Backlog: The Embiggening – March, 2026
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/20/26 at 02:34 AM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! With the coming of March, we’re officially at the end of the Fiscal Year, around which all big corporations – including those in Industrial Gaming – build their existence. Will there be any real last-ditch efforts to bring in revenue? Will there be any ambitious go-getters looking to get a head start on the year’s profit margins before everyone else? Let’s take a look!
Well, we’ve got shovelware again in March. The most shovely of shovelware I’ve seen in quite some time is coming in the form of “Neopets: Mega Mini Games Collection,” which is simultaneously Licensed Swill, Casual Swill, AND a Port! Other than that, there’s a couple Annualized Releases in Sports: “WWE” and “MLB: The Show.” That leaves us with a number of Noteworthy Ports, including the “Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection,” a remake of “Fatal Frame 2,” a FOURTH volume of ‘Taito Milestones’ hitting the original Switch, plus …
Discord Attempts Suicide, Soon Forcing Global ID Checks
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/14/26 at 03:18 PM CT
Discord has been the biggest name in gamer chat and communications for a while now, supplanting old-school players like Mumble and Ventrillo through its alleged ease-of-use and plethora of added features. The MJ Crew doesn’t have a lot of first-hand experience with Discord, though, as we’ve stuck with Steam’s build-in text and voice chat features, and, aside from the occasional glitch, have found our favorite digital distribution platform’s added-value features have been “good enough” for our purposes.
And that turns out to have been a great decision, as Discord announced recently that they will be going above and beyond the call of corruption in complying with the United Kingdom’s overweening “THINK OF THE CHILDRED” online ID laws, and will start requiring an ID check or AI-powered facial scan from users – even those outside of the U.K. – in order to continue accessing Discord channels for adults. What “for adults” means is quite vague, and could range …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2026
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/04/26 at 09:35 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Unfortunately for us, the loaf-shaped, fur-covered, wiggly-nosed, pointy-toothed creature did indeed see its shadow, so we’ve got more Winter ahead of us. Will the imploding-building of Industrial Gaming provide us with something new to play during the extra 6 weeks of Winter? Will Indie developers come to the rescue? Or will we have to face our backlogs instead? Let’s dig into it!
We fortunately won’t have to get our shovels too dirty in February. It looks like there’s only one piece of Licensed Swill – a game based on the ‘My Hero Academia’ anime/manga – while there are zero Casual Trash games and zero Annualized Releases. There are a few Noteworthy Ports that are actually deserving of a mention: Three RPGs from yesteryear, “Dragon Quest 7,” “Tales of Berseria,” and “WiZman World” are getting thrown at a new audience (though, of those Noteworthy Ports, one is very much more noteworthy than the …
Last Year’s Best-Selling Console... Shouldn’t Have
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/01/26 at 01:23 PM CT
It seems that we may have jumped the gun in singing the praises of the Nintendo Switch 2’s glorious launch last year, as the latest and blandest from the Big-N only really sold “well” immediately after its launch, with Gamers quickly cooling on Nintendo’s milquetoast Launch Window games (and so, so many Ports/Remasters), leading to a massive drop-off during the 2025 Holiday season. Of course, neither Sony nor Microsoft did any better than Nintendo – and in fact, they actually did worse.
However, there’s one game console that kicked major booty while everyone else was failing... and it’s basically a toy that no serious Gamers or gaming hobbyist has probably heard of: The Nex Playground, a motion-controlled Casual game platform retailing for $250, with 5 pack-in games.
The real question, though, should be, “How in the world did the Nex Playground succeed when it did everything wrong?” Surely we have long enough memories to recall that a significant contributor …
View Archive
