The "triple-A" space is in a terrible position, something about which I remarked here-- but pleasantly, an entire parallel games industry has emerged, almost totally separate from the "primary" one, and it's cranking out incredible stuff, to the point where for the first time in twenty years I find myself not really playing older games much.

Just take a look at this: it's a brand new Game Boy Advance release, but will also-- provided enough funding becomes available-- see an enhanced, "Hi-Bit" Switch port. Incredible! The art style is mildly pretentious maybe, but not to enough of a degree to annoy me. We've had home brew games on older systems for a long time now, but what if we start seeing old systems used as new systems, with cross-platform releases with modern hardware become a normal thing? Talk about exciting!

The "OptiDoom" guy wants to make a brand new first-person shooter for 3DO, and he already has my name down as level designer and composer-- so I'm willing to do my part. If my baseline mental health improves, I also want to dive head first into making more "Sniperpon Productions" releases but this time for PCs proper, using "Godot Engine" as opposed to Fuze on Switch.

One other trend I'm starting to see, and this one is just as potentially exciting if it continues: indie game mentality trickling into the "triple-A" space. New engines are so capable that smaller development teams can make games with modern graphics on a smaller-ish budget, provided they keep their core scope contained. For instance, these (ignore the annoying music) are the best graphics I've ever seen in a video game-- maybe even better than the latest "Ratchet and Clank"-- yet look at how experimental the gameplay is!

In particular, pay attention to the: texture resolution, particle effects everywhere, volumetric dynamically-lit fog, incredible temporal reconstruction or upscaling, volumetric fluid dynamics and clouds, per-object motion blur, Bokeh depth of field, plus insanely rich and high contrast lighting. Wifey watched this and couldn't even believe it was a game: "it looks like a modern-day CGI movie." I get major "Wonderful 101" and "Splatoon" vibes; more games like this please!