Ramblings of the Queen of KOF

Outrun is one of my all-time favorite series. I love the original, love the more modern titles, you just can't go wrong with Outrun. It's one of my chill games I play when I'm stressed and reminds me of when I'd turn off my beaten path between my home and school to go driving for a while down unknown roads, through unseen valleys and every nook and corner the hills of western Virginia had to throw at me. Tunnels made of overgrown tree branches that opened into fields and no one else existed in these moments besides me, the explorer. To me, outrun worked best when it was just about capturing these feelings of peace and exploration. I will say, Outrun is a game whose development I've been known to romanticize. Yet, one of Yu Suzuki's core design philosophies has always inspired me. I'm paraphrasing here, but he once said something akin to "good games have rough edges." Outrun, even the original, has rough edges. The controls have never been much...

I have a lot of games. Like, a lot. Usually the first thing someone says after they come into my house and sit on my couch is, "That's a lot of consoles." On average there are 12 different consoles setup at the family TV spanning over 30 years of gaming. And that's not even mentioning a similarly big portable collection with everything from original Gameboys and GameGears to NeoGeoPocket Colors, PSPs, Vita, DS, GBA, the list goes on. That's a lot of stuff to store, maintain, and organize... Making up purpose A collection, or a mess of "stuff"? I can't really speak for why anyone else collects, but for me that internal reason that I tell myself has shifted and morphed a few times. When I worked at GameStop, it was a matter of exploring through discounted titles from aging consoles. It's hard to imagine now that the series has picked up, but I originally bought Yakuza 3 for, well, free. It was less than $10 on GameStop's long-standing B...