Why do I live up here?

It’s a question I get asked on occasion. My area is pretty far removed from…a lot of things, really; it’s at least a four-hour drive to get to any sort of truly large city. The local economy isn’t exactly great, property values are absurdly high, when you look at how little there is to do around here, and while there is nice scenery, it tends to be buried under multiple feet of snow for a third to half of the year. (Sometimes, multiple feet of snow fall all at once, as is the case now in Snowpocalypse, Part 9: This Time There Are Sharks for Some Reason.) And if you’re new to the region–or if you’ve never been to my neck of the woods–I can see why those things would drive you away. But if you actually spend some time in upper Michigan, and develop a feel for the place, you might find the solitude and the slower pace of life to your liking. Which brings us to today’s word.

callow, adj. – inexperienced, young, immature

Learned from: Jack Move (PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, XBox One)

Developed by So Romantic

Published by HypeTrain Digital (2022)

Jack Move is a short, sweet cyberpunk RPG about Noa, a hacker who gets wrapped up in a web of corporate intrigue while just trying to get by in a dystopian world ruled by megacorporations. Fairly bog standard stuff, but there are some emotional beats thrown in here and there, along with some fantastic pixel art. One of the more interesting bits of background plot involves a complicated history between Noa’s mother (who is dead), her father (who she feels abandoned her), and her uncle (who largely raised her).

Her uncle, Guin, is a bit of a dandy. Indulgent and permissive toward Noa, he does have his limits, and at one point where she’s getting in his face about something, Guin verbally slaps her down, calling her a “callow hypocrite.” And really, he’s not off base. Noa is young, and when you’re that age, you think you know everything. And to be fair, sometimes a teenager might know quite a bit; but sometimes, they might be in over their heads without realizing it.

That’s really what the story of Jack Move is about, at its core. Beneath all the evil corporate trappings, and cyberpunk lingo, there’s a story about a girl just trying to find her footing, discover what’s truly important, and figure herself out. Again, the game is nothing revolutionary, but it’s colorful, fun, and has a lot of heart.

That’s Noa, front and center, her dad to the far right, and the suave bastard in the upper right is Guin.

Into the hornet’s nest

Have you ever had a rude awakening when you’ve gone out to your shed, or garage, or heck, even just in your backyard, and you discover hornets building a nest, and suddenly your day’s ruined? Like, maybe you wanted to just do some relaxing gardening, or fire up the grill; maybe you had a trip planned out to an old family cabin in the woods to just get away and unwind, and between when you made the plans and now, there’s this swarm of angry, unreasoning bastards who’ve just set up shop, and now you’ve got that to worry about? Yeah, that’s how my impending trip to the Twin Cities area is feeling right about now. Which brings us to today’s word.

agonistic, adj. – aggressive, combative

Learned from: Chaos Zero Nightmare (PC, mobile)

Developed by Super Creative

Published by Smilegate Entertainment (2025)

But hey, things could be worse. Humanity could have been chased away from Earth by eldritch horrors, the very fabric of the universe could be unraveling, and our best hope to fight back could be a bevy of attractive anime girls. Huh, I guess there is an upside to the world of Chaos Zero Nightmare.

Yeah, it’s one of those games, but honestly, CZN is one of the best of its type I’ve played, because it does so much to distinguish itself from other gacha games whose selling point is sexy waifus. (Side note: I got a red squiggle under the word “gacha,” but not “waifus.” We really do live in weird times.)

If I had to describe CZN, I’d have to call it a free-to-play cross between Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon, with a sci-fi twist. That is to say, you could save yourself $25 on Slay the Spire, and get what I would argue is actually a better experience for free. Sure, if you really want a character, you can spend money to have better odds of getting them during their banner (a limited time event where you’re more likely/eventually guaranteed to end up with them), but you can grind in-game resources up to a point, and often get them that way.

Like Narja, the current banner combatant, who’s a failed experiment trying to replicate the abilities of a protos (no, not those Protoss from Starcraft; the short version is, they’re humanoid weapons that only one government controls, and others out there in space want a fighting chance without having to cave to the whims of another political entity). In the story, you rescue Narja, but if you want her (or her partner, Gaya), to actually fight alongside you, then you need to engage with the gacha system.

Oh yeah, the word. Once you recruit Narja, you can play through some of her memories, where the lab that made her puts her into training fights against simulated monsters in virtual environments. Despite not being real, the scientists tried their best to emulate the agonistic instincts of the various chaos creatures. Initially I thought this was just a misspelling of “antagonistic,” since gacha games sometimes have small errors in translation, but nope.

Anyway, stay safe out there, folks. Especially if you live in the US, like me. Shit’s getting crazier out there every day. I hope to be back home in about a week, relatively safe and sound out in the middle of nowhere. Until then, take care of yourselves, your friends, and your neighbors.

Narja’s the one in the upper right, for those who were curious.

Shrug it off

Happy New Year, everyone! I know 2025 wasn’t…great, for a lot of reasons. And I know that the whole concept of a new year being some momentous turning point is largely manufactured with nothing to really back it up, but the only way to really go is forward. So, if 2025 has left you damaged, try your best to keep pushing on, and leave as much of that unpleasantness behind you as you can, even if it’s only a little. Which brings us to the first word of the year.

ablative, adj. – relating to the loss or removal of something, often via surgery, melting, or evaporation

Learned from: Cyber-Cop (known as Corporation outside the US) (Sega Genesis, Amiga, Atari ST, PC)

Developed by Core Design, Synthetic Dimensions

Published by Core Design, Virgin Games (1990 – Amiga, Atari ST; 1991 – PC; 1992 – Genesis)

Cyber-Cop was a wildly complex and ambitious game for a system like the Genesis. Not the only first-person shooter on the console, it was definitely the least-approachable. The story of a corporation developing a genetic supersoldier that went rogue, and the government contracting a shadowy spy organization to break in and get evidence (covertly, so as not to chase the corporation out of the country and hurt the economy), is pretty straightforward. If a bit depressingly representative of dystopian capitalism. It’s the execution where things get wonky.

As you’ll see in the screenshot below, there are multiple regions on your character’s body where you can sustain damage. Each of those areas could have various pieces of armor or gear attached to them (from visors, to cybernetic implants, to ablative armor that shears off as it takes damage). And you had to make sure you healed damage to flesh with med-kits (but not too many, because you could develop a dependency, from what I remember–which was baffling at the time, since I’d never seen side-effects to healing before), and damage to cybernetics or equipment with different repair kits. I think the game had an encumbrance stat, so you couldn’t carry too much at once. Oh, and you also had stamina that you had to manage by sleeping or taking stimulants; similarly, you had to keep the batteries on your various gear charged. And…

Really, that’s just the stuff related to gear. The environment (while made mostly of the same gray walls), was pretty interactable, with control panels to use and/or hack, environmental hazards to account for, enemies with different tactics to take down or avoid, and puzzles to solve (including one that involved shifting your view of a hologram so you could see all of a door code, which I always thought was pretty damn cool).

Cyber-Cop was really more System Shock than Doom, rewarding slower, more methodical exploration (despite your stamina and energy constantly draining). But I only ever rented this, and when I had a real-life, 3-day time limit, that sort of approach really wasn’t in the cards. I’d probably enjoy it more now, but at the time, I never really got very far.

What? No, not *Robocop*; I distinctly said *Cyber-Cop*, a completely original and legally distinct intellectual property!

Can a metaphor be a single word?

A rhetorical question, really; the answer is yes, but it’s generally harder to accomplish. Today’s word feels like an apt descriptor of…well, a lot of what’s going on lately, if you stretch it a little.

purulent, adj. – filled with, or oozing pus

Learned from: Cronos: The New Dawn (PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch 2, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Bloober Team

Published by Bloober Team (2025)

People sometimes ask me why I like horror games. “What do you find so appealing about being scared?” “Do you like watching terrible things happen to people?” Etc. and so on. Being scared can be thrilling, but I’d argue it’s the perseverance over terrible situations that’s more of a draw than witnessing them on their own. But the real answer is, in horror games (the good ones at least, that give you some agency aside from running and hiding), you can face the awful things in the world and beat them to death with a two-by-four. It’s a nice contrast to real life, where it feels like all we can do is watch powerlessly as everything just gets progressively worse. And if you have any doubts about the world ending, just look at the fact that Silksong finally came out, and we got a Silent Hill sequel that isn’t absolute dog water. We just need Valve to shadow drop Half-Life 3, and the final seal will be broken.

But today, I’m not here to talk about any of those games. Cronos: The New Dawn is a really weird, and surprisingly excellent psychological/body horror game from a studio I’d nearly given up on after the clunky and disappointing Layers of Fear, and the pretty-but-shallow The Medium. You play as a Traveler from some point in the future, diving backwards through time to…acquire certain individuals present during the outbreak of a horrible mutagenic plague that destroyed the world for…uh…reasons. I don’t want to spoil anything, because experiencing this bizarre, unsettling mindfuck of a story firsthand is actually a big part of the fun. It shouldn’t come as any surprise though, that this plague is of the icky, goopy, body-deforming variety, with early medical reports tactfully describing the horrors unfolding with terms like “purulent lesions.”

I know that Silksong stole pretty much all the thunder in the gaming scene as of the time of this writing, but there are other games that have come out recently which also deserve attention if the reviews are any indication. Looking forward to trying out Hell is Us and Silent Hill f after I finish Cronos. I’ll get to Silksong eventually, so long as the “highly unusual” meeting of hundreds of generals in Virginia next week doesn’t in fact usher in World War III….

I’d almost prefer an anomalous, reality-warping plague, personally.

Hindsight

We’re currently undergoing a remodel where I work, and it’s…not really going as planned. They just got all of the offices usable again, a week and a half behind schedule, the new desks they put in take up like 75% of the floor space, and one–and only one–of the offices has carpet that looks like dirty, bare concrete. It’s not mine, but I really have to wonder if the CEO just doesn’t like that particular person or something. But beyond being behind schedule, this whole project is seeming like a worse and worse idea as time goes on: We’re losing workspace on the teller line (I work in a financial institution) that we really kinda need during shift changes. No one seems to know where we’re putting the printers, since we’re losing counter space. Actually, no one seems to know what the final product is going to look like–but somehow we’re putting in a waiting area for our members…that’s going to be in the same general vicinity as the entrance to the vault. Is there going to be any sort of wall or dividing barrier between the general public and the vault door (not to mention our bathroom)?

It’s almost like nobody stopped to think this through. But hindsight is 20/20 as they say. Which brings us to today’s word.

vigesimal, adj. – base-20, as in a numeric system

Learned from: Subject 13 (Playstation 4, Mac, PC, XBox One)

Developed by Microids

Published by Microids (2015)

Subject 13 is an adventure game that came out during a time when that particular genre seemed to largely be dead, or at least forgotten. Thankfully, the genre is experiencing something of a renaissance these days, but there was a span of a good 20 years when any adventure game that actually got released was worth checking out, just for the novelty of it.

At a glance, Subject 13 paints a decent picture of itself: attractive, pre-rendered environments; a mysterious sci-fi setting; varied and creative puzzles. Seeing it in motion is…less impressive, as the animations leave something to be desired. Hearing it also doesn’t do it any favors; the sound effects feel almost public domain, and the voice acting is flat-out bad (though, I understand the developer is French, so English dubbing might’ve been lower on their budget list than the rest of it. Not every small French game studio can have the production values of the folks at Sandfall). But again, pickings were slim in those days, so any port in a storm. Speaking of…

The real issues I had with the game though, are with the console port. I played this on PS4, and in converting it for that console (and presumably the XBone), Microids made some of the most baffling decisions I’ve ever seen. Some of it’s understandable: There’s no mouse interface (and nobody programmed for that touchpad thing on the PS4 controllers). So rather than just clicking where you want your character to go, you have to stumble around the not-as-big-as-they-look pre-rendered backdrops like a drunken orangutan, trying to get your guy to go up a flight of stairs or whatever. That’s…acceptable. The baffling part is pretty much everything else.

See, a lot of the puzzles require you to manipulate objects in ways that, again, would’ve been intuitive with a mouse. But for the console release, virtually everything requires you to hold down a trigger, and then rotate a thumbstick, regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. Turning a dial? Rotate the thumbstick. Sliding a panel? Rotate the thumbstick. Trying to enter a number into a device? Rotate the damn thumbstick! And it’s even worse, because the sensitivity on this interface is all over the damn map. You could be trying to move some device one notch to the left, but have to rotate the thumbstick in the opposite direction you’d expect, only to have it whip past half a dozen notches before you can stop. It is legitimately one of the worst control schemes I’ve ever come across, and when you combine it with the awful navigation to get your guy from point A to point B, it made some of the otherwise inventive puzzles almost unplayable.

I realize I haven’t talked about the story yet, and while it’s also a bit of a mess, I should at least do broad strokes. You play as Franklin Fargo, a professor who’s tried to end his own life by driving his car off a bridge, for reasons that become clearer as the game goes on. But your plan is foiled when you find yourself waking up in a futuristic pod, with no idea of where you are, how you got there, or if you can trust the disembodied voice that starts talking to you. But the voice eventually leads you, GLADoS-style, through an abandoned research facility and into a bizarre plot involving the nature of consciousness, multiverse theory, and Mayan prophecies (heavily leaning into puzzles based on their vigesimal number system). It’s…weird. Nowhere near as unhinged as, say, Indigo Prophecy, but it really does try to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. And in an adventure this short, that’s a pretty tall order.

All in all, Subject 13 isn’t a bad game, per se, but it’s certainly rough around the edges–even without the limitations of the console versions. If you’re curious, I can only in good conscience tell you to pick it up on Steam, and avoid the awful PS4/XBox ports.

Speaking of awful, just *look* at this, and tell me you see anything but the concrete floor of a steel mill that’s been abandoned for years. The other carpeting jobs are nowhere near this bad.

Where we’re going, we won’t need…eyes.

You might be expecting me to be talking about a horror game today, with a title like that, but nope. Bit of a story behind what brought this word to mind:

So, my wife and I went to see the fireworks downtown last week. Our city is situated on a lake, so we went down to the lower harbor and found a spot to sit right by the water while we waited for it to get dark. At one point, I took them off to rub my eyes or something, and they just slipped out of my fingers, skidded across the concrete embankment, and disappeared 20+ feet underwater. I’ve been using a pair of cheaters since then (though a holiday weekend and several hundred dollars later, I do have a new pair of actual glasses ordered), but walking around with them on feels like I’m inside a fishbowl. That means, when I’m at home or work and I need to move around, I’ve relied a lot on remembering where stuff is. And in a roundabout way, that brings us to today’s word.

homing, adj. – finding one’s way to a target or location through memory or technology

Learned from: Raiden (arcade, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Turbographx-16, PC, Atari Lynx, mobile)

Developed by Seibu Kaihatsu

Published by Tecmo (1990)

Raiden, to me, is the quintessential vertical-scrolling shmup. Other games are flashier, or have deeper mechanics, or fill the screen with more bullets, but there’s something about Raiden that keeps me coming back even after all these years. The sprite work is solid, the levels all look distinct, and there’s just something to the overall gameplay that simply feels right.

I don’t even remember if there’s much of a story, but sometimes all you need is to hop into the cockpit of a red or blue jet, decide if you want lasers or a spread of bullets, dumb-fire missiles or homing ones, and mow down wave after wave of enemy tanks and planes. Raiden is an emblematic arcade experience: difficult but fun, simple but addictive; it’s one of my favorite arcade games of all time, and one of these days I’ll beat it on a single quarter.

I don’t even need my glasses to see this is a *Crystal Castles* arcade cabinet with the *Raiden* logo slapped on the side. Bizarre.

It could always be worse

And it probably will. Speaking mainly to my US readers here, but I mean…*gestures broadly*. In a month, they’ll probably have banned schools, and sent children back to the mines, with breaks only for a few hours of sleep, and witch burnings where attendance is mandatory. I mean, what, do we expect kids older than seven to eat for free? What kind of traitorous, commie BS is that?

You might say that this country is broken. And that rather than fixing anything, the people in charge are just stomping on the pieces until they’re small enough that nobody will complain. Which brings us to today’s word.

banjanxed, adj. – ruined, broken

Learned from: Small Saga (PC)

Developed by Darya Noghani

Published by Darya Noghani (2023)

Small Saga falls into that timeless subgenre of fantasy that crops up every now and then, centered on tiny creatures that live among humans, and their hidden, unnoticed civilizations behind our walls and below our feet. The earliest example I’m familiar with is The Borrowers, published back in 1952, which is probably because Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty (2010), is a direct adaptation of it. But there’ve been plenty of others in between, from The Littles, to The Indian in the Cupboard, to The Secret of NIMH, and possibly Redwall (I never read that series, so I don’t know if there are humans in it). The point is, there’s something endearing about the thought that tiny animals (or people) are living complex lives all around us, just beyond our notice.

Small Saga takes that premise, and gives it a bit of a darker twist. Humans are seen as literal gods; their tools are seen as holy (or at least incredibly powerful) relics; their pets are guardian beasts out of legend. And they are not kind to rodents. You play as Verm, a young, aspiring mouse knight, whose foray into the gods’ food vault goes horribly wrong. The real story picks up when you’ve gotten older, more jaded, and filled with an enduring desire for revenge against the Yellow God (an exterminator in a hazmat suit), who ruined everything.

Along the way, your quest for vengeance will see you joined by various other rodents (and rodent-adjacent animals), from a squirrel with a flute made from a hollowed-out pencil, to a mole wizard who secretly collects human relics (including a not-Gameboy with a banjanxed screen). They make for quite a colorful cast in a JRPG-style adventure that truly has a lot of heart. And it’s even more impressive, considering I think this game was made by just one person. It’s nowhere near as astounding a feat as Expedition 33, but if that smash hit has got you curious about other worthwhile indie RPGs, Small Saga is definitely worth a try.

Upside down

As I write this, it’s May 2nd, 2025. If you’re in the United States, that means it’s 5/2/25: a number that looks the same if you flip it upside down, at least in certain typefaces, and so long as you ignore the slashes and the first two digits of the year. If you’re in other, saner parts of the world that list the date in a more sensible day/month/year order, then this happened back in February. Sorry, we Americans do a lot of things in the stupidest way possible. Anyway, this brings us to today’s word.

strobogrammatic, adj. – something, as a number, that appears the same upside down as it does right-side up

Learned from: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch)

Developed by Simogo

Published by Annapurna Interactive (2024)

I’d always thought that numbers that looked the same upside down were neat–I mean, who didn’t spell out “BOOBIES” on a calculator at some point as a kid? Though in that case, it’s not a true strobogrammatic number, since the result isn’t identical to how it looks right-side up. Or like when we got a verification key fob for one of the stations at work, and I inadvertently read it upside down and got us locked out of the system.

Anyway, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes pulls a lot from real-life escape rooms, being full of number and word puzzles, some of which are strobogrammatic. The game, itself, is…weird. It’s like if you threw Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone, Clue, and an international film festival into a blender, and topped it with a dash of The King in Yellow. It casts you as an artist(?) called to a remote mansion at the behest of an eccentric filmmaker, who wants to use your talents to create a truly transcendental work of art that may unmake reality itself…maybe.

Or maybe not. It’s a very surreal game that’s open to interpretation nearly every step of the way. I don’t want to say much else, because it’s very much worth playing. It’s a very unique, memorable narrative that stands out among…pretty much anything else out there.

It works with words sometimes, too! Turn this upside down, and it spells “abpa.”

I don’t think they know about second winter…

Ages ago, comedian and then-anchor at The Daily Show, Lewis Black, came to the town where I’d been going to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to do a stand-up show. My friends and I managed to get tickets for some of the last seats still available, way in the back of the auditorium, but I’m glad we went, because the way he kicked off the show still sticks with me. Not verbatim, but close enough:

“I don’t know if anyone’s told you people, but it’s April! There’s supposed to be birds singing, and flowers blooming, and fucking grass! But I look around here, and everything’s white, and gray, and dead–I want to slit my wrists, just so I can see some color!”

Welcome to da U.P., eh? Which brings us to today’s word.

isochoric, adj. – performed, maintained, or existing under a constant volume

Learned from: The Bazaar (PC, Mac, mobile [soon, as of this writing])

Developed by Tempo

Published by Tempo (2025)

The Bazaar is an interesting mix of Slay the Spire, Backpack Hero, and Team Fight Tactics, that has been devouring my free time since the open beta dropped a few months ago. It’s in full release now, and it’s still free to play if you want to check it out. There are some cosmetic purchases, and some cards you can buy–but those cards will become available for free at the end of their respective seasons, if you don’t mind waiting.

Anyway, you play as one of several heroes (though only Vanessa is available to start; you have to unlock the rest), making their way through the dangerous streets of the titular Bazaar. Vanessa is a pirate, Pygmalien is kinda-sorta a buff orc, Mak is an immortal alchemist, and my personal favorite, Dooley, is a little spherical robot pyromaniac. It’s one of his cards, the Isochoric Freezer, that taught me today’s word, a small item which freezes one of your opponent’s items for a time.

The Bazaar is PvP, but there’s no direct interaction between you and your opponents; if you’re like me, and steer away from multiplayer games in general due to toxic communities, then rest easy. So, you start out with nothing, and get to pick from one or two starting items to begin the match. These might be enchanted cards, or skills, or just extra money (I think; I never pick this option), which usually form the basis of your strategy. Pick a toxic blowfish for Vanessa’s first item, and you’re probably going to go for a poison build; pick the hamster wheel core for Dooley, and you’re probably going to focus on friend cards; etc. There are a ton of different approaches you can take, and since you start from zero each time, it’s fun to experiment.

Rounds are broken up into days, and days into six hours each. You’ll typically get four hours each day to acquire cards, have random events, buy skills and consumables, etc. Midway through the day, you’ll fight a non-player monster, to get XP and usually an item/skill if you win, and at the end of the day you’ll go up against another player, with their own deck layout. The cards in each of your decks activate automatically on cooldowns, so it’s all on you to arrange them in the most efficient way, and hope it’s enough to win. Sure, the RNG can screw you over sometimes, if your opponent has gotten better cards than you, but there’s still a lot of strategizing involved. Ideally, you fight until you’ve beaten 10 other players, but chances are, you’ll lose enough times that you’ll be out of the match before then. Still, it’s a ton of fun, whether you’re playing casual or ranked (ranked earns you chests if you do well enough, which contain cosmetic items and gems you can spend to unlock other heroes and things like that).

I know I’ve rambled a bit here, but The Bazaar really is a blast, and certainly worth checking out for the price point of free.

Guess the month! If you said anything but June, July, or August, you might be right!

Balrogs not included

I considered several titles for this post, including “ain’t no mountain high enough,” and simply, “you shall not pass!” but ultimately went with this one because out of all the bizarre assortment of monsters in this game, Balrogs aren’t one of them. Which brings us to today’s word.

impassable, adj. – unable to be traversed

Learned from: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel Electronics

Published by Mattel Electronics (1982)

I have to confess something here: I’ve never actually played this game. I had the other D&D game for the Intellivision, Treasure of Tarmin, but when I got the system from one of my cousins, it somehow came with the instruction manual for this game, but not the game, itself. But I sunk countless hours in to Tarmin, and I always wondered what this mysterious other game would be like to play, as I would occasionally look through the manual and dream.

Cloudy Mountain put you in charge of a team of three identical adventurers, armed only with a bow & arrow, sent on a quest to find and reunite two halves of a lost crown atop the eponymous mountain. Standing in your way was a menagerie of monsters that went from 0 to 60 (or from rat to demon) with seemingly nothing in between. I don’t know how evenly dispersed these beasts were, but the idea of fighting spiders and snakes, only to turn a corner and find a dragon or an unkillable slime seemed absurd–but also exciting–to my five- or six-year-old imagination.

But it wasn’t just things that wanted to kill you that were keeping you from your quest; various environmental obstacles barred your path. On the (presumably) randomized overworld map, there were forests you could only cut through with an ax, rivers you could only cross by boat, and color-coded mountains that either had caves or were impassable (black and brown, respectively).

I’m aware that I’ve had ample opportunity to download a ROM of this game, and finally experience it after all these years…but I know it could probably never live up to the experience I dreamt up in my imagination decades ago. Plus, the Intellivision controller looked like an old-school phone receiver with a paddle on the bottom of it, and I really don’t know how you’d effectively replicate that on modern hardware. (A numeric keypad, sure, but for the analog paddle it almost seems like you’d need a Joycon or something in your other hand.)