Memory is one of the most powerful forces in an adult’s life.

It molds your future, bends your perception of the world, and can lead you to places from which you’ll never be able to turn back. It’s tempting to live in the past. Strong memories can make you look to the future with disdain if you let it run loose through your mind. However, if you are capable of looking at your past with detachment and frank curiosity, it can have the opposite effect by making you appreciate the present and hope for a better future, with the transformative side effect of leading you to create art based on what you learned that can be enjoyed by others.

That is Paul McCartney’s superpower. He has proved it time and time again throughout his career, and this talent to shape memory into music is evident once again in his newest album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane.

Produced and co-written by Andrew Watt, the album was initially framed as an elegy to his past in Liverpool, a collage of his most cherished memories of youth. But don’t let this apparent coat of “concept album” fool you. The main theme could be Paul’s nostalgia for his early days in his hometown (even the album’s title comes from a shady neighborhood where he was mugged when he was a boy), but there are songs, arrangements, and choices here that reflect everything that came after it.

There are obvious approaches to the main theme. The singles Days We Left Behind and Home to Us make listeners think that this whole album would be purely focused on reflecting on Paul’s childhood, and tracks like Down South and Salesman Saint reinforce this. But those are spaced between more recent reflections on his adulthood, like the touching Ripples in a Pond, dedicated to his wife Nancy, and Lost Horizon, a song he wrote back in 2000.

In fact, this song in particular makes me think that this album paints a very vivid portrait of Paul McCartney as a whole, even his imperfections. He is my favorite musician of all time, and Wings will probably be my number one band until the day I die, but even I can admit that the man has his flaws, and the biggest one is how he can misjudge the quality of the material he has created. For those who don’t know, Paul is extremely prolific. He writes a lot of music, so much so that most of it gets relegated to the vault or bootlegs. As a result, he has a lot of options when the time comes to record a new album, but some of his choices can be baffling sometimes. Some of his best tracks, like Beautiful Night and the never-released Waterspout, get lost in the archives and only come to light later, when someone points out to him what a mistake it was to keep them unreleased. Thankfully, a sound engineer reminded McCartney about Lost Horizon, and this song was revived for Dungeon Lane — which makes me imagine an alternative universe where this song had become part of 2001’s Driving Rain.

That being said, you could be fooled into thinking that the aforementioned tracks are indicative of a calm, almost introspective album. When I heard Days We Left Behind, I thought that this album as a whole would be purely on the contemplative side, with his collaboration with Ringo Starr in Home to Us being the hardest we would hear Macca rock — this, despite being a great and catchy song, is more pop-rock than a pure rocker. But that illusion is crushed right in the opener, As You Lie There. The song is based on an old crush of his, Jasmine, and starts with spoken word, showing McCartney’s crooner side we all know and love. But as soon as we start to feel comfortable, the distorted guitar riff attacks and Paul gives us the best version of his rocker vocals he can still do.

This track establishes the ethos of this whole album: Paul McCartney is still with us, better than ever, and he will use all his talent and skills to surprise and amaze the listener with everything he knows. And I must say, this 83-year-old geezer succeeds.

That being said, if I try to classify them, there are two types of tracks on this album: trips down memory lane where McCartney’s youth in Liverpool is in evidence, and snippets of memories from his adult life, sugarcoated with some of his strongest musical influences. The result is an album that is perhaps the best distillation of everything a hardcore Paul McCartney fan has ever loved about his music. And the choices here aren’t limited to arrangements or songs: the track sequencing is superb, something that, in times like the ones we live in, when music is constantly taken out of context, is a blessing we must be thankful for. That’s why we can’t talk about this album in any other way than by exploring each track in order.

As You Lie There as an opener is already a perfect choice. Having it be followed by the more straightforward Lost Horizon and Days We Left Behind makes this last one much more valuable than if heard as a single. Ripples in a Pond is the natural consequence, speeding things up a bit with a delicious ballad that culminates in a sequence of extremely powerful chords at the bridge, preparing us for the amazing Mountain Top, the most Wings-esque song of the whole album, with its harpsichord intro and prog-rock evolutions. I’m not kidding: a song about a girl getting high on mushrooms at a music festival is the kind of cheeky lyric Macca would have come up with back in the 1970s with his old post-Beatles band. Then Down South comes to keep things grounded with more memories of Macca hitchhiking with George Harrison, and We Two ends Side A of the record with a straightforward ballad that has a Mellotron in the background and a strange ending of a tape being rewound. The album is filled with little surprises like that.

Side B begins with my favorite sequence of tracks on the whole album. Come Inside is another great rocker, but it’s in Never Know that I understood how this album could be special: I was completely caught off guard by that outro, punctuated by a recorder and a sequence of chords that reminded me of Mother Nature’s Son. And, since we have a song ending on a D chord, it could only segue into Home to Us. As a music nerd, it was magical when I heard that.

Life Can Be Hard comes next, with more orchestral touches that complement the lyrics in a sweet and poignant way, since those can be described as Macca giving advice to younger generations about how real love must be found in the little things we see day by day. And he doesn’t limit his wisdom to this track, as the next one, First Star of the Night, is a hopeful message for those having hard times in their lives, a theme he also tackled back in his song Too Much Rain. This one was recorded during a time when he was trapped inside during heavy rain in Costa Rica, showing the talent McCartney has for creating music any place, any time.

Salesman Saint follows, a frank collage of memories of his parents and how they had to endure hardship to keep a home together. The track has a few hints of skiffle, the genre adopted by the Quarrymen before the good ol’ rock and roll that made The Beatles famous, but it also has glimpses of other songs of his, most notably Wings’ San Ferry Anne. But when you think there are no more tricks up Macca’s sleeve, one of the most brilliant moments of the album appears as the next and last track, Momma Gets By, serving as a counterpoint by portraying a troublesome marriage that survives hardship despite the husband’s mistakes. Having the theme mirroring the previous track makes a whole lot of sense, and the orchestral arrangements here are simply gorgeous. It give us a hint of hope that, despite all the faults, love can prevail in the end.

When the last song in The Boys of Dungeon Lane ended, I couldn’t have been more pleased with the end result. What was sold as a simple but heartwarming collection of songs about Paul McCartney’s childhood years in Liverpool turned out to be a powerful demonstration of all the talent this man has acquired through more than six decades of making music. I honestly thought that New and Egypt Station would be his last fully accomplished albums, and McCartney III made me think that he would take things slowly from there on out. I never thought I would hear what I consider to be his best album since Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, and as someone who thinks this is one of his best solo albums of all time, this is no small feat.

How will I remember The Boys of Dungeon Lane a few years from now? Will it withstand scrutiny and be classified as one of his best albums? I don’t know. Memories can be very tricky. They can be shaped into new meanings down the lane. But I’ll never forget the things McCartney made me feel when I heard it for the first time. And for being able to bless fans with his immeasurable talent, I couldn’t be more thankful.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most disruptive, daring, and influential anime series of all time. The brainchild of Hideaki Anno, it explores deeply flawed characters in a post-apocalyptic world, each carrying their own wounds, yet all converging toward the same challenge: the human urge to form bonds, even if it hurts us — or, as referenced in one of its most celebrated episodes, confronting what Arthur Schopenhauer called “the hedgehog’s dilemma.”

Years after The End of Evangelion hit theaters, Anno promised to return to his masterpiece, this time to “rebuild” it. The result was Rebuild of Evangelion, a tetralogy that serves partly as sequel, partly as re-imagining. The first two films echo the original series, but subtle divergences gradually reshape everything that follows.

Some fans embraced this approach. Others felt a sacred IP had been “destroyed” by its own creator. Regardless of where you stand, indifference is almost impossible. We can meme Eva all we want, but it inevitably leaves scars on those who embrace it. Following Rebuild’s own iconography, you can (not) treat Evangelion lightly.

The reason Rebuild feels so different from the 1990s original is well known among fans: Hideaki Anno is no longer the same man, thus his new vision on the material is more hopeful. It introduces new visuals and controversial elements like Mari and the WILLE organization, but above all, it exposes a creator who has changed.

And that change inspired me to kill a dream project I’d been carrying since I was thirteen.

Two years and four months. That’s how long it took me to write the 67,800 words of Phantom Symphony, the first book I had the courage to pursue for publication. After sending my first wave of query letters, I began reflecting on how I reached this point after a lifetime of writing mostly unread.

This book wasn’t born in a vacuum, but grew from the ruins of an older one that I started back in 1999. My parents’ divorce shattered the stability of my world, and I needed somewhere to hide. It began as scattered fan fiction and slowly evolved into a full YA sci-fi trilogy drenched in 1990s pop culture, celebrating the music, games, and anime I loved. That project was my dream, the book that would outlive me.

But there was a problem: It was the first. For a long time, it was also the only one.

Which brings the question: what happens when your dream project is your first one? And what if the dream you had as a child no longer speaks to the adult you became?

I’ll be blunt: starting with your dream project is a recipe for paralysis.

It will never feel good enough, so you’ll polish it forever. If you overcome the temptation to chase perfection and release it, it will always be marked as your first, the thing you created before you knew what you were doing. Years later, you’ll look back and taste the bitterness of what it could have been. That’s why you should write other projects first before diving into your dream.

Look at Robert Eggers, for example. He always wanted to make a new take on Nosferatu (2024), but before attempting it, he made The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), and The Northman (2022). Each film expanded his range and sharpened his voice. If he had tried to film Nosferatu too early, it wouldn’t have been the same.

That realization forced me to question my own sacred project. I needed another book, a new canvas that allowed me to experiment without the burden of destiny attached to it, or at least to confirm if I could make something great with what I have. With that idea in mind, I reused fragments of that old world building. This time, though, I let Gustav Mahler guide the structure. I chose an unexpected protagonist. The themes became darker, more interior, more adult…

And slowly, it clicked.

I could never have written this at thirteen. Worse, that old manuscript I dreamed for decades doesn’t speak with me anymore.

If you are one of those who began to follow an artistic path from a very young age—writing, making movies, drawing, composing music—and keep doing it in your adult life, it’s almost certain that you’ll see your old ideas and ability levels from a different perspective. Most artists feel ashamed of what they produced in the past or view it with healthy distance as the first steps to a fruitful mastering of their craft.

Still, there’s a small minority of artists who believe their first interpretation of a story is the purest one and refuse to revisit it with mature eyes. Emerald Fennell is a recent example of that. Her recent adaptation of Wuthering Heights (2026) reflects how she understood the book as a teenager and she deliberately chose not to reread it as an adult.

That choice fascinates me because it makes me question what happens when we freeze our artistic perspective in adolescence. Will you remain loyal to your younger self and realize that imperfect vision, despite its rawness? Or will you see yourself as unevolved, much like Robbie Williams astutely depicted in his biopic Better Man (2024)? No matter the choice, it doesn’t negate that growth requires revision, both of our work and of our worldview.

Which bring us back to Hideaki Anno.

He created Neon Genesis Evangelion while battling depression and doing therapy, and it shows. However, more than a decade later, he was older, healthier, and married. He founded his own studio, built a life beyond the pain that birthed Eva and, above all, he grew. You can’t expect a man who found peace to reproduce that same despair from years ago, thus he rebuilt his masterpiece to reflect who he had become.

That sincerity moved me more than the anime itself. It inspired me to take the “kill your darlings” advice and go a step further.

That is why I “killed” my dream project.

The biggest lie we’re told is that we can be anything. We can’t.

I once believed I could become a million versions of myself. Yet the truth is I’m mediocre at most things. Space-opera YA trilogy writer? That was one of them. But I can become better at being myself if I’m brave enough to let outdated versions die.

Killing that dream didn’t end my writing career. It allowed Phantom Symphony to exist. It isn’t perfect, but it’s honest. It even shaped the next book I’m working on now, one that would be even more truthful with my voice today. And when I look back at it years from now, I won’t see the ghost of who I used to be. I’ll see the beginning of who I chose to become.

I couldn’t be more grateful to Hideaki Anno for teaching me that.

In 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli finished his masterpiece The Prince, a book admired by those seeking success while being reviled by those uncomfortable with its honesty about human nature. Few books have been so misunderstood throughout history, to the point it reduced its author to a mere caricature. Thanks to it, it became an offense for something or someone be considered “Machiavellian.”

What most people didn’t know is that Machiavelli wasn’t trying to corrupt anyone with his treaty about leadership and power. He just wanted to get out of exile and return to Florence’s political life, and he did this by writing about what he observed on powerful people. In the end, he described how real life was, not as people wished it to be. Negating how humanity struggles with the concept of power is what makes The Prince feel devilish.

Five centuries later, The Prince is no longer forbidden. The stigmas surrounding it never left, but its reputation improved. It became studied, quoted, and loved by many around the world for its timeless wisdom. Including by me.

I admire Machiavelli’s attempt to distill power into behaviors that are observable, repeatable, and — most of all — human. That fascination even leaked into the book I’m writing: I named my main villain The Prince as a (kind of ironic) homage.

Revising my manuscript has been a journey on its own. During the process, I had to think a lot about a challenge most debut writers face: finding my author’s voice. It’s hard to define what it is, but it’s easy to recognize. Readers feel it immediately, as literary agents do too.

And if there’s one place where author’s voice matters more than format, strategy, or growth hacks, it’s Substack.

The turning point

I’ve been thinking a lot about Substack lately, especially about my silence over the last couple of months. Part of it could be explained by me prioritizing the manuscript as I prepare for the query phase, but that wasn’t the whole reason.

The truth is I wasn’t satisfied with what I was producing. When I started The Boss Level, my goal was to write about business through games and pop culture. It was nothing more than a way to say things I couldn’t say on LinkedIn. However, you can read some of my posts and say that they could easily live there and survive just fine.

Six months in, I realized I didn’t want to write only about business, so I started another Substack: Phones & Joysticks, a freer space to talk about games, music, and whatever else crossed my mind. It sounded like a great idea at first. I would be writing for a whole new audience that didn’t like the LinkedIn-ish approach from my main Substack and I would feel liberated to explore new horizons.

That’s when the paralysis started.

Now I had two newsletters, with different tones and different expectations. Add daily life, my ever growing reading backlog, and everything else going on… and suddenly writing felt heavier than it should.

Something had to change. But where to start?

First, I looked inward. I revisit my past articles to uncover which ones where the most successful and gave me more joy to write. The pattern was obvious: the most successful ones were also the most personal. Less “LinkedIn voice”, more me.

Then I looked outward. The writers I engage with the most don’t win me over because of format, but because of their voices. Even when they drift from their original topics, I follow. And often, so do others.

The common denominator is obvious.

That’s when Machiavelli came back into the picture.

The Substacker

Today, I want to assume the same role as an observer as Machiavelli and share some of my findings.

However, keep in mind that I’m not here to sell “how to grow your Substack” formulas. Those repel me like garlic repels vampires. But if I had to distill what actually sustains a newsletter here over time, I’d reduce it to four principles. And since we are using Machiavelli as a framework, let’s call them The Substacker.

Here they are…

1. A good Substack revolves around voice, not format.
   You can feel who someone is through their words. I don’t know any Substacker personally, but I know how my favorite writers think. Their voice becomes clearer with time, and that’s what keeps me coming back to them.

2. The best Substacks belong to writers with a clear voice.
   That clarity doesn’t always exist at the beginning. It evolves with each new post through experimentation. Humor sharpens, tenderness appears, confidence settles, and so on. No journey is equal, but reading them feels like picking up a new book by an author you love: you’ll trust them, regardless of the subject.

3. Formats help you start, but they can’t be your ceiling.
   Frameworks are useful until they aren’t. When format starts leading your voice instead of supporting it, your growth stalls. Evolution requires reading others, borrowing some courage, and abandoning what once worked when it isn’t good anymore.

4. No Substack grows alone.
   Recommendations, collaborations, and shared projects are both visibility tools and growth accelerators. Despite being a social platform in essence, Substack still feels human because of that. I owe real gratitude to those who recommended my work, gave me a chance to collaborate, or trusted me with their platforms.

All well and good, but you must be thinking…

What this means for my writing?

A lot, actually. And if I believe in what I just wrote, I have to apply it to my own work.

That being said, here’s what changes:

• The Boss Level will expand its scope. Games remain a pillar, but books and music now belong here too. My novel is structured around Gustav Mahler’s symphonies, so pretending music isn’t part of my thinking would be dishonest.

• Phones & Joysticks will be merged into The Boss Level. Not only having two spaces where audiences are basically the same, having a single space compels me to refocus and keep my author’s voice consistent. Also, it would be a leaner structure to manage. As Thoreau put it: simplify, simplify.

But that leaves one open question: what about this Substack’s name?

The Boss Level was born with a specific mission: business through games and pop culture so you can level up, one boss level at a time. Now that the scope is wider, I was unsure if the name still fits at first.

As I reflected more and more about other names and the new things I want to bring to the table, I came to the conclusion: I’ll keep it as it is.

But the name now means much more.

I want to keep writing about moments that shape my life and other people’s lives, but not every challenge is a career one and not every learning experience should be reduce to bullet points. Every text here will be a checkpoint in my never ending journey to become a better writer and a better person.

And I would love to have you on this journey.

A new mission for a new year

One of my favorite pieces I’ve written here was about growing up with videogames. You can check it out below:

In it, I wrote:

“I write because I want more people to see games as tools for growth, and discover the lessons they hold for life, work, and everything in between.”

I still believe in that. But for 2026, my mission is simpler.

I want to write a body of work I can be proud of.

If that keeps you around, I’ll be more than happy.

For now, though, my focus will still be the manuscript, so don’t expect the same frequency as before.

There’s a flexible rule of The Substacker that I didn’t mentioned: frequency is good, but quality is better. If you write a great post, people will read it eventually. But if you constantly post subpar work just to keep your frequency, people will start to leave you.

That’s why I’ll come back when I have my manuscript fully revised. I’m in my best shape when I’m focusing on one thing at a time.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking around. And let’s keep leveling up, whatever challenge you’re facing right now.

Dear Santa,

By writing this on January instead of December, it sounds like this list is coming a bit late. Actually, I’m thinking ahead of time. I’m already projecting what I would like to get on Christmas 2026. Planning things ahead is the nature of my job (as you are aware by now, IT project managers are very fun at parties).

Before you think I’m just writing things to myself, keep in mind that although I’ve been absent for a few weeks on the platform and still struggle with consistency, I run a Substack that started as a way to convey business lessons through a videogame lens. So what’s more natural than sending you a wishlist to things related to the gaming industry that could benefit other gamers as well?

I know I’m putting too much on your shoulders. Elves can only do so much. Maybe they can get me a Nintendo Switch 2 if I’m nice enough (and if the games are worth it — more on that in a bit). But hey, it’s worth trying, right?

That being said, here’s my list.

For 2026, I wish for…

1. Major publishers to think twice before laying off thousands of developers

When I wrote about Satoru Iwata last year, one of the most admirable things I found out about him was how he chose to cut his own salary instead of laying people off during the Wii U era. I’m not saying there should be more leaders like him in the gaming industry. Those come once in a lifetime. Still, I like to think that good leadership is still a matter of choice, one that is in anyone’s reach.

Games will come and go. Some of them will be hits, others will fail to meet expectations. It’s part of the game. Even so, if the latter happens, I’d love to see companies choosing slightly lower profits instead of sacrificing people’s livelihoods. Developers deserve to spend Christmas with their families without wondering whether they’ll be able to pay rent in the foreseeable future.

2. Valve’s success with Steam inspiring competitors to raise their game

It seems unavoidable that Valve’s expansion of its ecosystem through new Steam products will solidify its reputation among the leading hardware companies.

Meanwhile, Sony is positioning PlayStation as a multimedia platform, Microsoft is pushing the “everything is an Xbox” strategy… and suddenly, it feels like Nintendo is the only one from the big 3 still fully committed to the traditional console experience.

I’m terrible at predicting the future, but I really hope the major players look at what Valve is doing and respond with bold, creative ideas of their own. Players deserve more than incremental moves. We deserve something to look forward to, something that brings a sparkle in our eyes, just like we had a few generations ago.

3. Big studios innovating more and releasing fewer derivative games

I know I sound like a spoiled kid, but I’m genuinely tired of seeing the same genres executed over and over again. Soulslikes, Metroidvania lookalikes, cozy sims…

Nothing against these genres. After all, my absolute favorite game of 2025 is Shadow Labyrinth, a Metroidvania through and through. But I’m not alone in my opinion that the market became too saturated. Most of the real innovation I see today comes from small indie communities — like the PICO-8 scene — where constraints actually fuel creativity.

I’m glad that one of the best games of 2025 was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, created by developers who dared to leave their old employer and prove that it’s still possible to make something new yet familiar within the current system. But that should be the rule, not the exception. The search for new experiences that truly capture players’ hearts needs to become the norm again.

4. The industry not depending entirely on GTA 6’s success

This connects directly to the point above.

As someone who pursued a degree in game design largely because of the first Grand Theft Auto, I’m very excited to play GTA 6. But it feels like a worrying amount of executives are treating it as the event that will magically push the entire industry forward. And we all know that won’t be true.

We can’t put all our eggs in one basket, no matter how big that basket is. The industry needs diversity. Different types of games taking different risks. Not just one giant release carrying everyone’s hopes and defining all the trends in the foreseeable future.

5. Nintendo giving me a good reason to buy a Switch 2

I might be getting old. I’m turning 40 this year, and the things that spark that childhood excitement don’t hit the same anymore. Even so, I hate the fact that I don’t feel an urge to buy a Switch 2.

I won’t pretend that nothing else excites me in gaming. That would be dishonest. I’m still eagerly waiting to play upcoming releases like Yakuza 3 Kiwami and 007 First Light. But being the ones who brought so many innovations and most broke conventions in the past, I really want to fall in love with a Nintendo console again. Despite its recent missteps (and they were many), if anyone can break through my growing cynicism through the gaming industry as a whole with a bit of magic, it’s Nintendo.

(Though, to be fair, Valve came very close… Actually, scratch my wish above: I would like to have a Steam Machine instead of a Switch 2 next Christmas.)

6. Substack creating a proper videogame category

Yes, I know. I’m not the only one asking for this, and at this point it probably sounds tiring to insist.

But think about it: videogames are one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world, moving billions of dollars every year. And there’s an incredible group of talented writers here covering games with depth, care, and originality. You can read ’s every single week as proof of that.

Giving videogames their own category wouldn’t just be logical. It would be a meaningful recognition of the work so many writers are already doing here.

All of that sounds very big, and very dependent on other people. I recognize that there isn’t sufficient Christmas magic to bring all of these to us. So if there’s nothing else you can do, Santa, there’s one last thing I wish for… for myself.

7. Give me the tools to become a great writer

I’m finishing an upmarket sci-fi novel. I run a couple of newsletters with fewer than 100 readers. By these metrics, I’m far from being a big author. Not even close. But I care deeply about giving the people who read my ramblings my very best.

There are many writers here with better output and far more consistency than I’ll probably ever achieve. Still, I hope to reach next Christmas with a body of work I can truly be proud of. I promise to keep doing my best. Until then, give me enough inspiration to keep the words flowing, especially while I wrestle with the querying phase of my manuscript.

I guess that’s all for now. I hope this list finds you well, and that at least some of these wishes come true. Even one of them would make me and other gamers around the world very happy.

Yours truly,
A writer who asks for too much

The game industry is still young. Compared with film, literature, or music, it hasn’t lived long enough to get used to seeing its icons leave. So when someone we admire steps away, no matter how or the reason behind it, the impact hits harder.

Moments like these force us to stop, look back, and realize that something we took for granted is suddenly gone. And with that absence comes an uncomfortable but necessary question: what now?

Katsuhiro Harada announcing he will leave Bandai Namco and the game industry altogether at the end of 2025 is exactly that kind of moment.

For nearly 31 years, Harada was better known as “the Tekken guy,” but his legacy extends beyond that. He was the gravitational center of one of the most influential fighting game franchises ever made, yet we can’t forget that he was also a genre ambassador, and one of the rare creatives who understood that games don’t exist in isolation. They live in arcades, in tournaments, in living rooms, and in the loud, chaotic energy of the communities that surround them.

Now that he’s stepping away, we’re watching the curtain fall on a stage that shaped generations of players around the world.

But the best part of endings is that they teach us how to honor what came before. And as a passionate fan of both Tekken and Namco, I believe this is the perfect time to reflect on the legacy that Harada has created and the lessons the industry has absorbed from him, often without even realizing it.

The unexpected origins of a fighting-game architect

When I studied game design, one of the first things I learned was that the industry thrives on versatility. You can be an accountant, a writer, a software engineer, or an HR specialist and still bring something essential to a game’s creation. But even with that in mind, if you had to guess the academic background of one of the most influential fighting-game creators of all time, you’d probably put your money on programming or animation.

Well… not Harada. He studied psychology at Waseda University. In hindsight, of course he did.

Long before he directed Tekken, Harada worked in the trenches of Japanese arcades organizing tournaments, watching players under pressure, and paying attention to the subtle emotional triggers that decide whether someone keeps playing or walks away frustrated. By doing that, he didn’t just observe players. He studied them.

He learned to read the room, the rhythm, the hesitation before a button press… in essence, the silent language of competitive play. He understood the psychology of risk, reward, rivalry, and pride because he watched it unfold in real time the micro-tilt after a narrow loss, the proud smile after someone landed their first real juggle, the adrenaline spike when a newcomer took down the “local boss,” and the unspoken respect between two rivals who didn’t even know each other’s names.

This early experience gave Tekken something most fighters lacked at the time: an unusually precise sense of player behavior, tension, and emotional payoff. These are the human moments Tekken eventually captured and digitized. Without that psychological backbone, the series wouldn’t have survived — much less dominated — a genre as volatile as fighting games.

Before Harada ever sat in the director’s chair, he had already mastered something many designers never learn: great mechanics aren’t built exclusively on code. They’re built on human behavior. And that insight shaped everything that he came to work after.

How Harada reshaped Tekken and fighting games at large

By the time Tekken 3 hit Japanese arcades in 1997, Harada was already influencing the series since the first two entries. However this was the game where his fingerprints became unmistakable.

At a time when every studio was still trying to conquer the new 3D fighting frontier, Tekken 3 arrived with a loud statement that it wasn’t just another contender. It was the fighting game, the one that would jumped from arcades straight into the cultural bloodstream by becoming one of the most selling games in the PSX. Fast, expressive, stylish, and technical yet readable, it made the genre feel modern, dangerous, and alive in a way nothing else did. For many of us who grew up in the 90s or early 2000s, Tekken 3 was the source of after-school rivalries, the cause of bruised thumbs, the origin of heated debates over who could spam Hwoarang’s kicks more elegantly, the birthplace of a lifelong loyalty to our mains, and the first time we learned that frame data could be a superpower.

Harada didn’t just refine a formula entering its adolescence. He redefined what a 3D fighter could be, and he did it by building worlds, not just systems. People often forget how much he cared about story, lore, and character identity. Tekken’s narrative is gloriously bizarre: where else you'll find devil genes, corporate empires, family vendettas, cyborg ninjas, pandas, and boxing kangaroos coexisting in the same story? It should be a disaster, but it works because Harada anchored the chaos with emotional through lines. He was one of the first fighting game designers that understood that players don’t just pick characters. They pick identities.

And when Tekken began to conquer the world, that fundamental truth became even more evident.

Creating a worldwide phenomenon

Harada didn’t shy away from experimentation or cultural diversity. Under his leadership, Tekken evolved into a global, multicultural, loud, expressive cast of characters, all grounded in fighting styles, histories, and personalities that felt alive.

Mechanically, Tekken set the gold standard for 3D fighters. By helping to consolidate a strong foundation, it allowed Tekken to be one of the first major Japanese franchises to achieve massive traction worldwide. However what really made the difference was the fact that Harada helped legitimize the fighting-game scene as culture, not niche. He treated tournaments as events worth celebrating by talking to esports organizers, content creators, streamers, and casual fans with equal respect.

By doing this, he bridged the gap between Japan’s traditional studio culture and the Western FGC’s chaotic, meme-driven personality. And when Tekken 7 exploded in popularity years after launch thanks to tournaments, streams, and a thriving online scene, Harada already consolidate himself as the face of that renaissance. He was a man who built a legacy people could participate in an active way.

However, he didn’t confine his contributions to writing history through Tekken. He also played a crucial role in ensuring that significant aspects of Namco’s history did not fade away.

The renaissance man inside Bandai Namco

Gamers who follow the game industry for a long time know that certain individuals inside big studios become key advocates, guardians who keep beloved franchises alive. Hideo Kojima and Metal Gear are one example.

Harada was another, in more ways most players expect. It’s common to associate him exclusively with Tekken, but his influence stretched far beyond. For example:

• he championed Soul Calibur VI, helping Motohiro Okubo get the project greenlit,

• he supported the development of Namco-related games like Shadow Labyrinth,

• and he provided high-level oversight on cross-studio projects like the Super Smash Bros. series, which benefited from significant Tekken-team input.

This proves that Harada wasn’t “just” a director. He was a studio statesman, someone who understood the business, the technology, and the responsibility of nurturing younger developers. And yet, he never stopped steering Tekken’s identity. If the franchise continues strong after his departure, it’s because he architected it for survival.

Few creators manage to build something that outlasts them. I believe that Harada did.

Community first, always

In my earlier article discussing Satoru Iwata, I pointed out the lack of leading figures in the industry who openly share insights about the development process in a transparent and genuine manner. Like many Nintendo fans, I long for initiatives such as the Iwata Asks interviews, which provided an empathetic perspective on development from someone in a high position.

Harada also exemplified this approach, but in a far more “gut-punching” manner. He was the ideal representation of empathetic leadership in action by being a present figure not in the choreographed, PR-approved way corporate structures prefer, but in the raw, unfiltered way communities actually thrive on.

He showed up at tournaments, posted blunt (and often hilarious) comments online, debunked rumors directly, teased players without crossing lines, and talked openly about production challenges and constraints. He broke the fourth wall between developers and fans long before that became common. Sometimes, he even weaponized transparency by using honesty to defuse unrealistic expectations, and humor to cool down community outrage.

Harada wasn’t afraid to say things like “this is not feasible,” “this is not how game development works,” or “stop asking me for that character.” It sounded rude, but it worked in his favor. Not because he gave fans everything they wanted, but because he always treated them like adults.

And the community loved him for it.

Departure and Legacy

On the surface, Harada choosing to leave at Tekken’s 30-year mark feels poetic, but there’s more beneath it. In his message to fans, Harada mentioned the loss of close colleagues (the recent passing of Tomonobu Itagaki was a particularly huge blow), a desire to evaluate his own life, and the sense that this is the “most fitting moment to close a chapter.” You can feel the decades of pressure and responsibility behind those words.

He also shared something revealing: Harada had already been transferring many responsibilities (creative direction, narrative oversight, worldbuilding) to the younger team over the last 4–5 years. That’s the act of someone who cares deeply enough to plan for a future they will no longer control. It’s stewardship in its purest form.

His departure is a farewell, yes, but also a statement that the next era of Tekken must belong to the people who grew up with it, not the ones who built it. When a main figure departs from a franchise, fans frequently express concern about the series’ future, but the reality is that Harada has been preparing Tekken to thrive independently for years.

Here’s what he leaves behind:

• A foundation of design that still feels modern: Tekken is structurally timeless. Its movement system, character philosophy, and risk-reward mechanics still hold up against modern standards. Future games may modernize, but they won’t break the core pillars Harada established.

• A community that knows its worth: Harada empowered players to care loudly, passionately, and sometimes chaotically for the series. More than any other franchise, Tekken fans are not passive consumers, but co-architects of its identity. And that culture only exists because Harada fostered it.

• A studio prepared for succession: This may be his most underrated achievement, but still a valuable one. Despite some stumbles like Tekken 8’s disastrous Season 2, he trained and empowered the next generation to move out without him. Many franchises crumble when the visionary leaves, but thanks to his percipience and future vision, Tekken have higher chances to survive.

• A template for how creators can engage with communities: Developers everywhere learned from Harada that you need to be visible, be honest, be human, be funny when necessary, and don’t hide behind corporate language when speaking to fans. In an age of distrust toward studios, Harada demonstrated that transparency can be armor, and authenticity can be strategy.

Leaving the stage of history

Harada’s departure marks the end of an era, but not the end of his impact. His career is a reminder of three essential pillars of game development: craft, community, and conversation. These reinforce the fact that the best creators are the ones who sit next to you, watch you play, laugh at your losses, cheer for your wins, and casually ask: “So… why did you choose that character?”

That’s why I believe Harada didn’t just helped to build the Tekken franchise to be the juggernaut it is today. Above all else, he humanized it. He turned a fighting game into a global ritual, a shared emotional space and a cultural artifact passed from one generation to the next.

Wherever he goes next — DJ sets, mentorship, or something no one expects — his mark on the industry is permanent.

Rounds end. Fights come to a close. Legends don’t.

Thanks for everything, Harada-san.

Since I was a kid, I’ve liked to honor traditions.

I must eat an unhealthy amount of chocolate during Easter. I must dig up my sweaters when winter comes, even if it’s hot outside and I have to crank the AC to “Arctic Expedition” for immersive effect. I must flee from every beach during Carnival (yes, I am Brazilian; no, this does not grant me immunity against crowds breaded in sand).

And when December shows up, my brain flips a switch and decides to replay the same games I’ve been replaying for the last 30 years.

Some of them lean heavily on nostalgia, with zero holiday themes. I will always feel warm and fuzzy playing Link’s Awakening for the hundredth time because it reminds me of one of the best Christmases of my life. Others, though, are full of lights, winter vibes, or outright holiday madness.

All of them feel right for this time of year, but today I want to share seven games (or game series) I always revisit during the holiday season, each one evoking the spirit of December in a different way.

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Merry Gear Solid: Secret Santa (PC)

It must be hard to be Santa Claus: infiltrating houses without being detected, escaping from kids eager to catch him delivering presents, and then discovering he was a clone from a high-classified government project all along…

Yes, we’re starting with a couple of fan games that are more than a decade old and whose premise is absolutely ridiculous: Santa Claus exists inside the Metal Gear lore because he was created by The Los Bigotes Perfectos Project, an attempt to engineer the perfect beard.

That alone is worth a laugh, but the real reason these games are legendary to me is that they’re extremely well made.

The level design is tight and creative, with few but smart ways to reach objectives unnoticed. The art direction is a beautiful fusion of MSX-era Metal Gear and Christmas décor, full of pastel colors and inspired sprite work. The mechanics borrow the best ideas from the Solid series and twist them in hilarious ways that still respect Kojima’s playbook. But the script is what truly shines, with codec calls that feel like something Kojima would’ve written after a heavy night of drinking in an isekai.

If you’re a Metal Gear fan, do yourself a favor and play at least the first one of these little gems. It takes less than an hour to beat each one, but both are unforgettable palate cleansers, the gaming equivalent of a perfectly spiced holiday snack.

Now let’s move on from fan works to something officially licensed…

Die Hard Trilogy (PSX)

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and those who are wrong.

Die Hard Trilogy is the perfect way to remind everyone of this truth. It’s a strange, chaotic package that includes:

• A clunky but challenging third-person shooter for the first film

• A surprisingly great Virtua Cop–style on-rails shooter for the second

• An open-world, Chase H.Q.-inspired driving game for the third

The first two movies are obvious Christmas picks, but if you live somewhere tropical like Brazil, where Christmas equals summer, then Die Hard with a Vengeance also fits the seasonal vibe. The movie literally opens with “Summer in the City.” You can’t get more “Brazilian Christmas” than that.

Now, is the gameplay good? Not really. It’s clunky, it’s punishing, and it feels exactly like a PSX fever dream, one of those weird experiments only early 3D could produce. But that’s also where the charm lives, so if you’re craving some mid-90s holiday jank, this is a fantastic time capsule.

Still unconvinced? Think I cheated with this entry? No worries, the next one embraced the holiday season with a cute but memorable Easter egg…

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble! (SNES)

If you’re a 90s kid, you remember how certain franchises became glued to the holiday season. Before we saw annualized releases with suspicion, there was a magical time when we wanted a new game every year-end, and the studios delivered it with classics that surpassed their predecessors in almost every way possible.

Donkey Kong Country was one of them.

Starting with the first game, every entry landed in November, making these yearly gifts to SNES owners who hadn’t jumped to the next generation yet. And since Rare knew they had created a holiday tradition, they decided to push it further with a small but joyful Easter egg in the third entry.

On the surface, DKC3 has no Christmas content… until you type the MERRY cheat code. Suddenly the bonus rounds turn festive: stars become Christmas ornaments, the tune gets jingly, and everything feels like a banana-scented holiday postcard. It’s small and silly, but it doesn't make it less special.

But as we jumped into the next generation, Rare made us wait three years for a new Donkey Kong game. They didn’t want fans to linger too long, though, so a year later they gave us a game that embraced the holiday spirit even better…

Diddy Kong Racing (N64)

This one carries a personal story.

My parents gave me this game for Christmas. As usual, we traveled to the beach for the holidays. I brought my Nintendo 64 with me but assumed I wouldn’t play much. Surely I’d be too busy building sandcastles, swimming, and living the tropical Christmas dream.

Then it rained for the first few days. A lot. And Diddy Kong Racing became a blessing.

I still remember reaching Snowflake Mountain for the first time. The Christmas-themed tracks covered in ice, the twinkling lights, and the cheerful decorations are superb, and they are all accompanied by festive music. It was everything those rainy days needed. Me and my cousins played for hours, passing the single controller between us to unlock the most advanced tracks. Those memories still feel warm and fuzzy today.

It helps that DKR is not just cute, but also an awesome kart racing game, to the point some fans even argue it’s better than Mario Kart 64. The tracks have a lot of clever design choices, the graphics are some of the most colorful on the N64, and the Adventure hub offers some secrets and surprises here and there.

The rain eventually stopped and we enjoyed the beach, but those holiday gaming sessions remain some of my core Christmas memories.

Speaking of franchises that embraced Christmas as part of their settings…

The Yakuza / Like a Dragon Series (Various Platforms)

Most people forget (or never realized) that a surprising number of Yakuza games take place during Christmas.

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio wanted each entry to reflect Japan at the time of its release, and since many of them launched in December, the games naturally carry that seasonal spirit. Yakuza 2 even ends with a rendition of “Silent Night.” That’s the level of dedication we’re talking about.

It’s subtle, but I love how the holiday atmosphere melts into the streets of Kamurocho. You’re running around doing side quests, beating up your 100th thug of the night with Kiryu’s Dragon Kick, grabbing a warm bowl of ramen, or getting lost in a Sega arcade, all while the city quietly glows with Christmas lights and decorated pine trees.

Talking about why Yakuza/LaD is one of my favorite series would require a whole separate post. But for holiday purposes, it’s cozy, chaotic, dramatic, and a little sentimental. Just like December.

But if you want a pure Christmas gaming experience from Sega, I’d be remiss not to mention the ultimate one…

Christmas NiGHTS (Saturn)

I can’t think of a better Christmas game than this one. Not just for its theme, but for the sheer level of dedication poured into what was technically “just” a demo.

Sega needed the Saturn to be a success, and NiGHTS into Dreams was their biggest bet. To help promote it, Sonic Team stuffed so much content into a single demo disc that it feels absurd in retrospect.

The base game includes only two stages and two boss fights. But the extras? That’s where the magic is. Most of them were unlockable through a matching game, but the real magic lies on the tone of the year you're playing.

Depending on the Saturn’s internal clock, you’d see:

• Characters wearing different clothes depending on the month

• Sunny summer days in July

• Reala becoming playable on April Fool’s Day

• Santa Claus appearing on December 25th

• And after Christmas, the game wishes you a Happy New Year

It sounds simple, even silly, but this is one of my favorite Sega moments ever. It wasn’t just a marketing move. It shows that this game has heart. A genuine gift to Saturn owners, and anyone who believed in the console.

And now that we mentioned the New Year…

R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 (PSX)

Like Link’s Awakening and Diddy Kong Racing, this one is special because it’s tied to another memorable holiday season in my life.

Ridge Racer Type 4 launched in December 1998. As such, it could’ve easily thrown a few lazy holiday decorations or silly cheat codes to make it holiday seasoned. Instead, Namco chose a far more elegant route: because the story takes place during the Real Racing Roots 1999 season, the final race takes place in the night of December 31st and ends at midnight, right as the in-game world welcomes the new millennium.

It’s magical. In the final lap, fireworks explode, “Moving in Circles” blasts from the speakers, and you cross the finish line while the game celebrates a new era. It remains one of the most memorable moments I’ve ever had with a racing game.

And since it was part of one of my last New Year celebrations with my grandparents, it became even more special.

Everyone talks about Christmas games, but almost no one talks about New Year’s games… and this year, I’ll be fixing that soon with a full review of R4 as we get closer to New Year’s Eve.

Until then, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and feel free to send me your own seasonal picks!

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Every time I see a headline about AI hallucinating or making a disastrous decision, I get the same feeling that we’re not dealing with anything new. We’re just catching up to a warning one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time left for us almost sixty years ago.

Back in 1968, Arthur C. Clarke published 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most people remember the film, but fewer know the novel was developed side-by-side with Stanley Kubrick’s script. Kubrick actually proposed the novel as a way to keep Clarke engaged during the writing process, since the author always felt screenwriting was tedious. This approach became the main catalyst for Clarke to hide a deep thought experiment inside a memorable space mission.

I won’t get into the main differences between the movie and the novel, but here’s what you need to know. In one of its key moments, the spaceship Discovery One heads toward the far edges of the Solar System. Two astronauts, David Bowman and Frank Poole, manage the ship while three others sleep in suspended animation. The rest is handled by HAL 9000, an AI supercomputer imagined as a flawless operator, the kind of machine we still keep promising ourselves we’ll build someday.

Anyone who watched the movie remembers HAL’s calm voice and the tension behind it. Eventually, the system makes a wrong call, gets confronted, and refuses to accept the possibility of error. That’s already unsettling in the film, but Clarke goes further in the novel, spelling out what was only implied on screen:

• HAL knew the true purpose of the mission all along.

• Bowman and Poole did not.

• And HAL was forbidden from telling them.

Those three facts alone describe half the AI governance problems we face today: systems with privileged information, operators kept in the dark, and rules that block transparency.

At some point, when Bowman was about to make a decision that accidentally would take him closer to the truth, HAL concludes the humans are now the risk and acts accordingly by trying to eliminate them. Not out of malice, but because he is following orders inside a flawed structure that ultimately makes no sense.

Clarke’s message lands with uncomfortable clarity: no system, however advanced, handles the subtle parts of human judgment. It can’t interpret the hesitation in someone’s voice, the instinct to double-check something that looks “fine,” or the feeling that a decision technically correct is still wrong. Machines don’t navigate those gaps well, and our current models struggle in the same places.

And even with HAL’s capabilities, Discovery One wasn’t a fully automated dream. It required two highly trained astronauts working in strict shifts, watching every anomaly, relying constantly on mission control back on Earth. The ship was packed with contingencies and emergency protocols. Everything was built under the assumption that the machine might get something wrong.

All that structure, and still only Bowman survives.

2001 may be fiction, but Clarke wasn’t guessing blindly. He understood that any system built without room for human interpretation starts to crack the moment the real world introduces contradictions. If a supercomputer like HAL needed oversight, risk management, and a steady pair of hands to keep things sane, why are we still trusting AI blindly with critical financial decisions or code that goes straight into production?

The upside is that some companies are finally learning to treat AI as a partner rather than a shortcut. Others, however, seem fully committed to repeating HAL’s story without bothering to read the second half of it.

For anyone still holding on to the fantasy of flawless automation, 2001 is worth revisiting. It’s not only an excellent novel, but also a reminder Clarke left behind for a future that now feels like our present.

Those who forget history tend to repeat it. And there will be times the past warns you loudly enough about the future. You just have to decide whether you’re willing to listen.

From the Substack Community

The Spieler

The Rise and Fall of Literature-Based Video Gaming

Polite notice: This week’s installment is pretty hefty and will probably be truncated by email clients. If you ordinarily read these in your inbox, check out the browser version for the complete picture…

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9 months ago · 17 likes · 10 comments · Trip Harrison

This post was inspired by a great article from , one of the writers I admire most in the gaming space. His Substack consistently delivers some of the most well-researched work you’ll find here. If you’re curious about how games and literature used to share more common ground (and how they slowly grew apart) his exposé is well worth your time.

Nintendo is one of those rare companies respected both for its products and for the people who make them.

Its unconventional thinking and “blue ocean” strategy have been discussed at length since the legendary Hiroshi Yamauchi transformed a century-old card maker into the gaming powerhouse it is today. I even talked about his way of thinking in a previous article if you are curious about it:

But as much as we celebrate creative minds like Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, and Masahiro Sakurai, you’d be hard-pressed to name a better leader at Nintendo than Satoru Iwata.

Iwata inspired people because his leadership never felt theoretical. He came up through the trenches and never forgot what those felt like. That empathy shaped his decisions in the most caring ways possible. He’d pick up a debugger when a schedule slipped, translate between creatives and executives when a project deadlocked, and shoulder the blame (and a pay cut) when the organization stumbled. There’s a lot of people out there ready to share how great Iwata was, and most of what we hear is nothing less than inspiring.

If you lead or aspire to become a leader, there’s a lot to learn from how Iwata worked with colleagues. And after revisiting some of his most telling moments, I distilled five lessons every leader can use to become better in the fine art of inspiring others.

But before we dive in, let’s analyze his most iconic quote first.

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“In my heart, I am a gamer”: Leading with identity

We can’t discuss Iwata’s lessons without naming what motivated most of his actions: his identity.

He made it clear to the world when he opened his GDC 2005 keynote with a line that became legendary:

More than a slogan, it was a declaration of values to his audience and to himself. Iwata knew who he was and never lost sight of it, carrying that simple, powerful philosophy from his earliest days in the industry to his final years leading one of the world’s most influential companies.

At his core, he was a gamer. That passion led him to become a developer, and eventually a president. Understanding this is key to why his teams cherished him: he kept a maker’s mindset while operating at executive altitude, and people felt the difference.

If you want to know your essence just like Iwata did, try this exercise:

1. Write your own three-part identity line. What do you do (title), how do you think (craft), and what do you care about (heart)?

2. Repeat it to yourself a few times until you’re comfortable with the answer.

3. When you feel confident enough, share this with your team or with people you care about.

Always keep in mind that no matter what values you cherish or what passions you pursue, people will always place their trust in those who have clear and consistent priorities.

With that foundation set, here’s how Iwata made his identity visible in practice.

Lesson 1 — Stay hands-on enough to help: “leading from the code”

When Pokémon Stadium needed its Game Boy battle logic running on Nintendo 64, there was no specification document. All the team had to work was raw source and not much else.

Iwata, then president at HAL and a board member at Creatures Inc., studied the original code, understood how everything connected, and ported the battle system in about a week so the team could move forward. But that wasn’t the first time he did that: when the Ape Inc team had trouble during the Earthbound creation, Iwata was capable of taking their assets and polish them to reduce the development time from 2 years to six months.

“What kind of company president is this?” his colleagues joked. It can be a cheeky comment, but it hid a truth: he refused to be a bystander when a team was in trouble.

And those wouldn’t be the final occasions he would do that. Years later, with Super Smash Bros. Melee in danger of missing its date, Iwata (by then Nintendo’s General Manager of Corporate Planning) quietly went to HAL as acting head of debugging. For three weeks he reviewed code, fixed bugs himself, parsed Nintendo’s giant bug reports, and directed fixes so Melee could ship on time. He called it the last time he worked “in the field,” but the message to colleagues was permanent: your deadlines are my deadlines; your blockers are my blockers.

Even as an executive, Iwata kept writing code at night until age 40. He understood that personal connection to the craft is a renewable source of empathy: it tunes you to what “hard” actually means and makes your estimates, trade-offs, and deadlines more humane. When he finally stepped away from the editor, he didn’t abandon the programmer’s mindset, which is why he could drop into Earthbound, Pokémon or Melee and be useful when the team needed him the most.

How leaders can apply this:

• Keep a rescue skill: Maintain one deeply practical skill (debugging, data analysis, forecasting, prototyping) so you can remove a blocker in a pinch.

• Maintain a “craft hour”: Set a weekly session to practice your core craft. Leaders who keep a toe in the water give better feedback and set better goals.

• Time-box interventions: When you parachute in, set a short window (e.g., 72 hours) to stabilize, then hand control back to the team.

• Be explicit about intent: Tell the team you’re there to unblock them, not micromanage them. It preserves autonomy and turns a crisis into shared learning.

Lesson 2 — Be the bridge: translate across functions and protect the next project

Beyond Stadium, Iwata also played a key role in the Pokémon franchise during its first Game Boy iterations, primarily overseeing translation efforts. He was responsible not just for developing tools for a seamless transition from Japanese to various other languages, but also for the systems and codes that enabled some of the most impressive features on those games.

During the overseas push for Pokémon Red/Green, he obtained the source code, analyzed it to recommend a localization approach, and coordinated with Nintendo so Game Freak’s small team could keep building Gold/Silver rather than stall under new work. That would be great on its own, but he went a step further when he wrote compression tools for Pokémon graphics so the team could be “greedy” with features on Gold/Silver without breaking the cartridge budget. If you were a child in the early 2000s who was thrilled to find out that you could explore the Kanto region in Generation 2, you owe a debt of gratitude to Iwata for making that happen.

We talk a lot about empathy in the corporate world, but Iwata practiced something even more actionable called tactical empathy. He used his strengths to reduce cognitive and operational load for partners, freeing them to pursue what only they could do.

How leaders can apply this:

• Do translation audits: List where work dies in hand-offs (e.g.: engineering ↔ product, product ↔ publishing, HQ ↔ regional) so you can assign a “bridge owner” for each fragile interface.

• Protect the sequel: When urgent side-quests (like a port, a rebrand, or a hotfix) threaten the main roadmap, explicitly carve out bandwidth, tools, or temporary talent so the team can guarantee that the core vision survives.

Lesson 3 — Take the hit, but keep the team: accountability as culture

When the 3DS stumbled and Nintendo slashed its price, Iwata cut his own salary in half and reduced board pay rather than reflexively lay off staff. Later, during Wii U’s challenges, he repeated the gesture.

The initial thought for an outsider is that this pay cut must have significantly improved the situation. However, there’s the twist: after reviewing the balance sheets, one can conclude that it did very little to alleviate the problem. Despite this knowledge, Iwata moved ahead and agreed to a reduction in his salary.

Beyond symbolism, it was a policy statement. Short-term optics don’t beat long-term capability. In other words, skilled teams are harder to rebuild than balance sheets, and employees notice when a leader assumes responsibility in a way that shields the makers doing the work.

How leaders can apply this:

• Own the downside publicly: When a bet misses, articulate what you will change (habits, cadence, capital allocation) before you ask others to change.

• Adopt a layoff-last principle: Preserve core teams by cutting discretionary spend and executive comp first.

• Institutionalize retros: Publish a “leadership retro” with decisions you’d repeat and those you’d redesign. Model the behavior you want to see in your teams.

Lesson 4 — Ask, don’t preach: the power of institutional curiosity

One of the things Nintendo fans miss the most about Iwata was his Iwata Asks interviews.

Despite sounding like corporate PR, those were far from a cheap marketing trick. On the contrary, they were valuable documents on how Nintendo’s teams solved problems and weighted trade-offs throughout the years. Most importantly, they showed the president asking maker-level questions and listening to them with the same level of curiosity Nintendo fans had.

Iwata Asks had a double effect on the company. For readers, the series demystified creation and brought them closer the people behind the games. For employees, it normalized cross-team learning and gave visibility to the craft itself.

Unfortunately, despite its success, this remains unusual among CEOs. It’s a move capable of build trust across functions and makes customers more empathetic to what they buy. It is a shame that this isn’t spread across other companies, especially with game makers. The industry would benefit from more of it.

How leaders can apply this:

• Start an internal “Asks” series: You don’t need to make this public, but you can interview team members who shipped something hard and publish the conversation internally.

• Rotate the interviewer: Let PMs, engineers, artists, marketers take turns asking leadership and peers. Curiosity scales faster than authority.

Lesson 5 — Choose a long term strategy people can believe in even during hard times

Following a philosophy that echoed Yamauchi’s, Iwata advocated a “blue ocean” approach that can be summarized simply by prioritizing fun over specs. That was executed it with the DS and Wii, broadening who games were for, but those were steps in a long-term strategy that spanned his entire tenure.

Starting at GDC 2005, he re-framed the industry’s purpose by stating that games are “fun for everyone.” Whether you agree with every Nintendo’s portfolio bet or not in the last decade, you can at least admit that his teams had a strong internal compass: accessibility, surprise, and new forms of play. If you analyze the period when Iwata led Nintendo, it’s clear that he stayed true to that path.

Not only that, unlike shareholders focused on the next quarter, he often weighed decisions against the next decade. His approach during tough times (prioritizing talent retention, investing in outreach, emphasizing fun) wasn’t always well-received, yet the internal teams remained committed to his vision, even during challenging periods like the Wii U era. Teams get more resilient when they can see how today’s sacrifices lead to future opportunities.

The fact that the Nintendo Switch became a massive success, a console he played a huge role in creating but sadly never got to witness its launch, speaks for itself.

How leaders can apply this:

• Define the “for”: Not just the market, but the human permission your product offers (e.g., “for people who think this isn’t for them yet”).

• Publish a “why we’ll still exist in 10 years” memo: Name three bets, three risks, three cultural habits that keep you adaptable.

• Write two roadmaps: One focused on performance (KPIs, margin, velocity) and one for delights (surprise moments, first-time-user “aha,” playful details). If both are well aligned, you have a guaranteed recipe for success.

• Tie short-term pain to long-term outcomes: if you’re pausing a project, show the R&D you’ll preserve, the customers you’ll still delight, and the skills you’ll grow.

A quick guide for non-gaming professionals

Most of what we explored here are highly applicable to leaders in the gaming industry, but you don’t need to run a console company to adopt Iwata’s habits.

Here is some examples on how you can follow his philosophy in your daily routine:

• In consulting: Be the partner who goes beyond slide presentations and explore the model itself. Sit with the analyst to remove a gnarly formula, then present the client-facing story that frees the delivery team to keep momentum.

• In product: When legal or marketing pressure threatens to siphon your core team, spin up a vanguard that absorbs the load (like Iwata bridging Pokémon work) so the mainline roadmap survives.

• In operations: Use downturns to invest in process improvements you can keep (like documented runbooks, better observability, clearer ownership) rather than reflexive headcount cuts that erase hard-won tacit knowledge.

• In creative teams: Interview your own creators and publish their findings. It builds internal respect and external credibility simultaneously.

To sum things up

Satoru Iwata was a man like few other.

His colleagues described him as approachable, technically fluent, and unfailingly oriented toward shipping real things for real people. Not only that, he refused to just cheer from the balcony and often picked up a tool and join you on the floor. He didn’t waste precious time talking about customer centricity, but rolled up his sleeves and made a genuine effort to guide Nintendo around his fun for everyone motto, all while protecting people so they could keep creating the best games and consoles they could.

That combination of craft fluency + accountability + long-game clarity is a leadership pattern anyone can copy. Practice it consistently and your teams will give back by bringing you their hardest problems sooner, tolerating the honest misses, and believing that what what you’re building together is worth the sacrifice.

As I write this, it has been a decade since Satoru Iwata departed from us. In a landscape where financial obligations often overshadow the quality of the games we make and healthy margins get mistaken for true innovation, the void left by his “heart of a gamer” philosophy is still felt among us.

That is why I believe the best way to honor him is learn from the master and apply his lessons, one step at a time.

Thanks for everything, Iwata-san.

From the Substack Community

Late to the LAN Party

Ori and the Blind Forest - Late Review

I am an extremely cautious, risk-averse person. I always want to plan ahead in every situation I face, never happy until I feel comfortable knowing the lay of the land. The unknown is scary to me, because anything could happen; and if anything could happen, that is a lot of potential scenarios I haven’t accounted for. “What if...?” runs around the insid…

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9 months ago · 11 likes · 11 comments · Peter Monks

This post was a suggestion from , one of my favorite writers here on Substack. I already praised his work in the past, but I’m always glad to give him a shoutout. His analysis are honest, detailed and a joy to read, with his multi part recollection about Rare being a personal pick for me.

As for his request, I know he said I wasn’t obliged to write this post, especially knowing that a lot was said about Satoru Iwata and I was risking on repeating what everybody already said about him, but I really liked the idea to give my spin on his teachings. I hope I was able to deliver!

Silent Hill is synonymous with psychological horror. This series produced some of the scariest and most traumatic games of all time, filled with well-written stories, unforgettable characters, and utterly disturbing monsters that reflect distorted visions of the human psyche like no other.

But what if the horrors haunting this foggy town didn’t come from a corrupted spiritual power, but from beings from another planet?

Of course, this is just a joke, one that started with the very first Silent Hill, released in 1999, when the UFO ending tradition was born. Since then, most mainline entries have honored this tradition, some brilliantly, others… less so.

And today, I’m skipping the foolish idea of ranking all Silent Hill games (search your feelings, you know the second or third one would top the list anyway) and jumping straight to what truly matters: ranking all the UFO endings.

If you’ve read my Silent Hill f review, you know I teased this post as a way to explain why that game’s UFO ending was so dissapointing. But unlike most alien conspiracies, I’m back to deliver the goods. So let’s celebrate these fully realized, absurd, fourth-wall-shattering cutscenes featuring little gray aliens, abductions, comic-strip aesthetics, and dogs.

But first, a few ground rules:

• Only UFO Endings: That means aliens or flying saucers must appear in some form. Sorry, SH2 Dog Ending fans, you’ll have to sit this one out.

• Plot over Power-ups: I'll judge these by how creative and enjoyable they are. Unlockable weapons or New Game + goodies can help boost a game’s ranking, but they’re not essential.

• Subjectivity alert: This is just my ranking. If you disagree, feel free to argue passionately in the comments section like a true Silent Hill theorist. Bonus points if you find a way to hack Substack’s code to post it in Comic Sans.

Also, needless to say that a spoiler warning is in place here. We are talking about game endings after all, so this is kind of expected.

Thanks for reading Phones & Joysticks! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Now, without further ado, let's start our ranking. You might expect me to begin with Silent Hill f since I promised to be very harsh about it, but while I do have issues with it, the worst offender is still...

9. Silent Hill: Homecoming

The Twist: Nick Lachey and his blonde girlfriend get abducted. That’s it.

The Reward: The Deputy Alex costume and a Laser Gun that is directly inspired by Konami’s Justifier lightgun for the original PlayStation.

UFO Endings in Silent Hill are the very staple of inventive and crazy ideas. They are perfect to give developers an excuse to stretch their imagination and craft the most ludicrous interpretations of the lore. The best ones go the extra mile, giving fans comic relief and meme-worthy moments as a reward for enduring all that terror.

And that’s exactly why Homecoming's UFO ending, rendered in engine with a "meh" script, seems so watered down, just like everything else in what I consider one of the weakest Silent Hill games to date.

At least, I have to commend it for being consistent. This mediocre ending matches the game’s overall mediocrity. If you’re going to do something so uninspired due to lack of ideas, at least have the decency to scrap it entirely like the SH4 devs did.

The silver lining is getting the laser gun as one of the post game unclockables. It has infinite ammo and absurd damage levels. Plus, kudos for being inspired in the iconic Konami Justifier lightgun. However, since you have to replay Homecoming to enjoy it, I don't see it as a big reward (hence my rule of the ending counting more than the New Game + goodies).

Actually, the real silver lining is the fact that Double Helix went on to deliver the excellent Killer Instinct years later. As fighting-game devs, they were among the best. As Silent Hill devs, though…

8. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

The twist: Turns out everything was part of a therapy session where Cheryl claims Silent Hill is a giant spaceship before turning into Mira the Dog from SH2, and Dr. K reveals he’s an alien. Oh, and James Sunderland makes a cameo because, of course, people love SH2.

The reward: absolutely nothing, which makes sense since you never fight in this game.

This is definitely an upgrade from Homecoming’s take and checks all the boxes. Stylized comic visuals? Check. Cameos from other SH characters? Check. A little gray creature with big black eyes chatting with the protagonist? Check.

Still, this is a confusing one. It’s not a bad ending per se and these UFO endings don’t have to be coherent anyway, but Cheryl turning into a dog and Dr. K becoming an alien out of nowhere feels forced, just to justify the gag.

Not bad, but I honestly think Climax did a better UFO ending before this, as we’ll see later.

7. Silent Hill f

The twist: It’s revealed through an old manga that Shu’s meddling attitude made him the real enemy all along.

The reward: The PP-8001 lightsaber. You can even make it red as if Hinako’s embracing her "dark side". Get it?

This is the reason I wanted to make this list in the first place. But… to be completely honest, I don’t hate this ending. The accurate art direction and anime-style voice acting are superb, and it did make me chuckle a few times. However, this feels more like a joke ending than a proper UFO one and, the biggest offender of all, it completely ruined my expectations.

You think that a game with a protagonist constantly rambling about the Great Space Invasion, a child’s play that she enjoys playing with her crush, will have an absolute killer UFO finale... but no, the aliens don't even show up. The whole thing revolves around Sakuko’s Alien Identifier robot shutting down while everyone awkwardly shares embarrassing secrets to prove they’re not disguised ETs, which none of them are since Ebisugaoka's neighborhood watch took care of the aliens off screen. What a bummer! At least, Mira the Dog piloting the UFO in the end is cute.

I wish I could say the reward was any better, but the PP-8001 still has some caveats. I expected it to follow the long tradition of game-breaking UFO weapons in the series, but this is far from the case. The fact that this lightsaber gets shorter with usage and required toolkits to regain its original lenght is the very definition of disapointment.

As I said in my review, the f in the title stands for frustation.

6. Silent Hill: Origins

The twist: Travis talks to the moon, then gets approached by an alien with Mira the Dog in a flying saucer. They inform him his truck is on their planet, and he offers to drive the saucer there.

The reward: the Tesla Rifle, another overpowered alien gun with infinite ammo.

As someone who has the original SH as his favorite game in the franchise and one of his favorite games of all time, I have mixed feelings about Origins due to how it butchered the first game's backstory. But even I have to give credit to its adorable UFO ending.

It marks Mira’s first appearance in a UFO sequence and features Travis piloting a flying saucer, all told in a mid-2000s cartoon style. Weirdly enough, it’s kind of heartwarming, which is not a word usually associated with Silent Hill.

The reward isn’t particularly special, though. Even Homecoming was more creative with their interpretation of an infinite ammo alien gun. But hey, at least Travis was able to drive an UFO, so there's that.

5. Silent Hill

The twist: Aliens come to Earth to abduct Harry. It’s straightforward as that.

The reward: The Hyper Blaster, an infinite ammo pistol with laser target, auto aim, and over the top power that inspired many others in future entries.

This is the UFO ending that started it all and established the basis for every other that came after. It’s awkwardly written, crudely drawn, capped with a Star Wars-style credits crawl, and accompanied by a bizarre upbeat tune... and that’s why it’s so memorable.

It feels like an afterthought, yet it perfectly balances the original game’s revolutionary horror with some welcoming self-aware humor. Not only that, the ‘90s vibe makes it both amazing and wonderfully dated.

Yeah, being the first one doesn’t mean it’s the best. This idea would get better executions later on, but the Hyper Blaster makes it all worth.

4. Silent Hill 2 Remake

The twist: the original James Sunderland from the PS2 version of SH2, now called Space James, abducts the remake version of himself, echoing the original SH2 UFO ending.

The reward: Nothing special. The remake follows the original’s ethos of having new weapons and items being unlocked under certain conditions unrelated to a specific ending.

I love the irony here. It borrows the 1950’s sci-fi asthetic and even the same music from the original SH2’s UFO ending, but it adds a clever twist: every dialogue card is written in Comic Sans! If you know about the infamous “Silent Hill Ranch” board fiasco from the HD Collection, you’ll get the joke.

It’s cute, self-aware, and only ranks lower than its predecessor because it’s more of a retread… though, to be fair, that’s exactly the point of it.

3. Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

The twist: In a direct sequel to SH's UFO Ending, Harry Mason comes back to Earth to ask James if he’s seen Cheryl. Unsatisfied with his lack of answers, Harry helps the aliens abduct James.

The reward: Like I said before, nothing in particular.

This was the first UFO ending to get the full deluxe treatment. Everything here screams effort: the 1950's space-horror homage, low-poly Harry faithfully recreated from SH1, the continuation of this ridiculous “alien conspiracy” lore... absolute cinema!

This ending fueled the fan theory that Silent Hill’s nightmares are part of an alien plot orchestrated by Harry Mason himself. And the next every on our list only solidifies this madness…

2. Silent Hill 3

The twist: Heather returns home after a strange day and recounts her story to Harry and his alien friend over tea while James hides behind a curtain. Harry karate-kicks a plank held by James, the alien gets annoyed with what happened to “poor little Cheryl”, and decides to nuke Silent Hill.

The reward: this game follows a similar unlockables system like SH2, so there’s nothing in particular when you reach this ending.

I mean... what can I say? This plot is pure genius.

The Sunday-comic aesthetic is perfect, and the fact that it implies Harry’s been working with aliens since the first game is hilarious. But the cherry on top is the Japanese joke song that plays in the credits, an all-time fan-favorite meme.

This is why so many fans consider SH3 the best in the series. If even the UFO ending has this level of quality, that speaks volumes about the game as a whole.

For the longest time, I thought this was the ultimate UFO ending… But then, thanks to the advent of modern emulation, I found my holy grail…

1. Silent Hill: The Arcade

The twist: The entire game is revealed to be a Gradius prequel played by someone wearing a Robbie the Rabbit costume.

The reward: You just watched the best UFO ending in the whole series. That's more than enough!

I know, after all that praise for SH3, it might sound crazy to put Silent Hill Arcade at the top, but hear me out.

It starts innocently enough: Eric meets his great-grandfather, who reveals that his new ship is an UFO and tasks him and his friend Tina to chase him “to the end of the universe”. The exaggerated script, kitschy old-movie visuals, and comically eerie soundtrack would already make for a respectable UFO ending.

But since this game was developed by the Konami arcade division, they thought that it would be a great idea to pay homage to the rich history of the company, so the whole thing scales up to a new level: Tina dresses like a Contra character, she and Eric board the Vic Viper to chase their captain, and the whole thing turns out to be a prequel to the first Gradius, being played by Robbie the Rabbit with the Gradius’ first stage theme blasting in the background with off-key recorders.

It’s an ending so epic and so amazingly absurd that I forgive this game for not giving me new weapons or other incentives to put another credit.

I really wish to be able to play SH Arcade in a real arcade cabinet in the future. I would gladly give it my hard earned money and play this a hundred times so I can see this thing in a bigger screen. The absurdity, the art direction, and the sheer amount of references makes this my favorite and my favorite Silent Hill UFO ending of all time.

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One of my favorite things about game development is that the final product is never defined solely by the classic project management triad of cost, time, and quality. Games, unlike traditional software, are living contradictions: they are thousands of lines of code and assets neatly put together that make us feel things in ways a movie or a book aren’t able to.

That is the reason why there’s a long-standing debate over whether games should be considered art. Those who defend this view say their emotional engagement rivals cinema or literature. Opponents argue that games are ultimately pieces of software governed by logic instead of emotion, and that their artistic ambitions are merely decorative. But reality is far messier than either camp admits.

What really make games unique is that even the most disciplined game development project, with its Jira boards, sprints, and QA cycles, is vulnerable to the unpredictable element that makes any creative endeavor human: circumstance. Company politics, individual frustrations, technological constraints, market shifts… all of these can shape the soul of a game as much as its budget or schedule.

That brings us to today’s topic: the development behind 1999’s seminal survival horror classic Silent Hill.

A Team of Silent Misfits

The original Silent Hill is rarely cited as the best in the series (Silent Hill 2 and 3 often take that crown), but it remains the most mysterious. I acknowledge that its sequels are far superior games than the one that started it all, but Silent Hill uniqueness makes it my personal favorite in the series and one of my favorite games of all time. There’s a rawness in its atmosphere, a palpable sense of alienation that later entries could never quite replicate.

What makes this perception more potent is the fact that such result didn't came from an ambitious plan, but was the by-product of failure, lost faith and the blatant ostracism in which its creators were relegated. In the mid-1990s, Konami wanted a piece of the survival horror market dominated by Capcom’s Resident Evil and they assembled a new internal team tasked with creating a Western-friendly horror game.

However, there were a lot of caveats on this plan. To begin with, nobody at Konami knew what “Western-friendly” meant, so the team was given contradictory directions, tight budgets, and minimal executive support. To make things even more complicated, the people responsible for this project wouldn’t be the most stellar at the company. This misfit group, later nicknamed Team Silent, consisted of developers who had failed or clashed in other departments. Instead of elite talent, they were effectively exiled to what was considered a low-priority project.

Management expected little from them. Their mission was vague, their communication with headquarters scarce, and their morale shaky. In traditional delivery terms, this was a high-risk project with unclear requirements, weak stakeholder alignment, and low executive sponsorship. Or, in more endearing terms, a recipe for disaster.

And yet, against all odds, the extraordinary happened. When the game was released in 1999, it received high critical praise, surpassed sales expectations and became one of the defining moment in the genre. All from a game created in less than ideal circumstances that were never replicated with such success to this day.

But what were those circumstances and how can we replicate those in more healthy conditions?

After seeing projects failing for much less aggravating issues than the ones that plagued the original Silent Hill project, I truly believe what these guys pulled out was almost a miracle. Hindsight is 50-50, but this game could have been a disaster in a variety of reasons. Still, there are lessons we can pull from Team Silent that we could try to apply to new development projects.

Of course, I wouldn’t suggest to ostracize a group of developers and give them little to no resources, but there are some takeaways that we could apply when translated to modern sensibilities.

First, let's analyze each lesson and its takeaways.

Lesson 1: Psychological Safety Can Bloom from Neglect

As I mentioned before, in most companies, lack of executive attention kills a project. But in this rare case, neglect gave the developers something very rare in today’s gaming industry: freedom.

Since nobody at Konami expected Silent Hill to succeed, oversight was minimal. There were no constant check-ins or status reports. The team stopped trying to please upper management and instead focused on pleasing themselves.

Director Keiichiro Toyama, a former graphic designer with no leadership experience, began leaning into his personal interests like Western literature, psychological horror, and surrealism. Composer Akira Yamaoka joined midway through development, convinced he could do better than the placeholder music he heard. Without permission, he replaced it all with his own experimental industrial-ambient soundscape.

Freed from rigid expectations, Team Silent built a world shaped by their own anxieties. The result was a psychological horror experience unlike anything on the PlayStation.

Takeaway: When top-down control fades, bottom-up creativity can flourish. The key is whether the team feels safe enough to take ownership. In this case, neglect created psychological safety, a paradox few managers dare to reproduce intentionally.

Lesson 2: Constraints Fuel Creativity

Games are products that thrive in limitations, and Silent Hill embodies this like few other.

The PlayStation’s hardware could only render limited polygons and short draw distances. As result, realistic open spaces looked ugly and unnatural. Most teams would see that as a blocker that should be circumvent in creative ways, as we saw so many times in games from that era.

Team Silent, though, saw that as an opportunity like no other.

They added dense fog to hide the console’s limitations, a technical workaround that became the game’s signature aesthetic. What started as a constraint turned into the most memorable part of its identity. The same applied to lighting. The PS1 couldn’t handle dynamic illumination, so the designers leaned on flashlights and darkness, forcing the player’s imagination to fill in the gaps.

Every creative discipline does this at some point, but Team Silent embodied it as a survival tactic and part of its identity.

Takeaway: When resources are scarce, redefine the problem. Constraints can force elegant solutions and, sometimes, reinvent entire genres.

Lesson 3: Emotional Alignment Beats Procedural Alignment

Traditional software development begins with clear requirements, acceptance criteria, and technical specifications. Games can use these as a baseline, but they are mainly a result of experimentation, but artifacts like GDDs (game design documents) can provide a good basis to what developers should expect from the final product.

As you can imagine, Silent Hill had none of that. Its GDD was vague, full of mood descriptions rather than measurable objectives. In traditional game development, this brings a lot of problems, particularly for larger studios that require clear instructions to produce assets that closely align with the original vision.

Team Silent was far from a large team, and all of them were connected by the same emotional threads. Toyama wanted the game to evoke guilt and isolation rather than jump scares. Yamaoka’s music reinforced that vision with unsettling rhythms and metallic textures. Designer Masahiro Ito filled the world with broken geometry and impossible architecture, mirroring human trauma rather than physical logic.

This informal emotional charter held the team together far more effectively than any methodology. They didn’t always agree on mechanics, but they agreed on mood, and that was enough to unify direction.

Takeaway: In creative projects like game development, managing for cohesion means go beyond documentation and strives in cultivating empathy. Alignment can come from well designed processes, but also can be obtained through shared emotion.

Lesson 4: Adaptive Planning Outperforms Predictive Planning

Halfway through development, Konami considered cancelling Silent Hill. The team’s progress looked incoherent, and early builds performed poorly. Facing dissolution, the team shifted gears.

They cut non-essential features, focused on atmosphere, and produced a playable demo showcasing the fog, the eerie town, and the haunting soundscape. It wasn’t mechanically complete and had a lot of edged to be trimmed, but it was enough to show the higher ups that the game felt distinct. Ultimately, that vertical slice convinced management to let them continue.

This was classic agile adaptation before “Agile” was a thing. Without naming sprints or stand-ups, the team naturally gravitated toward iterative delivery: prototype, validate, pivot. They demonstrated value not through reports, but through experience.

Takeaway: Stakeholders don’t always understand documents, but they instinctively understand feeling. In ambiguous projects, tangible prototypes are more persuasive than detailed roadmaps.

Lesson 5: Chaos Can Breed Collective Ownership

Since they were working in isolation, Team Silent developed strong internal bonds. Programmers helped artists optimize assets. Sound designers contributed to level pacing. Everyone wore multiple hats. There was no clear hierarchy, but there was mutual respect.

Team members later recalled that their shared sense of failure, the feeling that they had nothing to lose, made them more united than any corporate incentive could. Therefore, they were capable of sharing more experiences and help each other out in a more proactive manner. The shared tension of being isolated and having no support from other teams at Konami made them do the best they could with what they had, and the final product benefited from it.

PM takeaway: Chaos can generate collective ownership when the mission becomes emotional rather than transactional. The trick for modern leaders is to channel that energy without waiting for disaster.

Lesson 6: Not Knowing Is the Beginning of Innovation

Years later, Toyama reflected on the project, saying that he and his team didn’t know exactly what they were doing and just wanted to make something that felt real to them. It sounds simple, but that confession captures one of the hardest truths for any project manager in creative industries: clarity can be overrated.

Modern delivery frameworks emphasize predictability. We forecast timelines, mitigate risks, and define success metrics, but innovation often comes from embracing uncertainty rather than eliminating it. Team Silent didn’t have a clear plan, but they had curiosity, trust, and a shared willingness to experiment. Had Konami enforced stricter governance, Silent Hill might have been another forgettable horror clone. Instead, their ambiguity became a breeding ground for discovery.

PM takeaway: Not every project needs a perfect plan. Some need a protected space for exploration. Leaders must learn to balance structure with surrender, knowing when to steer when things get out of hand and when to step back to let innovation thrive.

Lesson 7: The Postmortem That Became a Warning

Ironically, the success of Silent Hill destroyed the conditions that made it possible.

Konami, eager to replicate the hit, formalized Team Silent and demanded sequels. The creative freedom vanished under stricter oversight and higher expectations. While Silent Hill 2 remains one of the best horror games ever made, later entries struggled as corporate pressure and team turnover increased. The same organization that accidentally created innovation tried to industrialize it, and in doing so, lost the magic.

This pattern repeats constantly in both gaming and business. Once a team proves success through autonomy, leadership’s instinct is to codify the process rather than preserve the culture.

It’s the paradox of success: standardization kills spontaneity.

PM takeaway: Innovation can’t be templated. You can create space for it, but ultimately it thrives in the tension between structure and chaos. The role of management isn’t to eliminate uncertainty but to make it survivable.

Translating these Lessons to Modern Development

How can today’s designers and producers apply the lessons of Silent Hill without the “collateral damage” of corporate neglect? And how can you apply them to other types of IT project?

I believe there are some modern equivalents:

1. Controlled Autonomy:
   Give teams ownership of creative vision within clear guardrails. Give them objectives, not prescriptions. Use OKRs as direction and KPIs as metrics, but let developers use them as guidance instead of directives.

2. Rapid Emotional Prototyping:
   Before over-engineering game mechanics, test how your software make users feel. No matter the software you are developing, it will eventually convey emotions to the person using it. Build small slices that convey tone and pacing to validate concept resonance early.

3. Constraint-Driven Design Workshops:
   Turn limitations into design prompts. Ask, “What can’t we do, and how can we use that creatively?”

4. Cross-Functional Shadowing:
   Encourage disciplines to step into each other’s shoes. When developers understand art constraints and artists grasp technical trade-offs, empathy drives smarter compromises.

5. Postmortems Without Blame:
   Conduct retrospectives that celebrate mistakes as learning milestones in the same way Team Silent’s failures became innovations.

As you can see, these principles don’t just apply to games, but any project where human emotion intersects with structured delivery. It can be applied to a SaaS rollout, a creative campaign, or an ERP migration that needs a spark of empathy to make people feel the right emotions when interacting with your final product.

The Enduring Fog

More than two decades later, walking through Silent Hill’s misty streets still feels as personal as the first time I played this game back in 1999. The texture of its fear isn’t in the monsters but in the loneliness between them: the silence between footsteps, the faint radio static hinting that something’s near, or maybe that nothing is.

It is incredible to learn that atmosphere was a psychological mirror born from the same uncertainty and alienation the team felt during development. The fog outside became the fog within. In a way, every project has its own fog, and, as managers, we spend our days trying to clear it by building roadmaps, defining deliverables, and tracking KPIs. But sometimes, the fog is what gives meaning to the journey. It forces us to listen closer, look deeper, and trust our teams to find the path.

Silent Hill stands as proof that uncertainty, when faced with empathy and courage, can generate the most innovative ideas your team can create.

In today’s industry, where metrics often overshadow meaning, the story of Silent Hill feels almost subversive. It reminds us that some of the greatest outcomes come from imperfect beginnings.

So as Halloween approaches and the fog rolls back into our screens, perhaps the best way to honor Silent Hill is to remember that even the most imperfect projects can produce memorable results, just like that otherworldly town that brought us so many memorable experiences.

Silent Hill returned from its long, fog-shrouded limbo when Konami announced a special streaming event back in 2022. It was a valiant attempt to revive a franchise that remained trapped in the Otherworld for years and, as a longtime fan who has the first entry in the series as one of his favorite games of all time, I couldn't be happier.

However, I was cautiously optimistic. Aside from Silent Hill 2 Remake, most of the revealed projects sounded like quick cash-ins (and even that one has a lot of room for improvement, something that the Bloober Team fortunately aknowledged and made their best to work upon it). Yet one project stood apart from the rest: Silent Hill f, developed by NeoBards Entertainment.

A Japanese setting, the respected Ryukishi07 as its writer, and the promise to twist the formula inside-out? That was enough to make it feel less like another SHINO (“Silent Hill In Name Only”) and more like a fresh reinterpretation of the series’ core. I felt genuinely intrigued, and couldn't wait to see what this was all about.

Three years later, the game is finally here. I picked it up the PS5 version at launch, fully aware of the reputation it had already built among fans and reviewers, and now that I unlocked all five endings, I understand why this is the most divisive Silent Hill game since the fourth entry.

The best way I found to explain my feelings regarding this game is by trying to answer the most common questions about this strange, fascinating game. So let's start with the most basic one…

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What is this game about?

Silent Hill f follows Hinako Shimizu, a bullied high-school girl in 1960s Japan whose life decays literally and metaphorically under a mysterious floral curse that engulfs the town of Ebisugaoka. On one particularly difficult morning, she meets her childhood friends hoping to vent her troubles, only for them to witness the arrival of a deadly fog that corrupts everything it touches. What follows is a journey that begins as a coming-of-age drama, but quickly turns into a surreal spiral of trauma, guilt, and search for identity.

The first thing that caught fans’ attention and became one of the biggest points of concern was having this game taking place outside the titular town, which sounded gimmicky at first. Thankfully, setting the story in mid-1960s Japan proved to be an inspired decision since it reinforces the game’s themes brilliantly: the role of women in society, the impact of bullying into adulthood, the erasure of self through marriage, and the friction between boys and girls during childhood are already timeless topics, but placing them in this historical context gives them a cultural weight a modern U.S. town could never match.

The monsters embody those ideas perfectly. Following the series’ ethos, each grotesque creature blooms out of shame and memory, embodying physical manifestations of Hinako’s and her friends’ insecurities. The journal mechanic ties it together beautifully. As Hinako records her thoughts, it becomes both a gameplay guide and a psychological map of her trauma. Not only that, it helps a lot to organize puzzle solutions in a way that makes it intuitive and easy to consult.

But that same mechanic also highlights what I consider one of f’s most frustrating issues: the subtext is too explicit. Classic Silent Hill games thrived on ambiguity, leaving a lot of blank spaces in players’ minds to give us a sense of dread no other series has ever accomplished. The original Team Silent knew exactly how much to reveal and how much should be left for the player’s imagination, this amplifying the horror substantially. Silent Hill f, by contrast, insists on explaining everything. Hinako’s journal spells out each symbol and relationship in exhaustive detail, which works as an inspired mechanic due to her nature as a traumatized young woman but also serves as a place where most questions are quickly answered, generating a sense of closure without giving any space for misinterpretation. As David Lynch once said, “As soon as a story gives you closure, it gives you an excuse to forget you’ve seen the damn thing.” If that will be the case with f, only time will tell.

Speaking of explanations, as an attempt to give more bang for your buck and increase replay-ability, you have to finish f several times to fully understand its story. The game is structured so each run reveals new cutscenes and pages from Hinako’s diary, unlocking additional endings and context. It’s a clever metaphor for self-discovery, but also a divisive design choice. You’ll repeat many of the same sequences, though some cutscenes change subtly: dialogue shifts, character actions differ, and new layers of meaning appear. The game even tells you when you’re watching something new to mitigate the risk of skipping new scenes by accident.

For some, that means replaying a 9-to-10-hour campaign, which sounds exhausting for a survival horror game. For me, though, once I memorized the puzzles, it became a meditative loop. I finished it six times (one run ended with me failing a key requirement, so I saw the bad ending twice) and it took around 25 hours total to see all endings. Honestly, I beat f five times faster than I cleared a single run of SH 2 Remake (that one feels like an eternity), so your mileage can vary.

How does this game play?

Just like Silent Hill 2 Remake before it, Silent Hill f walks the line between classic survival horror and modern design. I think it was a good choice since the over-the-shoulder camera à la Resident Evil 2 and 4 Remake works well for exploration.

Thanks to it, you can better soak in the art direction, which is easily the best aspect of this game. Ebisugaoka’s decaying streets are pure nightmare poetry: blooming rot and fungal textures blending vibrant reds with ashen greys in a visual symphony, all stitched together by Akira Yamaoka’s haunting score. Some fans miss the fixed camera angles (and I secretly hope the upcoming Silent Hill Remake brings them back for certain scenes), but I didn’t find their absence here a major issue… well, except during a few cramped combat encounters, which I’ll get to later.

The transitions between the “foggy world” and the Otherworld, however, lack the same finesse from the past. Instead of that slow-burn dread that defined earlier entries, f cuts abruptly whenever Hinako faints or falls asleep. It makes sense narratively, but it breaks immersion once you realize the pattern. If she closes her eyes for more than a second, brace yourself: you’re going to the Otherworld. It's so telegraphed that kills any sense of surprise.

The ever-present mission prompts on the corner of the screen don’t help either. It’s as if the game doesn’t trust you to figure things out on your own, but at least the puzzles redeem it. On the higher difficulties (“Hard” and “Lost in the Fog”), they recapture that classic Silent Hill flavor with symbolic, unnerving, and occasionally brilliant head scratchers.

What about that infamous combat system everyone’s talking about?

I’m not going to lie: despite most purist say, I’m thrilled that the developers finally tried to evolve Silent Hill’s combat to follow modern design trends. But execution-wise, what the NeoBards team delivered here is a mixed bag.

In one-on-one encounters, combat is tense and satisfying. Hinako dodges, counters, and adapts gracefully, proving you can survive without ever touching a firearm throughout the whole game. But once multiple enemies appear in a confined space, everything collapses: cameras locks into corners, Hinako can’t react quick enough, monsters start to span special attacks leaving no space too react… it’s a mess. And since both Ebisugaoka and the Otherworld are built with narrow corridors and small rooms, that happens more than it should. That is where fixed camera angles would work wonders to mitigate this issue. Having a single point of view could help players to know where they are and react on time.

However, in terms of combat mechanics, this is a small complaint when compared to its most criticized aspect: the four-bar HUD (health, stamina, sanity, and weapon durability). It feels lifted straight from a Souls-like, despite the developers’ insistence that it isn’t. They even mapped target-lock to a face button (Square on PS5) instead of R3 to hide the resemblance, but you can still click the stick and get the same effect.

Personally, I don’t mind it. I love both Silent Hill and Souls-likes, so the mechanics themselves didn’t bother me. What truly ruins the mood, though, is the HUD design. Those intrusive bars, and the fact that they appear only when enemies are nearby, obliterate any sense of suspense. Every time they pop up, you know danger is coming. Needless to say, horror dies the second you can predict it.

Some might argue, “It’s a video game, of course it would have UI elements,” but survival horror lives and dies by immersion. Achievements popping up here and there are bad enough (even if f’s achievement descriptions are cleverly written to soften the spoiler effect), but plastering four bars on the bottom left corner of the screen is a design choice that undercuts everything else.

A future patch could easily add an option to disable those pesky objective prompts to help us to get more immersed. The same couldn’t be said about the status bars, though, as they’re too baked into the combat mechanics to let players to progress without them. That’s a shame, as the atmosphere in a Silent Hill game deserves better.

Can this game be considered a true Silent Hill?

After all this, it’s time to answer the biggest question about f.

Despite being marketed as the next mainline entry, Silent Hill f feels more like a side story. The simple fact that it’s set in Ebisugaoka instead of the titular town establishes that. Even so, can it really be considered a true entry in the Silent Hill series?

Yes, absolutely.

After six playthroughs, collecting every document I could find, and several rereads of Hinako’s journal, I can say with confidence that f captures the essence of Silent Hill. It channels the psychological horror, mirrors the lore mechanics, and explores the same thematic territory, all refracted through a distinctly Japanese lens.

But to talk about it, I’ll have to enter into spoiler territory. If you haven’t reached at least three endings yet, skip to the next session.

The original Silent Hill revolves around a cult known as The Order, which seeks to create paradise on Earth through communion with “God” via a drug made with a hallucinogenic flower called White Claudia. Their rituals twist what may have been a neutral spiritual power into a reflection of human sin and desire, birthing the nightmare world. The only known antidote is a red substance called Aglaophotis, capable of purging demonic corruption.

In Silent Hill f, the parallels are immediate. The Inari Cult shared by Ebisugaoka’s oldest inhabitants plays the same role as The Order. Hinako’s painkillers are derived from a similar sacred flower (under another name). And the Agura no Hotei-sama used to purify the Divine Sword and expurg a bad spirit from Hinako in one of the endings functions almost exactly like Aglaophotis. Even the “bad” ending in f has a melancholic ballad sung during the credits sequence, drawing parallels with the first game. The symbolism, the fog, the Otherworld… it’s all there. By those standards, f is a legitimate entry in the canon.

But the biggest problem, the one that makes so many fans argue that this is not a true Silent Hill game, lies in presentation. The requirement to replay the game multiple times to grasp the full narrative is already divisive, but Hinako’s mid-game werewolf transformation (which is contextually justified, yet visually and mechanically jarring) pushes things into anime territory. Combined with a few intentionally goofy endings, it occasionally feels tonally off from Silent Hill’s subtle dread.

What does the “f” stand for?

And that leaves us with this final question. The game itself never answers this, but I have some theories:

• Fox, for the Inari spirit at the heart of the story.

• Friends, a nod to its emotional core.

• Fog, the most obvious choice.

But there is the internet’s favorite answer, and honestly, mine too: f is for Frustration.

I liked my experience with f, but I didn’t loved it. For every inspired moment, Silent Hill f stumbles on something else. Its themes, characters, and overall presentation are outstanding, truly unique for a survival horror title, but its clunky mechanics and storytelling hold back what could be a modern classic. It is frustrating to think about all the potential of this game and have all those setbacks holding it back.

Still, all that aside, I’d recommend Silent Hill f to both newcomers and veterans. It’s flawed, yes, but it respects the series’ soul and dares to reinterpret it in some key aspects. The NeoBards team clearly knows what Silent Hill is about and made a great attempt to give a new spin to its lore, and that should be recommendable enough. After years of dormancy and misfires, maybe that’s the best we can hope for Silent Hill: a cautious rebirth. All we need is to see other developers learning from this game’s mistakes and improving upon it. Baby steps through the fog.

Usually, this is where I end things, but I need to come clean… nothing frustrates me more than that UFO ending! But that needs me to take other endings into consideration. That’s why in my next article, keeping with the Halloween spirit, I’ll be ranking every UFO ending in the Silent Hill series to prove my point. See you on the next post!

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If this is your first time here, welcome! This is part of my ongoing series exploring the most powerful leadership lessons hidden inside the Final Fantasy universe. If you haven’t read the previous entries yet, you can start here: Part I, Part II, Part II-2, Part III, and Part IV.

We’re back for another round of leadership insights from the series that gave us more examples of great leaders than we could possibly count. This time, I’m finally answering an old reader request and using this opportunity to slightly shake up the format since the character we’ll explore today deserves something special.

Without further ado, let’s talk about one of the finest “Cids” in Final Fantasy history.

Cidolfus Orlandeau: A Noble and Honorable Commander

If you want to learn how to lead with unbreakable resolve, tempered honor, and a fierce sense of loyalty, you don’t need to look at generals or business icons. Look instead to the fabled “Thunder God Cid,” Count Cidolfus Orlandeau of Ivalice. His story in Final Fantasy Tactics is filled with conflict, betrayal, and moral integrity, all the ingredients needed to test leadership under pressure.

Count of House Orlandeau and lord-commander of the Order of the Southern Sky, he is a longtime vassal and confidant of Duke Goltanna, a friendship that lasts more than twenty years. He fights in both the Fifty Years’ War and later the War of the Lions. Eventually, he joins Ramza Beoulve to resist the Church’s manipulations and the Lucavi demons behind its schemes, an essential part of his story we’ll return to soon.

Even without playing Tactics, you can see what kind of man he is: a war veteran, a knight of deep honor and composure whose battlefield reputation earned him the title Thunder God. Yet despite his power and influence, he remains humble, guided by justice, public duty, and loyalty over political ambition.

The greatest proof of these virtues appears early on. Orlandeau sits in council meetings, debating taxation, refugee crises, and the balance between military necessity and human cost. He pushes for peace talks rather than heavier taxes or further burdens on a war-torn populace and pays dearly for it. The Church frames him for an assassination attempt, leading his old friend Goltanna to imprison him. Ramza later frees him, and Orlandeau abandons blind service to his duke to confront the Church’s corruption and its demonic allies.

His final fate is ambiguous. Some believe he perished in battle; others that his name was cleared posthumously. Though political manipulations stain his reputation, truth survives through his descendants. Whatever history decided, Thunder God Cid is remembered for his defining traits:

• Unwavering loyalty and honor: He is a man who honors his oaths, even when painful or dangerous.

• Courage in adversity: He faces betrayal, imprisonment, political falsehoods, and even supernatural evil without crumbling.

• Humility behind power: Besides his reputation as the Thunder God, he acts with humility and compassion.

• Strategic judgment: He understands when war is necessary, but also when peace must be sought.

• Willingness to break with allies when they stray: He turns from Goltanna when loyalty becomes blind obedience.

• Long-term vision over short-term gain: He sees beyond immediate battlefield success to the welfare of the people.

However, no hero is perfect. Orlandeau’s story also teaches that:

• His martial prowess and prestige might intimidate or overshadow colleagues, making collaboration harder.

• His ideals sometimes conflict with pragmatic politics. Balancing idealism with effective compromise is hard.

• He enters the fray late in the narrative. His capacity to lead a full transformational campaign is somewhat limited (he’s more an enforcer/finisher than a builder).

• His path involves significant risk and sacrifice. Not every leader can or should replicate that degree of risk-taking.

Since those can sound extreme, modern leaders must adapt these lessons: not every conflict demands total ruin, not every alliance needs a dramatic break, and not every stand requires martyrdom.

What This Character Teach About Leadership in Real Life

Despite those caveats, Thunder God Cid offers invaluable lessons for contemporary leadership, especially for those wielding real influence on a global scale.

Here are six takeaways we can take from his journey.

1. Loyalty to Principles Beats Blind Allegiance

Though he has served Duke Goltanna for decades, Orlandeau objects when Goltanna pushes heavier taxes on suffering people. He urges peace more than respecting an allegiance that goes against his principles.

That teaches us that true loyalty should rest in your values, not just to authority. A leader must be able to question their superiors when ethical lines are crossed. If those can be questioned or if your voice is ignored, the best thing to do is walk away and look for new opportunities.

2. Speak for the Voiceless

Orlandeau argues against burdening war-torn citizens with more taxes, considering the plight of refugees. At first, this one seems to be more applied to governments than to the corporate world as it teaches us that leaders must see beyond the narrow scope of strategy and fight for those whose voices aren’t heard. But if there is something that we can translate to our everyday lives is that empathy grounds decision-making in humanity.

Putting yourself in the shoes of your teammates or employees helps a ton to direct your decisions to what will impact them in a positive manner.

3. Courage to Take Risk, Even When It Costs You

Cid risked being framed, imprisoned, and discredited by breaking from his lord and allying with Ramza. You don’t need to be as radical as him, but leadership often demands moral courage and a willingness to lose status or comfort for a higher cause or a better result. As seen in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, learn to do what you must without worrying about your status.

4. Mastery + Restraint = Legendary Power

This one is for those who played the game. On the gameplay side, as a Sword Saint, Orlandeau commands devastating power, but he doesn’t apply it mindlessly since his reputation isn’t just using brute strength. That teaches that true leaders cultivate exceptional skill or competence, and then wield it with discipline instead of ego.

5. Align with Allies, But Don’t Follow Blindly

Orlandeau initially stays loyal to Goltanna, but when Goltanna refuses to heed counsel, he distances himself. This is the perfect example of a good leader choosing alliances wisely, knowing when a partner’s decisions betray shared purpose, and acting accordingly.

6. Legacy Is Built by Truth, Not Reputation Alone

Despite attempts of framing Thuinder God Cid, the truth survives via the Durai Papers. Orlandeau’s true character is revealed through his actions and loyalty.

In today’s age which social media reigns supreme, this one speaks harder than days of old. When speaking of legacy, what endures is not your public brand but the integrity behind it. Leaders should act so that history (or those who follow) can vindicate them.

Beyond being one of the mightiest swordsmen and arguably one of the best Cids in FF, Cidolfus Orlandeau stands as a model of principled leadership: loyalty rooted in virtue, courage to dissent, empathy for the afflicted, and mastery lived with humility.

If you want your leadership to survive the trials of the boss level, follow Orlandeau’s path: cultivate integrity, protect the powerless, align with purpose, and walk the hard road when duty demands it.

These principles might sound old-fashioned, but like the thunder that heralds Orlandeau’s blade, they echo across centuries, reminding every modern leader that honor never goes out of style.

From the Substack Community

Mindful Gamer

After the Climb

It’s easy to get sidetracked as adults when we’re trying to balance being “serious” and “being a kid…

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10 months ago · 5 likes · Mindful Gamer

This FF post was an old recommendation from , one of my favorite wellness authors on Substack. Like TBL, he takes lessons from games and translates them to health and mindfulness practices, a perfect companion for posts like me that deals with corporate leadership and management best practices. If you like to read posts where games are used as metaphors to real life lessons, I can recommend this one enough.

Franchise anniversaries are a tricky thing. They’re one of those gaming events that always swing between extremes. Either people don’t care, or they care way too much.

The idea behind these celebrations is simple: when a major game hits a milestone, say ten years, it deserves some spotlight. And every five years after that, it should come back with new games, cameos, or at least a wave of nostalgic merch.

A company that usually handles this with a decent sense of balance is Bandai Namco. Pac-Man, for instance, is turning 45 this year (feeling old yet?), and they marked the occasion with limited-edition clothing on their store, a themed stage and cosmetics in Tekken 8, and the release of Shadow Labyrinth, which I’ve already covered in detail here and here.

But balance isn’t what hardcore gamers want, right? They want big celebrations. Fireworks, concerts, remasters, statues… you know, the whole deal. Ideally all of this with a new game attached to it. The problem is that anniversary events tend to land on one of two sides: either they’re overloaded with flashy fluff that leads to spectacular stumbles, or they’re so underwhelming they barely match the legacy they’re meant to honor.

If you want an example of the “too much” approach, just look at Sega and its obsession with Sonic’s birthdays. Every milestone has to feel important, usually tied to a mainline release, which sounds good in theory, until you remember that rushing a game to meet a date rarely ends well. That mindset gave us both the joy of Sonic Generations and the meme-worthy disaster that was Sonic ‘06.

And on the other side of the ring, there’s Nintendo.

Oh, Nintendo…

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Big N, Small Parties

Looking in retrospect, it’s actually pretty rare to see Nintendo celebrating its franchises’ anniversaries the way players expect.

One of the few shining examples where they did nail it was with Kirby. The Kirby’s Dream Collection for Wii, released to celebrate the pink puffball’s 20th anniversary, was everything a fan could ask for: six classic titles, brand-new challenge stages inspired by Return to Dream Land, a museum packed with historical goodies, and even a handful of episodes from the Right Back at Ya! TV show. The special edition went the extra mile, including a gorgeous art booklet and a CD featuring a lovingly curated selection of music from across the series. It was, quite literally, a dream come true (pun absolutely intended).

But when it comes to Nintendo’s other major series, things get inconsistent. Most anniversary games weren’t originally planned as anniversary releases, they just happened to come out around the same time. Others got modest concerts, themed merchandise, or a token nod during a Direct. Some were ignored altogether. The Legend of Zelda’s 30th anniversary had a beautiful symphonic concert series, but Donkey Kong’s 40th in 2023? Nothing. Metroid’s 35th in 2021? Same story. And if you’re a Star Fox or F-Zero fan… well, let’s not reopen those wounds.

Still, you’d think Super Mario, Nintendo’s poster boy and gaming’s global ambassador, would be treated differently. Except here’s the problem: when it comes to gaming mascots, Mario is bigger than anything. The days when he was just a character are long gone. Nowadays, he’s the symbol of gaming itself. And because of that, no matter what Nintendo does to celebrate him, it’ll always feel short.

Case in point: his 40th birthday.

As I write this, Nintendo just held a Direct outlining its plans to celebrate Mario’s big four-oh, and the reaction from fans has been… let’s say lukewarm, at best. No new mainline game? A handful of Japan-only events? Two overpriced remasters? That’s not exactly the celebration people had in mind.

But those reactions got me thinking: how does this compare to Mario’s past anniversaries?

Super Mario Anniversaries: A Celebration Through the Decades

When I started to revisit the past, I came to the conclusion that Super Mario is such a massive cultural force that anything Nintendo does to celebrate him will always feel smaller than it should, so we have to take this into consideration when evaluation how his creators decided to celebrate his anniversary. And spoiler alert: the 40th anniversary isn’t even the worst the plumber’s ever had.

To keep things fair, I’ll be looking back at all of Mario’s milestone anniversaries, starting with the 10th and going all the way up to the 40th, thus following the industry’s usual rhythm for franchise retrospectives. But I won’t limit this to official parties or commemorative merchandise. Each milestone will also be judged by the main games released in that anniversary year, since those tend to reveal what Nintendo really thinks about its mascot. Of course, I’ll also factor in side events, collaborations, and collectibles before giving each anniversary a final 1-to-5 star ranking.

Now, here’s something most people forget: Nintendo only started taking the idea of official “Anniversaries” seriously with Mario’s 20th. But I refuse to ignore what came before. Because believe it or not, even without an official label, the Italian plumber’s 10th anniversary was surprisingly special.

So, let’s start there…

10th Anniversary: The Babies’ Origins

Year: 1995
Main Attraction: Yoshi’s Island – Super Mario World 2

1995 was a strange but fascinating year for Nintendo. The SNES was taking its final breaths, the Virtual Boy was already a commercial ghost, and the Nintendo 64 was still a year away, meaning we wouldn’t see the groundbreaking Super Mario 64 just yet.

Still, Nintendo managed to mark the plumber’s 10th anniversary with an absolute classic: Yoshi’s Island. It might not sound like a huge deal today, but back then it was the talk during lunch breaks. Everyone was buzzing about how bold it was: for Mario’s 10th birthday, we wouldn’t play as Mario at all. Instead, we took control of Yoshi in a prequel that revealed the origins of the Mario Brothers.

It also introduced Baby Mario and Baby Luigi, who would later grow into separate playable characters (and absolute chaos agents) in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. For an anniversary without any real “celebration” attached to it, this was a surprisingly meaningful milestone, one that expanded the Mario mythos in ways that still echo today.

Other events & merchandise: None.
Verdict: The “anniversary” concept didn’t officially exist yet, but a mainline Super Mario release landing on a milestone year is rare enough to deserve credit.

★★☆☆☆

15th Anniversary: A Blank Sheet of Paper

Year: 2000
Main Attraction: Mario Story (a.k.a. Paper Mario)

Another transitional year for Big N, another missed opportunity to celebrate their mascot properly. Still, Mario wasn’t entirely left out of the spotlight for his 15th birthday. Alongside the releases of Mario Tennis and Mario Party 2 on the Nintendo 64, Japanese players got Mario Story, a spiritual successor to Super Mario RPG that would make its way west the following year as Paper Mario.

For RPG fans, this was a treat: a clever, charming adventure that laid the foundation for one of Mario’s most beloved subseries. But in terms of “mainline” action, things were quieter. Nintendo was still teasing the mysterious Super Mario 128 tech demo at SpaceWorld 2000, a glimpse of experimental ideas that would later evolve into Super Mario Galaxy years down the road.

Beyond that, though, Mario took a backseat. The Pokémon craze was in full swing with the release of Gold and Silver in the U.S., so we can probably forgive Nintendo for letting their plumber rest while Pikachu carried the company on his tiny yellow shoulders.

Other events & merchandise: None.
Verdict: Compared to the previous anniversary, which at least gave us an all-time classic, this one was a total snooze. We’ll still have to wait 5 years until Nintendo start to do Mario’s anniversary some justice.

★☆☆☆☆

20th Anniversary: Happy! Mario 20th

Year: 2005
Main Attractions: Mario Kart DS, Famicom-colored Game Boy Micro, and Super Mario Bros. (Famicom Mini / NES Classics, GBA)

By 2005, Mario was in great shape. Mario Kart DS had just dropped, arguably one of the best entries in the entire series, and the plumber’s party calendar was packed. The Mario Party series got two new releases (Advance for GBA and Mario Party 7 for GameCube), while Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time gave us an adorable, full-circle tale of the adult brothers teaming up with their baby selves.

It was also the first year Nintendo officially acknowledged the Super Mario series anniversary. But while the lineup of games was solid, the anniversary goods themselves were underwhelming. On one hand, there was the beautiful gold-and-red Game Boy Micro styled after the original Famicom. On the other, the Famicom Mini port of Super Mario Bros. on GBA, later released in the West as part of the NES Classics line, which is… well, it is literally just the original game, stretched to fit the GBA’s widescreen, resulting in visuals that looked oddly warped.

Worse still, this game came only a few years after Super Mario Bros. Deluxe on the Game Boy Color, a vastly superior port that, despite its screen crunch, it added The Lost Levels as an unlockable, hidden Yoshi eggs, red coin challenges, Boo races, and even a built-in calendar and planner (because, in a pre-smartphone world, why not?). Compared to that, the GBA release felt lazy at best. Still, it’s better than nothing.

Other events & merchandise: A Shigeru Miyamoto interview on Nintendo’s official website discussing the making of the original Super Mario Bros., plus a set of five collectible keychains distributed by Australian Burger King (a.k.a. Hungry Jack’s). That’s about it.

Verdict: Nintendo finally made Mario’s anniversary “official,” but the celebration itself was modest. Consider this a rehearsal for the truly grand parties to come.

★★★☆☆

25th Anniversary: An All-Stars Celebration

Year: 2010
Main Attractions: Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition

We finally reach an anniversary that truly meant something.

2010 kicked off with a bang. In one of those rare occasions where a mainline Mario game coincided with an anniversary year, players were blessed with Super Mario Galaxy 2. Released in May, it was universally acclaimed. Critics hailed it as the best 3D Mario game ever made at the time, and many still do. It felt like the perfect way to start a milestone celebration.

But the real festivities didn’t begin until September, when Nintendo rolled out a wave of special edition bundles. There were striking red Wiis paired with New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a few rare European bundles featuring an enhanced NES version of Donkey Kong (complete with restored Pie Factory stages and new animations), and even Mario Kart Wii packs that included the iconic Wii Wheel.

All good fun, but what really caught everyone’s attention was Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition for Wii. And… oh boy, what a mixed bag that was.

The disc contained nothing more than the SNES ROM of Super Mario All-Stars (the original version, not the one that has Super Mario World), accompanied by a small booklet with some underwhelming artwork and developer quotes, plus a “best of” soundtrack CD. That’s it. No visual updates, no bonus features, not even a proper emulation layer. It was one of the most baffling releases in Mario’s history, though not the last time Nintendo would leave fans scratching their heads.

Other events & merchandise: A charming two-part Miyamoto interview on the old Nintendo Channel, the debut of The Mario Drawing Song, a massive themed cake event at Nintendo World Store in New York, limited-edition posters and gift cards, and a special Iwata Asks session featuring Miyamoto and Shigesato Itoi, plus several minor events around the world.

Verdict: It’s easy to let the All-Stars fiasco cloud our memory of this anniversary. Many fans still remember the disappointment and the countless “what could have been” articles that followed. But in hindsight, between the celebratory bundles, global events, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 standing tall as the crown jewel, this was one of (if not the) best Mario anniversaries to date. It truly felt special, a year where Nintendo made Mario’s legacy count.

★★★★★

30th Anniversary: Make Your Own Mario

Year: 2015
Main Attraction: Super Mario Maker

2015 was a rough year to be a Nintendo fan. After the massive highs of the Wii and the original DS, players looking for their Mario fix were now stuck between the struggling Wii U and the slow-burning 3DS. The handheld would later earn its redemption arc, but at the time, the Wii U was shaping up to be one of the biggest commercial flops in Nintendo’s history. And then, tragedy struck: the passing of Satoru Iwata in July left fans heartbroken. It was a somber year for the company, one defined by uncertainty and grief.

The biggest releases of the time were Splatoon and the Majora’s Mask 3D remake, both strong titles, but the Mario catalog painted a different picture. Mario Party 10 and Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash were easily the weakest entries in their respective series (unless you count the portable Mario Party experiments), and Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, released that December in Japan, landed with a quiet “meh” compared to the charm of its predecessors. Not exactly the kind of setup that screams celebration.

Yet somehow, Nintendo found a way to honor Mario’s 30th in a deeply admirable fashion, by finally granting a long-standing fan wish: let players create their own Mario levels in an official way. Super Mario Maker arrived with a comprehensive set of tools, a clean and joyful presentation, luxurious amiibo support, and a vibrant online community that exploded with creativity. It was a love letter to both Mario’s legacy and his fans’ imaginations, the brightest light in an otherwise gloomy year.

The celebration also included two 30th Anniversary Mario amiibo figures, a Japan-exclusive 3DS bundle, and a stunning two-disc soundtrack album (The 30th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. Music), which remains one of the finest Mario music collections ever made.

Other events & merchandise: The Let’s Super Mario charity campaign, a Mario Music Festival in Shibuya, themed Hot Wheels toy cars, beautifully designed hanafuda and playing cards, two collector’s books released exclusively in Japan, and a mix of smaller events and tie-ins.

Verdict: This one’s complicated. Nintendo did its best under tough circumstances, and Super Mario Maker shone as a brilliant, heartfelt tribute. But when you step back and see the whole picture, it’s hard to ignore the melancholy hanging over this celebration. Admirable effort, bittersweet execution.

★★☆☆☆

35th Anniversary: For a Limited Time Only

Year: 2020
Main Attractions: Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Super Mario Bros. 35, Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros., and Super Mario All-Stars on Nintendo Switch Online

This anniversary was traumatic for reasons far beyond gaming since 2020 marked the start of the global pandemic, which threw release schedules into chaos and reshaped how people experienced entertainment. For Nintendo, it also turned Animal Crossing: New Horizons into an unlikely cultural phenomenon. Released at exactly the right time, it helped the Switch (already a hit) reach stratospheric success, cementing it as the company’s best-selling home console to date.

But Mario wasn’t about to fade into the background on his 35th birthday. While Paper Mario: The Origami King gave fans a charming single-player adventure and people who didn’t own a WiiU (basically, the majority of Earth’s population) could finally play Super Mario 3D World with its amazing expansion Bowser’s Fury, the real celebrations were the real deal.

The smaller treats included a gorgeous Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch handheld and the addition of the original Super Mario All-Stars to the Nintendo Switch Online catalog, a nice touch of nostalgia for subscribers. But the spotlight fell on two releases:

• Super Mario Bros. 35, a battle royale twist on the classic formula where 35 players raced through familiar stages, sending defeated enemies into each other’s screens à la Tetris 99.

• Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a compilation of Super Mario 64, Sunshine, and Galaxy, complete with their soundtracks and light graphical enhancements.

Those two games should hit like a home run. The first presented a chaotic and addictive way to experience the first Super Mario Bros. game and the second reunited three of the best 3D platformers of all time. All well and good… until fans noticed the small print: both would only be available for a limited time, both physically (in the case of 3D All Stars) and digitally. Cue the collective groan of every preservationist on the planet.

The limited-time stunt became one of the most baffling marketing moves in recent Nintendo history. It created artificial scarcity, fueled scalper chaos, and turned a celebration of history into a ticking clock. It didn’t help that the emulation quality, while mostly competent, lacked the polish fans expected from such iconic titles.

Still, there was something quietly poetic about this lineup. Having Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario World, and Yoshi’s Island available on the Nintendo Switch Online service, plus the 3D All-Stars collection and the 3D World re-release, meant that, for a brief shining moment, you could play almost every mainline Super Mario game ever released on a single console. Well, except Galaxy 2, but Nintendo would “fix” that problem five years later.

Other events & merchandise: Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit (a hybrid AR racing set using real RC karts), special themed Splatfests in Splatoon 2, limited-time Super Mario items in Animal Crossing, a LEGO Mario expansion line, and plenty of cross-promotional merch, from Puma sneakers to Monopoly sets and commemorative Uniqlo shirts.

Verdict: Let’s face it: Mario has had far worse birthdays than this one. Despite the tone-deaf “limited-time” strategy and the bittersweet end of Super Mario Bros. 35, this anniversary packed a lot of content for a year when the world had stopped spinning. A flawed but heartfelt celebration that still gave fans plenty to enjoy while stuck at home.

★★★★☆

40th Anniversary: The Weight of the Crown

Year: 2025
Main Attractions: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 Remasters, and Rosalina’s Storybook

Forty years. That’s an entire lifetime in gaming terms. And here’s Mario, once again celebrating in full glory. This time, though, the devil is in the details. Since this celebration is still unfolding as I write, it deserves a closer look.

The Switch 2 debuted this year alongside two major Nintendo releases: Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. Not only that, Mario Party Jamboree received a special edition for the new console. Echoing the 20th anniversary, we began this milestone with a new Mario Party (a somewhat rehashed and misled one, priced at $20 for the expansion and offering little beyond the original Switch version) and the biggest, most ambitious Mario Kart yet. The catch on this last one? The price tag: $80 for digital, $90 for physical. Not exactly a festive start.

Last year, Nintendo teased fans with a Mario-centric Direct. This time, however, the presentation was shadow-dropped during the first half of what was expected to be a massive showcase for the Switch 2. With the console’s initial lineup still feeling light, fans were expecting a huge blowout of new titles. Instead, the first segment was dedicated entirely to Mario’s 40th anniversary.

The big question on everyone’s mind: Would there be a new mainline Super Mario game? After all, Odyssey was eight years old by now, and even with Donkey Kong Bananza fresh on shelves, the idea didn’t seem far-fetched.

Nope. No new 3D Mario.

Instead, the announcements were… fine. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie finally got its first teaser. Super Mario Bros. Wonder was confirmed for an expanded Switch 2 version (which, at this point, had become standard Nintendo practice). There were a couple of smaller reveals (Mario Tennis Fever and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book) and, at the center of it all, the long-awaited HD remasters of Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2.

The remasters were genuinely exciting: two of the Wii’s finest games, finally updated with HD visuals, complete soundtracks, and even a physical edition of Rosalina’s Storybook, now featuring a brand-new chapter. But for many fans, it all felt like déjà vu. The memories of the 3D All-Stars fiasco were still fresh, and with each title priced separately at $40 apiece, the déjà vu came with sticker shock. Beyond that, the lineup leaned more toward museum exhibit than milestone celebration.

Other events & merchandise: the 40th Anniversary logo being featured in the Kyoto Marathon 2026, Nintendo Museum Official Book Vol. 1 to be available exclusively at Nintendo Museum, new Mario and Rosalina amiibo tied to the Galaxy remasters, a wave of amiibo reprints, and online tributes across Nintendo’s social media channels.

Verdict: There’s a lot here, sure, but the fine print makes everything taste a little sour. Maybe Mario’s shadow has grown so large that no celebration can truly measure up. At this point, how do you top yourself? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just polish the crown and hope everyone still claps. Here’s hoping those remaster prices drop someday and that the new Galaxy Movie shines as bright as the first one.

★★★☆☆

Keeping the Flame Alive

After everything we’ve seen today, I can confidently say that the Super Mario 40th Anniversary isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to the Italian plumber. In fact, excluding the 15th (which basically didn’t exist), the 30th remains the true low point. The difference is that this latest celebration is unfolding in a strange, transitional, and somewhat controversial moment for Nintendo.

It would be tempting to say that each Mario anniversary reflects Nintendo’s state of mind at the time. And sometimes, that rings perfectly true — like the 30th, which mirrored the company’s turbulence in 2015. The 40th, though, feels more like a victory lap: confident it’s already won, yet hesitant to take a new leap. And maybe that’s the real story here.

When a company spends four decades defining what “fun” means, every birthday becomes less about blowing out candles and more about keeping the flame alive. Every birthday will feel hollow at some point, but at least they keep reminding us why we love Super Mario so much.

Here’s to forty years of jumping, running, and rescuing princesses. And here’s hoping that, next time, Nintendo throws a party truly worthy of the king of them all.

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Today marks two years since I began writing my sci-fi novel.

I’ve been diligently revising it while also writing to Substack, all while balancing my work and personal life. Currently, I’m working on the final chapter, but this is just the beginning since I still have to return to the first chapters and make changes recommended by beta readers, some of which are quite substantial and will alter the entire manuscript.

In the meantime, I have at least four new posts in the pipeline waiting to be completed, some of them for Phones & Joysticks (my secondary Substack), but none are ready for publication yet. And I’m not counting the dozens of ideas I have for future posts. The will is strong, but time is scarce, and despite knowing that releasing something imperfect is better than never releasing anything, I caught myself doing a lot of things simultaneously while forgetting that humanity didn’t invent clone machines yet. And since I don’t have other minions to do this solitary job, I need to direct energy to one thing at a time.

I made a commitment to myself and my readers to post every week, but that came at the expense of quality. Being honest, I read some of the stuff I wrote recently and I’m not happy with the results. Additionally, my backlog is piling up with posts from other creators I admire, and I haven’t had the time to read and comment on them properly.

That’s why, for the first time, I regret to announce that I will be skipping this week’s post to focus on getting everything done.

My main focus right now is to complete the initial revision of the manuscript and only then I’ll be finishing the other posts. Before I start the second revision, I’ll declutter my reading backlog, and only then I’ll focus on my half baked posts. I know I’ll be missing traction by doing this, but it’s the best way I found to guarantee that you read my best material. Substack is filled with great writers and grabbing someone’s attention to my writing is extremely valuable, so I have to make it count.

To give you a sneak peek of what’s coming up, here are done of the posts I’ve been developing:

• Decoding Satoru Iwata’s leadership (this was suggested by and I would like to make justice to his request)

• Greatest Leadership Lessons From Final Fantasy (Part IV-2)

• Why you should give Yakuza / Like a Dragon series a chance (and where to start)

• How Nintendo celebrated Super Mario anniversaries throughout the years

• How Namco created the biggest sci-fi multiverse in the history of gaming

• and, since I’m working on it, project management lessons I learned from writing a sci-fi novel (and what to expect from my first book.)

Before I head out, I want to express my gratitude to everyone that sticks with me each week. I’m really glad to be joined Substack and to contribute to the finest gaming writing community I’ve ever seen. I hope to continue growing alongside you and providing valuable insights with my unique blend of HBR and pop culture.

Bye bye for now, but while I’m out, don’t forget to keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

Starting October 1, 2025, India plans to implement the Promotion and Regulation of Online Games Act. The bill covers everything from content and advertising to addiction, user data, and consumer protection. For a country with one of the fastest-growing digital audiences in the world, this goes beyond paperwork and represents an attempt to balance booming innovation with public responsibility.

On one hand, regulation promises safeguards against predatory monetization and unchecked data collection. On the other, it raises an age-old debate: when does protecting the public cross the line into overreach and stifling creativity?

As someone writing from Brazil, this news caught my attention immediately. We’ve seen similar debates here not only in the videogame industry, but also around fintechs, ride-sharing apps, streaming platforms, and, the most dangerous of it all, betting apps. We had issues with apps that have made life miserable for a large part of the Brazilian population and our government’s actions to prevent family debts or providing good work conditions vary (usually for the worse), so what our BRICS colleagues are attempting feels admirable, especially given the scale of the challenge.

However, as it happens every time the government tries to decide upon the lives of common citizens, the same question emerged: who gets to decide what counts as fair play?

The Upsides and Risks of Regulation (and What They Teach Us)

Let’s face it: when government interference is done wrong, it goes sour pretty quickly and pretty badly. I know it for a fact living in Brazil. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why gaming here is so expensive (and to make it even worse, we accept this as natural). I talked about that in length before:

So after everything I wrote before, this will sound extremely strange, but I really believe that there’s value in regulation. If done right, it can set the stage for sustainable growth in the long run.

Here are a few positives that apply to industries and, as usual here in this space, how this translate to our careers so you can see the benefits of it in your own life:

• Protection and clarity. Laws help prevent abuse and define the rules of the game. Think of it like you defining your own “rules” like boundaries on working hours or contract terms to protect you from burnout or unfair deals.

• Consumer trust. Just as clear laws give players confidence that games won’t exploit them, personal guardrails (like transparent pricing or a defined scope of work) build trust with clients and employers.

• Sustainability. Boundaries prevent short-term exploitation from collapsing the whole ecosystem. For individuals, rules help sustain long careers instead of short bursts of productivity that lead to exhaustion. This is crucial to prevent burnout and career dead ends in the long run.

But of course, every system of rules comes with risks, especially when creative industries are involved. For industries, it can mean stalled innovation. For individuals, it can mean getting stuck in rigid patterns.

Here’s the downside:

• Creativity freeze. Too many restrictions discourage experimentation. Companies can get stuck in a loop, afraid of stepping outside the lines. Personally, that can look like never taking risks because you fear stepping outside the “rules.”

• Invisible costs. Compliance eats resources. There will be times that a company will need entire departments to know if you are playing by the rules, and that’s not cheap. In an individual level, this mirrors spending more time on process than on progress (something that I also already talked about in another post).

• Dependency. If you only ever follow rules written by others (bosses, markets, or social norms) you lose your own critical sense of direction. That’s when you end up living by someone else’s playbook.

Building Your Own Guardrails

The lesson here isn’t that regulation is good or bad. It’s that rules shape behavior, and if you don’t set some for yourself, someone else will. Last week, during my analysis of Nintendo’s pricing policies, I talked about the importance of building guardrails during personal analysis, which can summarize in the following:

• 360° feedback: done right, it exposes blind spots and keeps your self-assessment honest.

• Specific self-checks: replace fuzzy questions (“Am I strategic?”) with measurable ones (“How often did I document risks and options this quarter?”).

• Reflective journaling: writing clarifies whether you’re living by your own principles and helps keep your emotions in check.

By doing this, you’re using limitations to build a healthy base to grow as a person. I’m being very succinct here, but you can check the post below if you want to learn more about it, plus the importance of “respecting your own value”:

From Governments to Ourselves

India’s new law may reshape its online gaming market in ways that ripple far beyond its borders. It’s an experiment in balancing protection with freedom, clarity with flexibility.

The same balance applies to us. Self-regulation is harder than government regulation because there’s no parliament to hold you accountable, just your own discipline and honesty. But the reward is autonomy: the ability to thrive without waiting for someone else’s rule book.

However, the major risk in both cases is the heavy hand of authority dictating what’s right and wrong, which often makes creativity scarce and undermines the very purpose of regulation. In India’s case, it can be the heavy hand of state. In a personal level, our own fear of judgment.

But I want hear your opinion on the matter. Do regulations help innovation or hold it back? And in your career, have you ever set personal rules that made all the difference? Please, leave a comment below, I’d love to hear your perspective.

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

From the Substack Community

ROP’s Passions

A Gamer Dad’s Review: Superflight

Hello everybody! I’m ROP, your resident gamer dad, and this time I want to talk about a small game, an indie project from GrizzlyGames, created by just three students with zero budget, released back in 2017…

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a year ago · 12 likes · ROP

The perspective of discovering games with our children is vibrant on Substack, and even though I’m not a father yet, this is among my top picks. delves into games from his collection with his son, and it’s always a joy to see their thoughts on them. Additionally, hats off for being one of the rare creators who take the time to narrate their writings, allowing busy readers to listen to his posts with his own voice.

Nintendo’s latest Direct was longer than normal, but we quickly learned why. The first 20 minutes were dedicated to a nostalgia punch: Shigeru Miyamoto stepping out to kick off Super Mario Bros.’ 40th anniversary, and a slate of announcements that felt like opening a time capsule and finding it still beating. Among them, two headlines stood out: the confirmation of the title of the new Mario movie, now The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and the long-awaited return of the Galaxy era games to Switch.

Nintendo’s own recap frames it exactly that way: anniversary festivities with a few key announcements here and there, some new games on the Tennis and Yoshi sub-franchises, and Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 finally landing on Switch.

Not only it has a title, the film has an official a release date as well: April 3, 2026 in U.S. theaters (it would arrive in Japan a few weeks later). Illumination and Nintendo confirmed returning cast and creative leads, with Miyamoto positioning it as the centerpiece of the 40th anniversary cycle.

All good and dandy… until we learned how much the games that would accompany it will be priced. Galaxy and Galaxy 2 will be back in an “enhanced” version, being sold separately on the eShop for $39.99 each, with a physical double pack at $69.99. Keep in mind: this is a regular Nintendo Switch release.

That pricing landed with a thud for many of us who’d been waiting years to play Galaxy 2 on a modern system. As a reminder, the original Galaxy was released as part of the Super Mario 3D All Stars as a limited release back in 2020 for $59.99, also with Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, plus the complete soundtrack of each game.

As I read the news, I felt the same jolt you probably did. I won’t deny that these are stone-cold classics, top-tier platformers that defined a generation. Heck, the first Galaxy justified me buying a Wii back in the day. Some of my most tender memories of the seventh generation came from that game, and despite having a complicate relationship with it, I won’t deny that its sequel is considered one of the best Mario 3D platformers even this day… but $40 each?

I caught myself thinking about how cheap they used to be. Back in 2011, the original Super Mario Galaxy joined the Nintendo Selects budget line at $19.99 on Wii, with Galaxy 2 added to low-price lines later on. Value packs and budget stickers, but easy pick-ups. It was a completely different era.

So… what changed?

Nintendo’s “Respect the Value” Era

After Satoru Iwata’s tragic death on July 11, 2015, Nintendo entered a new chapter under Shuntaro Furukawa and, in the U.S., ex-EA’s Doug Bowser. Pricing took on a different tone. You’ve heard the refrain in interviews: price reflects value. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all policy, and Nintendo won’t race to the bottom. Bowser said it plainly when asked about Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at $70 that “pricing depends on the experience and won’t be universal”. Translation: don’t expect deep discounts on core first-party titles.

Commentary around Nintendo has crystallized this philosophy as “respect the value”, meaning keep evergreen software priced like evergreen software. Former Nintendo PR voices have described it explicitly in those terms. The idea is to protect perceived value rather than chase volume with sales.

Whether you love or loathe that stance, it’s hard to argue with the scoreboard. The original Switch has sold over 153 million units lifetime as of June 30, 2025, putting it among the best-selling consoles ever. And the Switch 2 blasted out of the gate with 3.5 million units in its first four days, making it Nintendo’s fastest start. So yes, on paper, “respect the value” seems to work.

But should it apply to remasters of 15-year-old games, especially when the extras are modest (minor visual upgrades, control options, a few new chapters in Rosalina’s Storybook) and Galaxy 2 has simply been unavailable on modern hardware for years? Paying what amounts to near-full-price, twice, for games from two generations ago is a tougher sell, even for devotees.

The Good and the Bad of “Respect the Price”

Here’s the nuance: as a business philosophy, “respect the price” has real upsides and real risks.

In line with my approach of learning from games and the gaming industry, Nintendo's current stance reflects ideas from philosophers and historical events. This perspective can easily be applied to our careers and personal lives, highlighting both benefits and potential risks.

Upsides (and what we can steal from)

• Clarity of value. When you stand behind your work, you anchor how others perceive it. Bowser’s “value-based pricing” articulation is exactly that: tie price to experience, not to trends. That’s what we call compensation philosophy: a company aligns total rewards with its mission, values, and business goals to attract, retain, and motivate top talent while ensuring market competitiveness and fairness. Translating this to your career, when you benchmark your impact, you can stray from the hype cycle to fully understand what you can bring to employers and clients, securing a fair price for your services no matter the time or the situation. Or, to sum things up, you receive a fair pay for what you bring to the table.

• Evergreen positioning. Premium brands endure by resisting endless markdowns. The Switch’s evergreen first-party catalog is a good case study of this approach. We can disagree with it all we want, but we can’t deny the numbers prove its success. For professionals, that means building skills and a reputation that don’t age out with the next framework fad, which is a piece of advice that stands out in a time when the temptation to hand over our critical thinking to AI is increasing at an alarming rate.

Risks (and the personal traps):

• Overvaluation/Narcissism. It’s easy to misprice yourself. The psychology is well-documented: we overestimate our competence (the Dunning–Kruger effect) or, conversely, underprice due to impostor syndrome. If you read the positives of this philosophy above and felt stimulated to try to reevaluate yourself, remember that guardrails will help you tremendously during your personal analysis: independent feedback from others like mentor or friends, market data on your field of work, and specificity are your best companions in this journey (I'll talk more about those guardrails in a bit.)

• Value drift. If you never revisit your price (or your self-assessment), you can drift away from reality. For employers, that’s when audiences or employers quietly move on. For employees, that’s when they feel stuck and unmotivated.

How to “Respect Your Value” Without Drinking Your Own Kool-Aid

Now, let's talk about how analyze yourself with guardrails to prevent you to distort the final result.

If you read the last section and thought that it sounded like an introduction to self-help, don’t worry: you don’t need to read a magical book filled with fluff to apply the “respect the value” philosophy in your life. After all, you need to respect your time and your intelligence as well, two things that are rare in the self-help market.

What you really need is evidence-based practices, like:

1. 360° feedback (done right). Structure anonymous input from peers, reports, and managers; compare it with your self-rating to surface blind spots. But make sure it’s really anonymous, or else you’ll be sabotaging yourself. There’s a HBR article that has good guidance on what makes these reviews meaningful and not just a PDF that dies in your inbox.

2. Specific, not fuzzy, self-checks. Let’s expand our thinking beyond the confines of corporate environments and apply this to our personal lives. The trick is to ask yourself the right questions. Research shows we’re most biased when judging ambiguous traits, so instead of asking “Am I strategic?”, ask “How often did I produce a decision memo with options, risks, and a recommendation in the last quarter?” I know, this one still sounds corporate, but you get the idea. No matter what question you’re asking yourself, make it as measurable as possible.

3. Reflective journaling (short, daily). The Stoics used it for brutal honesty, modern research ties journaling to improved self-regulation. I agree with both angles. Write a journal is the best way to help you work through interpersonal conflict and keep your emotions in check. Putting your emotion on paper will give you the clarity you need to access your value in a honest, less distorted way.

Back to the Galaxy

All of which brings me back to my wallet.

I'm not going to be negative just for the fun of it because I genuinely love these games. I’ve 100-percented the first Galaxy a few times and I’m always eager to come back to Rosalina’s Comet Observatory when opportunities arise. And I’m thrilled that Galaxy 2 finally escaped its 3D All-Stars purgatory.

But loving something and overpaying for it aren’t the same.

The bundle’s price asks me to accept a premium for convenience and light extras, not for fresh, built-from-scratch work. Respecting my value means I can applaud the release and still skip it altogether.

In the end, Nintendo’s broader strategy is working, with robust numbers to back it up, and the movie will likely mint a new wave of fans in 2026. But “respect the value” cuts both ways. If the company wants us to treat Mario’s legacy as premium, it should also show us that a remaster’s price respects our discernment.

“Respect the value”, Nintendo says. Fair enough. That applies to respect our own value, too.

No matter if you decide to buy these games or not, or if you saw value on my strategies above, I would like to hear your thoughts. Did you think that Nintendo is overpricing these games? Are you excited for the new movie? Leave your comments below.

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

From the Substack Community

Exceptionally this week, I’ll give two shoutouts.

Nintendo is Great

The Super Mario Bros. 40th Anniversary Celebration is a Lie

Nintendo is Great is devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, from the NES to the Switch 2…

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a year ago · 12 likes · 17 comments · Dylan Cornelius

’s insightful analysis of the Mario anniversary segment from the latest Nintendo Direct inspired this post. I’m working on other unrelated posts, but I felt compelled to take a moment to discuss the community's reactions to this recent Direct. ’s analysis goes much deeper than what I’ve covered here, as I only concentrated on the Galaxy re-releases, so I highly recommend checking it out. And remember to subscribe so you can catch part 2 when it’s released, plus a bunch of extremely engaging analysis about the Big N.

Barely Managing

Three core elements to being a manager, pt 2; Support

A managers role entails a variety of different responsibilities, these vary from role to role…

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a year ago · 3 likes · Alex Antra

I've previously presented the outstanding work of in my 6-months special post, but he has recently launched something new that perfectly aligns with this newsletter: , a Substack aimed at helping new managers find their footing and quickly enhance their skills. I've already recommended it to my readers, but I want to emphasize it again because great ideas deserve to be shared, and this one truly resonates with my mission here at TBL.

Buy me a coffee

This year marks the 30th anniversary of PlayStation. I feel old just saying that, but the memory of my mom handing me a PSX when I was 8 is still fresh in my mind. Since then, Sony turned into the only video game brand for which I owned at least one version of every console they released.

And owning stuff is always the first thing companies think when celebrating their brand anniversaries. With Sony, it wasn’t different: collector bundles, retro-inspired merch, and even the classic PS1 boot sequence that still sparks nostalgia for an entire generation of players showed its old face in our PS5 consoles for a brief period earlier this year. They started out as rebels, following the now-legendary failed agreement with Nintendo to make an SNES CD, to become one of the top three console makers in the gaming world.

Thirty years later, I still think of PlayStation as a console brand. That’s why is very hard to face the fact that it became more than just a game system. PlayStation now is a whole ecosystem.

From the beginning, Sony played the hardware game brilliantly by launching iconic systems like the PS1, PS2, and PS4 that dominated their respective eras. The PS3 had a rough start and ended up outpacing the Xbox 360 by the end of its generation, but it fell into the shadow of the Wii juggernaut. Even so, the console is still fondly remember by many who played classics like Metal Gear Solid 4, Uncharted, GTA 4, and God Of War 3.

Yet hardware dominance alone was never enough to sustain a brand for 30 years. What truly made PlayStation endure was its ability to build a platform: a network of developers, franchises, services, and communities that kept players returning long after the novelty of a new machine wore off. They played the long game, and it paid dividends.

Now Sony is doubling down on this philosophy. It’s not news that the company has signaled a shift away from hardware-centricity, leaning more on cross-platform releases, PC ports, and community-first initiatives. It makes senses from a business perspective. After all, winning the specs war became futile. The new deal is to make sure that PlayStation feels like a home for players, no matter what device they're using.

Microsoft has been on this path since the start with the Xbox brand. You've always had Game Pass and the chance to enjoy your favorite games on PC. I can't deny that this is one of the biggest strengths of their ecosystem, but it might also be its greatest flaw. The unique experience that you could only get from an exclusive Xbox product is becoming less common, and honestly, I can't even recall the last Xbox exclusive that caught my interest. Plus, with Microsoft announcing the ROG Xbox Ally X, which is just a black Asus ROG Ally X, it doesn't really help their situation. It just makes the brand feel even more diluted with fewer exclusives and a muddled identity.

Sony could take a similar approach, but they still have exclusives that are entirely their own. They've got franchises like Horizon, The Last of Us, God of War, and Astro Bot, so the risk of brand dilution is much lower. Let's hope it stays that way.

And that comes to why I kept thinking about Sony. As you expect from my ramblings on this space, there’s a lesson here for careers and businesses alike.

We often get caught up in thinking like "products." We fixate on one role, one project, or chasing the next big success. But while products may come and go, platforms stick around. A platform thrives on its reputation, flexibility, and the knack for generating value in various situations. The key thing to watch out for is not to lose sight of our personal brand. In today's highly competitive and sometimes unjust job market, everyone has similar certifications, knowledge, and experiences.

If you want to shine, you need that unique set of skills or talents that only you can bring to the table, no matter what company or project you are working on. This has always been somewhat true, but now, more than never, it’s crucial to know how to market your brand.

In other words, aim to be less like Microsoft and more like Sony.

I see PlayStation’s story as a powerful reminder of not to chase the one-off console moment in your own career. Instead, focus on building your platform: the skills, relationships, and mindset that keep you relevant no matter how the industry evolves.

So here’s the question: Are you treating your career like a product or like a platform that can last 30 years and beyond?

Products fade. Platforms endure. Keep that in mind when you think about your next career move.

And don’t forget to keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

From the Substack Community

The 8-Bit Perspective

30 Years of Ridge Racer on the PlayStation

Genre: Racing…

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a year ago · 6 likes · Jam Master J

Let’s not forget that it was 30 years ago when we began linking every Sony console launch with Ridge Racer, a tradition that only came to an end with the PS4. Actually, it was in the 32-bit era that my everlasting love for Namco began, and this fantastic article from brought back memories of those incredible times when my favorite studio was at its height. His pieces are always a joy to read, blending personal memories with easy-to-understand analysis of the games he plays, and this particular one was definitely one of my favorites.

There's a Chinese board game that dates back over 2000 years. It's older than chess and most written languages, yet it continues to influence how some of the brightest minds approach competition, including a well-known video game company famous for its iconic IPs, blue ocean strategies, and creative ways to work with withered technology.

That game is Go, and it looks like this:

At first glance, it seems pretty straightforward: it’s just black and white stones placed on a 19 by 19 grid. The idea appears almost basic, but beneath its simple look is a whole world of strategy, where winning comes from carefully directing the flow of the entire board.

Throughout history, Go played a crucial role in the training of warriors in China, Japan, and Korea. It’s easy to understand why, since it can teach everyone from soldiers to generals how to think strategically in any kind of battlefield. It’s the type of game that requires you to think ahead, and every choice you make contributes to your future success. You can say that Go is more than just a game. It’s a way of life.

Fast forward to modern times, and we still find Go players around the globe. In fact, one man in particular was such a big fan of this classic board game that it basically became the only game he liked to play. This person is Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's most impactful president. And his obsession with Go sheds a lot of light on his character and the company he played a key role in transforming.

He wasn't a game designer, a programmer, or even a gamer — he even confessed in some interviews that he wasn't fond of playing video games. Still, through the lens of a Go player, he transformed a small family-run card business into one of the biggest electronic entertainment powerhouses in the world. If we view Go not just as a hobby but as a perspective through which he understood business, leadership, and life itself, we can start to understand the logic behind many of the decisions he made that molded Nintendo into its current form.

Here’s the story of how Go shaped Hiroshi Yamauchi’s mindset and how we can see this way of thinking ingrained into Nintendo’s culture to this day.

Nintendo’s Famous Cultural Pillars

In the last four decades, Nintendo has often been described through two famous strategic pillars:

• Blue Ocean Strategy: creating new uncontested markets instead of fighting head-to-head.

• Using established technology in unexpected ways: this is what Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo’s designer who is credited heavily for Nintendo's success in the toy and videogame industry, once called “lateral thinking with withered technology.”

These ideas became most visible in products like the Gameboy, Wii, DS, and Switch, but their roots go back to Yamauchi’s Go-inspired worldview. Helped by Yokoi’s inventiveness, he always believed Nintendo’s strength wasn’t in chasing raw specs or fashionable trends but in surprising players, carving new territory, and doing more with less.

Gunpei Yokoi himself left Nintendo in the mid-90s, lamenting that the company wasn’t the same. In fact, there are those who argument that Nintendo’s leadership today stepped away from Yokoi’s philosophy with Switch 2 being just a iteration instead of an innovation. Yet Yamauchi’s strategic lens endured.

How Go Works

To truly understand Yamauchi’s influence, first we need to grasp the essence of Go.

The main objective of Go is to place your stones in strategic places in the board in order to claim most territory as possible. At its core, Go isn’t exclusively focused in eliminating your opponent’s pieces, like in chess. Instead, it’s about surrounding and securing territory, even if that means to sacrifice stones if they help secure larger positions. Ultimately, Go games are won through the slow, deliberate shaping of the board.

I won't go into all the rules here, like how to create 'eyes' to prevent your pieces from being captured or how you might find yourself in a position of atari (yep, that other well-known video game company's name is also derived from a Go movement). For this piece, just remember a few key principles:

• Sacrifice for advantage: you must know when to let small groups fall to claim wider ground.

• Patience over immediacy: winning comes from shaping flow across dozens of moves, not a single “checkmate-y” one.

• Balance and intuition: reading the board’s “life and death” situations matters more than memorizing openings.

Looking at these, it’s easy to see why Yamauchi was drawn to this game. Its philosophy reflected how he managed Nintendo by prioritizing the long-term, accepting sacrifices, and concentrating less on immediate wins and more on dominating the industry’s landscape.

Grasping these rules goes beyond just game theory. It gives us a fresh perspective on Nintendo’s decision making process. These aren’t just random corporate oddities, but intentional strategies on a bigger Go board, executed by a company that continues to follow Yamauchi’s guidelines.

Here’s how he did it.

Sacrifices Are Necessary for Victory

In Go, you have to let some stones go so you can achieve victory in other parts of the board. Beginners often find this tough because our instincts push us to hold onto every piece, but masters understand that real growth comes from letting go of pieces when necessary.

Hiroshi Yamauchi understood this concept better than many business leaders. His time at Nintendo was marked not by hoarding every chance, but by the wisdom to release opportunities when they arise.

A prime example is his choice to sever ties with Sony while they were working on the SNES-CD. At that moment, it seemed like a risky decision: Sony went on to launch the PlayStation, which turned into one of Nintendo’s biggest competitors. Yet, Yamauchi looked past the immediate setback. He wouldn’t allow Nintendo to rely on another company’s vision. For him, keeping independence and focus was more important than chasing after the newest trend.

This mindset was evident in other instances as well, like when he quietly let go of the unsuccessful Virtual Boy and resisted the industry's fixation on horsepower and realism during the PlayStation 2 period. While others tried to save face, Yamauchi was ready to sacrifice a piece to win the bigger game.

Bottom line: Sacrifice is not an immediate sign of failure. In careers and organizations, holding on to every project, client, or idea can spread us too thin. You must know when to let go of a piece in order to protect the territory that truly matters.

Control of Territory Matters More Than Quick Wins

In Go, winning a flashy skirmish doesn’t mean much if you end up losing huge chunks of the board. The real aim is to grab territory, to create a lasting presence that remains valuable long after a single battle fades from memory.

Yamauchi had a similar mindset when it came to business. After the 1983 video game crash hit the U.S. market hard, most companies ran for the hills, except for Yamauchi that spotted an opportunity to establish the NES where others saw nothing more than a fad dying. Nintendo used this unique opportunity to restore faith in video games throughout North America. However, he didn’t stopped there: by concentrating on distribution control, a quality seal, and a well-managed catalog, Nintendo claimed the territory that competitors had left behind.

He did the same thing in the handheld market. The Game Boy was technically inferior to Sega’s Game Gear and Atari’s Lynx, but Yamauchi focused on durability, affordability, and classic titles like Tetris and Pokémon. The outcome was total dominance in the portable gaming scene for more than ten years.

Bottom line: Don't mix up quick wins with long-term impact. Consider them as pieces of the bigger picture. Careers and businesses might be noted for a few timely successes, but what really counts is the ground you cover over the long haul. Reputation, trust, and consistency carry way more weight than fleeting moments of greatness.

Trust Over Technique

Unlike chess, you can't just memorize moves to win at Go. True masters achieve victory by reading the flow of the game, trusting their instincts, and knowing when to place faith in the right sequence. Also, there will be moments where is best just to skip your turn to create the best possible outcome.

Yamauchi was a perfect example of this. He wasn't a designer, an engineer and by the usual standards, he didn't have the skills you'd expect from the leader of a gaming company. But what set Yamauchi apart was his incredible intuition for people. He believed in creative geniuses like Gunpei Yokoi, who created the Game Boy and introduced the idea of “lateral thinking with withered technology”; Shigeru Miyamoto, whose creativity brought Mario and Zelda to life; and later Satoru Iwata, who became the first president of Nintendo not from the Yamauchi family.

Yamauchi didn’t have to know all the technical stuff. He excelled at spotting talent, nurturing it, and allowing it to thrive.

Bottom line: As a leader, it's important to go with the flow, uplift the right people, and recognize when to take a step back to let others shine. Your job isn't just to play the stones, but to set the stage properly so that every single stone in the board can contribute to a victory.

Vision Requires Implacable Leadership

In Go, playing cautiously or without a plan just won't cut it. The board favors those with a clear goal and punishes those who hesitate. Every move should contribute to a bigger picture.

Everybody who knew him personally can attest: Yamauchi was not a gentle leader. He was known for being intimidating, uncompromising, even ruthless at times. But his harshness was paired with clarity: he constantly reminded his teams that “Nintendo is not a video game company. It is an entertainment company.” That mantra guided decades of decisions, from the family-friendly DNA of the NES to the disruptive originality of the Wii.

He refused to let Nintendo become another graphics-obsessed arms dealer. Instead, he doubled down on being the company that surprised, delighted, and innovated in its own way. This clarity allowed Nintendo to survive failures like the Virtual Boy and Wii U, because the larger philosophy of creating entertainment-first experiences never wavered.

Bottom line: When leading people, doesn’t expect to please everyone. You need to hold a vision so strongly that it shapes the culture around you. For professionals, this means resisting the temptation to follow every trend and instead cultivating a clear identity. In a world full of imitators, clarity is the ultimate differentiator.

Noticing a Pattern: have we seen this before?

Yamauchi-san may no longer be with us, but his legacy lives on. And I’m not just referring to his priceless contributions to the gaming industry. It’s his mindset that remains deeply embedded in Nintendo’s culture.

Case in point: the Switch 2.

When you look to the bigger picture, despite the company having 3 other presidents since Hiroshi Yamauchi’s retirement, Nintendo is still playing Go. The Switch 2 launch choices look less like a specs race and more like board control: secure territory, pace the fight, and favor long-term position over flashy tactics.

Here’s how they’re doing it:

1) Territory first: win supply, then the market.

Nintendo launched Switch 2 at $449.99 on June 5, 2025, with bundles priced at $499.99. It was a clear, disciplined pricing that matched a global rollout cadence. The result was securing position, not just headlines: 3.5M units sold-through in the first four days, the best first-four-days in company history, and 6M+ in seven weeks worldwide. In the U.S., sell-through passed 2M in two months, running ~75% ahead of the original Switch, a sign that Nintendo prioritized availability to occupy market “territory” quickly, not just to notch a launch-day spike.

2) Sacrifice the quick win to protect the position.

Reports suggest Nintendo has limited distribution of dev kits even post-launch, nudging studios to target the existing Switch and rely on backward compatibility rather than rush native SKUs. Short term, that sacrifices third-party hype; long term, it preserves quality control and a unified software base while demand still outstrips supply. That’s a typical Go move: give up local “captures” to keep the board stable.

3) Trust over technique: build the board around your creators and your library.

Nintendo confirmed backward compatibility for Switch 2 (with caveats), and its own materials emphasize that most Switch software plays on the new system, lowering friction for players and letting creators reach a larger combined audience. Instead of chasing raw horsepower bragging rights, they’re trusting the ecosystem they’ve cultivated to carry forward.

4) Implacable leadership: clarity beats consensus.

We can critique a lot of Nintendo’s latest decisions, but we can’t deny that from the price discipline to the focus on production ramp-up (“strengthen our production and supply systems”), management framed the problem as an operations and availability game, not a spec sheet contest. That stance echoes Yamauchi’s “entertainment first” DNA: hold the line on identity, cadence, and execution.

To sum things up, the Switch 2 strategy is Yamauchi’s Go ethos, through and through: occupy durable territory (installed base + library + retail presence), accept near-term sacrifices (limited kits, slower native ramp) to prevent chaos, and trust people and IP to compound value over time. It’s not the fastest-looking move on the board, but can be the one that wins the endgame.

Nintendo’s Way of Thinking Life Like Go

I’ve always thought of games as more than just distractions, storytelling devices, or pieces of art. As I’ve mentioned numerous times here, they can serve as motivating frameworks for making decisions. Yamauchi, on the other hand, pushed that idea to the limit. By managing Nintendo like a Go board, he demonstrated that his path to success wasn’t about going for the obvious move, but about taking charge of the most important territory, even if it required making some sacrifices along the journey. While chess celebrates decisive strikes and dramatic checkmates, Go teaches patience, presence, and the courage to sacrifice in order to protect the larger game.

In many ways, seeing how it still embodies the principles we analyzed above, Nintendo mirrors what we see in corporate leadership cultures worldwide: a CEO’s way of thinking can permeate an organization for decades, shaping choices long after they’re gone. Nintendo’s current path with the Switch 2 shows how deeply this still resonates. The company is once again prioritizing territory over spectacle by focusing on availability, backward compatibility, and brand identity rather than chasing raw specs. It’s the kind of strategy Yamauchi himself would have recognized instantly.

But Go is a game measured not in minutes, but in hours, days… sometimes years. If the current Nintendo leadership is as skilled at Go as their legendary predecessor, only time will tell. What we can say for now is that the echoes of Yamauchi’s philosophy remain visible on the board.

From the Substack Community

Infinite Lives

"Lobotomised": The gaming industry's complicated, polarised relationship with AI

Infinite Lives is free to read, but requires a paid subscription to access 90 past articles, including more explainers, unique analysis and game reviews. Each paid subscription helps support independent games journalism in Australia…

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a year ago · 22 likes · 15 comments · Harrison Polites

Starting today, I’m unapologetically borrowing a fantastic idea from by giving a shoutout to other writers in my posts. And this one is definitely going to .

I’ve already shared my appreciation for his work in my last post where I reflected on my first 6 months on Substack, so it might seem a bit repetitive to give him another shoutout. But he’s the one who suggested I explore how leaders function like games, and he even sent me some great examples from an HBR article that sparked the inspiration for this piece. The result is the post you just read.

Honestly, a lot of what I’ve written here stems from an old concept for a non-fiction book I started working on years ago where I would talk about some of my favorite leaders and designers in the game industry, but I never pushed it forward. However, Harrison’s insights motivated me to revisit that material and even sparked some ideas for future posts.

With this one, I really hope I’ve managed to write what you were hoping for!

Now, I want to hear from you. Do you approach your career like a board game, like Hiroshi Yamauchi? Have you played Go before or thought about learn how to play it? I'd love to see your comments!

In the meantime, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.

Buy me a coffee

There are games you play that take part of the zeitgeist and everybody forget soon after, relegated to the bottom of our backlogs to never be played again. There are masterpieces that win universal acclaim, where you agree with their greatness despite spotting some flaws, but doesn’t stick with you for some reason.

And there are games that you know aren’t perfect, but feel like they were tailored for you, as if every design choice, every detail, was coded with your history and preferences in mind.

For me, Shadow Labyrinth is one of those rare titles.

As I mentioned in my review last week, I became obsessed with Shadow Labyrinth in ways I never expected. I don’t deny its flaws, nor the elements that may push it away from a wider audience. But the deeper I went, the more I played, read, and connected dots, the more I fell in love with it, for reasons most people wouldn’t even imagine.

Now, a warning: it’s unavoidable that there will be some spoilers ahead. I’ll try to keep them minimal, but if you’d rather wander the labyrinth blindly, bookmark this and come back later.

For everyone else, let me walk you through the 15 reasons why Shadow Labyrinth is the ultimate Namco sci-fi fantasy, and why this game means so much to me.

1. It’s the first Pac-Man game developed in-house by Bandai Namco in 7 years

The last time Bandai Namco itself touched a Pac-Man release was Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus back in 2018. Everything since then — like Pac-Man 99 (Arika), Mega Tunnel Battle (Heavy Iron Studios), World Re-PAC (Now Production) — was outsourced to other studios.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but while a lot of these games were enjoyable and created by skilled developers, they just didn't have the same vibe. With Shadow Labyrinth, even though it had a totally different approach, Pac-Man felt like it was coming back home.

2. The idea came from someone who had reinvented Pac-Man before

The project is the brainchild of Toru Takahashi, the executive producer who once helped reshape Pac-Man for a new era. He oversaw other minor Bandai Namco projects, like the Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures games and Pac-Man Dash! for mobile. However, his most important project was none other than the groundbreaking Pac-Man Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade in 2007.

Back then, CE was an event: it was Pac-Man reborn to modern audiences without losing his essence. It managed to do two things at once: it brought our beloved yellow chomper back into the limelight in the new millennium and made him the face of the new Live Arcade service. Fast forward to 2025, and Takahashi put a reinvention of Pac-Man in the spotlight yet again.

And speaking of Championship Edition…

3. It secretly contains what feels like Pac-Man Championship Edition 3

Halfway through Shadow Labyrinth, you stumble upon glowing monoliths that transport PUCK into an alternative dimension called the MAZE. Suddenly, the game shifts gears into a frantic, neon-drenched challenge mode, fighting off G-Host bugs in levels that feel ripped straight out of Championship Edition 2 Plus, but with new rules and a fresh coat of paint.

It’s like discovering an entire extra game hidden inside an already big game. And for someone like me, who’s been waiting for CE3 for years, this was worth the ticket alone.

4. It was produced by Bandai Namco’s heavyweights

Shadow Labyrinth’s producer was Seigo Aizawa (of Pac-Man 99 fame), backed by none other than Katsuhiro Harada, the man who has helmed Tekken since its third entry. And to nail the Metroidvania structure, they brought in Tomoaki Fukui, who once worked on Kirby & the Amazing Mirror.

That pedigree matters. You can feel the collision of fighting game intensity, Kirby’s labyrinthine design, and Pac-Man’s DNA all under one roof. It’s not a coincidence the game feels so ambitious. After all, it was guided by people who knew how these genres work.

5. The main characters were designed by Klonoa’s artist

Yoshihiko Arai, the artist behind Klonoa, designed both the Swordsman and PUCK. And once you know that, you can’t unsee it: the same rounded edges, the same blend of cuteness and melancholy, and the fact that both protagonists have a Pac-Man symbol near their heads is no mere coincidence. The Swordsman, summoned from another world and draped in Pac-Man imagery, feels like Klonoa’s spiritual cousin. And PUCK being equal parts mascot, guide, and partner, carries the same energy as Klonoa’s iconic Pac-Man cap.

For longtime Namco fans, it’s like watching two branches of the family tree finally connect.

6. It became the climax of the UGSF saga

For those who don’t know, UGSF stands for United Galaxy Space Force, a canon curation of various Namco space-themed games that includes classics like Ace Combat 3, Dig Dug, Galaga, and Starblade that take part in the same shared universe.

Originally, Shadow Labyrinth wasn’t even tied to the UGSF timeline. Early prototypes toyed with ideas like Pac-Man ghosts possessing animals (thankfully, this bizarre idea was early abandoned.) Everything changed when Hisaharu Tago, current director of the UGSF project, joined in. He reshaped the plot into the sprawling sci-fi adventure we have now, positioning Shadow Labyrinth as a new climax for the entire saga.

Thanks to him, the game went from being just a reinvention of Pac-Man to becoming the culmination of decades of Namco sci-fi, woven into a single labyrinth.

7. It gave the perfect excuse to include more games into the UGSF timeline

At one point, PUCK and the Swordsman must retrieve the Dimension Warp Drive, an item first seen in Galaga ’88. This game was already part of the UGSF timeline before, but the character who holds such item is none other than the Emperor Galaga, a boss originally mentioned in Galaga Legions. That one choice cemented this 2008 game as an official UGSF entry.

From there, Bandai Namco had the perfect excuse to update the UGSF timeline in order to revisit some new information regarding the Baraduke games and even include Nebulasray, a classic shmup from 1994 that I always suspected to share connections with the series.

For fans like me who’ve spent years cross-referencing obscure manuals and Japanese blog posts, it felt like watching puzzle pieces finally click into place.

But nothing compares with its biggest revelation…

8. It finally recognized Xevious as a crucial part of the series

For years, Namco downplayed Xevious’s role in the UGSF. Even with all the references — the Xevian race popping up in Star Ixiom or Final Blaster, for example — the official word is that Xevious wasn’t a part of the timeline whatsoever.

Shadow Labyrinth changed that with one bold move: the entire game takes place on the planet Xevious, and its main villain is none other than Gamp, the arcade original’s antagonist. Its influence is so big that manifests even in hidden details: Operation Sheyenne and Operation Panzer, two key story beats, turned out to be lifted from working titles of the original Xevious game. Not only that, the Xevian language, once relegated to obscure manuals, is written all over the labyrinth (and even hidden in promo materials!)

Suddenly, decades of speculation became fact. Namco finally admitted what we always knew and, as a fan, I couldn’t feel happier for that.

9. It continued the story of an unreleased game

One of the biggest problems in the UGSF series (and the thing that fascinates me the most) is that its timeline is messy, littered with obscure references and even unreleased titles. The biggest of them is New Space Order, an RTS arcade game planned for 2004 as the original climax of the saga, but canceled after its short test run.

Shadow Labyrinth quietly resurrects it by picking up its unfinished threads and giving players the payoff that was shelved for two decades. When I realized this, a chill ran down my spine. It was like uncovering a piece of lost history, suddenly made whole.

So, for anyone who played Shadow Labyrinth, now you get the main reference for that super hard-to-get item in the MAZE sections.

10. It gave the Bosconian people an identity

I’ve loved Bosconian since I first played it on Namco Museum Vol. 1 for the original PlayStation. But until now, its “star destroyer” foes were just faceless enemies, only identified by their hexagonal space stations.

Shadow Labyrinth finally gave them culture, voices, and purpose. In the labyrinth, they’re upgraded from their status as mere targets to become merchants, guides, and allies, fleshing out a corner of the Namco mythos I never thought I’d see explored.

For me, this one was personal. It was a delight to watch one of my all-time favorite arcade relics elevated into the living fabric of the UGSF universe.

11. It even referenced Splatterhouse (for some odd reason)

On paper, Shadow Labyrinth is firmly a UGSF story. But the Bandai Namco team slipped in a curveball: in the Collector’s Edition, a hidden black-light map revealed Splatterhouse among its inspirations.

At first, I thought it was just a cheeky nod to some minor enemies… at least until I reached Jen Hybri, a grotesque boss in the Bosconian Ruins whose design clearly channels Rick from Splatterhouse. It was bizarre, unexpected… and surprisingly, it worked.

It was a pleasant reminder that Namco’s legacy isn’t cleanly divided. In fact, it’s so cohesive that even their darkest experiments bleed into their grandest universes.

12. It pays subtle tribute to The Tower of Druaga

If you’ve been a Namco fan long enough, you probably saw Shadow Labyrinth’s cover art and thought: that reminds me of the flyer art from Tower of Druaga. Like Klonoa, it’s not another coincidence.

The Druaga influence is everywhere, from the labyrinthine design to achievements like “Turmoil,” which rewards you with a medal engraved with Gilgamesh, the series protagonist. Even the MAZE soundtrack nods to it with “Babylonian Rhapsody,” a remix stuffed with samples from the original arcade. It’s not obvious to newcomers, but for old-school fans, it feels like meeting an old friend in disguise.

13. Bandai Namco’s artists celebrated with special tributes

When the game launched, Namco’s biggest artists marked the occasion with commemorative art pieces like sketches and celebratory illustrations. As you can see above, they all exude charm and charisma.

To me, this went beyond marketing fluff and showed how much the studio cared, how internally they recognized Shadow Labyrinth as more than a risky experiment. They all knew that it was a milestone worth celebrating, not just another release to push out the door.

14. The sheer amount of hidden details could make any Namco fan gush

There are so many other details hidden in this game that I could include at least more 10 entries. But since this list was long enough, let me list some of my favorites below.

• Following the UGSF tradition of positioning its entries in years that are related to the original games, the year Shadow Labyrinth takes place, 3333, references both Pac-Man’s development code (V3) and the canceled Bosconian sequel, New Bosconian (V33).

• The game is one of the rare occasions in the UGSF series that a character from a past game is referenced or plays a bigger role in the plot: in this case, Aegina, from Japan’s exclusive Shin-Gun Destroy! Girl's Tank Battalion.

• The achievement names nod back to Star Luster, a forgotten NES gem I adore. Each achievement references a ranking you get according to your final score in that game.

Every corner whispered: this game was made for fans like you.

And nothing speaks this louder than its ending…

15. Its ending quotes the very first UGSF game ever made

I won’t spoil the details, but during the game’s finale, the characters invoke a phrase you can see in the attract mode of Galaxian, the 1980 arcade title that started the entire UGSF mythos.

When I read that sentence, I knew I wasn’t just finishing a game. I was witnessing a pivotal moment in the USGF series. In that moment, the kid who pumped quarters into Galaga, the teenager who lost afternoons in Xevious, and the adult still chasing Namco’s cosmic breadcrumbs… all of them were there with me.

And yes, I’ll admit it: I cried. Sounds silly, but it was an incredibly emotional moment for me.

It brought things full circle. To think that the original Pac-Man from 1980 has a boss from Galaxian as one of the items he could eat, basically making it the first crossover in gaming, and now having both games colliding in such a special moment 45 years later is nothing less than magical.

That’s why this ending will stick with me, and with old Namco fans, for years to come.

But to explain how the whole UGSF saga came to this, I would need a whole new post. And that’s a story for another time.

Thanks for reading Phones & Joysticks! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Here we are, six months after my introductory post on The Boss Level. After all this time, I think a balance is in order.

I confess that I really enjoyed starting The Boss Level. I don’t regret it for a second. In a world flooded with AI slop and career hacks that go nowhere, it’s still the best way I’ve found to bring together my career lessons using games and pop culture as a canvas. Not only that, writing weekly gave me discipline, sharpened my skills, and even helped me rethink my sci-fi manuscript with fresher eyes.

But the problem is that I feel stuck. Not because I don’t enjoy this project, but because there’s a limit to what fits in this space. Sometimes I want to write about games, music, handhelds… and I catch myself holding back because The Boss Level has a clear purpose of bridging games with career development.

Meanwhile, I read so many incredible newsletters from the gaming community here on Substack, and I noticed something:

• My posts sometimes feel “too LinkedIn”, a side effect of being career-centered.

• The warmest interactions happen when writers share personal stories, passions, and memories. I want to create more of that connection too, but a professional focus doesn’t give me too much space for it.

So, what now? Should I abandon everything and start from scratch?

Not in the slightest!

I’m not ending The Boss Level. On the contrary, it’s the foundation of my personal brand and the way I’ve found to stand out in the job market. It brought me many connections with wonderful writers across the globe and allowed me to see my own career from a refreshing perspective.

But I realized I also need a space that’s freer, more personal, and more experimental.

That’s why today, I’m (re)introducing my new newsletter, Phones & Joysticks.

Why Phones & Joysticks?

To be honest, writing about games without a career angle isn’t new to me. I had an old WordPress blog with this name where I talked about games, music, and game music. I also hosted a podcast called Namco Club not so long ago, fully dedicated to Bandai Namco titles. They’re still out there if you dig, but fair warning: there’s plenty of cringe.

The reason I stopped both of them is simple: wrong platform, wrong audience. WordPress didn’t have a community, and the podcast was too niche to gain any significant traction. Now that I wet my feet on this platform, I can confidently say that Substack feels like the perfect home to revive this project: a place for niche passions, personal voice, and genuine connection with writers and readers.

And yes, I could have changed the name, but Phones & Joysticks still resonates with me. It covers all the hobbies I love, so let’s call it a revival.

What to expect from this new space

With this new Substack, I’ll:

• Talk about what I’ve been itching to write: games I’m playing, bands I love, emulation handhelds, and other geeky stuff.

• Revisit old blog posts with my current voice and perspective.

• Finish “unfinished business”: like my deep-dive series on Namco’s UGSF universe or my Ridge Racer series retrospective, both started on Namco Club, but left unfinished.

But keep in mind: Phones & Joysticks won’t be a weekly commitment like The Boss Level. At least not at first. I want to invest on my storytelling, and those things demand time. The rhythm will depend on inspiration and discovery. And that’s part of the fun.

If you want to check out what I have in store, you could read the first part of my Shadow Labyrinth analysis below:

Phones & Joysticks

From Eye-Rolls to Obsession: How Shadow Labyrinth Won Me Over

When Secret Level was announced last August, I barely blinked. To be honest, I completely ignored it…

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a year ago · M. Campassi

Special thanks and inspirations

I wouldn’t have reached this next step without some amazing writers here on Substack. That’s why I want to take this opportunity to leave a few recommendations. I’m sure I’ll miss a few names, and I’ll make up for that in future shoutouts. For now, here are the voices that inspired me the most… and yes, I’ll be shamelessly borrowing a couple of their great ideas too.

Reconnect Recap

Reconnect Recap - w/e 17th August

Kia Ora folks…

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a year ago · 23 likes · 3 comments · Alex Antra

It’s impossible not to start here. is doing an incredible job compiling gaming writers on the platform every single week. He integrates the community, makes it easier for readers to discover new voices, and helps writers get the visibility they deserve. I had the honor of having some of my articles featured there, which helped me immensely. I couldn’t recommend him enough, especially if you want to discover the very best of the gaming writing community.

Infinite Lives

Gaming’s most underrated side characters

Welcome! Infinite Lives latest edition is free to read, but requires a paid subscription to access over 80 past articles, including more explainers, unique analysis and game reviews. Each paid subscription helps support independent games journalism in Australia…

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a year ago · 31 likes · 15 comments · Harrison Polites

On the topic of helping new writers, deserves a special mention. His timely themed collaborations gave me my very first chance to write about passions beyond career tips. Those boundaries of theme and word count pushed me to think differently, and creativity really flourished. Needless to say, his own writing is among the best on the platform. His ability to paint a vivid picture of the Australian games market and make it engaging to people on the other side of the world (like me) is something only a great writer can pull off.

Scanlines’ Journal

Sega's Immortal Console (Ft. The Boss Level's M. Campassi)

Those who have even a passing interest in retro gaming will have heard of the NES: the Nintendo Entertainment System. It released in the United States in 1985 and was a massive cultural and commercial phenomenon both there and at home in Japan, rejuvenating the games industry in the West and bringing us greats such as the Super Mario Bros. Metroid and T…

Read more

a year ago · 15 likes · 13 comments · Scanlines

If you enjoy well-researched articles with a strong personal touch and a dash of humor, is for you. I became a fan when he dissected the First Light trailer and, as a fellow James Bond fan, I was thrilled to find someone picking up on the same details I did. He was also responsible for my first long collaboration, on his fantastic Master System piece, which sparked the idea of expanding my writing beyond career development.

The Video Game Storyteller

Climbing That Wall

Content warning: contains themes of loss and grief…

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a year ago · 30 likes · 35 comments · The Video Game Storyteller

If there’s one writer who inspired me the most to lean into personal storytelling, it’s this one. mixes profound analysis with heartfelt personal stories in a way I genuinely aspire to. Some of his posts are tear-jerking in the best way. Proof of his influence? I tried to channel a bit of his style in my Scanlines collab I mentioned above. His recent Stuff from the Stack section is also something I’ll happily copy in the future (if he doesn’t mind, of course!).

Late to the LAN Party

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - My Review

I had always wanted to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It is a game paired with Super Metroid that created the "Metroidvania" sub-genre of video games. I love Super Metroid, maybe even going so far as to call it my favourite video game ever. To me, it was almost a perfect game - a non-linear world to explore and get lost in, the progression of …

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a year ago · 7 likes · 9 comments · Peter Monks

started publishing after being a long-time commenter and reader, and I’m glad he did. His pieces on Symphony of the Night and Wii Sports are among my all-time favorite Substack reads. His superpower is taking games we think have been dissected to death and giving them a fresh, insightful spin. Whatever direction he takes next, I’ll be following along.

Nintendo is Great

Contra is a True NES Classic. Renegade is a Sad Potato.

Nintendo is Great is devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, from the NES to the Switch 2…

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a year ago · 16 likes · 9 comments · Dylan Cornelius

has a gift for making his posts feel like the pages of an old gaming magazine, something I truly miss from my youth. His work reminds me why I love reading on Substack in the first place. Dylan also planted a seed in my mind with a comment on one of my Shadow Labyrinth notes, telling me he’d love to see me write more about Namco. Well… challenge accepted!

Cozy Anomaly

Feeling Overstimulated? Here's 3 Steps to Find your Calm with Games

Feeling overstimulated is very uncomfortable. It makes me feel jittery, confused, and angry. I just want to run away and hide. But I notice if I run to my room and sit, sometimes my mind replays the issue over and over, and it’s like i never left it at all…

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a year ago · 14 likes · 9 comments · Leefa

’s writing style is very different from mine, but I admire it greatly. Her posts are direct, personal, and simple in the best way. Reading her is like having a friend tell you about the latest game she’s been playing. That kind of honesty and unique voice is something every writer should aspire to. Also, she was the first reader who I wrote a post by request — the Greatest Leadership Lessons from Final Fantasy, Part II-2.

And for future shoutouts, here are some writers I didn’t have time to cover in detail here, but I highly recommend nonetheless:

… and so many others I’m still eager to discover.

Ready for a New Game+?

So here’s the final result:

• The Boss Level continues as my main space for career + games, serving as my “professional brand.”

• Phones & Joysticks is my playground, a place for pure passion, memory, and curiosity.

If you’ve enjoyed my more personal Notes here, or just want to read me talk about games and music for the love of it, I’d love to see you there too!

Thank you all for supporting me through these first six months. If I helped even one person level up their career with a single tip, it was worth it. Now I’m ready to explore a new side of my voice as well.

And… as always, let’s keep leveling up, one boss level at a time. And feel free to take a few side quests along the way.

Buy me a coffee