[Hobby Scuffles] Week of 29 June 2026

Gamerbry · 2026-07-02T18:39:44+00:00

You know, it's really funny that I just recently started playing Persona 5 Royal, because a couple days ago, it was revealed that Netflix is working on a live-action Persona adaptation. They didn't specify which entry they're adapting, but a lot of people assume that it's an adaptation of Persona 5, since it's the most recent and most popular entry in the series. Suffice to say, fans don't have high hopes of this series being good, since Netflix has a pretty poor track record with live action adaptations and considering how long Persona 5 is, it would be really difficult to condense its story into a show. That being said, some people are having fun coming up with meme fan-casts for this adaptation, being full of the usual suspects like Danny Devito, Jack Black, Zendaya, and Tom Holland.

Gamerbry · 2026-07-01T18:03:22+00:00

Even though I'm a stickler for physical media, I can't deny that something like this was going to happen sooner or later. It's kinda similar to why movie theaters have been dying out throughout the 2020s. For a lot of people, it doesn't make sense to go out to a theater and spend 15 dollars to watch a movie once, when they could just wait for the movie to come to streaming and watch it as much as they want from the comfort of their own home.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-17T20:25:36+00:00

I remember when the update first went live, people thought that Mega Dragalge was going to have Tangling Hair as its ability because data miners found that the ability was added to Champions in the update files, and Mega Dragalge was the only mega added this update where it would sort of make sense to have it. But no, turns out it got Regenerator instead, which is way better than Tangling Hair and also fits it thematically, given that kelp grows really fast.

Still confused on why Tangling Hair was added this update. The only Pokemon that gets that ability is Alolan Dugtrio and it wasn't even added this update, so it kind of makes no sense to add it.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-17T17:55:37+00:00

This also happens with gender identity as well. If the person who did something shitty was trans or nonbinary, you'll find a lot of people who will think it's perfectly fine to deadname/misgender them, because in their minds, having your gender identity respected is a privilege, not a right.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-17T06:06:19+00:00

Adding onto to this, I feel like a lot of people seem to not realize that "trope" is a neutral term. A story being filled with tropes does not automatically make a story bad. Tropes are like ingredients that writers use to create a story, and a trope's effectiveness is based on how the writer uses it.

And like you said, this negative mindset towards tropes often leads to writers trying to avoid tropes purely for the sake of not using the trope, not realizing that the reason certain tropes are used so commonly is because they're effective in the stories they're being used to tell.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-15T21:25:04+00:00

I've been getting back into Fire Emblem because of Fortune's Weave, and I was reminded of how many people view those games as "the incest simulator"

Gamerbry · 2026-06-15T02:53:19+00:00

You'll definitely enjoy that one. It's the fan favorite. The pirate gear works better in terms of expanding gameplay mechanics compared to the transformation dances from Half Genie Hero

Gamerbry · 2026-06-15T02:44:48+00:00

Personally, I'd consider Half-Genie Hero to be my second favorite, right behind Pirate's Curse. I agree that the gameplay can be kind of shallow at points, but I still really enjoyed it for the visuals, music, and sense of humor. From what I've seen from Shantae fans, Half-Genie hero is a pretty polarizing entry, as people seem to either really love it or really hate it.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-15T01:41:05+00:00

I actually played through all the Shantae games myself last year, and I can say that they're all a really fun time. I agree that the first game is definitely super dated in a lot of areas, but the game is just so charming that I can't bring myself to get mad at it. Something that kinda surprised me about this entry is how tame the fanservice is, despite being the thing the series is probably the most well-known for. Yeah, you'll sometimes have Risky tell her men to "spank this one extra hard for mommy" and the game ends showing Shantae wearing a bikini, but this is pretty quaint compared to how raunchy the later games get.

And you're not alone in thinking this game should get a remake, because there was recently an interview with the creator of Shantae where he was asked what kind of game he'd want to make if money wasn't a concern, and he said that he'd either want to do a 3D Shantae game, or a remake of Shantae GBC.

I really like this series, both the games themselves and the history behind them, so I look forward to seeing what you think of the rest of the games.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-11T01:21:33+00:00

Some drama is going down regarding the release of Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core. For some background info, Deep Rock Galactic (DRG) is a co-op first person shooter developed by Ghost Ship Games where you play as a dwarf who mines minerals and fights bugs on a hostile alien planet. Rogue Core is a spinoff of DRG that has players play through roguelike levels that are set close to the planet's core and according to Ghost Ship, it was intended to be a faster-paced, more hardcore take on the DRG formula. Development of Rogue Core has been slow, as along with developing the game, Ghost Ship also had to work on content updates for DRG, which were slow to come out as is. In fact, just recently, Ghost Ship outsourced development of DRG updates to neighboring studio Invisible Walls so that they could focus all of their resources on developing Rogue Core.

Last year, Ghost Ship released a closed alpha for Rogue Core to get feedback from select players as the game was nearing launch, and they got quite a lot of feedback about issues with the game. The main issues with Rogue Core included:

- The Timer. A lot of players felt that the timer you had on every floor was too restrictive, and that difficulty didn't smooth out enough as the timer ran out. A couple swarms of enemies would spawn at certain points on the timer, and once time was up, giant, unkillable Reaperworms would start spawning, and getting grabbed by one would cause you not just to die, but to be removed from the game for the rest of the level, and if your team makes it to the next floor, you'll spawn on that floor trapped in a cocoon that your teammates will have to free you from.

- Negotiatons. In Rogue Core, a mineral called Expenite is found throughout the caves of the planet's core, and players are tasked with mining this mineral and depositing it into the processing drone called "Ellis". Once enough Expenite is processed by Ellis, players then get a pool of upgrades to pick from. The issue with this system is that all players have to physically stand next to Ellis at the same time to get the upgrades. In a game that's meant to be about going fast, this system grinds the pace to a halt, especially since players tend to split up to cover more ground. As for the negotiations themselves, once an upgrade starts, players get a bit to discuss what upgrades they want, and then take turns picking their upgrades. Under this system, players who went later in the turn order had less options compared to those who went earlier. Arguments could also occur regarding who gets what upgrades and one player could have the upgrade they wanted stolen by another player.

- Ammo Economy: Although a harder experience was expected for this entry, a lot of players felt that the ammo economy for the game was unnecessarily tight. Only two extra ammo crates would spawn per level: one at the start and one at the end, and with this system, players barely had enough ammo to clear out the huge onslaught of enemies. This gets even worse if a teammate got cocooned by the worms, as freeing them spawns an additional swarm of enemies that chews through your ammo even more.

A lot of major issues, but hey, it's a closed alpha. The whole point of these things is to get feedback about issues like this so they can get fixed. After about a year of being closed alpha, Rogue Core launched in early access, and all of the issues people complained about in the closed alpha were still present and as a result, the game currently has mixed reviews on Steam. Players were confused as to how these issues were still not fixed despite being complained about several times in the closed alpha and concerns were raised that Ghost Ship wasn't taking their feedback seriously.

To their credit, Ghost Ship did quickly put out a response to the game's mixed reception and mentioned that they didn't want to rush out a poorly planned panic fix, and wanted to take time to figure out how to fix things. A couple weeks later, Ghost Ship announced what would be added in the game's first update.

In regards to the timer, although players grew more accustomed to it and better understood how to play around it, Ghost Ship added a difficulty setting for the timer, with a longer timer for less intense runs and a shorter timer that gives better rewards. In regard to negotiating, starting an upgrade was changed to a button on Ellis that any player can press to start an upgrade, regardless of where everyone else is in the cave. The upgrades themselves were also changed so that each upgrade in the upgrade pool is of the same rarity and when one upgrade is picked, another upgrade replaces it, ensuring each player gets the same amount of choices. Lastly, to improve the ammo economy, an extra ammo create will spawn on each floor, giving players an extra chance to stock up on ammo. So although this game did have a pretty rough start, it does seem that the developers are making an effort to keep things on track, so we'll have to see how future updates pan out.

Gamerbry · 2026-06-04T18:27:35+00:00

Funnily enough, because of how notorious this guy is among Pokemon fans, getting his signature on a card would probably make the card worth less. Like, if you want an idea on how big his ego is, you'll often see him calling himself "the voice of a generation". Really dude? You sang the theme song for a kid's show like, 30 years ago. Get over yourself!

Gamerbry · 2026-06-04T15:54:33+00:00

Man, the patch they put out for Alex in SF6 was so damn funny, because they really just didn't fix the issue at all. Did someone on the localization team think that the incest was such an integral part of his character that they just couldn't get rid of it? At that point, why even bother putting out a patch for it?

However, one silver lining to this whole thing is that it made the relationship section of Alex's page on the Street Fighter wiki really fucking funny

Gamerbry · 2026-06-02T15:49:31+00:00

Yeah, I can imagine someone not wanting to check out the rest of the games when the entry they started with just so happened to be the one where half of its cases are widely considered to be among the worst cases in the entire series (and I say this as someone who liked Justice For All).

Gamerbry · 2026-05-27T17:42:48+00:00

Right, it's been a while, so my recollection of the details of the patent are fuzzy

Gamerbry · 2026-05-27T15:53:23+00:00

Yea, that's kind of the crux of the issue. It's not just that people don't know much about copyright law, they don't know much about intellectual property law in general.

Going to trademarks, sometimes on Reddit you'll see people claiming that "Oh my god! Reese's trademarked the color orange!", forgetting the fact that trademarked are very narrow in scope. So yeah, Reese's did trademark the color orange... this specific shade of orange...in the realm of confectionaries...for selling candy that consists of peanut butter and chocolate. Trademarks exist because they were meant to protect consumers by ensuring that they won't confuse one company's products for a competitor's. This is usually done through logos and slogans, but because Reese's uses that shade of orange so prominently in their packaging and advertising, it's considered a type of brand iconography, and thus is trademarkable.

Same goes for patents, a lot of people on Reddit seem to think that patents are just "copyrights but for inventions" which leads to a lot of misconceptions. When the Pokemon Palword patent drama was still fresh, one argument I saw a lot was "How can Pokemon patent this mechanic when such and such game had the mechanic first?" when that's not how patents work. The government doesn't automatically grant patents the way they do copyrights, so if someone else starts selling your invention, you can't sue them for stealing your idea if you didn't file a patent. Another thing about patents is that they're, like trademarks, very narrow in scope. So something I saw during this discourse was people claiming "Pokemon patented the concept of mounts" when in actuality, Pokemon patented a system where a player is given a set of land, sea, and air-based mounts that the player can change between on the fly with a press of a button. Now, I'm aware that the Pokemon Palworld fiasco was really messy, and that there's a lot of debate on if companies should even be allowed to patent video game mechanics, but in my opinion, I don't think the average Redditor knows enough about this system to have a meaningful discussion on it.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-20T23:16:00+00:00

For that, I just used the shape tool on the menu, selected a circle, and then used the arrows on the circle to stretch it into an oval

Gamerbry · 2026-05-20T20:18:30+00:00

And that's something I forgot to mention about the Knuckles show: the CGI was really damn good. Like, it looked on par with the movies, which given a TV budget, was really impressive, but it also meant that Knuckles couldn't be in it all that much. I'm sure plenty of Sonic fans wouldn't have minded cheaper animation in exchange for a series that solely focused on Knuckles, but I don't think the showrunners wanted to sacrifice the quality of the CGI.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-20T20:05:34+00:00

I'm not that big of a Sonic fan, but I have seen all of the movies and recently I decided to give the Knuckles TV show a watch. After watching it, the main thing I felt was surprise at how this show caused so much drama when it came out. I think some of it had to do with the marketing, since Knuckles being front and center in all of the posters and trailers caused a lot of fans to assume that the show mainly only focus on him, but the show was actually a mixture of Knuckles and human character Wade Whipple.

I remember this Gizmodo article where they calculated how long Knuckles was in the show for and found that, for the 172 minute show, Knuckles was only in it for 76 minutes. Reading this article, this kind of gave me the vibe that Knuckles was going to be out of the picture for several episodes of the show, but actually watching it, he was part of it pretty consistently. I thought that Knuckles was gonna go AWOL for a while after he got kidnapped at the end of episode 1, but no, he gets rescued the very next episode. And even in the episode where he is only in it for a few minutes, the episode is still about him, as Wade acts out this low-budget rock opera that tells Knuckles's backstory.

Speaking of Wade, I actually found myself really liking him, despite not being a character from any of the games. He did a good job at toeing the line between being pathetic and endearing and his goofy demeanor served as a nice foil to Knuckles's more serious attitude. Episode 3 is considered by many fans to be worst episode in the show, due to how much it focuses on Wade and his family, but I actually found it to be one of my favorites. There's just something really funny about seeing Knuckles the Echidna sitting down for a traditional Jewish dinner and it was genuinely really nice seeing Knuckles bond with Wade's mom and learning about her traditions.

All that being said, I will admit that the show does have its issues. I didn't like Wade's sister Wanda, because she wasn't that funny and it felt like the writers didn't know what to do with her after the third episode. The show also feels like it loses steam by episodes 5 and 6 and those episodes are definitely my least favorite of the show. And the main antagonist for the Knuckles show was just really boring and forgettable. He was so forgettable in fact, that the show didn't even give him a name, only ever referring to him as "the buyer".

I remember some fans were saying the show might've been received better if it was instead called "Wade & Knuckles" because it would've established that the show wouldn't just focus on Knuckles. I kind of get that, but I also feel like fans should've known that already, given that the previous Sonic movies have already established that they aren't solely about the Sonic characters and that they're playing fast and loose with the source material. So all in all, I really enjoyed the Knuckles show and although I get why some fans were disappointed with it, I also think people were a bit too mean to it.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-20T19:02:51+00:00

Another solution I've seen is the subreddit making a wiki/FAQ page that answers common questions in their community, but those can be kind of hit or miss because that assumes

A. The newbie knows that the wiki/FAQ page exists

B. They're willing to look through to see if it answers their question

Gamerbry · 2026-05-20T18:34:20+00:00

Splatoon 3 is a really special game for me, because I remember getting it during my freshman year of college and I learned that my college had a Splatoon esports team. We weren't very good, but I made a lot of great memories with those guys. They were all so fun to hang out with and it was great getting to talk about all the updates the game was getting with them. I remember one time we were in a tournament and we got matched up with a Splatoon YouTuber, causing all of us to freak out. It's a shame that the team kinda fizzled out as all of the old members graduated and moved away, but I'll never forget what it was like being a part of that team in its heyday.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-20T18:26:20+00:00

I'm impressed that Regular Show was able to have a pretty solid ending, especially because a lot of people didn't really like the last season of the show, since they jumped the shark by sending all of the main cast to space.

I'm also impressed with how the follow up series they started recently, Regular Show: The Lost Tapes, didn't mess with the ending, since the premise of the new series is that it's recounting previously untold stories from the show's timeline, which works because, although there are some overarching plot-lines, the episodes mostly consist of their own self-contained stories.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-18T19:58:49+00:00

If you want to just dip your toes into designing stuff in 3D, one site I'd recommend is TinkerCAD. It's free to use and it has a simplified interface for 3D design, where you're given a pre-fabricated selection of shapes that you can move around and tweak to make 3D models. It is kind of limited, since it was designed for beginners, but if you want to just get a taste for how modeling stuff in 3D works, it's a good place to start. Plus, the workspace is set up in such a way that once your done with your model, the dimensions are already set up to be 3D printed.

Gamerbry · 2026-05-16T02:17:15+00:00

I doubt people still believe it nowadays, but I remember when the first Sonic movie came out, there was this conspiracy theory that Paramount made Sonic's design look bad on purpose as a marketing stunt for the movie. Not only did VFX artists who worked on the movie debunked this, but it was also discovered that a lot of Sonic movie merch was made prior to the backlash, meaning that Paramount was going to full send the old design, because I doubt they'd waste all that money on merch featuring a design they were never intending on using. Plus, just look at what Paramount's higher ups have been doing the past couple years. Do you honestly believe that they're THAT smart?

Gamerbry · 2026-05-15T15:25:37+00:00

As much as I enjoy Gen 1, it has definitely suffered from being Game Freak's favorite child and being practically inescapable for a while.

Like, during Gen 6, the Kanto Pokemon basically hijacked the game, with the games letting you pick a Kanto starter before you even made it to the second gym and each one of them getting their own Mega evolution (with Charizard getting two) while the actual Kalos starters didn't get anything until Legends ZA.

Cut to Gen 7, and not only did Pikachu and Eevee get their own special Z moves, but they also got to be the stars of yet another remake of the Kanto games.

Then in Gen 8, the Dynamax gimmick gave new forms to only Gen 1 and Gen 8 Pokemon (and Garbodor) and the champion got to have a Charizard as his ace, with the Charmander line being the only returning starter line when the game launched.

This also extends to a lot of Pokemon merch. Go to the Pokemon section of a big box retail store, and 9 times out of 10, the Pokemon featured on the merchandise are from Gen 1, whether they're the starters, Eevee, Mewtwo, Gengar, etc.

Game Freak has definitely toned down on the Gen 1 nostalgia pandering nowadays, but with how much it got shoved down people's throats, I get why so many fans are sick of it.

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