The Plan for 2026

The end of the year approaches once again.  The game awards have crawled out of the sewer to suck the dick of industry shareholders and to affirm the undercooked opinions of the gaming masses.  The end of year sales are churning so that idiots like me can buy stuff 50 to 90% off and then have it rot in the backlog for 2 to 30 years.  Various platforms give us our end of year snapshots to fill our email inboxes with redundant information that serves no purpose to anyone.  A sort of irritating time of year but it’s cozy. 

My plan for 2025 was, at first, to try and finish 365 games within the year.  The idea being I would recreate the October 31 game horror challenge but for every month.  This was then instantly scuppered by finding out my wife was pregnant in mid January and instead of picking games that I could finish quickly, I just played whatever.  Not all bad since I played some cool shit but my best and worst is best kept for another post.  So now I’m thinking how I’m going to approach my 2026 in gaming and I think it’s about high time I tackled something that’s been looming over me for a long time. 

A while ago indie game repository and storefront Itch.io gave away 2 absolutely huge packs of games.  One was around the time of the George Floyd incident and the other when the war in Ukraine started with money raised from these packs used for charitable causes related to these events.  I forget what the exact number of titles were in these packs but it was north of 500 both times and in an instant my already quad digit backlog of games ballooned even harder.   I picked them up because each pack had one game that I wanted and then all the others were a nice bonus. 

These packs have gone mostly untouched since I bought them so I have decided that 2026 will be the year that I rectify that.  Not all of the titles in these packs are video games with some of the entries being table top things or resources for game devs but even with that in mind how many I’ll be able to actually get through is up in the air.  There are many short experiences in there but there’s also some more involved titles too that may eat up decent chunks of my time. 

That said though I think if the only thing I played all year was pc indie games I might go mental so as a secondary goal I think I also want to explore the library of the GBA.  A system I adored in my younger days, a system that has a ton of great games and yet I feel that I’ve only scratched the surface with it.  Plenty of curios on my radar, plenty of titles I’m sure I’ll discover as I dig, I’m excited to revisit this absolute powerhouse of a handheld in the coming year

Of course, not 100% set in stone.  I want to leave myself open to try the new games that come out in the year and maybe pepper in titles from other systems that tickle my fancy in a given month but in terms of a general focus, Itch and the GBA will be dominating my to do lists.  If I can beat my 2025 clear count of around 150 that would be an extra bonus

Here to a good year of good gaming!

The Worst Thing In Japan

My time living in Japan is getting quite long.  At time of writing I’m pushing 15 years and for the most part it’s been incredible.  It’s the very least significantly better than living in my home country of the UK.  For reasons too long to go into here, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to get on a plane back to Manchester or get shot, you would watch me die on the spot. 

That said though, no place is perfect and Japan obviously has its problems, no place in the world could ever be perfect, after all.  For example a pretty serious problem I have here is that as a filthy gaijin, despite having my paychecks drained month to month with all the bullshit taxes and national health insurance, despite having children and owning property, I’m completely disallowed from voting.  Contributing yet having no say in where my tax yennies go is very annoying.  A less serious issue is also Japanse obsession with seasonal or time limited food items.  The day to day stuff is obviously pretty good, Japan is a place known for its cuisine but every so often there will be a thing in a store/restaurant/super market that will be absolutely LIFE CHANGING.  Then you look at the packet or the menu and I see the dreaded 期間限定 and my souls sinks through the floor and into the abyss.  Just make the good shit be forever, there’s no reason why Chocolate Mint Parm is only available some years in summer only, fuck off with that

But the absolute worst thing, by far the biggest bane in my life after living here so long is the company known as Open House, I fucking HATE these guys more than anything in the known universe.  You may think my anger is misplaced, how can I hate a real estate agent? I already own house, surely I don’t have any reason to interact with them? Well you’re right, I don’t, but they are constantly coming to me.  Not just me either, if you’re unlucky enough, native or foreign resident, to be walking down the street and one of their mobile salesmen see you, you’re in for some shit.  When every other salesman in the street sees you they might be like “excuse me, can I have a moment of your time to talk about solar panels?” And you say “no thanks” and they go “ok fine thank you very much”.  But the Open House guys are like, “are you sure?” And then when you say no again they start making small talk while FOLLOWING YOU DOWN THE STREET hoping to steer the conversation back to real estate, the absolute fucking worst.

Here’s an exchange between me and an Open House employee the previous day of writing that inspired this post.  Unless specified with [EN] at the start, the conversation was done in Japanese and while constantly moving down the street

OH: Excise me do you have a moment?

Me [EN]: No thanks (answering in English to hopefully deter the guy from continuing, this has never worked)

OH: Are you interested in purchasing property in this area?

Me: No sorry, I really don’t have the time right now

OH: *shimmying directly into my path, pushing a clipboard into my view and pulling out a pen and offering it to me* So how old is your son? (he was in a carrier on my chest)

Me [EN]: Oh my god can you FUCK OFF?!

OH [EN]: I’m sorry?

Me: Get lost!

OH: It’ll only take a little time!

To which we then reached the supermarket I was walking to and I ignored that last comment and he thankfully didn’t follow me inside.  If I talked to any other salesmen like that I’d feel bad, but with these guys I almost regret not throwing out personal insults or resorting to fists. 

Now you can argue that “they are just doing their jobs, it’s probably their bosses probably telling them to be like that” but I honestly do not fucking care.  Japan is a country where you can literally pay a company like 30 bucks and they will find a selection of jobs FOR YOU, they are choosing to work at a company where their approach to sales is to push as hard as possible and waste as much time as possible.  If the job market was fucked like it is in some other places I’d be more understanding but it’s not, so get fucked.  Encounters like this have happened to me countless times around Nagoya and I’m fucking sick of it.  My example above isn’t even the worst one, I had a woman try to drag me into their offices and sit down for a consultation despite saying no and she DID follow me into a department store up to an escalator.  She got lucky though because at that point I’d only had the Open House harassment like 8 times and the sub 10 count made me less prone to rage

This is the only company in the country to act like this.  It’s happened to me and I’ve seen people being chased around by these guys looking extremely uncomfortable.  Doesn’t matter if you’re in a rush, with kids, bleeding out in the street, the open house guys are coming and they will not rest until they have sold you a property you don’t need at a significantly higher price than other properties in the area.  Even the cell phone plan salesman in AEON malls who can be a bit annoying aren’t this bad.  FUCK OPEN HOUSE, GO BANKRUPT NOW.