The Hotdog Laserhouse

Every Game I Played in 2025 (More than once, for more than 10 minutes)

• Apotris
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• SRB2 Generations
• Crazy Taxi HD (⭐ Class S License)
• Sonic Racing Crossworlds
• Amid Evil: The Black Labyrinth
• Chop Goblins
• Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection
• Unleashed Recompiled ⭐
• Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers v2.4
• Yooka-Replaylee (⭐ Defeated Capital B)
• Sonic & The Secret Rings Reignition (Demo 3)
• Heavy Bullets
• American Truck Simulator (VR)
• Superhot VR
• Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever
• Quake 2, Quake 2 RTX, & Quake 2 64 (⭐ Finished Base Quake 2, almost done with Quake 2 64)
• Sonic Mania Plus
• Sonic Origins Ultrafix
• Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
• Gravity Circuit
• PEAK (⭐ Reached the Peak on my first co-op game)
• I.M. Meen (Doom Port)
• NiGHTS HD
• Blur
• Forza Horizon 4
• Voices of the Void (⭐ Reached Day 48, v0.8.2c)
• Vampire Survivors
• Mortal Kombat II Remix (⭐ Finished Arcade Mode as Sub-Zero)
• Freedom Planet 2
• Dustforce DX
• Undertale (⭐ Normal and Pacifist)
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
• UFO 50
• Runman: Race Around the World
• Maximum Action
• Spyro: Reignited Trilogy
• Super Video Golf
• Doom 2016
• Alan Wake Remastered (⭐ Finished base game and all DLC)
• Alan Wake’s American Nightmare (⭐ Finished story mode)
• Control
• Dirt 5
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered
• Burnout Paradise Remastered
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (PS2)
• TimeSplitters
• Burnout 3: Takedown
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call
• WarioWare Gold
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
• Sonic x Shadow Generations
• Sonic Frontiers
• Wreckfest
• Balatro ⭐
• Asphalt Legends
• Fortnite
• Faaast Penguin
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Tetris 99
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (⭐ Finished the game as Alucard)
• A Plumber for All Seasons
• Final Fantasy IX
• Yoshi’s Island
• Donkey Kong Country
• Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil ⭐
• Crash Bandicoot 4
• The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog ⭐
• Sonic the Fighters ⭐
• Sonic and the Fallen Star ⭐

⭐= I finished the game

It’s hard for me to pick one, but if I had to narrow it down to a top three, I’d say Undertale, Voices of the Void, and… hm. I mean even picking a third is hard. Klonoa 2 is great as always, Murder of Sonic is great, Balatro is great, the Nightdive remaster for Quake 2 is transformative, Yooka-Replaylee was surprisingly enjoyable, Unleashed Recompiled was also a great surprise, and Apotris is basically my favorite way to play Tetris now.

If I had to go the opposite direction and pick a least favorite game, I’d probably say Crash Bandicoot 4. That game is exhausting in the worst ways. Competently made, great art direction, but sort of like what I complained about with Sonic Mania, just a total slog. Way too much of everything. I’d argue that Crash 4 is worse about it than Mania, too, because it’s also incredibly difficult on top of everything else. So you spend 30-45 minutes grinding out one jump in one level. And that’s not even talking about collectibles and side missions. Crash Bandicoot 4 is a game that hates you and uses that hatred specifically to waste your time. Deeply miserable.

I can understand being exhausted with discourse, yeah. There are some things I’m like that with. But… I dunno, the response to the Sonic Frontiers in general is also a little weird and I’m starting to think I made a bad first impression with some of what I had to say. Some people are taking it personally in a way that it’s not directed at them.

But – and I do not say this disparagingly – that’s Sonic fans. I get it. It’s not true so much these days, but ten years ago, twenty years ago, this industry loved to beat up on Sonic and especially Sonic fans, eventually. Some people don’t see that I’m one of them too, which is also understandable, because not everybody knows me.

I’m weighing options on how to deal with that. I’ve said it before but doing follow-up “correction/comment response” videos seem to be a good idea, but I don’t know if I should wait until the final DLC is out or try and get it released sometime next week.

As for how I handle it… I don’t know. Maybe it just comes naturally. I remember way back when I first got on the internet, when I was on AOL, the big thing everybody was doing back then before blogs was Mailing Lists. “MLs” for short. People would send you a message like “I would like to subscribe to your ML,” so you’d write down their email address, and once a week or so you’d send out this gigantic email that was practically its own whole website.

And I juggled two or three MLs, for Sonic, for Pokemon, for Sailor Moon. I’d attach files for MP3s, I’d do Q&A sections, the whole nine yards, and I was like… 15. And I’d get comments (email replies) from people telling me that they loved how natural I sounded. Apparently people running other MLs were pretty wooden and robotic with their writing style, but I was always very conversational and approachable. And the numbers bore that out; I remember having several mailing lists crest 100+ subscribers, which felt like a huge deal.

And it’s weird, because if you met me in real life, I’m maybe the most quiet, reserved person on earth. I have to force myself to speak out. I live in a house with five other people and I will go days where the only thing I say to anyone is telling my nephews good night. I feel like I can’t talk. Like I don’t know how. Which is a whole other kettle of fish, especially when it comes to recording voice over for a video.

But you sit me down in front of a keyboard, or even maybe a phone to some degree, where I can type out my thoughts? I used to be able to type as fast as some people could speak. And literally as I write this right now, I am more or less mouthing the words, either physically or in my head, as I type them. Like I am saying them. It’s all a stream of consciousness. That goes for things I write here on this blog and it goes for video scripts, too. It’s always flowed as naturally as running water (maybe too naturally, for how rambly I can get).

I would love to have the confidence to speak in the same way I type, and I know I have the capacity for it. I just get too nervous in the moment.

And as for how I handle people who are rude or don’t understand me or whatever, I mean I have theories, but ultimately I don’t know.

Like, something I learned early on was to distinguish the difference between people who are actually angry and people who are just trying to hurt you for laughs. I remember, all the way back when I was in Kindergarten or First Grade, some kids on the school bus were trying to get a rise out of me and in my head I kept thinking “They’re just trying to make me mad, so I won’t give them the satisfaction.” And I just went totally stonefaced. When I objectively refused to react, they left me alone.

A few years later, I had friends who turned out to be bitter enemies that may or may not have ruined my life, and again, I learned new skills to deal with baseless people who were just trying to make me angry. I learned how to cope with or avoid some of that.

(Until eventually the bomb went off, I beat a kid black and blue, and was nearly charged with assault at 13 years old.)

And then a few of my first internet friends were deeply stubborn people who reveled in their ability to be rude, frustrating assholes. And, again, I learned ways to avoid, cope with, or defuse those people.

(Until I got tired of dealing with them and cut them out of my life entirely.)

Like, compared to some of the things I’ve had to endure, some of the things “friends” have said or done to me, an angry internet comment feels like a stiff breeze.

And I also just love putting myself in someone else’s shoes. Thinking about how they came to a different conclusion than I have. Ask people who knew me 20 years ago and they’ll tell you I used to (and still sort of do) live by a mantra that all arguments start as misunderstandings. If two people come to terms with their differences in perspective then all problems can be solved.

So I learned that when someone has a problem with me or something I’ve said, I just need to explain it better, or explain it more. If the scope of what I said is too small, then I need to provide a bigger picture view of where I’m coming from. And 90% of the time that is a great way to solve a problem, to come to terms and say “Tell me where you’re coming from and I’ll tell you where I’m coming from and we can meet in the middle.” You’re being heard, they’re being heard, everybody (usually) wins.

I always try to come at everything in good faith like that. Even anger comes from somewhere. Understanding that helps everyone.

(Now, I don’t always have the energy for that. There was a twitter thread last week where I incited quite a bit of Discourse™ and I eventually became exhausted by the endless supply of people who were looking for cheap dunks, or were being weirdly rude, plus I was deep into deadline stress… I ended up getting kind of punchy in a way I’m not super proud of)

And I guess just… all of this stuff, it all just combines into my ability to mostly handle it.

Which is why it can feel so weird when people don’t want to engage me.