Kyle OrlandAs I wrap up my work year, a quick thread of the ten best things I wrote in 2022 (according to me)
Feel free to share if you enjoyed my work this year.
1. What does it mean when people call Elden Ring "too hard"? I tried to break down the different categories of game difficulty and explain how the ultra-popular RPG fits into each of them
2. The prototype of "Marble Madness II" was only playable on a handful of extant cabinets, until a MAME-compatible ROM leaked this year. I explained the history and how it happened.
3. The niche world of classic computer game collecting was rocked by a major forgery scandal this year. I did a massive feature laying out the evidence and even talked to the alleged forger.
(this piece got me on NPR: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104291221/pc-game-collectors-uncover-multiple-forgeries-from-prominent-collector)
4. I broke the story of a scammer that was using the GameStop NFT marketplace to sell unlicensed copies of games he didn't own, which now may be impossible to remove from the Internet.
5. I broke down why a visual novel was judged too racy to sell on Steam but apparently was just fine to sell on the Nintendo Switch.
6. I tried to get at what, exactly, feels so "off" about Chris Pratt's voice in the first Super Mario Bros. movie trailer.
7. I talked to the young hacker who managed to get Doom running in a copy of Windows' default notepad.exe app. This was a fun one.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/how-to-get-doom-running-in-windows-notepad-exe/
8. I talked to some of the Stadia developers that were caught completely flat-footed when the streaming game service was unceremoniously shut down this year.
9. I reviewed the Meta Quest Pro headset and came away struggling to think of anyone who would want to spend $1,499 on a headset that was only slightly better than the $399 Quest 2.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/meta-quest-pro-review-for-those-with-more-money-than-sense/
10. I talked to the newly named Wordle editor at the New York Times to figure out what, exactly, a Wordle editor does. Another fun one.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/11/how-wordle-editor-became-a-real-job-at-the-new-york-times/
Thanks to all the readers who've allowed me to write stuff like this on Ars for over ten years now.
If you liked any of these articles, or any of the others I worked on this year, please feel free to boost this thread.
11. (Bonus) I talked to a museum that rigged a multi-screen version of N64 Goldeneye using off-the-shelf video equipment.
Garad@KyleOrl A lot of good articles in this thread! Thanks, Kyle!