By now you’ve probably been buried under “Best of 2025” lists. I’ve always hated those lists. You cannot crown anything “best” when the volume of output is this insane. And this year the firehose was worse than ever. Rough scale of what dropped in 2025: • 4 million books • 3 million music albums • 1.3 million apps • 20,000 Steam games • 12,000 movies AI slop is part of the spike, but most of this comes from humans taking advantage of a world with fewer gatekeepers and less friction. In the 80s, releasing an album meant studio fees and paying for vinyl or CD runs. Today you record in your bedroom and push it to Spotify. That’s the point. No one has read every book, heard every album, played every game, or seen every movie. The dataset is too large for any person, critic, or newsroom. So why is legacy media still pumping out “Best of” lists? To preserve the fiction that they’re still the gatekeepers. It works only for people who still believe in their taste. The illusion weakens every year. And I say this as someone who tracks gaming obsessively. I follow this industry closer than most people follow their own blood pressure. Even then, I’d never pretend to know the single best game of 2025. There’s always something excellent I missed. People should stop hunting for “the best” and let themselves be surprised. Tastemakers can point you to a few things. But finding something on your own and realizing it’s your new favourite? That hits harder than any list ever will.

I had never heard of Alien Soldier on the SEGA Genesis. There is a reason. In North America, it was locked to the SEGA Channel. That was an online service in an era when most people did not even have dial-up. If you did not subscribe, the game effectively did not exist. Japan and Europe got physical cartridges. North America did not. I finally bought a legal copy on Steam in 2016. Within minutes, it felt familiar. The controls, the pacing, the combat rhythm. It plays almost exactly like Gunstar Heroes. That is because both were made by Treasure. This is what they did best on the Genesis. The difference is difficulty. Alien Soldier is far harsher. Even on easy, it is punishing. It also clearly wants more buttons while pretending the 3-button controller is enough. Still, it is a strong game. The title is painfully generic. The design is not. If you like Gunstar Heroes and want something meaner, this is worth your time.

Just realized that back in June 2016 I bought 50+ SEGA Genesis classics on Steam. SEGA even sold an official emulator front end for years before quietly delisting it last year. A lot of these games I had never actually played. Which brings me to Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle. When the Genesis was first announced, this was one I was excited for. Alex Kidd was SEGA’s original mascot. Pre-Sonic. Their Mario counterpunch. I had played every Alex Kidd game on the Master System. So a 16-bit Alex Kidd felt inevitable. It just never happened for me. The Genesis library was stacked. Altered Beast looked unreal at the time. Truxton was melting faces. Alex Kidd got pushed to the back burner, helped along by screenshots that looked… underwhelming. I finally played it today. It’s fine. Not a Mario killer. Not even close. Enchanted Castle cannot touch Super Mario Bros. 3. That comparison ends quickly. It’s serviceable, but clearly weaker than Miracle World and Shinobi World. Still much better than High-Tech World, which remains irredeemable. What really hurts is how little this game shows off the Genesis. The visuals are muted. The controls are floaty. Deaths feel cheap. It never feels confident in its own hardware. Which is unfortunate, because this was Alex Kidd’s one and only shot on the Genesis. And that was that.

Found out that the IP for RiME sold for ~€15,000. Which is just gob-smacking considering the game sells for C$40 on Steam, was a critical success, and well loved by gamers. And it is good. I put a lot of hours into RiME. So did my kid. Now I know I could have owned the rights to it for the price of a used car.