I should point out, too, that I was opposed to this game existing at all. As well as Kiryu’s return as an NPC central to the story of Like a Dragon. His tale had wrapped up with Yakuza 6, and while it was a bitter end, it was an end all the same. Still, I was willing to play The Man Who Erased His Name to see where this train I could not stop was heading, and I changed my mind. They were right to bring Kiryu back, they were right to give him a more satisfying conclusion to his arc that doesn’t retcon Yakuza 6 in any way but instead leans heavily into how all of that came about as a reason for the need for this new story.

There are some pacing issues early here, too, mostly related to the fact that they wanted to do a shorter, condensed spin-off that still felt like a “full” release, so the beginning hours of the game are overloaded with “hey go do this/listen to this/try this” moments acclimating you to the region, your new toys, mechanics, etc. Once the training wheels come off again, though, you’re left with an incredible feeling brawler attached to an immensely satisfying story, and a reminder that Kazuma Kiryu is one of the best protagonists Sega — hell, video games — have produced. Cannot recommend enough, even if it made me that much more annoyed with the game it spun out of.

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Venba

Developer: Visai Games
Publisher: Visai Games
Xbox One, Series S|X, Playstation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Windows
July 31

Venba, at its most basic, is a cooking simulator, and not a particularly tricky one if you’ve got even a little bit of patience for what it’ trying to get you to figure out. It’s much more than just that, however, as this short game manages to pack itself into a dense package that details a multi-generation journey of immigration from India to Canada, and the adjustment of not just the eventual parents these immigrants would become to their new home and its many contexts, but to the push and pull of that home on their child, who feels singled out and alone at school, and resentful of his parents’ culture and food because of it.

Image credit: Steam

As I’m all the way at third-generation American rather than the second-generation Canadian depicted within Venba, I don’t have the same relationship with food/my parents/myself that is represented there. But it did make me think of how different I'd be if I had felt the need to distance myself from my mother and her cooking rather than embracing both. I love cooking, I’m the primary cook in our home, and I certainly get that from my mother — just this past weekend, we had a call where we were both swapping stories about substitutions we had made in recipes earlier that day while explaining the why of these decisions with a delight you think would have been reserved for something a little more significant — so the idea of rejecting her love of cooking and the food she, the daughter of an Italian immigrant, grew up with… well it isn’t foreign to me, necessarily, but it does speak of some potential loss, a hole that would need to be filled otherwise. And that idea of being without this connective tissue, this commonality, this appreciation for where she is and where she’s been and where her own parents and grandparents were… well, to make those feelings of sadness dissipate I feel like I need some of the very comfort food I’d be without in this situation.

Venba explores quite a bit in its short and linear runtime; maybe it’ll hit you differently than it hit me, because of your own context that you’ll bring into it, but it’s worth picking up and playing just to see what it draws out of you.

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F-Zero 99

Developer: Nintendo Software Technology
Publisher: Nintendo
Nintendo Switch
Sep. 14

F-Zero 99 isn’t a remake. It’s a completely different game than F-Zero, which released on the Super Famicom in 1990 and the SNES in 1991, and I mean that in a different way than “Resident Evil 4 Remake is different than Resident Evil 4.” Yes, the tracks — at least their twists and turns and names — are the same, as are the four vehicles you can choose from. They’ve been lifted from their previous context and placed into a completely new one, however: rather than a single-player racing game that — very successfully — showed off what the SNES was capable of in terms of its Mode 7 feature and its processing power, all you knew from F-Zero is now contained within an online-only multiplayer battle royale racer.

It’s a stunning achievement, an addictive one, too. The gameplay isn’t just the same as F-Zero, which does a lot of the lifting that keeps this from being a remake or re-release even beyond the battle royale thing. The original F-Zero had boosts that you acquired by successfully completing laps. This one uses a feature introduced later in the series, where your health and your boost are tied together as one, meaning that in order to boost, you must not be crashing, or else you’ll put yourself in precarious situations you might not survive. And unlike in other F-Zero games, where you might find some daylight on the race track and survive until the next health recovery bar appears, in F-Zero 99, there are 98 racers besides you on the track. And they’re going to try to kill you to power themselves up.

The boost/health bar gets bigger if you can destroy another car, and in tournaments, it’ll even stay larger: this is a huge advantage that everyone is going to be attempting to gain, so when your car starts smoking as it nears death, you might as well have just placed a giant target on the back that also says “kick me” on it. You also get a spin move that didn’t exist in the original F-Zero, and will help you both avoid and dole out damage. It makes for some exhilarating moments that the original F-Zero, for all of its positive qualities and tension, lacked.

F-Zero 99 features multiple play modes, an experience system that unlocks additional gameplay features, and gameplay that all moves so fast that even losing is just a bump in the road until your next chance at a victory. It’s one of the best games of the year, and if Nintendo shuts it all down like they did Super Mario Bros. 35 even while people are still into it, I’m never going to stop complaining about that decision.

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Honorable Mentions

TEVI: A Metroidvania featuring a (fake) bunny girl, who comes into contact with a (robot) angel and demon, plops them into her floating orb cannons for safekeeping, and then explores the world she lives in searching for ancient technology as a plot unfurls around her. It’s a very self-aware game, in the sense it knows what you pervs are looking for in a game featuring a bunny girl protagonist and will needle you for it the whole time, but it’s also just a blast to play.

The world is fairly open, in terms of you going where you want to within each chapter to complete your missions in whatever order you feel like, but everything is still tied to this chapter structure, so it’s not fully open. Which is fine, it’s a Metroidvania, “fully open” is not what makes these things work. If you’re familiar with Rabi-Ribi — made and published by the same companies — then you know what you’re in for here. And hey, the outfits are less “I am going to have a hard time explaining this to someone who sees me playing” than in that game. Whether that’s a pro or a con I leave up to your personal situation.

Batsugun: The first bullet hell shooter finally received a North American release, and, for Paste Magazine, I went into why that matters back in May when that happened. Batsugun has been surpassed by many of the kinds of games it helped inspire in the decades since its release, but there’s still something special here. And it’s a fantastic entry point for danmaku shooters, which… that’s a short list, given the fact it’s a genre made for genre sickos.

Sprawl: I don't know if there's an original thought in Sprawl, but let me tell you, everything it threw into a blender works exceptionally well and enjoyed the hell out of it. Pulling from Titanfall 2 and more modern Doom releases, this first-person shooter has you pulling off complicated bullet time maneuvers that aren’t just flashy, but necessary: if you don’t use bullet time to slow things down, you will be overwhelmed by baddies and bullets, and you will die. You get ammo and health refills with successful bullet time and katana kills a la DOOM (2016)’s special melee attacks, but you also get to keep on living at all by playing this way. Oh, and you have a rail gun rifle even though you’re a person and not a giant mech.

It was pretty buggy on my first playthrough, but the developers, MAETH, have kept with it to improve performance, in a way that’ll ensure that I come back for a second playthrough on a harder difficulty. Wildly overlooked game, even if understandably so given some of what came through the FPS space this year — which I’ll get to later this week — and worth checking out if you’re into a delicious violence smoothie made of ingredients you’re familiar with.

Jusant: I found Jusant to be a soothing activity, despite the stresses of climbing. I’ve got a whole thing about heights, so climbing sheer rock faces isn’t exactly on my real-life to-do list, but Jusant let me imagine, for just a little bit, what it would be like to climb. There’s some beauty in that alone, but the game also tells a story of a climate-impacted world, with you traveling through what it left behind, while looking toward a better future. It’s soothing, yes, but it has its intensity, whether it’s experienced tethered to the side of a rock a mile above sea level, or while reading the writings of a lost people and their final days.

Slay the Princess: This is one of those games where you can’t really go into the what of it in too much detail, lest you spoil a bit of the surprise and the inner workings. But it’s one of a few standouts from 2023 that took an established genre and your expectations of it, and pulled it apart piece by piece to subvert those expectations and make you think on the structure of it all. In this case, visual novels, as well as games with choices and morality in play. Everything you do in Slay the Princess matters, but what it matters for, and to whom, and why, is more the point than the actual decision trees. There are no wrong answers, really, just results.

There’s a coldness to the model that I think will turn some people off, as it does veer a little close to showing a little too much of how the sausage is made, and admittedly it sometimes winks so hard as to be distracting. But there’s just too much here that I find fascinating from a structure and breaking-down-the-genre perspective, so it at least merited inclusion here in the honorables space.

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