It's that time of year again where I take a look at all the stuff I've written across the year. Isn't that fun? Sadly, while I managed to get a perfect attendance record last year, I had to skip out on two months in 2023 (June because I was completely burnt out after writing 10000 words about Mother, and December because I had a lot of other stuff to do). Still, we managed to get quite a bit done, so let's take a look!
January - Urban Champion
Over the years I've mostly avoiding covering NES games on my site, mostly because back when I started doing this nonsense, the NES was massively oversaturated on fansites. It's easy to understand why, of course, but I wanted to make my focus a little different. However, that's not because I dislike the NES or don't find it interesting! So after playing the Arcade Archives version, I decided to cover one of the earliest games for the system, and its strange primordial take on one-on-one fighting. You should play the 3DS version though!
February - Space Invaders '90
Space Invaders games are something I definitely like covering. There's so many of them, and a lot of them are weird, so here's a look at one of the very first home console-exclusive Invaders titles. I'd certainly like to cover more of the arcade sequels in the future, so please look forward to it!
March - Sukeban Deka II
You know what, you can stop what you're doing right now and watch the TV show SUKEBAN DEKA. The story of multiple girls taking on the codename Saki Asamiya and their unique yo-yo brand of justice is absolutely essential television. Once you've done that, maybe read about the Mark III game that got made based on the second season of the show! It's a weird text adventure / action game hybrid!
April - Pac & Pal
Pac-Man finally makes his debut on Gaming Hell with one of the Namco-deveolped arcade sequels, and I'm a big fan of this one. It's probably my favourite Pac-Man follow-up honestly, and while it didn't get to be part of the Namco Museum series on PS1, I'm glad that it's started showing up more frequently in subsequent years. Miru is cute, that is all.
May - Mother / Earthbound Beginnings
My favourite article of this year, for the site's 15th anniversary I went back to the NES again with over 10000 words about Mother, sometimes called Earthbound Zero but officially called Earthbound Beginnings by Nintendo. This game has a special place in my heart, and I've seen a lot of people completely dismiss it over the years for somewhat spurious reasons. RPGs aren't exactly my area of expertise, but I hope I did a good job explaining why I enjoy the game so much, and how you might approach it if you want to give it a chance.
July - Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II
This year's fighting game is another Capcom one, and I'm a bit of a fan. I'm not really much of a wrestling person so the original Saturday Night Slam Masters isn't really my cup of tea, but I see why people like it. Ring of Destruction, though, turns the game into a one-on-one fighter, and a lot of people completely ignore or outright badmouth the game for just being another Street Fighter II clone in their eyes. I completely disagree! Violently!! This game actually does a lot different from other fighting games, so I wanted to explain why it's a favourite of mine. I also had to locate a soundtrack CD to get to the bottom of the Tetsuo Hara mystery surrounding the series! Fun!!
August - The Tower of Druaga
I'm not normally in the business of rewriting old articles from scratch- sometimes I'll make additions and changes to make them be less terrible, but not completely throw something out. However, The Tower of Druaga article was missing a lot of information, especially in the home ports department, and I wanted to really beef it up and make it a more definitive look at the game. Yes, that means this page now includes a photo of an inflatable Quox on top of a real-life Tower of Druaga. That means the article's good now.
September - Quarth
Sometimes, I just want to write about a game because I really, really like it. Quarth is one of those games. A great little block-shooting action-puzzle game with dream-like presentation, what's not to like? This also has my favourite piece of MS Paint art I've drawn this year, be sure to read the text!
October - Futari wa Pretty Cure: Ariena~i! Yume no Sono wa Daimeikyū.
The site's first stand-alone Game Boy Advance article is an oddball one- an anime tie-in game based on the first season of Futari wa Pretty Cure, which went on to become an absolutely massive series. In its humble beginnings though, it got this adorable puzzle-platformer with some impressive spritework and even voice clips from the show! This article also contains propoganda urging you to watch HeartCatch! PreCure! so you'd better do it.
November - Mega Drive Collections
This is one of those more information-dense articles, but it seems I manage to do one of these every year or so. The Mega Drive is among my very favourite consoles, so I wanted to take a look at the various console-based collections over the years. I learned a lot doing this one, especially about the different revisions of these games used over the years! Anyway, where's my X-Perts rerelease, Sega?
Elsewhere...
I've been continuing to truck along on my little Twitch channel which has a nice audience and is generally a lot of fun to do! It's also been about a year since I started doing Cohost posts for each Arcade Archives release, and maybe about a year in general since I started Cohost posts at all? I quite enjoy doing them and hopefully I'll be able to do more varied posts next year, but we'll have to see~
I was also invited to contribute a little MS Paint art to TAITRONICA, a Taito fanart book organised by DevilREI and sold at Comiket 103 which is an absolutely wild thing to think about. Everyone else did absolutely fantastic work for the book, so please take a look!
End And All Over
With that, 2023 is almost over. You've done well, so please remember to be kind to yourself and others as we head into 2024 and beyond. Gaming Hell will do its best to continue being the strongest website in the universe, so see you next year everyone, take care! Have guts and courage!!
