From the very first issue, this newsletter was meant to be our love letter to millions of gamers around the globe. For 38 sends, we did just that, exploring stories at the intersection of gaming and life. Achievement unlocked, as they say.

Here are 10 of our favorites:

• Why we're so obsessed with hell in TV, music, movies, and games

• How to break into the world of voice acting for games

• Meet a real-life chess queen taking the Internet by storm

• Did you know Dwarf Metal was a thing? Neither did we

• Pickleball is America's hottest new game. We explore why

• Just what is a loremaster, exactly?

• How gaming helped this soldier reconnect with his son

• The rising trend of the 'lonely game'

• How Alodia Gosiengfiao turned cosplaying into a multimedia empire

• How Dungeons & Dragons became a tool for group therapy

(You can find the rest of our work here.)

We're so thankful you went on this journey with us. We made some (pretty awesome tbh) Monday mixtapes, enjoyed fleeting moments of meme, and went down enough wormholes to lose an entire week's worth of afternoons.

It's been an honor. From us to you: Troll the respawn, Jeremy.

—The Editors: Andrew Nusca, Eric Alt, Marques Edge, Tim Leong

P.S. We had one more story we’d like you to rea—er, listen to. It’s our first foray into audio storytelling: an aural history (get it?) of Hugo, otherwise known as Hugo the Troll, a call-in TV game show from the 1990s that was an innovative hit in more than 40 countries. We hope you enjoy it.

P.P.S. OK OK, here's one more wormhole, you rascals:

Millions of people across the world playing a phone game doesn’t sound too surprising.

But, what if it was 1990, before there was an app store or even smartphones?

That is the magic of Hugo the Troll, an inventive dial-in television show that was popular in more than 40 countries.

Press play to hear Christine Fennessy’s delightful tale of evil witches, dial tones, and technological innovation:

…wait, what?

OK, so the official start of autumn isn’t until September 23rd. But—as is annual tradition—Starbucks has kicked off the “sugar, spice, and everything nice" time of year with the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

(Nevermind the hottest summer in history. Good thing you can order an iced version.)

Believe it or not, the PSL is now 20 years old. Which, come to think of it, means we’ve been arguing over the appropriateness of hot coffee, sweaters, and plaid shirts in August for just as long.

What’s next, Christmas decorations in the summer? Umm yeah…that part. 🤦🏼‍♂️

—Marques Edge, Tim Leong, Eric Alt, Andrew Nusca

P.S. In Friday’s edition, we asked you: Which of the following is not a trick in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater? The answer is Taco stand.

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Seinfeld night. A minor league baseball team held its annual “Elaine Dancing Contest” paying tribute to the episode from the hit sitcom where she showcases her unique skills at an office party. Get out!

Nerfed: Destination wedding. A groom-to-be says his dog quite literally ate his passport days before the Boston couple’s wedding in Italy. We’re sure this excuse will not fly with customs.

Buffed: Game console relaunch. Atari is bringing back a well-known game console as the Atari 2600+. The upgraded system will support older cartridges and original joysticks and paddle controllers. Maybe they’ll update this commercial as well.

Nerfed: Mayo for life. Hellman’s Mayonnaise gives Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis a lifetime contract. The NFL rookie went viral last year when he replaced mayo for creamer into his coffee. New slogan: Every sandwich coffee wants Hellmann's?

Buffed: Netflix DVDs. As Netflix finally exits the rental-by-mail service (really!), the streaming giant says customers can keep their final batch of discs at no additional cost. Subscribers can also request up to 10 additional movies. Wave goodbye to the red envelope era. —ME

Cheat Code: Tidy your digital life with these organizer apps

Change your game.

Summer is coming to an end. For some that means back to school and for others that means time to shake off the lazy, warm weather malaise and refocus on work.

In both cases, some desktop tidying is in order.

Contributing writer Danny Gallagher looks into a few apps (both free and paid) that can help you organize, customize, and generally make your computer’s desktop look less like a digital trash heap.

Fall cleaning starts now.

Shameless plug: Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 5 is live

Fact: Hearthstone is the popular, free-to-play strategy card game from Blizzard.

Fact: Battlegrounds is the Hearthstone game mode where eight players face off in 1v1 rounds until only one is standing.

Fact: Season 5 of Battlegrounds is now live, and it’s chock full o’ goodness.

For example, it introduces Anomalies, new custom game rules that affect your entire lobby and shape the course of the game from the outset, making each one play out differently.

It also introduces Tier 7 minions—yes, reader, that means they’re more powerful than Tier 6 minions—for all players in games when the Secrets of Norgannon Anomaly is active.

And hey, did we mention the stormy new hero, Thorim?

Join us in the Tavern for more details.

A brief history of fake video games to appear in ‘The Simpsons’

Let’s go back.

Over 750 episodes (and counting), The Simpsons has turned its satirical eye to everything including war, religion, race, politics…and video games.

Contributing writer Reggie Wade breaks down the best fictional games to appear in Springfield.

Don’t have a cow, the list is right here.

Your moment of meme

Mixtape Monday

What are we listening to lately? Glad you asked.

Here we go:

Parcels, "Tieduprightnow." A perfect way to start the week. The band describes their music as a blend between electro-pop and disco-soul and their first single brings all those elements together. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Zach Churchill, Activision)

AnnenMayKantereit, "Toxic." The German band also known as AMK, is known for publishing cover songs in English and here is a perfect example bringing a different flavor to this Britney Spears classic. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Andrew Snell, Activision)

L7, "Pretend We're Dead." The all-female rock band brings the essence of the early 90s. The song was also featured in the video games Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Rock Band 2. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Grae Ashman, Blizzard)

UMI, "happy im." The soulful song from the Seattle-born musician was her first single released earlier this year following her debut album. It was written to remind herself "to think less, love more." Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Aninditya Kusumah, Activision)

Larry June, "Watering My Plants." Bringing back that San Francisco Bay Area funk. The Ringer once wrote about June’s craft "If E-40 is rap's model of independence, June is hip-hop's Jack LaLanne.” Anything is possible. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Calvin Hatcher, Activision)

Wormhole

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The Edit is a thrice-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of gaming and life. Our love letter to millions of gamers around the globe, it is written and published by the Activision Blizzard King global editorial team.

It’s back-to-school time for students and end-of-summer-refocus time for the working world, which means you should probably start getting organized.

One of the most neglected areas is one you can’t actually touch: your digital life. It may seem easier to putter around your home organizing papers and trinkets, but that doesn’t mean your desktop or laptop computer deserves to be a big messy-mess.

C’mon, let’s be real: Underneath this very story lies a cluttered desktop or home screen of windows, files, tabs, or apps you haven’t opened or used in months.

The following paid and free applications can help get your system in shape for a new season. Let’s get into it.

Organize the chaos

Fences (PC, paid with annual subscription)

If your desktop looks a bit like someone swallowed 10,000 mahjong tiles and then sneezed them out, you need to tackle this before anything else.

Stardock Software has a whole host of programs and apps that can alter your desktop and file organization but Fences stands out for us.

Fences is a file organizer that essentially lets you corral files together (or “fence” them in) so that relevant files, folders, and icons can be neatly grouped and more easily accessed. Fences is also fully customizable so you can choose the color of the groupings and label each “fence” so you always know what you have and where you have it. You can even choose the font for them so you don’t have to look at the same boring desktop day in and day out.

Although usage varies, in general Fences isn’t a tremendous energy drain on your CPU either—just be wary of overloading with too many groupings as some users have experienced performance slowdown (and besides, if you replace a file clutter with Fences clutter, are you really solving your problem?)

Work on your toolbar hygiene

RocketDock (PC, free)

One thing PC users tend to envy (or miss) about the Mac is the clean app toolbar.

If you’ve recently switched from Mac to PC and miss that old taskbar for keeping your go-to apps organized, RocketDock is a very useful way to clone this feature, and reduce app icon clutter.

It’s really that simple—RocketDock works just like the traditional Apple taskbar but for PC users. You can put it on any side of the screen and it moves and acts just the Apple version. It also doesn’t supersede the Windows taskbar if you still need it so you can organize your apps and computer access features on both and use them at the same time.

MultiDock (Mac, paid)

We haven’t forgotten about Apple users. If your only complaint about the Mac toolbar is that there’s only one, then MultiDock is a unique way to expand the dock experience.

Just like the name suggests, it lets you put several taskbar docs on the desktop so you can keep your files in one, your school apps in another, and your game apps in one more (so you’re not tempted to”accidentally” launch into a game when you should be finishing your work).

There are also no limits on the number of panels you can put on your desktop and every icon and animation is customizable to meet your pickiest needs.

Make it all look pretty

Rainmeter (PC, free)

The best part of this comprehensive desktop customization and organization program is that it’s free and has pretty expansive customization options.

Rainmeter allows you to take all the stuff you wish you had handy on desktop and arrange, organize, and re-skin it to make it more accessible (so you don’t have to rely on the Windows “Start” button to bring up your most used apps—it doesn’t always call up what you’re looking for when you need it). If you’re the type who hates wearing a watch but still needs to keep track of the time when you’re playing online so you don’t miss roll call or a meeting, you can keep your synced calendar right on top to help you map out your day.

You organize your desktop by downloading “skins” from the app’s community archive at Visualskins.com or program and design one of your own. There’s just about something for every taste from “simple, clean” designs to special Fallout 4 skins.

Rainmeter will use about 35 MB of RAM, or roughly 5% of your CPU, which is not monstrous, but it’s something to keep in mind as you load up on apps and files.

Wallpaper Engine (PC, paid)

Ok, this isn’t really an organization optimizer, but if you’re tired of the same old boring desktop image staring back at you (as nice as those mountains and trees are), Wallpaper Engine can be one way to help.

This app turns your desktop into a kinetic, vibrant display that runs videos and animations on your computer’s main hub. You can even take still images and add effects to them like static, glitches and even flames in the wallpaper customizer.

However, this program is a bit of a beast when it comes to your CPU’s resources. Wallpaper Engine uses 1024 MB/1 GB of RAM, and there have been those who report seeing other apps and programs slow down when the kinetic displays are running. It’s something to keep in mind as you weight aesthetics vs. efficiency.

Since its debut in 1989, The Simpsons has become a cultural juggernaut, weaving satire and wit into the fabric of modern television. At different points, catchphrases such as ‘D’oh!,’ ‘Ay, Caramba!,’ and ‘Okily Dokily’ make their way into the American lexicon.

But one area where The Simpsons doesn’t get its due is in the realm of video games, and no, we’re not talking about the classic arcade game. Throughout its run, the beloved TV show has introduced us to an array of fictional video games that range from the absurdly ludicrous to the strangely enticing. 

Rocky III vs. Clara Peller

This fictional video game classic first graced television sets during the show’s 381st episode, “Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em,” and features a true clash of ‘80s icons; slugger Rocky Balboa and former Wendy’s ad darling Clara Peller. Set in the confines of Springfield Mall’s Captain Blip’s Zapateria, the episode features a plethora of fictional games from ‘80s lore. Honorable mentions include Remington Steele: The Game, Monkey Kong, and Unipede. Although technically a fighting game, Rocky III vs. Clara Peller has little in the way of actual action. The characters enter the ring and taunt each other with catchphrases. “You ain’t so bad,” shouts Rocky, and Clara Peller asks, “Where’s the beef?” 

Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge

The 1995, the episode “Marge Be not Proud,” focused The Simpsons’ satirical spotlight on video games. Bart is caught shoplifting that year’s most coveted game, Mortal Kombat parody Bonestorm. Later, Bart believes that Marge has come through for him on Christmas, but instead, he gets the gift that keeps on giving. The greatest fake sports game of all time: Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge, a spoof of the NES classic Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf, which was aptly named because everyone knows Lee Trevino kicked butt! Below is but a mere sample of the non-stop golfing fun fictional kids in the ‘90s were lucky enough to have. 

“Welcome to Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge. I am Carvallo. Now, choose a club. (Beep) You have chosen a three wood. May I suggest a putter? (Beep) Three wood. Now enter the force of your swing. I suggest feather touch. (Beep, beep, beep) You have entered “power drive”. Now, push seven eight seven to swing.” (Beep beep beep) “Ball is in...parking lot. Would you like to play again? (Beep) You have selected “No.”

A masterpiece. 

Kevin Costner’s Waterworld

The Simpsons was truly ahead of their time, and Kevin Costner’s Waterworld is a perfect example. The airdate for the 10th episode of season 8 was written in 1996 and aired in January of ‘97, a full nine months before the real Waterworld video game would debut. The scene shows Milhouse playing the adaptation based on the over-budget, financial disappointment that cost filmmakers around $100 million. The player is asked to insert 40 quarters, and after taking one step, it asks for 40 more quarters. $20 for two seconds of gameplay, is almost as big a rip off as [insert quarter for punchline].

Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster

Who knew that converting heathens could be so much fun? That’s exactly the kind of action season one’s, “Alone Again, Natura-Diddily” treated viewers with. It’s a somber episode, as Simpsons staple Maude Flanders is laid to rest after her untimely demise. Bart, being the good neighbor that he is, comforts Flanders boys Rod and Todd and suggests playing some video games to alleviate the sadness of losing their mom–Bart is all heart isn’t he? The only game the Evangelical duo has is Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster. The mission of this game is to shoot bibles at non-believers, which converts them to Christianity, but be careful. If you graze a heathen, they only become a Unitarian.   

Death Kill City II: Death Kill Stories

The iconic Grand Theft Auto series got the Simpsons treatment in 2007’s episode “Yokel Chords.” Death Kill City II: Death Kill Stories is rated Bad for Everyone, and the mission of level one is to 'destroy every human being.' The game is truly damaging to mind, body, and soul—kinda like watching cable news. 

Tandem Bike Ride With Your Mom

The Simpsons are equal opportunity lampooners, so handheld consoles also get the satirical treatment. Season 17, episode 5, brought us the classic Tandem Bike Ride With Your Mom. With rousing levels such as "Enjoy the scenery," this game will provide minutes of entertainment to the citizens of Springfield when they need a break from watching paint dry. 

Hockey Dad

The fourth episode of the 15th season, titled “The Regina Monologues’’ pays homage to this time-honored tradition of parents making buffoons of themselves at children’s sporting events in the form of the video game Hockey Dad. After scoring a goal, Mr. Shadowski will tell Mr. O’Bannon, “Your kid sucks!” After that, we are off to the races. The two fathers fight until one incapacitates his opponent. After the win, the announcer exclaims, “You’re a big man! BIG MAN!!” and your player is whisked off the ice by police. Parents beating the hell out of each other at children’s sporting events is as American as apple pie. 

My Dinner With André

This next one might be a little highbrow, but it’s hilarious nonetheless. Spoofing the classic 1981 comedy-drama of the same name, this is the perfect game for the erudite Martin Prince, Jr. The player moves the joystick to choose the next round of dialogue for two men eating dinner at a fancy restaurant. The three move options “Tell me More,” “Trenchant insight,” and “Bon Mot” might be the funniest in the entire series. 

Dash Dingo 

The first Crash Bandicoot isn’t spared from The Simpsons’ satirical might in the seventh episode of season 9. The game starts with the disembodied head of Crocodile Dundee star Paul Hogan, telling Dash Dingo, “Foolish Dino, you must find and devour the seven crystal babies or spend eternity trapped in deep didgeridoo!” Leave it to The Simpsons to lampoon a popular video game, a movie, and a real-life tragedy all in one breath. 

So there you have it: The Simpsons’ hilarious take on video games shows us that the universal joy of gaming and the playful spirit of satire remain timeless elements that bridge the gap between our screens and our lives.

Kids used to bring teachers an apple on the first day of school. The concept stems back to colonial times, when teachers received a basket of apples from students. Back then, the apples were smaller, bitter, and mostly used for making cider.

Once prohibition hit, apples’ reputation became a little rotten. But after a successful PR campaign (an apple a day keeps the doctor away)—and some botanical engineering to make new varieties—the apple was again a core American fruit.

How do you like them apples?

—Tim Leong, Eric Alt, Marques Edge, Andrew Nusca

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Indiana Jones’s nightmares. A pet shop in England recently hatched a two-headed snake. Forget what you’ve heard: TWO HEADS ARE NOT BETTER THAN ONE.

Nerfed: Your liver. Scream star Matthew Lillard is launching a whiskey inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. Unfortunately, you must roll a natural 21 to drink it.

Buffed: Creative spelling. Rumer Willis says her daughter Louetta’s name was created because of a typo. Whatever happened to ducking autocorrekt?

Nerfed: One ring to rule them all. Someone found a 460-year-old ring near Sherwood Forest (yes, that one) with a secret message written on the inside. Experts contend it may have belonged to a Sheriff of Nottingham, or someone known to him. Or, to a friend of a friend. Or just any human, really.

Buffed: Ocean currents. A family cleaning the New Jersey shoreline found a message in a bottle that originated in Ireland. Presumably, the message says: Don’t litter. —TL

Speed Run: Meet the designer that creates jewelry inspired by video games

Two-minute talks with today’s movers and shakers.

Video games have been an important part of Kelly Young’s entire life. First, they were a way to connect with family. Later, games were how she found love.

Now they’re part of her career. Kelly creates beautifully intricate jewelry inspired by various video games.

Editor Tim Leong talks to Kelly about her surprising story of how she was able to turn her passion into a profession.

Put a ring on it here.

Extractor: How the X-Men have predicted the future past

Investigations of interest.

Whether you’re a sci-fi author or a Simpsons writer, any time you dabble in a “what if?” peek into our collective future, you’re bound to be accidentally right more than a few times. When you play as fast and loose with timelines and realities as often as the X-Men do, well, you’re going to seem downright prophetic.

In honor of the 60th anniversary of Marvel’s merry band of mutants, contributing writer Jordan Burchette did a deep box dive into 10 (or “X”) times X-Men comics seemingly predicted the future.

To me, my X-Men.

Shameless plug: Sneak peek at Modern Warfare III’s first mission

Players got their first peek at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’s first level this week.

The best way to raise the bar? Go behind bars. Prepare for a prison mission titled Operation 627.

Wanna play? You’ll have to wait for Campaign Early Access opens up, or wait until the full game is released on Nov. 10. Stay tuned.

Pop quiz, hot shot!

Put your gaming knowledge to the test.

The answer will be in Monday’s edition of The Edit.

Wormhole

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When you work in forward-looking science fiction, you can pretty much expect two possible outcomes: Either your ideas end up looking ridiculously dated (looking at you, apocalyptic thriller 2012) or eventually your ideas nudge so closely to real events that you end up looking like some kind of oracle. This is true if your medium is literature, video games (of course), or even comedy if you’ve been around long enough. (Just consider how many things The Simpsons has “predicted” over the years.)

Because they dabble so much in alternate timelines and convoluted character histories, the X-Men seem to fall into the latter category more often than most.

For 60 years, X-Men comics have famously drawn upon real-life events, ripping stories from the headlines like a mutant spin-off of Law & Order. Still, other X-Men narratives have actually foretold headlines yet unpublished, scooping the future with visionary storylines that portend developments years—sometimes decades—ahead of schedule.

For the diamond anniversary of Professor Charles Xavier’s dream, we read 3,000-plus comic books in search of the 10 that best exemplify the team’s precognitive virtuosity. Behold! The most prophetic plots, farsighted fables and oracular orations in the history of the X-Men!

I. 1978 Miyagi earthquake

As far as natural disasters go, earthquakes can be the hardest to predict—they don’t have a season and they rarely signal their intentions. So when one struck a fictional port city on the Japanese island of Honshu in Uncanny X-Men #118, we all should probably have stormed writer Chris Claremont’s house with pitchforks.

That’s because around the same time in 1978, a 7.4-magnitude temblor erupted off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture… the real-life home of Honshu island. While the tremor struck in June and the cover bears a publish date of February 1979, the book hit newsstands in November. Given publishing lead times, Claremont would have turned in his script a month or two before the quake.

II. Police robots

Originally introduced in 1965’s Uncanny X-Men #14 to eradicate the “mutant menace,” the first Sentinels were forerunners of the armed law enforcement droids now being considered for deployment in America’s major cities. Invented by an anthropologist, their primary directive was to protect humans.

But these lumbering, one-dimensional killbots programmed to target mutants turned their attentions on their creator as well, determining the only way to protect mankind is to conquer it. Frankly, it’s a conclusion that’s hard to argue, which is why we welcome our robot overlords.

III. 9/11

In Uncanny X-Men #189, published in 1984, Rachel Summers, a psionic mutant sent to the present from an alternate 2013, is reminded of a tragedy from her future past.

Looking out over Lower Manhattan from the Statue of Liberty, Rachel is seen in one prescient panel reflecting wistfully on the smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center and its thousands of dead. At this point in history, the Twin Towers had stood scarcely more than a decade and would be gone less than 17 years later.

IV. The PATRIOT Act

Similar to the events following 9/11, a terror attack in the “Days of Future Past” storyline triggered sweeping reforms a la the PATRIOT Act, giving the government unprecedented power to monitor and detain citizens more than 20 years earlier.

What began as an effort to strengthen surveillance and enforcement was ultimately used to crush any who resisted the new order, resulting in a dystopian future where freedom and liberty became distant memories.

V. Squid Games

Long before The Running Man and Squid Game, the idea of human survival as entertainment was explored to great effect in the X books. Within its ever-changing walls, the eponymously deadly amusement park Murderworld first staged a diverse spectacle of life-size pinball games, buzzsaw bumper cars and fun house reflections come lethally to life in Uncanny X-Men #123.

A spiritual precursor to New Jersey’s Action Park, Murderworld first opened to victims in Marvel Team-Up #66, but it became a staple of X-Men stories for decades, hosted by the most nefarious of hair-and-skin combinations, a ginger named Arcade.

VI. Genetic modification

Nearly a decade before scientists successfully used CRISPR gene-editing technology to reprogram DNA, a real-life paleontologist at Argentina’s Instituto Patagónico de Geología y Paleontología has reasoned that fictional geneticist Dr. Kavita Rao used the technique’s mechanisms to develop a cure for mutation in Astonishing X-Men #1.

The formula was short-lived, however, having been destroyed several issues later in an ensuing raid on the pharmaceutical company responsible for developing it. No way UnitedHealth was approving that claim anyway.

VII. Hurricane Sandy

Picture it: East Orange, New Jersey, 2043. Time-skipping telekinetic Nathan Summers has just disembarked from a barge to discover the long-dilapidated ruins of a dystopian hellscape in Cable #1, published in 2008. 

Ordinarily, that’s just classic East Orange, N.J. But in this case, it’s an East Orange that, for 31 years, has languished after “massive East Coast flooding” resulting from “the superstorm of 2012.” That year in our own timeline, the area was rocked by the wind and water of Hurricane Sandy, the worst disaster in New Jersey history if you don’t count the state’s roadways.

VIII. Reboots and reality TV

A gelatinous scooter-propelled alien slave trader named Mojo repeatedly cast the X-Men as unwilling stars in his galactic programming throughout the ’80s and ’90s. To garner the ratings needed to maintain his dominion over Mojoworld, such broadcasts included pandering cash grabs like “X-Babies,” schlocky reboots like “The Wizard of X” and lazy spin-offs like “Mitey ’Vengers,” which was just an Avengers version of the X-Babies.

It eventually got so metatextual, it was hard to tell where the social commentary ended and Marvel’s own exploitation of these tropes began. If the publisher announces a series about the X-Babies’ internal fight to succeed an aging Mojo for control of his media empire, it’s just a play for primetime Eisner Awards.

IX. VR training

The kind of simulated combat and disaster response used by police and military today was modeled 60 years ago in the very first issue of X-Men. Originally filled with crude mechanical obstacles like floor flames and hydraulic compactors, the Danger Room was later upgraded with holographic projections, magnetic fields and atmospheric conditions that made for a more immersive experience, and addressed user complaints on the Xavier School message boards about latency.

Over the years the Danger Room has tested students’ very limits with simulations of iconic Marvel Universe locations like the Savage Land and Asteroid M, a surprise attack in the bathroom and, most grueling of all, New Jersey Mode.

X. Telefloronics

OK, this hasn’t quite happened in the real world yet. But it’s only a matter of time before scientists are able to harness the power of plants to build vital infrastructure, bioengineer mass transit and facilitate geological intercourse.

In fact, since the Krakoan Age began with House of X #1 in 2019, real-life studies have revealed that fungi form vast underground communications networks—a sort of mycelial internet—using an electrical vocabulary of up to 50 words.

Kelly Young wears her heart on her sleeve. Well, more like on her fingers, neck, and ears. As a lifelong video game fanatic, Kelly creates jewelry designs inspired by her favorite games: World of Warcraft, Legend of Zelda, and Animal Crossing.

The result is Soulbound NYC, an online store featuring jewelry that is as intricate as it is beautiful. But success was not always a given—here’s how she cracked the code and turned her passion into a profession.

Did you grow up playing video games?

My dad was an investment banker and worked ridiculously late hours. I grew up on Long Island. He worked in Manhattan, so he wouldn't get home from work until midnight or 1 a.m. And his unwinding ritual when he got home was to fire up the Super Nintendo, or later, the Nintendo 64. And eventually I caught onto this and I would wake up when my dad came home, and I would sneak downstairs and play video games with him. So that was kind of the only time that I really had to just spend with him during the week. 

So that's how it really started. And I'm the oldest of four kids, so that all got passed down. All the video game systems originally were my dad's and then they became ours. Even now, we still all play video games every single day. 

And so how did you decide to take that passion and make it a career?

Even from elementary school, loved to draw. I was always making fan art, like Legend of Zelda fan art, Sailor Moon fan art. Just total dweeb. Then I became really interested in drawing and art in general, just through drawing my favorite characters in video games and anime.

When it came time to go to college and decide what I want to do with my life, I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna go to art school and be an illustrator. Maybe I'll work for Blizzard and do concept art for characters for video games. So I went to the Rhode Island School of Design.

I discovered that I loved making things with my hands. Even when I was studying fashion design, all of the collections I made at school were video game-inspired [laughs]. We would do one big collection at the end of the year. It was inspired by Death Knights and World of Warcraft. My senior thesis was actually inspired by Lord of the Rings.

I could never stop basically making fan art, no matter what I'm making. It's somehow expressing my love for video games.

What is the hardest part about translating from an idea—something you designed in a computer—and then creating something physical?

Most people have a very hard time visualizing what a physical product is going to be in real life.

At the end of a school program where we had been using CAD every single day, only me and one other person really felt comfortable using this program. Everybody else in the class was like, “I still don't get it.” And actually some of them even paid me to do CAD work for them [laughs] after they took the class. The other person who was able to get it was another gamer.

The whole concept of clicking your mouse and dragging to rotate something in 3D space—people just could not get that. And I'm like, you know, I've been doing this in World of Warcraft for years now [laughs]. 

The thing that I sometimes have a hard time with is, when I’m staring at a design on the computer, I'm zooming in a ton. And I'm dealing with details that are a fraction of a millimeter. So a lot of times I forget how small this thing actually is going to be in real life. So sometimes when I'm designing a new piece, I think it looks great, and then I make a test sample and I'm like, “Oh my God, all these details that I spent so much time on are so small that you can't even see them in the final piece.” Or they're so small that when you polish the ring, they're gone [laughs]. You need to exaggerate details in the 3D model because in real life it's so much smaller than this looks and there's gonna be some shrinkage when the piece is cast in metal, and then additional shrinkage when it's polished.

Well, that's what I wanted to talk about, because your jewelry is so intricate, but the inspiration comes from graphics that are much simpler. Can you talk to me about that juxtaposition?

My goal with every piece that I design is, I want this to have the sort of geeky inspiration that evokes the feeling that I get when I think about this video game or this anime. But I want this to be a beautiful design that if someone had no clue what the inspiration was at all, they would be totally cool buying it. I actually have people that will buy pieces of jewelry that have no idea what the inspiration is behind it, and they don't care. That's when I know that I've done a good job. And if you are a big geek and you really like the inspiration behind this piece, then it's just like this special thing for you.

Especially when we're dealing with engagement rings. When someone gets engaged, your whole family wants to see that ring. And I always think about—I don't want someone's aunt to make a rude comment if this isn't just a beautiful ring on its own. I don't want people to be like, what the heck is this? I want them to just think, wow, that's really beautiful. I also want these designs to stand the test of time. I don't want it to be trendy. So I kind of try to mix vintage jewelry elements into video game inspiration. 

Press play on the video above to see Kelly’s process of designing the Band of Intellect, a ring inspired by the Kirin Tor from World of Warcraft.

Do you ever feel more pressure because you have this tie to the inspiration?

I do, a little bit. Especially when it's something that means a lot to me. The first real collection I did, I made a huge mistake. It was very simple and everything just kind of looked like pixels. I thought it was cute—I love pixel art and everything, but I was trying to appeal to the masses too much. I was a little afraid of going very specific, and that just appealed to nobody, basically.

I was like, this is wrong. I should just do what I really want to do. And the first collection where I really went for it was all inspired by Ocarina of Time, which is my favorite video game ever. And I did feel so much pressure because I was like, I've been staring at the visuals of this game, making fan art of it since I was like, what, seven years old? So it felt like the designs had to live up to that. And that's a lot of pressure.

The other thing I feel pressured by also is I wanna make sure that if I'm making a piece of jewelry based on a video game or an anime, that I really understand the source material. People ask me all the time if I can do a collection based on Final Fantasy. I would only do it if I played those games extensively and really understood them. I can't fake this. So probably not, because I've never really been into those games. Or, people ask me to do Kingdom Hearts jewelry all the time. If, one day, I got around to playing all of those games, then I would feel like I can do it. But I don't wanna make jewelry based on something I don't understand on a deep level or that I'm not super passionate about, because I think it shows.

When you play video games now, are you able to disassociate and get lost in the game? Or you're always just like, that's a cool texture? Wait, that could be something, that could be something?

No, I'm able to disassociate. [laughs] That's why I love them so much because it's my only time to kind of shut off my brain and decompress. I'm very bad at relaxing, but when I play a video game, I'm in another world so I don't have to think about everything else I have going on. Which is becoming increasingly difficult with children though. [laughs] My daughter's almost two.

Can you tell me about the Warcraft-inspired pieces you have in your collection?

Eventually I would like to have pieces that are representing each of the original classes from vanilla [classic] WoW. I only have a few right now. I have a priest, mage, warlock, and kind of half of a hunter. The hunter engagement ring I've been designing and redesigning for a while. I can't quite get it right.

Eventually I want to have representation of all of the classes, because that game specifically is how I met my husband. Not through the game, but we had been family friends for years. We went to high school together and we just started hanging out when we were 14 years old. And that meant: I'm gonna go to your mom's house on the bus after school. He had two desktop computers set up in his room and we would just sit next to each other for hours playing World of Warcraft.

He introduced me to that game and that was, I think, 2006. And we still play it together today. That has a lot of meaning to me. And I always played a priest. He either plays as a warrior, a rogue, or a hunter. I think there are a lot of other couples like us that bonded over this game. And you kind of identify with what class you play. So I hope to eventually have representation for each available class that you can play in terms of an engagement ring, a wedding band, a matching men's band, then maybe some earrings and necklaces too. It's my long-term goal.

And then you recently got married, right? Congratulations.

Yeah. Thank you. I'm kicking myself now 'cause we were dating since we're 14 [laughs] and we thought like we could have gotten married anytime. And we chose June 2020 for the wedding date [laughs]. Why did we wait so long? We were engaged in 2018. And of course we had to postpone the wedding [because of the pandemic]. 

We finally did have our big wedding this June, exactly as we planned. It was Zelda-themed. But subtly so. It's the same with my jewelry. It was absolutely beautiful. And if you didn't know all the references, you would have no clue. We had a four-string quartet. They're amazing. They're called the Triforce Quartet [laughs]. They take video game music and turn it into classical-sounding music that a quartet can play. So the whole time they're playing video game music, but if you didn't know, you’d think it's just beautiful classical music.

And I'm sure you made your own ring?

I did. Actually, when we got engaged, my husband designed the ring because I'm so self-critical. I knew if I designed it, I would just be, “Oh, I should have done this, I should have done that.” So he came up with the design and then we sat down together and did the CAD 3D model, so that he was involved in the process of me even making the 3D model. Then we picked the diamond together and then I made it, and then I gave it to him and I left it up to him about how he was gonna propose to me. [laughs]

Was that video game-inspired as well?

No, he just wanted to do it quickly 'cause he was so nervous. [laughs] 

What do you think it is about today's culture that makes your shop successful? I'm just imagining if you tried to open your store 20 years ago, it would have had a different reception.

When I started the business, I was just going off of other jewelry designers that I had worked for previously. And for all of them, [success] was: You gotta get your jewelry in retail stores. That's your bread and butter. The costume jeweler I worked for was selling to Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom. Then I worked for a fine jewelry designer and she was selling to smaller little boutique shops. I thought that was the only way I was going to have success. I was paying thousands of dollars to go to exhibit at these trade shows where buyers from stores would come around and look at your jewelry and decide if they're gonna buy your jewelry to sell in their little retail shops.

I did that for three years. I had to set up a whole display case and everything and people would be interested in my jewelry. And then when I told them it was all inspired by video games, they would laugh and they would walk away. And I had people tell me, “Don't tell anyone what the inspiration is. That's really off-putting.” And I was like, I don't wanna do that. If I have to hide who I am and what the inspiration is for my work, I don't wanna do this. So I decided, you know what? I'm not even gonna try to get into these stores anymore. Screw it. I'm just gonna go full-in on social media and spread the word myself and sell directly to customers. Because that feels better to me anyway.

I like the fact that when someone emails with a question, I'm the person answering. I'm also the person picking out your gemstones. I'm the person making the jewelry. I'm the person driving it to FedEx to ship it to you. And then tracking the number on your package to make sure that you got it and you signed for it. It just feels better to me that it's so personal. At the time I felt very defeated that these stores were not interested in my jewelry, but I've had so much success just leaning fully into the geekiness of myself and my brand. 

I just make jewelry for myself and for them now. And I'm not apologetic about it. Sometimes I make something that the reference is so unbelievably specific. Like, last year I made a few little pendant necklaces with some extra stones that I had on hand that were skinny, long rectangles. I couldn’t think of what to do with these. And what I did was, I recreated the hotel room key from Majora's Mask. You have to pretend to be a Goron and check into a hotel and you get this key. My sister and I love Majora's Mask and specifically that quest line. We'll get this reference, but I don't know if anyone else in the world is gonna get this specific reference.

And sure enough, so many people do. I think that because of the internet and because of social media, I can just connect directly to people that just get it. And I don't have to worry about changing myself to please store buyers or please anyone, really. And I'm just making whatever I want to make. And if people love it, then that's great.

This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

On this day in 1966, NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 sent back the first ever images of Earth as seen from lunar orbit, otherwise known as the iconic “Earthrise” images. Just a few weeks later, in early September, NBC debuted an obscure little sci-fi show you might have heard of called Star Trek.

Our collective obsession with space was kicked into high gear, and it still hasn’t slowed all these years later.

It’s fitting then that today’s newsletter has a lot of space talk, both real and imaginary. Counting down: 5…4…3…

—Eric Alt, Andrew Nusca, Tim Leong, Marques Edge

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Pink Floyd-inspired theories. China’s lunar rover (we warned you there’d be lots of space talk) was able to map 1,000 feet worth of hidden “structures” beneath the surface of the dark side of the moon. Starting syncing up side 1/track 1…now.

Nerfed: Your ability to sleep. New York City launched its first ever “Anti-Rat Day of Action” because residents have complained about “rats the size of Crocs.” They mean the shoes, but too late—you’re now imagining either crocodile-sized rats or Crocs made of rats and good luck sleeping tonight.

Buffed: VO job openings. Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario going all the way back to Super Mario 64, is retiring at the age of 67. “It’s-a me!”—thousands of voice actors vying for the gig.

Nerfed: Being twice shy. After being released early from his six-year prison sentence for wire fraud, Billy McFarland, the man behind the infamous Fyre Festival, appears to already be planning Fyre Festival II. Another unwanted sequel, it seems.

Buffed: Work excuses. “A bird dropped a fish on our power lines” is the new “my dog ate it” excuse, thanks (natch) to the never-boring state of New Jersey. —EA

Burning Questions: Which is safer: deep space travel or deep sea travel?

Asked and answered.

If you listen to the way in which space launches or space tourism are talked about versus how deep sea expeditions are discussed, you’ll notice that one always seems to be wrapped in Star Trek-inspired optimism while the other seems forever steeped in The Abyss-inspired anxiety.

But…is that fair?

Executive editor Eric Alt sat down with two experts to tackle this question: Sean Carroll, an expert in astrophysics and space exploration at Johns Hopkins University, and Robert Stern, an expert in sea exploration at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Dive in.

Shameless plug: ‘Diablo IV: Season of Blood’ is coming Oct. 17

You’ve already been hacking your way through zombies, goatmen, and winged fiends, and you’re probably thinking you’ve seen the worst Sanctuary has to throw at you.

You’ll never feel this good about being this wrong.

Blizzard has just announced that Diablo IV’s second season is coming just in time for Halloween, and it’s bringing vampires with it. But all is not lost, because actress and producer Gemma Chan is also joining the fray as a vampire hunter.

There will be blood.

Extractor: How movies have treated video games over the years

Investigations of interest.

As much as we love seeing our favorite games brought to the big screen, what happens when movies try to integrate the feeling and experience of actually playing a game?

Looking at everything from fun digital romps to dystopian thrillers, contributing writer Isaac Feldberg goes decade by decade to uncover some of the best ways gaming has been represented on the big screen.

Shall we play a game?

Wayback Wednesday

This is a wayback within a semi-wayback.

This ad for Hearthstone’s “Kobolds & Catacombs” expansion may have only been released in 2017, but its heart is firmly in the 1980s.

Designed as a loving tribute to the gloriously cheesy (and sometimes budget-challenged) fantasy films of that decade—most notably, Muppets creator Jim Henson’s forays into the genre like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal—”The Light Candle” features Star Wars: Battlefront II’s Janina Gavankar as the “movie’s” heroine in what is apparently Kobold King Togwaggle’s complete auteurist effort (he wrote, directed, and stars).

From the deliberately cheap and dated visual effects to the over-the-top puppet designs, the ad proves you can only truly make fun of something if you deeply love it. This one was definitely from the heart. —EA

Wormhole

Click the following image and…well, we don’t want to ruin the surprise.

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The history of movies based on video games is well-documented, from the 1990s Super Mario Bros adaptation to blockbusters like Detective Pikachu and Mortal Kombat.

Not as frequently discussed? Great films about the experience of gaming, rather than specific games.

Never fear. From arcade-inspired blockbusters to competitive documentaries, here’s a very brief look at movies that tried to channel the feel of gaming over the past five decades.

This list, it should go without saying, is far from comprehensive—think of it as a cheat sheet with some personal favorites. OK, let’s dive in.

Tron (1982)

Disney’s special-effects juggernaut, starring Jeff Bridges as a video game developer transported inside his own creation, was one of the first Hollywood blockbusters to take video games as its core subject. Building on the reign of Atari home consoles and the rise of Nintendo, which established video games’ place in popular culture, Tron opened the mainstream up to new digital worlds with its vivid light cycle battles and thrilling scenes of battle tanks navigating arcade-like mazes.

WarGames (1983)

“Shall we play a game?” Matthew Broderick’s techie breaks into a computer company’s database in hopes of playing an unreleased game, only to unwittingly interface with a top-secret government system and challenge it to a round of “Global Thermonuclear War.” Inspired by the hacker culture of Palo Alto, Calif.—home of SRI and Xerox’s PARC, two key players in Silicon Valley history—WarGames was among the first films to depict computerized military war games and the role of simulations in letting users learn by playing instead of playing to win. It’s a concept with Cold War-era relevance. 

eXistenZ (1999)

David Cronenberg’s prophetic sci-fi movie explored virtual-reality gaming at the dawn of the Internet age, envisioning a future in which biotechnological “game pods” have replaced electronic ones, complete with “bio-ports” surgically inserted into players’ spines. Collapsing the real world and cyberspace, eXistenZ probed the nature of reality, manipulated in new media environments, and the illusion of free will—provocative questions well-posed through the language of video games, with their limited choices and linear progression. 

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

Not just for nerds, Seth Gordon’s documentary about the rivalry between gamers Steve Wieber and Billy Mitchell, competing to become the greatest Donkey Kong player in history, is insightful in its exploration of the human condition, the role that games play in our lives, and the power-combo of ego, entitlement, obsession, and accomplishment that fuels our competitive spirit. 

Gamer (2009)

In this dystopian thriller, death-row inmates are forced through deadly tournaments and controlled, via self-replicating nanites, by gamers who experience the combat from their couches. A gratuitous, satirical vision of gladiatorial gameplay that merges MMORPGs with reality television, Gamer asks what limits exist to hyper-immersive media, questioning the moral ethics of first-person shooters, the “open-world” concept of Grand Theft Auto, and popular culture’s obsession with exploitation as entertainment. All that, and it’s paced as one long, cranked-up adrenaline rush. 

Ready Player One (2018)

The geeks inherited the Earth in Steven Spielberg’s ambitious adaptation of Ernest Cline’s dystopian novel, about a VR simulation that humanity uses to escape reality (to such a degree in-game currency has become the accepted global currency and most people never log off). A sci-fi spectacle and a nostalgia trip, Ready Player One was awash in pop culture—Minecraft, Street Fighter, Speed Racer, Tron, Galaga, and more—even as it told a story about the dangers of becoming too consumed by it. 

Tetris (2023)

Tracing the origins of the iconic puzzle game to Soviet Moscow, where a Dutch-born American businessman battled billionaires and KGB operatives to bring a Russian computer programmer’s pioneering invention to the west, Tetris is a stranger-than-fiction true story in which characters see falling blocks in their dreams. “It’s poetry, art, and math all working in magical synchronicity,” declares one character, in this ardent celebration of an arcade classic. “It's the perfect game."

It’s fitting that space travel and deep sea travel literally require you to move in opposite directions, because in the court of public opinion they couldn’t be further apart.

On one hand, every time a SpaceX rocket or Blue Origin vessel takes tourists for a spin or there’s an update on Boeing’s Starliner project, people react with wide-eyed enthusiasm. On the other, we have the recent Titan tragedy that saw undersea tourists lose their lives on a tragic journey, confirming for a lot of people the belief that the sea is just a danger zone to be avoided if at all possible.

So we have to ask the question: why? Why do we see space as a potential joyride but deep sea travel as fraught with endless peril? Hasn’t pop culture shown us enough ways both of these experiences could go horribly wrong?

So we called two experts and asked them. The first: Sean Carroll, a professor at Johns Hopkins University with expertise in astrophysics and space exploration. The second: Robert Stern, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas with expertise in deep sea research. In conversation, they explain the challenges, and sometimes misconceptions, around deep space and deep sea travel.

Let’s get right into it: Is it safer to travel to space than to travel to the bottom of the ocean?

Carroll: I think that the deep sea comparison is actually very interesting because what it immediately brings to mind for me is—do you remember Star Trek Into Darkness, where the Enterprise is hiding under the ocean and then it sort of rises up? People were like, “That's not what spaceships do!” But the writers tried to explain it by saying something to the effect of, “It’s meant to survive space; of course it can survive the ocean.” But that’s actually not right.

Think about it this way: In space, the atmosphere inside the spaceship is pushing outward. Whereas in the ocean, you're being pushed inward by the water around you, but also just the magnitude of the push is enormously different. No matter how far out you are in space, the difference in pressure between inside and outside is no greater than one atmosphere's worth of pressure. But as soon as you go down even a little bit into the ocean, you can have way more than one atmosphere of pressure pushing on your vessel. So in that sense, deep sea diving is much more dangerous. It requires a lot more technological capability to make sure that you can do it, which is why we've been able to go to the moon, but it's actually hard to go down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Stern: Absolutely. That's what happened with [the Titan] submarine—they didn't design the submarine well enough to withstand those incredible pressures. Every 10 meters of descent in the ocean adds one atmosphere of pressure. So by the time you're at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, you're at 1100 atmospheres pressing on the vessel.

So to Prof. Carroll’s point, you can’t just use spaceship technology in the deep sea, and vice versa.  

Stern: That's why these [undersea research vessels] are usually spherical, whereas what's pressing outward on a spaceship is easier to engineer. The research submarine, in order to deal with the great pressures, they have to have very thick walls, they're very heavy, whereas a spaceship, they can engineer a much thinner wall because it has to maintain the inside pressure. The big concern is that that'll be punctured by micro meteorites, which doesn't seem to be a really big problem yet, but you don't have to worry about micro meteorites puncturing the hull of a research vessel.

Carroll: But in basically all other ways, space travel is harder. And I do think that the fact that no one has died in a catastrophic space tourism accident yet is kind of lucky. I mean, plenty of people have died in space-related accidents—but many have involved either takeoff or landing. I think that numerically—if you count non-tourists—space is way more dangerous. There hasn’t been an accident involving space tourists yet, so we haven’t had that discussion yet or it’s not completely “real” to people yet, but it is going to happen. In the categories of things that can go disastrously wrong, of course, the major one is some giant technological failure—that's common to both deep sea and space missions. There is a lot more danger there in the takeoff and landing phases. In the deep sea, you literally jump into the water. That's not the dangerous part of your trip, right? In space, you literally jump on the top of a multi-ton explosion and you hope that nothing goes bad.

Stern: You also have to design deep sea vessels for specific distances or depths. Most of the ocean is accessible with a very small percentage at 6,500 meters. So yeah, basically, once you get outside of Earth's atmosphere, you're in a vacuum and that vacuum is everywhere and it doesn't change, whereas with a submarine, it depends on the depth. You've got to be engineered to go to a specific depth.

What about the effect both experiences can have on someone’s mental health? In either case, you’re in a dark void for an extended period of time.

Carroll: There are psychological effects—just sort of loneliness and weirdness and not being in the usual environment, being very cramped. And that's probably also true for underwater as well.

Stern: With most research vessels, you're only down there for eight hours or so. You don't stay down very long so with a little bit of thought, you can avoid having to do any bodily functions other than breathing. So in a way, space is more like being on a nuclear military submarine. They stay down for days and weeks. I don't know what the record of submergence on a nuclear submarine is, but I imagine it's probably closer in time to, say, certainly a trip to the moon and back, but maybe not the trip to Mars and back.

Another thing is, on a submersible, you've got the full benefit of gravity, and while gravity is kind of a pain to us, we're kind of used to it. A lot of the big concerns they have about space travel are bones getting weaker because there's no gravity, that's why they have to be always working out just to try and keep their bone density up.

And then same thing with bodily functions. Maybe you take a sandwich and a thermos of coffee down with you in a submarine, but you're not going to cook any food, you're not going to worry about the quality of your diet because you're going to eat dinner on the ship when you come back up.

OK, I have to ask: aliens and sea monsters. What do we have to know?

Carroll: I don't think that aliens are going to bother you in space. That's not a big worry. If you've seen the movie Gravity which has debris colliding with a ship—that's not really a big worry either. Space is very big. It's not yet crowded. Maybe someday it will be, but for the foreseeable future, it's pretty empty.

Stern: I think what a lot of people think about the deep sea is that—do you remember those old Time Life books, where they would have these big foldouts with all of these incredible creatures? I think a lot of people think that you would see those if you went down deep. You don't. There's almost no life at the bottom. It's pretty much a desert. There's a few slow moving creatures. And there are those creatures, they have been seen, but they're really scarce. You're not going to come down on a school of these weird looking fish. They're very much loners. I've never seen any.

The problem: So has everyone else.

We thought we did it right. We got an early start. We mapped out prime real estate. We used our previous trips to assess when the inevitable rush would happen.

No matter. It’s as if everyone took Ken’s words to heart: “My job…it’s just ‘beach.’” And the sea of unoccupied towels and chairs underscored the point.

(Speaking of which: A recent article in The New York Times outlines proper, if complicated, etiquette for claiming a spot at a public beach.)

Better luck at the pool or local park, I guess.

—Marques Edge, Tim Leong, Eric Alt, Andrew Nusca

P.S. In Friday’s edition, we asked you: Which of these early Activision games featured a parody of Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic” on the cover? The answer is Worm Whomper.

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Public libraries. Celebrations of 50 years of hip hop continue as the Brooklyn Library releases 13 limited-edition library cards with artwork from Jay-Z albums. Looks like someone figured out the blueprint to increasing attendance.

Nerfed: Traditional TV. For the first time ever, broadcast and cable television viewership falls below 50% of total U.S. viewing time. According to Nielsen, streaming services increased their share to almost 39%. Looks like our attention continues to move, uh, upstream.

Buffed: Barbie. At more than $537 million, sales of the Greta Gerwig flick eclipsed The Dark Knight as the highest-grossing domestic film in Warner Bros. history. Not too shabby…for a movie, ahem.

Nerfed: Americans in Paris. Security guards discovered that two tourists from the States slept inside the monument overnight after having a little too much vin, according to prosecutors. To quote Pierre Cadault: Ringardes!

Buffed: Tubes in a box. Gadget maker LG has developed a 27-inch TV housed in a suitcase. Priced just under $1,000, the StanbyME Go comes with a built-in battery and speakers. A telly fit for a spy, if you ask us. —ME

The inside story of Karateka

How a karate classic came to be.

In 1984 a new martial arts fighting game called Karateka launched on the Apple II. With its cinematic gameplay and rotoscoped graphics, it was a technical achievement and popular sensation.

Now publisher Digital Eclipse is celebrating the game with a new kind of interactive, playable documentary. (Think of it as a remastered game and a Criterion Collection all in one.)

Editor Tim Leong talked with Digital Eclipse’s Chris Kohler about the making of the karate classic.

Click here to get into the fight.

Shameless plug: More details about ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III’

Earlier this month we learned that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was coming on Nov. 10.

This week we discovered a bit more about about it.

The follow-up to last year’s spectacular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II will allow players to seamlessly “carry forward” their journey, inventories, and weapon progression from MW2 to MW3 for the first time.

The game will introduce so-called open combat missions that allow players to make choices to take different paths through certain campaign missions. A new campaign experience will see the return of the villain Makarov.

Meanwhile in multiplayer, all 16 maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 from 2009 will be back with new modes, mechanics, and gameplay. And three new battle maps will be on offer, along with the return of War Mode.

Our favorite? The first-ever Modern Warfare Zombies experience. Urrrrhhhhggghh. (That’s undead speak for “sweet.”)

The new game will be available for Playstation, Xbox, Battle.net, and Steam.

Learn more, and preorder it, here.

A brief history of Ninja Turtle games

Let’s go back.

With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem currently in theaters, the lovable band of “booyakasha” brothers are back in the pop culture zeitgeist.

Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo have a long history appearing in comics, movies, TV shows, and of course, video games.

Contributing writer Isaac Feldberg looks back at a short history of TMNT games, starting with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, which marks its 10^th anniversary this month.

Click here to get the whole story on the half shell.

Your moment of meme

Mixtape Monday

What are we listening to lately? Glad you asked.

Here we go:

Dev Lemonds, “Think About It.” The opening line says it all…then the beat drops and suddenly you’ll find yourself ready to get at your day. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Bud Gibson, Activision)

Arrested Development, “Tennessee.” We included the alternative hip hop group’s “People Everyday” two weeks ago, but this hit’s chorus is too catchy to ignore. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Joel Mitchell, Blizzard)

Kyle Gordon, “Planet of the Bass.” Meant as a parody to ‘90s European dance music, the song became so popular as snippets leaked via social media that the release date had to be moved up. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Dillon Rilea, Activision)

Stan Walker, “Ultralight Beam.” The spirit rises and inspires you to get the week started in this soulful cover of a Kanye West classic. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Louis Nunez, Blizzard)

Fleshwater, "Linda Claire." This headbanger from the band’s debut album unquestionably put them on the map with more than one million streams. Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube. (Recommended by Giovanni Faisca Robles, Activision)

Wormhole

Click the following image and…well, we don’t want to ruin the surprise.

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The Edit is a thrice-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of gaming and life. Our love letter to millions of gamers around the globe, it is written and published by the Activision Blizzard King global editorial team.

T-U-R-T-L-E POWER!

T-U-R-T-L-E POWER!

T-U-R-T-L-E POWER!

TEENAGE. MUTANT. NINJA. TURTLES.

Few media franchises are as firmly rooted in the 1980s as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who at the height of Turtlemania exploded from the pages of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s underground comics across kid-friendly TV animation, the action figure toy market, movie theaters (thanks to the Jim Henson Creature Shop), and of course just about every console and computer system in existence. 

It started as a joke, with Eastman and Laird satirizing superhero-comic standards like Uncanny X-Men and Daredevil, but their first 1984 comic’s ridiculous premise and surprisingly gritty action struck a chord with readers almost immediately. Still, few could have predicted the mainstream success of the “heroes in a half shell”—four turtles transformed into humanoid teenagers who live in the sewers, eat pizza, and fight crime with their ninjutsu combat skills—before they were suddenly everywhere.

By 1989 the Turtles’ self-titled arcade-game and Nintendo Entertainment System debuts were pop-cultural sensations; the side-scrolling version for the NES, released by Konami, sold more than four million cartridges worldwide, becoming one of the bestselling NES titles not made by Nintendo. (That it was also potentially unbeatable only cemented its place in the annals of ‘80s video-game history.) Not too shabby for those little green guys.

Though the franchise’s popularity waned slightly in the ’90s and early ’00s, the Turtles have intermittently returned to screens in live-action and animated form, most recently with this month’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. And they’ve retained a presence on arcade and home video game platforms; in fact, after signing a deal with Nickelodeon/Viacom in 2012, Activision published five unique Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles of its own, starting with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, first released 10 years ago this month.

To mark the anniversary, and with the heroes raising shell at the box office once more, what better time to look back at Activision’s TMNT titles?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2013)

In this Red Fly Studio-developed third-person brawler, loosely based on the 2012 animated series, players could opt for a four-player online mode and offline two-player co-op, switching seamlessly between each of the four Turtles and weaponizing their unique fighting styles to duke it out with the Shredder, the Foot Clan, Baxter Stockman, and other franchise-familiar opponents across a four-hour hack-and-slash campaign. A “classic” Arcade mode, reminiscent of coin-op cabinet gameplay, also allowed players to progress through the main story levels in a side-scrolling combat style.

Out of the Shadows rendered its world in an impressive level of detail, offering up distinctive main character models, and relying on cinematic camera moves while offering a darker, more realistic take on the world of TMNT and harkening back to the graphically stylized look of older animated series and the original comics.

As with the arcade titles Out of the Shadows paid homage to, teamwork was an important part of the game, with team combos and KOs making the Turtles more powerful together than apart, and this element received particular praise from reviewers at the time of the game’s release for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2013)

This Magic Pockets-developed title (for Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and Xbox 360), intended as a direct video-game adaptation of Nickelodeon’s 2012 animated series, was a side-scrolling beat-’em-up title aimed at younger audiences.  

Fighting against the Foot Clan, Krang, Baxter Stockman, and other opponents in order to rescue April O’Neil from the Shredder, this brawler allowed up to four players to shift between playing as all four Turtles at once—all of whom were voiced by actors from the animated series, including Sean Astin as Raphael and Mae Whitman as April.

Even with its show-off combo system and combat-heavy gameplay, this was a sillier outing for the Turtles in which players could collect mutagen canisters to unlock extras and chow down on pizza, sushi, noodles, algae, worms, and more to replenish their health.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

Also developed by Magic Pockets but this time based on the 2014 live-action movie reboot of the same name, this 3DS beat-’em-up featured the character redesigns from the Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yep, even down to the unsettling humanoid nostrils) and acted as a semi-sequel to the film’s story.

After defeating the Shredder, the Turtles go after the remaining Foot Clan, take on opponents like the Rat King and his robotic Mousers, and hunt for their missing sensei Splinter. A third-person hack-and-slash actioner, the game let players toggle between the four half-shell heroes while leveling up in power, unlocking new abilities, and cobbling together raw materials in order to make new weapons. 

The Turtles all had different weapons and abilities that came in useful in different places (Leonardo’s katanas could slice past shielded enemies’ defenses, while Donatello’s bo staff was better at holding off waves of swarming opponents). As such, players were encouraged to move back and forth between different characters as they made their way through the classic TMNT game levels (sewer, subway, street, and waterfront) and occasionally completed side-quests. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze (2014)

Developed by WayForward for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS, this second game based on the 2012 animated series was set between its second and third seasons, following the Turtles on a quest to prevent the Shredder from forging an alliance with the Krang and unleashing a new bio-weapon on New York City.

But Danger of the Ooze’s real draw was its side-scrolling, 2.5D style, reminiscent of classic Metroidvania titles in its guided non-linearity and focus on utility-gated exploration and progression. More colorful and dynamic than previous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles titles, it allowed players to maneuver a large map and slowly unlock new areas, eventually navigating laser grids, dodging projectiles, and escaping other booby traps. 

Though it was possible to play as all four Turtles and move between them at will, any Turtle losing their life meant that they had to then be recovered from random points along the map, necessitating a fair amount of backtracking. (Pro tip: never leave a Turtle brother behind.)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan (2016)

Hatched by Platinum Games, responsible for everything from Bayonetta 2 to Activision’s Transformers: Devastation, this hotly anticipated hack-and-slash title was written by Tom Waltz, co-writer of the IDW comics, which meant that its storyline—of Shredder and Krang invading New York—felt closely aligned in tone with what was happening with the Turtles on the page.

Heavily informed by the art style of those comics, Mutants in Manhattan boasted a gorgeous, cel-shaded look, bursting with bright color and made even more propulsive by a pulse-pounding, 8 bit-inspired score. Scaling walls, crawling through sewers, and racing across rooftops, the Turtles were able to move swiftly through various city environments. 

When going up against all manner of fan-favorite adversaries (like Bebop, Rocksteady, and Wingnut), players were able to alternate between light and heavy attacks, dodge rolls, counters, and so on; the bigger challenge was managing all four turtles at once in the midst of a close-quarters brawl, given that the main story unfolds as a single-player campaign. 

One cool collectible: All 50 of Kevin Eastman’s variant covers for the IDW series were scattered at randomized locations throughout the game’s levels. 

Karateka was one of the biggest Apple II games of its time. With innovative graphics and cinematic gameplay, the 1984 karate classic inspired a new wave of game developers.

Which is why it’s the subject of Digital Eclipse’s new interactive documentary coming this year. Wait, a what? An interactive documentary—a remastered game and a Criterion Collection all mashed up into one.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Chris Kohler, director of editorial content at Digital Eclipse, shares how they rebuilt Karateka and how they want to reinvent video game documentaries.

What is an interactive documentary?

The interactive documentary concept is: Let's lead with the story. Let's not have a list of games over here and a list of bonus content over here. Let's pretend that all of those things have equal weight: games, design documents, video interviews, audio, screenshots, historical trivia.

When you walk into a museum, there's the title of the exhibit and an overview of what you're going to experience. They've laid things out in a certain way. So, if you walk through it, you get a story that they're telling you until you get to the end of that exhibit. But ultimately, it's down to you to look around, see what's interesting, and go check those things out and do it at your own pace. We don't want the player to feel like they're boxed into at [the experience] in a certain way. It can be kind of frustrating when you just want to look around.

Once you understand [the context of the game], and then you jump in and you play the game, you have much more of an appreciation for what you're playing. If you'd bought an Atari collection and took it home, you’d get a big list of games that’s just alphabetical: Asteroids, Astro Blasts, Astro Smash, Astro this, Astro that. You don't know which version is the real version that was done by the creator. You don't have any of that context, and the game itself is just not gonna be as interesting to you without that.

Last year’s Atari 50 collection was your first foray into the interactive documentary format, right?

Atari 50 was the first one that we released. But we'd been working on Karateka prior to that, [when we had] downtime when big projects weren't coming in. Then Atari 50 came in and we shelved [Karateka] to do Atari 50 in time for the 50th anniversary. Originally, Atari wanted something different, and we were able to come in and say, “Hey, like, you, you guys don't want just another collection.”

Why Karateka? What is about Karateka that warrants all this attention?

Karateka was a very important game. Jordan [Mechner], the creator, was a Yale college student and he was making this game. He started freshman year, and he was in the Yale Film Society and just watching tons of films all the time. And at first he started out wanting to make an arcade shooter, but eventually got to the point where he loved all these things about film, and wanted to put them into an Apple II game—which would be very difficult. Nobody had really done it to that extent.

Karateka made so many major innovations as far as like cinematic scenes, use of cinematic techniques like cross-cutting between two pieces of action that are happening at the same time—really developing that sense of a camera, wordless storytelling scenes with the characters, acting things out, a soundtrack that was based on like Wagner and the Ring Cycle.

And most importantly, he used rotoscoping; he pioneered the use of rotoscoping in video games. He filmed his mother's karate teacher, and he filmed his father, Francis Mechner. He used the frames of that film to get lifelike human animation on the Apple II. It was this incredibly laborious process that nobody else even did—even after he did it—because it was so laborious. For a lot of people, it was the first time they played a game that felt like a little movie.

When you look at video games today, you can trace that lineage back of these massive, cinematic video games back to Karateka specifically. It was massive in an age when video games didn't necessarily become worldwide hits. It was just very popular for a long time and inspired a lot of people. In the documentary we talked to John Tobias, the co-creator of Mortal Kombat. John Romero, co-creator of Doom, was so taken with Karateka in 1985 that as a teenager, he wrote Jordan a fan letter that we put in the game. So, when you look at the number of game designers who were designing major games in the ‘90s, the fact that they all point back to Karateka—it really just dawns on you that this is a very important game.

We have these great Netflix series about the history of games. We've got so many books about the history of games. Why are we not using this great storytelling medium that is the video game to tell the stories of video games? It’s surprising to us that nobody's really done it before.

Is there an official pronunciation of Karateka?

So, we actually deal with this in the game itself. In the 1980s, Jordan had never really heard anybody pronounce it. He always said “kara-taeka.” Back then there was no YouTube or anything like that. So, it's not like you could hear somebody pronounce the name of the game the way they were. Jordan was saying it. So, most people knew the word karate, and then they’d add a “ka” on the end of it. So, a lot of people said “kartate-ka” or “karatika.” Or “kara-teka” sometimes. So basically everybody pronounces it different ways, including in the product. Like, there's interviews people and they all say it different ways.

Everybody pronounces it wrong. Just say whatever you want. Don't stress about it.

Some fans may not have heard of Karateka, but they've probably heard of Jordan's other game, Prince of Persia.

After Karateka, Jordan went on to create the Prince of Persia series. Karateka was a worldwide hit, but Prince of Persia was a massive franchise launching hit. It’s funny. Prince of Persia was going to be his Apple II masterpiece. He worked for, I think, another four years on the Apple II version of the game. And it came out and it flopped because the Apple II, by that point—I think it was 1989, was dead in the water as far as software sales. But he had created this incredible game on it.

But because they had a feeling it was gonna be a hit, ports (to other systems) were already in the works. And so, Prince of Persia really became successful once it got onto the IBM PC, the NES, Sega CD. Then it started hitting consoles all over the world and becomes huge. But to really understand where all that came from, you have to look at Karateka. Karateka is like Prince of Persia zero, as far as the use of rotoscoping, as far as the use of storytelling and cinematic techniques that Jordan took the ball and ran with it in Prince of Persia. All of that was pioneered in Karateka. It was the test case.

Are there different playable modes in Karteka?

What are considered the Holy Trinity of Karateka versions is: Jordan's original Apple II version, the Atari 800 or the Atari 8-bit computer version, and the Commodore 64 version. Those were done at Brøderbund, under Jordan's direct supervision. The other versions and ports of Karateka—basically all of them were done without Jordan really being involved. Karateka is this very tightly designed game, and trying to replicate it on another platform is very difficult. Our studio president, Mike Mika, who is an old school game programmer himself, loves to make new games from scratch or do ports of things.

He wanted to do a port of Karateka for modern consoles, but do it in a way that really tries to understand why so many Karateka ports were so bad, and how to make one that's actually good. That's the fourth playable version. It's still the same sprites, but, with modern lighting and stuff like that. And also some cut content because Jordan [originally] wanted to put in a fight against a leopard, or a panther.

And they ended up having to cut that for time. But we've built an all-new challenge in there, where it's a Prince of Persia -style fight against this leopard.

What were the other challenges in kind of building this whole massive sprawling project?

Certain types of people look at [a remaster] and go, “Well, that's just emulation.” An emulator is the tool that you use to get something running on a new platform. It is the tool in the same way that if you have The Godfather on a film strip and you want to watch it on a Blu-ray player, you have an underlying technological framework that interprets that data and gets it up on your screen in a digital way.

An emulator is the same. But on the other hand, if we're talking about a vintage computer game and you're moving it to a console, it's a very different thing. How do you map all the buttons—if the player had all of these [computer] these keys to map? How do you deal with things like how it would display on a monitor versus how it displays on your display. Because when you look at a game on an Apple II monitor, you're not just seeing raw pixels. You're seeing raw pixels as interpreted through a CRT. And the CRT is the artist's original intent. So you want to try to get it looking as close to that.

One minor example is: for the ground [graphics in Karateka] on the Apple II, Jordan put in alternating rows of blue and orange pixels. The ground was not supposed to look like stripy blue and orange. It was supposed to look gray, because if you do the alternating rows of those pixels and then put that out to an Apple II color monitor, it doesn't have the resolution to show the division between those. And they all blend together into a nice gray, which is not a color that the Apple II can actually produce natively. So we went in and looked for that texture and replaced it with the proper gray color. So, you can see raw pixel output, or you can choose things that will get it closer to what the player at the time would've experienced.

What other special features are in there?

We have the film that Jordan shot of his father running around in his wife's karate outfit. And using the film and the tracing paper that he then used to get the outlines of the characters off the film frames, we're able to figure out exactly which frames of film were used. So, there's a rotoscope theater mode where you can go in and you can view the film frames, and then like Photoshop, you can overlay the tracing paper, and then you can look at like the rough Apple II sprites. Then you can look at the final, paint it over sprites and play with the opacity and start and stop the animation, speed up the animation. You can really understand how the rotoscope process worked.

Wherever we can, we even have director’s commentary on the Apple II version. There's a watch mode, which basically you don't even have to play the game if you just want to see what it's like to play through Karateka. And you can jump in at any time. So, you can use it as a chapter select if you want to jump to the final boss fight. But then for the Apple II version, we've got Jordan and his father riffing over what they're seeing on screen and bringing up even more development stories that weren't covered anywhere else. So you get to go wherever you want, but no matter where you are, we're not just putting you into pure gameplay. We're trying to build in the making of, and the behind the scenes and the context in every way that we can.

We're just like packing this one full of the kitchen sink.

Today’s gem: Did you know a banana is a berry? And despite its name, a strawberry is not?

Botanically speaking, a berry is a fruit that has seeds and, well, it’s complicated and full of science. Other berries, apparently: eggplants, tomatoes, and avocados.

Now I’m hungry again.

—Tim Leong, Eric Alt, Marques Edge, Andrew Nusca

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Fast fingers. A man broke the world record for perfectly playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” at 300% speed in Guitar Hero. Don’t blink but we just tipped our hat to you—at 300% speed.

Nerfed: Cat fights. A leopard with questionable judgement tried to hunt a troop of baboons, who turned the tables and beat up the big cat. Talk about beast mode.

Buffed: My TV queue. The first trailer for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is out. It’s the anime adaptation of the movie that was based on the comic that was inspired by video games. Game on.

Nerfed: Fishy stories. A New Jersey town lost power after a bird dropped a fish(!) on top of a transformer, causing an outage. Fish fry, anyone?

Buffed: Breakfast. Eggo, the Kellogg Co. waffle brand, and Sugarlands Distilling are releasing a brunch-flavored liqueur that tastes like waffles, syrup, butter, and a hint of bacon. “Waffle” is our new favorite verb you can drink. —TL

Speed Run: Worlds collide with WWE star Zelina Vega

Two-minute talks with today’s movers and shakers.

Loud, brash, and passionate are all words that describes WWE superstar Zelina Vega.

That intensity applies to when she’s in the ring…or on the gaming sticks.

Contributing writer Reggie Wade sits down with Vega to chat about her undying love for her hometown, lifelong passion for gaming and cosplay, and how she balances it all.

Step into the ring.

Extractor: Why vinyl still rocks

Investigations of interest.

Although streaming has made movies more accessible to more people, there are still those who treasure their DVDs. You can download novels instantly on your eBook, but some people just like the feel of a book in their hands. And digital music playlists are great, but sometimes you just want to indulge in the snap, crackle, and pop of an old record.

Contributing writer Christine Champagne spoke with three vinyl collectors who came to their love of records in very different ways, and build their collections for very different reasons.

Listen in.

Shameless plug: The Hearthstone summer championship is on deck

Buckle up, Hearthstone’s Masters Tour Summer Championship is here.

Sixteen of the world’s best and brightest will compete this weekend for $50,000. Things kick off on Sat. Aug. 19 at 9 a.m. PDT (6 p.m. CEST).

Players at home can get in on the action, too—earn up to two Titans packs while watching on Twitch. (You can watch on YouTube, too.)

Pop quiz, hot shot!

Put your gaming knowledge to the test.

The answer will be in Monday’s edition of The Edit.

Wormhole

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The Edit is a thrice-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of gaming and life. Our love letter to millions of gamers around the globe, it is written and published by the Activision Blizzard King global editorial team.

You don’t have to buy records these days. And by records, we mean those spinning vinyl disks with songs embedded in them that for decades were the only way to experience your choice of music before 8-track tapes begat cassette tapes that begat CDs that begat the digital age we currently find ourselves living in.

And let’s be honest about where we are today in our listening journey: It’s frankly hard to beat the ease of downloading albums or individual songs from streaming services and instantaneously playing them on our phones, our computers, our home audio systems, or those tiny but powerful little speakers that we can so easily tote to the park, the beach, the backyard barbecue, anywhere we might want to blast tunes.

Record collectors certainly can’t deny the convenience of digital music, and those who aren’t absolute purists do, in fact, take advantage of streaming. But, we have to ask: Is something lost when there isn’t a physical manifestation of music?

Record collectors Alex Kaplan, James Humphrey, and Simon Workman all swear there’s nothing quite like vinyl. And after hearing them talk about the thrill of discovering a rare recording in the bins at a record shop, or what it is like to listen to music as it is played on a record player (those pops and crackles reminding you that you need to dust those disks!) you just might be inspired to start a record collection of your own.

Alex Kaplan

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Size of record collection: about 400 records

IG: @vinylgoneviral

How did you get into record collecting?

I started in 2016 when I was in grad school. I was living in Orlando and that was the first time I ever set foot in a record store. I didn’t even own a record player at the time. I am a very big fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and one of my friends actually sent me a 45, a 7-inch vinyl record from the I’m With You Sessions. There are nine 45s, and they each have a design on them. So, when you put them together, they form a piece of art. I sought to find the other ones to collect them just to maybe hang on my wall or something. I saw that there was a record store 15 minutes away, and I was like, “Let me just go look for this,” not really with the intention of starting a record collection. I felt like a little kid in a candy shop. I actually started buying records before I even owned a turntable. Several months later, I ended up buying a turntable, and the rest is history.

What kind of records do you collect?

I have a lot of different genres but primarily alternative rock, classic rock. Early 2000s and nineties music are my favorites because I grew up in the nineties and early 2000s. That music is nostalgic for me. But I have albums from the sixties to albums that were released last month.

Tell me about a recent find.

On Record Store Day two years ago at my local shop I stumbled upon a copy of Tracy Chapman’s [self-titled] album, and that was something I had been looking for for a really long time.

What is the experience of listening to vinyl like for you?

With a record, you’re choosing which album you’re going to listen to, opening it up, putting it on your turntable, flipping the record from side A to side B. You’re actually sitting there listening to the songs on the album in the order the artist intended versus if I’m streaming, maybe I’ll just listen to a random playlist on shuffle. It’s not as intentional and meaningful.

What about the sound quality? Is vinyl better?

With streaming, the music is more compressed. When you have it on vinyl, you can really hear the details of the instrumentation, depending on the level of your audio system. That increases with the quality of the audio system you have. But I just like vinyl for the experience. Every [used] record has a past. If you’re in a record store, and you’re crate digging, you don’t know who owned the record prior to you, what their story was, what brought it there. I like that element of it, and then I like the fact that it’s generational. My parents passed their records on to me, and I hope to pass mine on to my children one day.

Do you have a lot of friends who collect records?

I have a few friends that do but not to the extent that I do. They’re more casually into it. But through Instagram and online, I’ve actually made a lot of friends that collect even more than I do. I’ve had the chance to meet up with a few of them in person. Last year, we actually went to Boston to see the Chili Peppers at Fenway Park, and we ended up going with about four or five people that I had met through Instagram that were also vinyl collectors. So, that was really cool.

James Humphrey

Burlington, Iowa

Size of record collection: “a few thousand”

IG: @midwest_record_collector

Why do you describe yourself as the George Costanza of record collecting in your Instagram bio?

First off, I love Seinfeld, and George is just who he is. He is just sort of borderline whatever, and I feel like some of the lengths that I’ve gone to to acquire records has been sort of… there’s no pride, I guess. Recently, I pretended I was playing basketball so I could bump into somebody that I knew had a large record collection. [laughs]

What kind of records to do you collect?

I love all music. But, for me, record collecting in general can get out of hand real quick. You can have a collection that could collapse a house. I don’t want my collection to be my house. That’s why I go more for jazz. It narrows everything down, it’s a lot harder to find, and it keeps my collection from getting out of control.

What is special about the experience of purchasing records?

Records can represent milestones. You remember where you bought it, or why you bought it. It’s an adventure. It connects you with people. The record collecting thing, it’s more than just records on a shelf. It’s like, ‘How did they get there?’

Do you shop for records online as well as in person at record stores and thrift shops and other places?

I use eBay—eBay’s always been a great place to look. The George Costanza in me says, “James, don’t tell everybody everything. There might be avenues they don’t know!” [laughs] But you can buy and sell records on almost any platform, even on Instagram. And, obviously, I shop locally. A couple of days ago, I found a couple of decent records at the thrift store in town. It’s hard to find jazz locally, but if you’re in it to find stuff and experience music, you’re going to have some wasted trips [where you don’t find any records].

What’s it like when you do find a record you’ve been searching for in a store?

It’s sort of like dopamine. It’s like, “Oh my God, this is amazing!” I would say for every thousand records you dig through, maybe 20 of them are good, and then maybe two of three of them would be a good jazz record.

Tell me about a recent find.

This John Jenkins record. It’s got Clifford Jordan and Bobby Timmons [playing on it], and I paid $30 for this record. It can go for upwards of $1,000. I knew it was pretty special. I was back home in North Carolina, and I was with my buddy. He was dropping me off at the airport, and we stopped at this thrift store where he sells stuff. So, I go in there, and we’re getting ready to walk out, and I see a little stack of records behind the counter. I was like, “Hey, are those for sale?” They’re like, “Oh yeah.” And I’m flipping through, and that one’s in there. The fact that it is worth a lot doesn’t matter to me. I had a few friends that said, you should sell that. But that’s not what it is for me. It’s a connection kind of thing. That record, it’s rare.

Simon Workman

Dayton, Ohio

Size of record collection: about 2,000 records

IG: @gemcityrecordcollector

What kind of records do you collect?

I like a lot of psychedelic stuff, progressive rock, anything in the rock vein I’m usually interested in. I’ve always liked soul, R&B and funk, too. I buy a lot of that still. I’d like to think I have pretty wide-ranging taste.

Do you limit your record purchases because of storage considerations, or do you buy whatever you want?

I’m kind of out of storage right now. [laughs] I try to thin out when I can. I went and actually just sold a box of stuff maybe a month or two ago. But yeah, it is hard. I’m lucky enough that we live in a decent-sized house, and I have my own music room. But it’s not super big. So, I try to limit myself as much as I can. But it is hard to resist sometimes when you come across a good deal or a record that you’ve been trying to find forever. I’m also a big fan of box sets. I have a lot of those, and those take up even more space.

Tell me about a recent find.

I’m a big fan of the band Guided by Voices. A lot of their early stuff is really hard to find. Before they got discovered, they put out a few albums that all go for pretty good money. I found one of those. It is a funny story. I was at our local record shop here in Dayton, and there was a guy standing in front of me trying to sell some stuff. He had a big stack of stuff on the counter, and they were going through it, and I saw this Guided by Voices record in there, and I was like, “Ooh, that’s one I’ve been looking for.” They told him, “We’ll give you this much for it,” and he was like, “I think I’ll hold onto that one. I was wanting to get a little bit more for that one.” I leaned over and I’m like, “How much did you want for that one?” He gave me a number that was extremely reasonable and only a few bucks more than what they had offered him. So I was like, “OK, I’ll buy that from you right now!”

What do you love about vinyl?

The sound quality is part of it, but it’s not as big a part of it for me. For me, it’s two main things: One is, since a lot of the music that I listen to is older, I like to try to have an original copy of something when I can. When it originally came out, that’s the record that someone bought in 1967 or whatever. So that’s part of it, just to have that little piece of history. The other part of it is the intentionality of it. You can’t just put a record on in the background with the push of a button. You have to find the record, pull it out, put it on the turntable, put the needle down. Whenever I put a record on, I’m putting it on to listen to it, not just to have it on in the background.

Zelina Vega contains multitudes.

The native New Yorker dominates in the ring as a WWE superstar, the reigning queen of the Latino World Order (LWO), a WWE tag-team champion, and “Queens Crown” tournament winner.

Vega also dominates on the sticks. Gaming and cosplay are lifelong passions. This year, Vega got the opportunity of a gaming lifetime when she was asked to join the commentary cast of Street Fighter 6. She took it a step further at the 2023 Royal Rumble, where she cosplayed as Juri Han. 

It comes as no surprise that gaming was a fixture of Vega’s home growing up. Her dad played an original Game Boy and her mom mashed buttons, too. 

“I got into it really young. My mom played Mortal Kombat. I remember seeing her play that as a kid,” Vega says. “I was like, okay, that is the coolest thing ever. She was like, ‘Okay, yeah, you can play, just don’t tell your dad.’ And then obviously my dad was already playing Tekken with me.”

So it was “one of the craziest things” to participate in the WWE x Street Fighter 6 collab as an adult.

“They’ve never done that before,” she says. “So, it was such a cool thing to be the first person to do that. To see the VR [virtual reality] of the Street Fighter logo, I never knew they did anything like that.”

Vega relishes upending assumptions about how she wrestles—and games.

“We’re pretty savage, bro,” she exclaims. “I think that’s such a funny thing. People will look at me and say, ‘Oh my God, she’s so small, but her personality is like 7 feet 8 [inches].’ But I feel like it’s anybody who’s from New York—it’s just how we are … we will stop at nothing until we make it.”

She adds: “When I was on the side of the Barclay Center [in Brooklyn, N.Y.], I was like, ‘Damn, I really made it.’”

When I asked her to name the best gamer in the WWE locker room, Vega gave the nod to a member of The New Day—but not the member you might think.

“I hate to say it, but it’s Kofi. He’s beaten me so many times [in games], and I try to be calm because there’s a camera there, but inside I’m like, stewing.”

Like a true gamer, Vega never leaves the house unarmed. She always carries a Nintendo Switch with her on the road. She’d bring the consoles, too, but fellow WWE superstar Xavier Woods—who’s also a member of The New Day and host of UpUpDownDown—has her covered. 

“So I’m just like, okay, we’re good, what are you feeling today? Tekken? Alright, let’s go,” she says.

The sheer awesomeness of her job is not lost on Vega.

“It’s such a cool thing. Like, not only do we get to do what we love and be a part of WWE and get to entertain our fans in that capacity, but we also get to just be little kids and just play games and play superheroes,” she says. “It’s like we’re playing the superheroes backstage, and literally playing with them in the video games, and then we get to be that out in the ring. It’s pretty cool.”

Wrestling tops the priority list for Vega, but don’t expect her to hang up her controller anytime soon. If anything, she’ll keep exploring the intersection of the two. The WWE superstar has some plans on the horizon, forming a tag team, albeit not in the ring with fellow superstar Dakota Kai. 

“Me and Dakota Kai are trying to do a Twitch podcast kind of thing. It’s where she and I can kind of just get in there and talk about games and start gaming with each other and some of the fans,” she says. “Have some guests on there to talk about their experiences with games too. Just two nerdy girls nerding out.” 

To catch Vega’s passion and intensity on the sticks, tune in to her Twitch stream at theatrinidad. To catch her in the ring, tune in to WWE SmackDown Friday nights at 8 p.m. on Fox.

You never know—she might even cosplay as your favorite character.

More importantly, it created “Hump Day,” and gave Wednesday a personality.

During the pandemic, however, more and more companies began toying with the idea of moving to a four-day work week, and studies showed it would have positive impact.

But what would become of Hump Day? Would it be just Tuesday afternoon, like a “Hump Happy Hour”? Should we declare Wednesday a globally accepted day off in the middle of a Monday/Tuesday-Thursday/Friday work schedule, thereby enshrining Hump Day as an official holiday?

What do you think? What else do you have to really think about on a Wednesday anyway?

—Eric Alt, Andrew Nusca, Tim Leong, Marques Edge

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Climate activism. A group of young Montana residents recently took their state to court for allegedly violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by promoting fossil fuel use—and a judge just ruled in their favor. The future is bright…

Nerfed: Feel good movies. Remember the warm and fuzzies you got from the 2009 Sandra Bullock movie The Blind Side? Well, NFL star Michael Oher, whose life story was used as the basis for the film, claims it was all a lie. You might say that news…caught people by surprise.

Buffed: Movie nerd scientists. Researchers in Peru discovered a new species of snake, and named it after Harrison Ford. We’re sure he was super psyched.

Nerfed: Netflix and chill. Subscribers in Canada and the U.K. will be the first to test out Netflix’s new video game-streaming options. As if you didn’t already waste entire evenings scrolling indecisively through the menu trying to make a choice…

Buffed: In-game diversity. FIFA 23 just updated and added Moroccan player Nouhaila Benzina’s hijab to her in-game character model, marking the first time the traditional headwear has been included in the game. Huzzah! —EA

Burning Questions: Are video games going extinct?

Asked and answered.

Video games have always been about moving forward. More powerful computers and consoles. More innovative gameplay. Updates, retools, and revamps. It’s what makes the industry so exciting, and the release of new titles so highly anticipated.

While we can (and should) appreciate this drive at the heart of video games, it’s also important to make sure we don’t lose our collective history in the process. Contributing writer Danny Gallagher takes a look at the challenges facing the archiving and preservation of old games.

Insert coin.

Extractor: Welcome to America, Wrexham!

Investigations of interest.

Thanks to the popularity of their FX docuseries Welcome to Wrexham (and co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney), the Wrexham AFC squad toured the U.S. with unprecedented fanfare.

The lower tier soccer club joined giants Manchester United and Chelsea FC playing four matches across American soil in front of humongous crowds.

Contributing writer Bernie Wilson spoke with players and fans to get a behind the scenes look on what why this underdog squad has become such a global sensation.

Join us on the pitch.

Wayback Wednesday

For a brief moment between the rise of the internet and the proliferation of user-generated video platforms like YouTube and Twitch, there was Attack of the Show!

All you have to do is drop the words “DVDuesday,” “Gems of the Internet,” or “Gadget Pr0n” and gamers of a certain age will nod knowingly.

Originally launched in 2005, AOTS was a gamer-centric show that defied characterization—it featured news, game reviews, gear recommendations, celebrity interviews, comedy skits, field reports, and even musical guests. It was a way for gamers and other citizens of the early internet to connect over content made for them by people who were them. Original host Kevin Pereira was a former G4TV.com intern barely in his 20s, and he would end up being the show’s anchor amid an evolving host lineup that would include the likes of future Digg founder Kevin Rose and actress Olivia Munn.

Full disclosure: I was hired as the show’s first writer as it was transitioning from The Screen Savers (an unscripted call-in tech help show) to the more involved (and scripted) Attack of the Show!—a name that was the result of internal crowd-sourcing. Producer Mike Shaw won the naming rights after penning a manifesto passionately defending his choice, and it was the right way to go. My suggestions, on the other hand, were likely mostly bad puns best lost to history.

Alongside X-Play, Attack of the Show! would be the face of the G4 Network, and would be a cable TV haven for the game-obsessed for the first decade of the 2000s. If you were there, you get it. —EA

Wormhole

Click the following image and…well, we don’t want to ruin the surprise.

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The Edit is a thrice-weekly newsletter exploring the intersection of gaming and life. Our love letter to millions of gamers around the globe, it is written and published by the Activision Blizzard King global editorial team.

America’s favorite Welsh soccer club ventured to the U.S. this past summer.

Wrexham AFC—the team co-owned by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, and made popular by the FX docuseries Welcome to Wrexham—played four matches on American soil this past month.

The tour started in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, headed west to Los Angeles and San Diego, and then ended on a stormy Philadelphia night less than two weeks before Wrexham began regular season play, but the soccer was almost secondary.

The once-downtrodden soccer club has become a global sensation and American fans were excited to catch a glimpse of them in the flesh.

They were introduced to star striker “Super” Paul Mullin, who is Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s favorite player; manager Phil Parkinson, whose halftime speeches laced with f-bombs are hilariously dissected in the series; and Wayne Jones, the real-life owner of The Turf pub in Wrexham that’s attached to the Racecourse Grounds (the world’s oldest international soccer stadium), who greeted fans next to a popup replica of the pub, where they stood in a long line to buy $18 gin drinks.

If they were lucky, they might have run into McElhenney, who bought Wrexham along with fellow star Reynolds for $2.5 million at the height of the pandemic.

McElhenney became famous via the sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and was overjoyed at the reception his club received in the City of Brotherly Love.

The welcome Wrexham received during the entire tour was hardly surprising. According to Parrot Analytics, audience demand for Welcome to Wrexham is eight times the demand of the average TV series in the United States and has higher demand than 99% of all documentary titles in the U.S.

Simon Meyer and his son, Cooper, both fans of the docuseries, traveled nearly 500 miles from the San Francisco Bay Area to San Diego, decked out in their Wrexham T-shirts and joined the record crowd of nearly 35,000 at Snapdragon Stadium.

Simon Meyer called the series “gigantic” and added, “What an investment, first of all, and then to watch them succeed as much as they have, it just makes your hair stand up. What a great series and what a great accomplishment for the two owners.”

Cooper Meyer added: “I’m just glad that they’re starting to blow up and I hope they succeed and go higher up in the leagues.”

Mullin, who was initially not a fan of participating in the program shared: “The day I got told they were doing a documentary; my first thought was: ‘That might be a waste of time. Who’s going to be interested in Wrexham?’”

But to his dismay, Mullin found out how popular they were just two hours after arriving at their first U.S. stop in North Carolina, where Wrexham faced off against powerhouse Chelsea in front of more than 50,000 fans.

“I was walking to get a drink from a shop and a car window goes down and they yell it’s: ‘Super Paul Mullin!’ That was the moment, ‘Ah, maybe what Rob and Ryan and everyone else has been telling us is true,'" Mullin said. “That’s probably the one that will stick with me and that was the first moment I thought, ‘Maybe they do know who we are around here then.'"

Wrexham supporters who pack Racecourse Ground love to serenade their team’s best player with the song “Super Paul Mullin” to the tune of Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart.”

“It’s crazy, right?” Jones said about the impact of the docuseries. “[Wrexham] is a wonderful town, it’s a wonderful place, the people are incredible. The world is just getting to see what we’ve always known as locals. The world just seems to have taken to it. Long may it continue.”

Goalkeeper Ben Foster called the reception in America “mind-blowing."

He added, “It’s amazing to think that we’re making so many people happy. They would never have expected us to come out to America and watch Wrexham play in the games that we’re playing, with the crowds that we’re getting. So, for me, for them to be fulfilled with that, brings immense joy.”

Wrexham even made an impression with long-time Manchester United fans like Greg Hill of San Diego, who was “shocked” there were so many Wrexham fans at the match.

“Great show,” he said. “I think it brings it more to America. You obviously have a bunch of people here that had never heard of Wrexham before that TV show. The fact they have so many fans here is because of the show.”

Season 2 of Welcome to Wrexham premieres on Sept. 12. Season 1 is now available on Hulu.

Games may be easier to get than ever thanks to digital downloads and online resellers, but they are aging just like any other retro collectible. 

“The older [a game] gets,” says collector and National Videogame Museum founder John Hardie, “the less that are available.” 

Video games are becoming the new baseball cards, where rare copies of original NES cartridges and obscure accessories like the SNES Super Scope can go for thousands of dollars…if they’re still in their pristine, original box. However, there’s an even bigger price to pay when it comes to preserving them the way we preserve books, music, and movies. 

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) conducted an eye-opening study revealing 87% of classic games not in regular release in their original format are “considered critically endangered.” 

“Historical video game availability is dire,” according to a survey included in the study written by VGHF library director Phil Salvador. 

The survey includes games originally released before 2010, and some of the numbers of surviving games for systems and classic computers reach into single digits. Just over 4% of titles for the Commodore 64 system are available. Even some of the most popular retro consoles like the family of Nintendo Game Boy systems have an availability rate of approximately 5%. 

“This is just par for the course,” says Brett Weiss, the lead video game cataloguer for Heritage Auctions and the author of books like The NES Omnibus and The SNES Omnibus. “Pop culture collectibles are huge right now and people aren’t just buying them for nostalgia. People are buying them for investments. When you’ve got people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s buying these old NES, SNES, and even Gamecube games, it’s just more expensive now.” 

Arcade games can be a bigger challenge because of the size and upkeep required to keep them running. Demand is up thanks to the rise of bar arcades and retro arcades, but the older machines can be harder to maintain as the technology phases out necessary parts.

“There are days when you turn the machine on and you wonder what’s gonna come up,” Hardie says. “I always say if you look at them wrong they’ll go bad.” 

One solution for improving preservation could be cataloging games in libraries along with books, movies, and other media, but copyright laws and legal opposition have created roadblocks for these efforts.

“Libraries don’t need physical copies necessarily but if they could have access to digital libraries, it would be great but the ESA [Entertainment Software Association] makes that difficult,” Weiss says. The VGHF report cites several instances where the ESA has argued that there really isn’t such a thing as an “old game” as any IP can be revived and revamped at any time.

More active digital archiving would do a lot to preserve game history, particularly—as Hardie points out—because some of the early cartridge-based consoles don’t age out as readily as old coin-op cabinets. They have less moving parts and are more durable and easier to maintain. In tandem with robust archiving, a lot of old games and systems could survive.

“Our museum’s been open for seven years and some systems like the Nintendo 64, people are still playing it and that system’s going strong,” Hardie says.

Game preservation groups like the NVGM and VHGF are doing what they can to keep classic games from disappearing over time. Hardie believes it’s important because chronicling where the industry and medium has been can determine where it goes from here. 

“Let’s be honest, it’s all about money,” Hardie says. “It’s all about the fear that somebody playing an old game is gonna detract the sales from playing a new games. If anything, it’s going to rekindle the nostalgia that person had.”