After working for several years as a freelance writer covering a wide variety of topics, in 2017, I decided to write about what I really love: video games and pop culture.
Since then, I’ve written dozens of reviews, opinion pieces, lists, and features on gaming and culture. I’ve also guested on a variety of podcasts in similar areas of world-shaking expertise.
My passion for games and pop leans towards the creative, the weird, the independent, and the Nintendo – and if and when I have my druthers, that’s what I like best to write about.
What follows are a few highlights of my writing from the last three years.
To see more, click through and find the majority of my writing featured on the delightful independent gaming and culture web site, Goomba Stomp, or on my slightly-older Medium page.
(Or click here to learn about my book, Retro Games.)
Sadly in 2023, Goomba Stomp closed down, and I’m currently looking for a new home for this work. Hit me up!
A Four-Year Old’s Take on Mario Kart 8
for Goomba Stomp, August 2023
Excerpt:
Joe likes to ride in style as the Splat Buggy set up with Leaf Wheels and a Super Glider, and while he typically mains Lemmy, he also loves suiting up his Mii-rider with a specialty Pac-Man helmet, as unlocked by the Pac-Man Amiibo his Uncle gave him. He has several favorite tracks, a standout among them Ninja Hideaway from the last batch of DLC, which he wisely notes he loves because he has, “always wanted to become a ninja.” So have we, Joe.
Photo from the author’s Animal Crossing Island
Animal Crossing New Horizons: The 1-Year Review
Excerpt:
In 2001, 21-year-old Katsuya Eguchi moved from the Chiba Prefecture to Nintendo’s Kyoto office. He missed his family, and that feeling inspired a game. Twenty years later, amid a worldwide crisis, the universal longing for human-to-human connection was everywhere, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons arrived at that moment to meet it.
Journey Is Art
for Goomba Stomp, January 2020
Excerpt:
Journey’s great achievement is the sum of its aesthetics and philosophy. Every element builds towards something greater, ineffable, even. What it truly achieves is a sense of wonder and connection. Chen’s vision was made real, the audience feels something.
Ape Violence is fun!
Ape Out Is Jazz
for Goomba Stomp, March 8, 2019
Excerpt:
Ape Out is a rhythmic pulse of thrust-push-kill fun. Ape Out is the kick drum rolling right into to the snare and a crash just as you crush that guard a hair before he pulls the trigger. Ape Out is blood trailing behind you when you can’t take another shot and crossing through the green door of freedom and into the jungle beyond at the last moment.
Ape Out is so much fun.
Ape Out is very beautiful.
Ape Out is jazz.
“Blaaaathers! Where are youuuuu?!?”
Hyrule Crossing
for Switch Weekly, March 24, 2017
Excerpt:
I cracked the code for how I can make the most out of the wonders of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I play it like it’s Animal Crossing. With monsters.
In my own past (as opposed to Link’s), I’ve approached most open world games with optimism, only to have my dreams of glorious and carefree meandering crushed by ennui and button-mashing overload. Skyrim left me cold and reading disturbingly-well-put-together in-game novels. Grand Theft Auto left me feeling dirty and detached from the main quests (with the vague desire to commit atrocities in real life). In Assassin’s Creed, I just wanted to climb stuff. The Open World Disappointment List [OWDL] goes on, like an endless array of key-finding sidequests.
Stephen King Taught Me To Think
For Goomba Stomp, September 2019
Excerpt:
Among my kin, books were a crucible, a bridge to cross into young adulthood before getting down with rock music, drugs, and other illicit behaviors. First came the elves, then came the horror. King was filed just below the less murky rivers of Tolkien’s mines and mythril, both authors left around and therefore tacitly handed down by our father, who mostly worked, but sometimes still read. Everything he finished got stationed next to the can for us to swallow and digest amongst ourselves.
One Big Bad to rule them all…
Buffy’s Best Big Bad
Excerpt:
Who is the greatest Big Bad in Joss Whedon’s seven season television opus, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” A question that has plagued the sages. For ages.
This week and month and year, stake-shaped cakes will be eaten across the globe as the Land of the Internet celebrates Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s 20th Anniversary. In seven seasons a vast array of monstrosities, both physical and emotional, crossed paths and did battle with Buffy and her Scooby Gang. But each season featured one major threat, colloquially known as THE BIG BAD.