Eruditorum Press

An entryist coup for your subconscious

Signal Boost: Preserving Classic Video Games with RetroRGB

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Have you ever thought about how we experience media?
 
A book is a book is a book, surely. Reading is reading, no matter what device or medium you do it on. And yet, you’ll still hear people say the experience of reading on a computer, phone or e-reader isn’t the same as holding a physical book forged from dead tress in their hands. Many people still prefer the sound of vinyl records to digital music. Watching a play live is a manifestly different experience than watching a recording of the performance or reading a script (just ask Jack about Shakespeare sometime). And once you move into more thoroughly modern forms of creative expression, movies, television and video games, medium becomes even more important to consider.
 
Ever since the dawn of television, movie studios have played with unconventional and experimental aspect rations (or 3D film) to provide an experience than can only be had in theatres. For one TV example that should be familiar to many of you, I have previously, somewhat infamously, raised cane about what I consider the “proper” way to experience and judge Star Trek: The Next Generation. To briefly summarise that old chestnut, Star Trek: The Next Generation was *recorded* on film, but *composited* on VHS, meaning the show was edited and all the special effects shots were added in on magnetic tape after the fact, so the final episode lost a startling amount of visual detail, clarity and information between filming and being sent out to TV stations. This was fine in 1987 when consumer CRTs at the time couldn’t process that information anyway and the show could play to the strengths of that technology, but this provides a problem for anyone trying to enjoy the show any way other than broadcast TV in 1987.
 
Star Trek: The Next Generation did not handle the transition to digital video easily or cleanly, and from the first DVD releases in the early 2000s there has been scepticism about the show’s art direction, lighting, cinematography and general aesthetics. But this was because the DVD “transfer” was an Nth generation lossy VHS composite copied over to DVD and run through some editing software to artificially “clean it up” post facto. That transfer was then used in online streaming and cable reruns, and was all we had until 2012 when the Blu-ray “remaster” (a hopelessly inaccurate term I wish PR people would stop using) went back to the original film negatives and recomposited the entire show in high definition, offering digital natives and immigrants a glimpse at what the show was really meant to look like for the first time. Happily, this new transfer can be seen not only on the Blu-rays, but on all digital streaming services today.
 
With video games, this sort of problem becomes even more pronounced. If you think about a game console, it’s essentially a custom, specialized hardware configuration specifically tailored for playing video games. Games were created with these specific hardware configurations in mind, and were designed especially to take advantage of their strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies.
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Antica

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Let’s give the Proverbs a week off and talk about Secret Empire. For those who haven’t followed, this was Marvel’s annual shitty summer crossover, this time with the premise that history has been rewritten to make Captain America a Hydra sleeper agent who has now taken over the US. So basically, “what if Captain America were secretly a Nazi?” This has been widely panned, even moreso than Marvel’s summer crossovers usually are. On the one hand, this is entirely appropriate, as Secret Empire is not only one of the worst-written crossovers in superhero history but also one of the most flatly evil. On the other, relatively few people have actually articulated this, with an alarming number of critiques of the comic instead being exercises in point-missing far almost as epic than the crossover itself.

Perhaps the most spectacularly off-base thing to be frequently said about the comic is that its premise is an insult to the legacy of Captain America co-creator and avowed Nazi-puncher Jack Kirby. It is difficult to entirely grasp the value system under which making a fictional character he drew forty-three issues of into a fascist is an insult to his legacy but the basic existence of Marvel Comics as a corporate entity built on the systematic exploitation of his labor is not. Certainly it is not a value system worth taking seriously. But it is a commonly expressed one, in a way that is revealing about what superheroes, as a genre, have decomposed into over the seventy-six years since Captain America’s creation.

The second spectacularly wrongheaded objection to Secret Empire is closely related, namely the idea that its premise is anything short of brilliant. Of course Captain America as a fascist is a sensible story idea. He’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “super-soldier” named Captain America. The concept has always flirted with fascism, as has the superhero concept in general, with its fantasy of puissant men in uniforms who will protect us from danger and change. Exploring that tension has often been brilliant, whether consciously and carefully as in Alan Moore’s Miracleman and Kieron Gillen’s Uber, or with reckless overenthusiasm as in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Steve Ditko’s Mr. A. As premises for crossovers go, it’s far better than “a superhero civil war over the ethics of predicting the future,” “heroes and villains switch places,” or “Secret Wars again.”

But premises aren’t everything, and Nick Spencer, the writer of Secret Empire, is spectacularly the wrong man for the job. To knock down one last bad argument about the series, this is not because he’s a borderline fascist. He was a centrist who ran for Cincinnati city council as a Republican in 2005 and drifted to the Democratic party in the wake of the Tea Party and Trump. His politics are shitty in almost the precise way you would expect from that, and indeed slightly shittier given that he’s a thin-skinned Twitter bully to boot. In most regards this is considerably preferable to being a fascist, but unfortunately not when it comes to writing Secret Empire.…

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Drunken Whocast 3

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At long last, here is Drunken Whocast 3. 

Myself, Daniel, James, and Kit, gathered on Skype to discuss Series 3 while getting progressively sozzled.  This time we avoided getting drawn into speculations about the orgasms of prominent right-wingers, but still managed to fly off in all sorts of irrelevant and awful directions.  Many things were said, with all the authority of drunk white guys, that were very wrong – in both senses.  (The actual libels have been removed – even the true ones.)  Even so, there’s a fair bit of good, solid Doctor Who talk here.  We all find Series 3 pretty interesting, it seems. 

Download here.

I must apologise for my posts being sporadic at the moment.  I’m desperately trying to finish off some other (non-postable) projects while coping with a real life that is increasing frantic on both a work and personal level.  I’m grateful to all of you for being patient – and especially to those Patreon sponsors of mine who are, at the moment, basically giving me money for nothing.  Bless you all.  If you want to give me money for nothing, go here.

Here, by the way, are the Patreons of James and Kit.  And here’s Phil’s/Eruditorum Press’s.  Daniel doesn’t have one yet, but I’m sure he’ll figure out a way for you to give him money if you want to.  Just in case you felt like sponsoring people who are actually producing stuff at the moment.

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Tom and Jerry Classic Reading Guide (V.2)

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Over the summer, I posted a rough draft of what I called a “Reading Guide” for Tom and Jerry. You know. The cat and mouse cartoon. I’ve since rewatched the series and revised my picks and criteria, so here’s “Version 2”.

(Also, apparently something happened with the latest DTV Tom and Jerry movie? Apparently it went mememtic this summer without me noticing?)

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the history of animation, particularly during the Golden Age, these past few months for a variety of reasons. I used to watch theatrical shorts all the time on Cartoon Network and I have a real affinity for that genre, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion now that Tom and Jerry is probably my favourite out of all the Golden Age series. Naturally, it’s the most controversial one.

Some of the criticism I find perfectly understandable. Some of it I find utterly preposterous and born from media illiteracy. But to take the more valid complaints, while there are certainly some pretty appallingly racist shorts in the Tom and Jerry catalog I tend to find this disproportionately overemphasized in modern criticism, making it seem like racist jokes and stereotypes made up far more of a percentage of Tom and Jerry’s humour than they actually did. I don’t actually find Tom and Jerry to be on average worse on stuff like this than Disney or Warner Brothers’ output, it just looks worse for Tom and Jerry because MGM never outright banned any of their most egregious outings like the competition did (I would count WB’s “Censored 11” as far and away worse for the time than just about anything Tom and Jerry ever did, and that Disney’s Peter Pan was allowed to skirt by unchallenged is a resounding source of ire for me).
 
On the whole, Tom and Jerry comes across to me as the most consistently creative, inventive and reliably excellent series in the entire Golden Age. I don’t think Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera always get quite the credit they deserve for sticking around the industry as long as they did (especially when their rivals were starting to visibly flounder), or for being the gifted comedic talents this series demonstrably shows them to have been. Other studios had a much harder time grasping the cartoon morality (let alone comic timing) Tom and Jerry perfected. And I was very surprised to see that Chuck Jones’ run on Tom and Jerry seems to be held in such low esteem by both Chuck Jones fans *and* Tom and Jerry fans: For someone who claimed to not understand the characters, I always thought he sure handled them well.
 
But more than that, Tom and Jerry is workmanlike, and I mean that in the best possible way. It constantly tries to adapt to a changing environment, and its humour is truly universal: Somewhat famously (and tellingly), Japan considers Tom and Jerry one of the greatest “anime” of all time, and it’s the only Western series to consistently make people’s Best Of lists.
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The Proverbs of Hell 20/39: Yakimono

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YAKIMONO: A course of flame-grilled meat. There are a number of episodes this would be a sensible title for, none of which are this one. 

MIRIAM LASS: I remember a dream about drowning. Then being awake. And not awake. Being myself, and not myself. I remember I could smell salt air. We were by the sea. For weeks. Months. Longer. Days and evenings blurred, I’d wake up to the smell of fresh flowers and the sting of a needle. I wasn’t afraid. Fear and pain were so far away, on the horizon, but not close. Never close.

Miriam’s description is loosely adapted from a description of Hannibal’s brainwashing of Clarice from Hannibal. 

ALANA BLOOM: They found a witness. A survivor. The only victim of the Chesapeake Ripper who lived to tell.

HANNIBAL: Is this witness watching me now?

ALANA BLOOM: Yes.

HANNIBAL: It seems I am the usual suspect.

ALANA BLOOM: I keep having angry, imaginary conversations with Jack Crawford about that. I wish I could tell you why this is happening.

Why are Alana’s conversations imaginary? She showed no hesitation in picking a fight with Jack in season one, nor at the beginning of season two when she started an investigation into his conduct. The charitable explanation – and it’s far from clear such charity is warranted when dealing with apparent inconsistencies in Alana’s characterization – is that she does not bring the matter up with Jack because she is afraid of what Jack will say to defend his position. 

WILL GRAHAM: This is very sudden.

DR. CHILTON: The federal prosecutor has dropped all charges. Since you weren’t convicted of killing anyone, the basis for your sentencing to this institution is null and void. The Chesapeake Ripper has set you free.

Endearingly meta, given that we last saw Will early in “Futamono,” have seen none of the procedural wheels involved in this, and the cliffhanger had nothing to do with Will’s release. As a result, Will’s release feels slightly out of nowhere for all that it’s been anticipated for six episodes. 

DR. CHILTON: Why didn’t Hannibal just kill you?

WILL GRAHAM: Because he wants to be my friend. 

There’s no reason, in the script alone, why this line, which is mostly a restatement of previous sentiments, should be immediately iconic. It’s good, sure, but not in and of itself brilliant. Dancy’s delivery, on the other hand, full of both condescension towards Chilton and incredulity at the absurd thing he has to say in order to understand the basic fact of his drawing breath, is a thing of wonder and ensures that this is up there with “I love your work” and… well, we’ll talk about that next episode.

JACK CRAWFORD: You need a ride?

WILL GRAHAM: I was going to call a cab.

The untroubled ease with which Jack and Will resume their friendship is a nice callback to the tone of the final scene of “Coquilles.”

JACK CRAWFORD: Miriam thanked me. When we found her. For not giving up on her.

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Asylum, Love, & Slavery

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I was just popping by to tell you lot about a brilliantly fun new entry in the Amicus podcast from myself and Lee Russell, which you’ll find here http://pexlives.libsyn.com/city-of-the-dead-14-asylum and will offer you just the tonic. If you like old Doctor Who, this sort of stuff is right up your alley. And if you don’t, you’ll probably dig it too.

I was just going to do that and be on my way, but I noticed that there was no Friday post from that wine chugging layabout J. Graham, so I thought I’d be your subsitute leftist for the week and post this recent essay that had previously been exclusively available to those who support me on Patreon. Feel free to throw paper airplanes and leave tacks on my chair in the comments below.

 

All over the world, white supremacists are flexing their pale, flabby muscles in this new age of online organising. In America, an emboldened, far-right Republican party controls the government. The Southern Strategy has made the Republican Party as hard right, as racist, and as popular as it is now. The strategy was (and is) the winking and ever more thinly veiled appeal to racist whites in the South and elsewhere. Vote for us, it promised with seductive gestures towards prejudice against blacks, and we’ll take care of crime and immigration.

The Southern Strategy was pioneered by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s and took thousands of anti-civil rights bigots away from their traditional home in the Democratic Party. Credit is also due to the now-dead, once-sentient hemorrhoid, Roger Ailes, who was later an instrumental force behind the shaping and running of the Fox News network and all of its crimes against humanity. The Republicans subsequently had crushing electoral success in 1968 and rode the strategy again and again to the Presidency. 

The logical endpoint of moving further and further in this toxic, backward direction is the kind of Presidential campaign run with intolerant and vicious effectiveness by Donald Trump, New York millionaire and media personality, in 2016. There is no need to dredge once more over the motherfucker’s worst moments on the campaign trail here. 

Donald Trump now squats in the White House (built by people who were whipped, beaten, and enslaved because of the tint of the colour of their skin) thanks mostly to the suppression of votes from non-whites, the new Jim Crow, and the work of one of the United States’ most cerebral slaveholders. James Madison advocated for the Electoral College as a way to give the slave states an advantage against the more populous so-called free states in the choice of President. 

Plantation slavery in the US was not that long ago, however much the black and white photographs may tie it in our minds to some prehistoric era that doesn’t need consideration, like the Roman destruction of Carthage. That we all still live with slavery’s malignant after effects is evidence enough of its closeness. To get the beginnings of an idea of what that simple word ‘slavery’, which we can be in danger of eliding over, meant (as well as  its intrinsic link to the growth of capital) I recommend Edward E.…

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Nintendo at Gamescom and QuakeCon, 2017

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This is the first year I’ve paid serious attention to Gamescom, which basically amounts to Europe’s E3. Perhaps it’s because I’ve even less chance of getting to go it than I do to E3, but it’s kind of a blank spot in my games journalism career, if you want to call it that. But with a suite of teases at this year’s E3, not a lot of solid details and a whole slew of games all coming out in the next 2-4 months I’m actually interested in, I figured it was time to give the big game show on the other side of the Atlantic a try. With Bethesda saving most of its content for QuakeCon, which ran at the same time last week (which I’ll get to later on), and me not being terribly happy with Sony and Microsoft it was naturally only Nintendo I cared about, so here’s a rundown of what they did at Gamescom this year.
 
I’m not sure if companies do the big press conferences at Gamescom like they do at E3-If they did I didn’t see anywhere to stream them, and either way Nintendo seemed to once again go the route of releasing information directly to its fans through its own social media profiles. So strap in, it’s time once again to overanalyse some trailers.
 

 
Fire Emblem Warriors is a game that I’ve gotten progressively more interested in as the months have gone by. I don’t know much at all about Fire Emblem as a franchise: The earlier games’ permadeath turned me away from what basically amounts to Medieval Fantasy Advance Wars, but the corner it seems to have turned as of Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS, making the permadeath optional and adding in a visual novel/dating sim style relationship mechanic (clunkily implemented as it is) seems to have made it into something that seems marginally more up my alley. I was all ready to put down cash for Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE on the WiiU in spite of my total disinterest in Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, Fire Emblem and JRPGs in general simply because that game looked and sounded freaking awesome, but the collector’s edition turned out to be *way* more money than I wanted to spend at that time, especially with the WiiU at death’s door in 2016 and other releases causing me to have an existential crisis about the video game medium. I do still kind of want to at least add that to my collection given its critical acclaim, possibly if I can get it at a budget price, but it’s definitely not a priority anymore.
 
In the end, it took Omega Force releasing a musō game based on the franchise to get me to really pay attention to Fire Emblem for the first time. My hunger for any and all things musō cannot be satiated, and I’ve been desperate for another game like this I can take on the go with me and play without an Internet connection since grinding Hyrule Warriors Legends into dust last year, and in lieu of a proper Dynasty Warriors Empires or Samurai Warriors Empires release on the Switch I initially thought I’d have to settle for this.
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The Proverbs of Hell 19/39: Futamono

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FUTAMONO: A soup dish served in a lidded pot. Most obviously a reference to the final scene, in which Jack discovers Miriam in a covered hole.

WILL GRAHAM: You’re moving smoothly and slowly, Jack, carrying your concentration like a brimming cup.

Another case of using one of Thomas Harris’s characteristically vivid similes in an unexpected context – originally it is Francis Dolarhyde who thusly carries his concentration as he sets up to peruse home movies and decide on his next victim.

JACK CRAWFORD: And then you told him to kill Hannibal Lecter.

WILL GRAHAM: Nothing I said made that happen, Jack. It just happened.

JACK CRAWFORD: Don’t seem too broken up about it.

WILL GRAHAM: There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named. The happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.

Two Thomas Harris lines in rapid succession. This one comes from Hannibal, where the emotion play across the face of Margot Verger as she’s preparing to introduce Clarice to her brother. Its poetry comes from the fact that we do not, in fact, quite recognize the emotion, as the act of recognizing an emotion is in a large part coextensive with the act of naming it. The emotion does, however, cohere – once it is named, even in the nine-word formulation offered by Harris, it immediately becomes possible to recognize it, which in turn perpetuates the experience of it.

WILL GRAHAM: I have contempt for the Ripper. I have contempt for what he does.

JACK CRAWFORD: What does he do, Will?

WILL GRAHAM: What does he do? What is the first and principal thing he does? What need does he serve by killing?

And the hat trick; Will’s question is the same one Hannibal asks of Clarice regarding Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. I can’t see anything else in the scene that looks distinctively Harrisesque, so doubt Fuller got a Hannibal Rising line in as well, but then again, that’d be the book that doesn’t stand out.

WILL GRAHAM: The Ripper kills in sounders of three or four, in quick order. Do you know why? I know why.

JACK CRAWFORD: Tell me.

WILL GRAHAM: Because if he waits too long, then the meat spoils.

JACK CRAWFORD: He’s eating them? Hannibal Lecter is Garret Jacob Hobbs? A cannibal?

WILL GRAHAM: Not like Garret Jacob Hobbs. Hobbs ate his victims to honor them. The Ripper eats his victims because they’re no better to him than pigs.

I was tempted to make this entire post consist of an annotation regarding the pigs comparison, but it would amount to a rewrite of my previous essays “Capitalist Pig” and “Capitalist Pig 2: This Time It’s About Cancer.”

HANNIBAL: A remarkably-lean organ, the heart. Funny how we revere and romanticize a simple pump. Merely a muscle. Yet such a potent symbol of life and the things that make us human, good and bad. Love and ache.

ALANA BLOOM: All of them skewered.

HANNIBAL: It’s a thematic dish.

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radical, gamebreaking politics for a group that’s struggling with the basic right to fucking exist

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Being aro/ace is queer.  End of story!  To say that anyone who’s not cishet normative doesn’t belong at the queer “table” (as if being queer were some kind of banquet, Hannibal?) doesn’t really understand what it is to be queer at all.  So let’s pick up the harp and let’s dance.

“radical”: late 14c., in a medieval philosophical sense, from Late Latin radicalis “of or having roots,” from Latin radix (genitive radicis) “root” (see radish ). Meaning “going to the origin, essential” is from 1650s.

Here’s what being queer, in any sense, often entails:

  • corrective rape
  • pedagogical erasure
  • unacceptance of one’s non-normative relationships
  • othering in mainstream media
  • medical stigmatization, discrimination, even “conversion”
  • unsafe to “come out” to partners, families, community and colleagues and so forth, and yet “coming out” is essential to being authentic

In other words, nothing nice.

These are all things that ace people have experienced.  These are all things that gays and lesbians have experienced.  These are all things that bisexuals have experienced.  These are all things that trans people have experienced.  These are all things that intersexed people have experienced.  Why?  Because we’re all queer.  Because we all deviate from the expectations of straight people.

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I’m a big fan of etymology.  It’s a way of getting to the root of a word, of seeing where it came from.  Because of course words change over the eons.  “Nice” for example derives from Latin nescius “ignorant, unaware,” literally “not-knowing,” from ne– “not” + stem of scire “to know” (see science).  And then it changed to “timid,” then “fastidious,” then “precise” and “careful” and “delicate” before becoming “agreeable” and “kind” and “thoughtful.”  Over time, it’s been turned inside-out, polarity reversed and all that.  What a queer word!

“Queer” is the perfect word to describe the history of “nice.”  “Queer” derives from the c.1500, “strange, peculiar, eccentric” from Scottish, perhaps from Low German (Brunswick dialect) queer “oblique, off-center,” related to German quer “oblique, perverse, odd,” from Old High German twerh “oblique,” from PIE root *terkw– “to turn, twist, wind.”  Huh, looks like we got something in common with twerking, too. 

Oblique, off-center, turned… in other words, not straight.  This is the geometry of being queer, or perhaps the square root of it to be particularly nerdish, and with particular thanks to Harper’s Etymological dictionary.

So what does building solidarity look like?  Damn, it looks like looking in the mirror, I think!  Conversely, what does excluding aro/ace from queerdom look like?  It looks like, I dunno, like saying that because someone under the queer umbrella has an easier time of passing for straight we might as well just pretend that they’re straight?  It’s like demanding someone stay in the closet. 

That’s what we all have in common.  The damn closet, from late 14c. French closet “small enclosure, private room,” diminutive of clos “enclosure,” from Latin clausum “closed space, enclosure, confinement,” from neuter past participle of claudere “to shut”. In Matt. vi:6 it renders Latin cubiculum “bedchamber, bedroom,” Greek tamieion “chamber, inner chamber, secret room;” thus originally in English “a private room for study or prayer.”…

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Egomania

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Rarely has a work of fiction been so aptly named.
 
Sonic Mania released this past week on consoles, with the PC version delayed a few weeks for additional tweaks and optimization. This is one half of SEGA’s 25th Anniversary celebration for Sonic the Hedgehog (the actual anniversary was last year, but that’s just how SEGA rolls), a game made by a team of former Sonic fangame developers led by Christian Whitehead, famous for his HD remake of Sonic CD and his extremely high-quality conversions of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Sonic Mania, as you might expect, is thus a game self-consciously indebted to the style of the earliest Sonic game releases and plays out as a kind of fan’s version of Sonic Generations: A bunch of “reimagined” classic stages with the occasional crop of new material, but this time done in a manner that slavishly attempts to recreate the style of the original games on a new platform.
 
This is not a review of Sonic Mania. I don’t even have the game as of the time of this writing, though I do have the Nintendo Switch version of the special collector’s edition on preorder, primarily because I thought the display statue and faux-SEGA Genesis stand would look nice in my room stood next to my library. It is a game I’m looking forward to, as you can probably tell, and I do have something special planned for it later in the year. I am not, however, looking forward to it as much as I am some other releases coming out in the next few weeks and months (the fact I not only do not have the game, but I don’t even have the console to play it on should probably speak to that), and it would seem I’m not looking forward to it anywhere near as much as certain other individuals, if the press’ crop of reviews is anything to go by.
 
The enthusiasm for Sonic Mania has been nothing short of rabid, and the professional reviews for it have been glowing in a way typically reserved for things like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (particularly perceptive longtime fans of mine will know where this is going). Amongst the expected slew of reviews declaring Mania “a return to form”, there’s been many a re-evaluation of the Blue Blur’s history to date, and one author even made the analogy that Sonic is the Bugs Bunny to Mario’s Mickey Mouse, with their sympathies clearly lying firmly with the wabbit (Given the fact that, when faced with the age-old binary of “Disney or Warner Brothers”, I’m the asshole who picks “Tom and Jerry”, my thoughts on liberal Nerd Culture’s veneration of Looney Tunes are many and varied, but would require an essay of their own). But the reviews have been something else too: Nasty. Not towards Sonic Mania, of course, but towards basically every other Sonic game ever made that isn’t Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
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