A: That’d be me, Box Boy! I truly love Video Games. In my mind’s eye, I still view Games as the most premier, unique, and complete means of narrative design available to modern creatives. I attempt to engage with them with the same excitement and fervor that blossomed in the 80’s and 90’s and gave birth to the classics we all know and love, and that still echo – at least in some small part – in the games made today. Regrettably, in spite of how more widely enjoyed and beloved games have become, the language and discussions around them have never been more simplistic and reductive. In an industry that wants nothing more to be taken seriously and considered well and truly an artistic medium, those that create and enjoy games cannot seem to break away from the same tired, diminishing, talking points like ‘graphics’, ‘consoles’, ‘cinema’, or worst of all – ‘nostalgia’. Grown ever tired of these conversations, I decided to give voice to my own thoughts, and hope to try and elevate and shift the conversation and culture around these beautiful artistic instruments a little at a time.
A: Every year I replay Square’s well known Final Fantasy and Super Mario amalgamation ‘Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars’. Although almost 30 years old at time of writing, it still remains one of the most charming and unique experiences, among an absolute barrage of unique experiences from that era. In the original, traditional RPG aspects like elemental affinities are for the most part hidden and not explicitly disclosed to the player, only truly visible through increased damage values against certain creatures in combat – and even then, most of the time with no immediately real rhyme or reason. With the release of the ‘good’ remake in 2023, the updated UI/UX overhauled this already fairly straightforward (and truly with no real need to be any more complicated) system and revealed a good deal of these once hidden affinities. So pleased was I to find that Mario’s ‘Jump’ specials were now (and had always been) in fact categorized as the Jump ‘element’ against enemies, I would repeat to myself coyly ‘Jump Is Magic!’ anytime I used one his specials. It’s stuck with me in my mind as a sort of declaration – that to ‘Jump’ is indeed magic. Games, no matter how simplistic their controls or straightforward their premisses can be at times – ARE magical. For those with the time and patience to engage with them on an artistic and intellectual level, they are an endless font of creativity and wonder, and so – ‘Jump is Magic!’
A: Games are judged based on four main qualities: Narrative Design, Characters, Gameplay, and Sound Design. Each reviews goes in depth around the culture and end creation, and afterwards for posterity more than anything I render a star review, with Seven being the highest and One being the lowest. In general, anything above Four stars is worth paying attention to and playing, and anything less than Four might warrant some extreme skepticism and caution before engaing with. If we want games to be treated like art, we have to start engaging with their individual elements as much as we do their whole. I do not shy away from criticism, and encourage all viewers and readers to treat my criticism – and any criticism for that matter, as more than just an evaluation of successes and failures, but as a call to action. A call to evaluate your own love, how you can love a thing more, how you can wish it was better than it is, and how you can see the good in the bad, and how we as artists and creators might improve and iterate upon our works. Criticism is not an indictment of the viewer, nor is it a value judgement of individual taste.
A: I post as frequently as I can, at least once a week or so. I try to prioritize new releases and ideas and save older titles for quiet periods at the beginning of the year and summer. If you’d like, you may follow my account on Twitter (“X”), where I post every time a new review or report is released. If you’d like to submit review requests or have any questions or feedback for me, please feel free to submit a request via ‘Inquiries’ or comment and interact with my work to get a conversation started.