This might piss some of you off, but I’m still not done talking about the Nintendo Entertainment System. See, the thing is the NES didn’t just have a huge impact on me but on culture itself. As the ‘80s bled into the ‘90s, this played out across pop culture more than any other video game console.

In 1988, Nintendo made an official cereal called the Nintendo Cereal System. I remember being bombarded with the annoying yet catchy commercial. Even now I think it’s a neat gimmick. Two varieties of breakfast cereal in one box. One Mario themed, the other Zelda. The top was even perforated, so you could only get at the cereal you want. Ultimately, I never tried the stuff. At the time I was only into a cereal if it had marshmallows or turned your milk chocolaty.

The IRATE Gamer goes even more in-depth in this video

Starting in 1988 was Nintendo’s official magazine Nintendo Power. It was a bi-monthly game magazine that offered maps and game tips, a fold out poster, the occasional comics, as well as other fun stuff like fan letters and game awards and rankings. Whenever you bought a NES game, one of the slips of paper in the box would be a Nintendo Power subscription card. I got started in January 1990.

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And then came the cartoons. On Saturday’s I’d watch Captain N: The Game Master. (1989 - 1991) Essentially its Nintendo themed Tron. A teenager and his dog get pulled into his NES and join a group of heroes from popular NES games, Mega Man, Simon Belmont, Kid Icarus, and a made just for the show Princess Lana. They constantly clash against a group of NES villains, Mother Brain, King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard.

The show I was really interested in was The Super Mario Brothers Super show. It was a cartoon mish-mash of Mario Bros. 1 & 2. The show itself had a live action skit that would play out and act as a wrapper to the cartoon. But much like the Nintendo cereal, the show also contained a Legend of Zelda cartoon that would play on Fridays. That was my jam! In fact, I’ve found YouTube videos of these old shows and the only one I could stand to watch as an adult was the Zelda one. I can remember getting off the school bus and racing home to make sure I caught this one.

They followed this show up with The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990 and Super Mario World in 1991. They were separate from the original show with some different voice actors, but I always considered this one big long show.

Late in the game, there was a Mega Man cartoon in 1994. I seem to remember catching this one in the morning before going to school. Which is good because at the time it had to compete with killer shows like Spider-Man, Gargoyles and The Tick.

One more topic before I sign off. Movies.

In 1989, Fred Savage stared in The Wizard, where he chaperones his (I assume) autistic little brother on a road trip to escape being institutionalized. When they arrive at their destination, they learn of a video game tournament and enroll the gifted sibling. I’m sure at the time I didn’t really care, just tuning out the commercials until I saw what happens at the 18 second mark of the following video...

Yeah, that’s Mario Bros. 3, a Nintendo game I had no idea existed until right then. Turns out they slipped the best product placement of all time into this movie in the form of a yet to be released video game!

And then there was Super Mario Bros. in 1993. No, not that new one with Chris Pratt, but the crazy one with Bob Hoskins. I remember it being very weird. Ancient CG effects, Dennis Hopper with spikey hair, and strange animatronics. It’s since gone on to be a cult classic, but I don’t think I’d ever want to try revisiting it.

Well, that’s all I’ve got on the NES. I could probably scrape up some more cultural impact about it, like the copious Nintendo merch with Mario’s face on it, but these were the things that really applied to me.

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Last week I turned on the computer and something jumped out at me from the mosaic of new videos on my YouTube homepage. A three-hour interview on the Tim Ferris Show with Brandon Sanderson as the guest. It was just minutes old, so I watched it straight on through the beginning of my writing time and finished it all in one go. (It’s still winter here and my productivity sucks.)

Here’s a link to the podcast:

While I enjoyed the whole thing, I especially liked these parts:

1:23:00 | Direct to consumer.

1:42:00 | The escape velocity of attention.

2:03:00 | Beta readers.

If you’ve been reading my blog since the start, you might remember me mentioning Brandon Sanderson. Between his podcasts, Writing Excuses and Intentionally Blank and his creative writing lectures, I’ve picked up all sorts of useful information about writing technique, tools and the writing business.

Well, he’s currently in the midst of posting new 2025 lectures. The production quality is higher than ever before. And I’m keeping an eye on his YouTube page for updates:

https://www.youtube.com/@BrandSanderson

He’s currently up to 4 lectures and some side Q&A videos.

But if you simply can’t wait for them to be done, here’s a playlist of his previous lectures from 2020:

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It’s January and I’m back with another entertainment recap. This year I put my whole ass into this one and I made the job way harder than it was last year. Last year I just relied on what entertainment I could remember enjoying, even a little, and added it to the list. This year I used a combination of looking up my history on various websites, remembering what I liked and at jotting down what entertainment I took in. So when it came time to work on the recap, I had an avalanche of information to deal with.

The first time around, I had no idea how to make up a tournament bracket, so I simply ran the tournament a few times until I felt that I didn’t totally snub something I loved. This time around, I ran a double elimination tournament. So the three things I mention in each category are the winners of the zero, single and double elimination brackets. Because I overloaded myself on data, the first thing I did was narrow any bloated categories down to 20 entries maximum.

Another reminder. This is stuff that was new to me in 2024, not necessarily new in 2024.

Games:

I got engrossed in some time-consuming games in 2024, which limited the amount of new games I tried. Specifically Factorio and Baldur’s Gate 3.

Isaac Clarke, a space engineer, travels to help the suspiciously silent planet cracker, USG Ishimura. Inside the welcoming party are Necromorphs, alien life that twist corpses into brutal killing machines. Dead Space is one of my all-time favorite games. That being said, I don’t tend to get excited about remakes and remasters. Thanks to my Playstation plus account, a copy of the game dropped into my lap. Ultimately, I really enjoyed the game. I won’t go in depth, but they made a lot of minor changes, some of which I like, some I don’t. However, I had a lot of fun with this one.

The expansion to Cyberpunk 2077. Given an offer too good to pass up, V enters a new zone, Dogtown, to rescue the president of the NUSA. Very fun. I found the writing to be on another level with the campaign and side gigs. I used it as an excuse to do the full story over again, so this one ate a lot of time.

I enjoyed the first game, so when I heard so much commotion for the second game, I knew I had to get in on that. The game pits the forces of Super Earth against the Terminid and Automaton factions (and Illuminate as of December) You, a helldiver, are a soldier of attrition who attempts to spread “Managed Democracy” across the cosmos. I loved the game intensely for a couple of months. I’m sure I’ll revisit it again at some point.

Honorable mentions

Factorio Space Age
Transformers Devastation
MyHouse.wad

Books:

I had an unusually high number of DNFs this year. Also, I cannibalized some of my reading time to edit my manuscript. As a result, I didn’t have a large selection of books to choose from.

As I hinted at in my September blog post, I discovered this book thanks to MyHouse.wad. After wrapping the game up, I did some careful digging online and decided the book sounded great and indeed I loved it. I’m not going to try to give you a blurb about it. I’m just going to say that I loved it; devoured it like a man who’s found water in the desert. After finishing it, I discovered that the book seems to have a polarizing reputation. But hey like it says in the front matter, "This is not for you."

This one is all about trauma and the mind and body’s reactions to trauma. I have some interest in psychology, so I found this one to be very interesting.

This one is about a strange shop popping up in Castle Rock. The sinister, yet enticing proprietor knows exactly what the townsfolk most want, and he’s eager to sell it to them at a high price. I really enjoyed this one. With Stephen King’s bigger works, I sometimes find myself wishing he would have more aggressively edited things down. But with Needful Things, I cruised through all 690 pages with gusto.

Honorable mentions

The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
Desperation by Stephen King.

Video:

I found a lot of stuff that I enjoyed in 2024, so I had to whittle this one down before setting the tournament up.

Evelyn Wang, (played by Michelle Yeoh) owner of a laundromat, is struggling to keep her business afloat when she’s suddenly dropped into a conflict with dark forces that threaten all reality.

I was aware that this had won awards when I found it on my streaming service. I didn’t know what the movie was actually about, but it looked weird and cool. I found it to be a wonderful blend or action, comedy with powerful themes.

Set in the late 1800s two lighthouse workers, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, slowly lose their sanity in this psychological horror movie. A friend told me about this one after he’d rented it. I don’t think he meant it to be a recommendation, as he highlighted its weirdness. But as the first entry in the video category suggests, weirdness is my middle name, so I jotted this one down and it didn’t disappoint.

I loved Scavengers Reign and was unable to pace myself when I discovered it. Binging the whole show in a couple days. In the show we follow the survivors of a commercial space craft trying to survive on an alien world. They seem to have trained for this, but nothing can prepare them for just how totally alien this world is.

Unfortunately season one had an abrupt ending and is now in canceled states... So who knows if we’ll ever get to see more.

Honorable mentions:

Delicious in Dungeon
X-Men 97
Marcel the Shell with Shoes on

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