Tenth Gen: It Looks Like We’re Doing This... Again.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/15/26 at 03:36 PM CT
All of the news last year was pointing to a final winding down of the long-running console wars, with PC and Mobile gaming as the ultimate winners. With Sony allegedly cooling on hardware sales and wishing to pivot into developing “community,” Xbox seeming to throw all of its resources into the “Everything is an Xbox” campaign, and even Nintendo’s Switch 2 sales cratering after a strong Launch Window, it looked like all of the major players in console gaming (and Xbox – LOL, Xbox) were ready to disappear into the long night.
Alas, those of us who were looking forward to Unified Gaming may have counted our chickens before they were laid, as early 2026 has seen a spate of bad news that seems to have reversed everything we thought we knew was coming.
First, in a surprise move, Xbox fired both Phil Spencer and his presumed successor and protege, Sarah Bond, only to replace them with an executive with no gaming experience who used to be part of Microsoft’s AI …
He’s Everywhere X!: MOAR Yu-Gi-Oh! Edition
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/07/26 at 07:37 PM CT
It’s that time of year, again! The coming of March means that MeltedJoystick’s very own Resident Evil (and Biohazard), Chris, is another year older and another year more irredeemably corrupted. Last year, it was Time to Duel, as I revealed 10 different forms of Chris that were resident in Konami’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, Duel Monsters.
Well, I’ve still been playing a LOT of "Master Duel," and it turns out that the game’s late creator and original artist DEFINITELY had Chris on the brain, as there are EVEN MORE of them than the ones I looked at last year.
10. Soitsu"A vaguely-abstract representation of an out-of-shape naked man daydreaming about his hidden potential by flexing while riding on the back of a paper airplane just feels too familiar to anyone who deals with Chris on a regular basis."
9. Goblin of Greed"Known internationally as ‘Greedy Goblin,’ this character has his own riches-to-rags story arc told through the variety of support cards …
Review Round-Up: Winter 2025
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/01/26 at 02:27 PM CT
Welcome back to another installment of the MeltedJoystick Review Round-Up. Here’s what our staff has reviewed since last time:
Nelson’s Reviews:
Erg, my Winter gaming wasn’t particularly inspiring. I mostly played mediocre games, and most of them cooperatively. The “Next Big RPG” I was excited about turned out to be a major dud, while Sony’s first-party PC ports did nothing to restore my faith in their ecosystem. Let’s hope 2026 manages to be better.
LEGO: The Hobbit – 2.5/5
Sackboy: A Big Adventure – 3/5
Dad of Boy – 3.5/5
Zoria: Age of Shattering – 2.5/5
River City Girls – 3/5
Chris’ Reviews:
Chris finally posted some late reviews of coop games, so that’s good. He also got done with “The Outer Worlds”... then immediately started “Greedfall,” so his Sandbox addiction is still in full effect.
The Outer Worlds – 3.5/5
Baldur’s Gate 3 – 4.5/5
It Takes Two – 4.5/5
Nick’s Review:
Nick’s only Winter review was his …
Backlog: The Embiggening – March, 2026
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/20/26 at 02:34 AM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! With the coming of March, we’re officially at the end of the Fiscal Year, around which all big corporations – including those in Industrial Gaming – build their existence. Will there be any real last-ditch efforts to bring in revenue? Will there be any ambitious go-getters looking to get a head start on the year’s profit margins before everyone else? Let’s take a look!
Well, we’ve got shovelware again in March. The most shovely of shovelware I’ve seen in quite some time is coming in the form of “Neopets: Mega Mini Games Collection,” which is simultaneously Licensed Swill, Casual Swill, AND a Port! Other than that, there’s a couple Annualized Releases in Sports: “WWE” and “MLB: The Show.” That leaves us with a number of Noteworthy Ports, including the “Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection,” a remake of “Fatal Frame 2,” a FOURTH volume of ‘Taito Milestones’ hitting the original Switch, plus …
Discord Attempts Suicide, Soon Forcing Global ID Checks
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/14/26 at 03:18 PM CT
Discord has been the biggest name in gamer chat and communications for a while now, supplanting old-school players like Mumble and Ventrillo through its alleged ease-of-use and plethora of added features. The MJ Crew doesn’t have a lot of first-hand experience with Discord, though, as we’ve stuck with Steam’s build-in text and voice chat features, and, aside from the occasional glitch, have found our favorite digital distribution platform’s added-value features have been “good enough” for our purposes.
And that turns out to have been a great decision, as Discord announced recently that they will be going above and beyond the call of corruption in complying with the United Kingdom’s overweening “THINK OF THE CHILDRED” online ID laws, and will start requiring an ID check or AI-powered facial scan from users – even those outside of the U.K. – in order to continue accessing Discord channels for adults. What “for adults” means is quite vague, and could range …
Backlog: The Embiggening – February, 2026
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/04/26 at 09:35 PM CT
Welcome back to another look into the near future! Unfortunately for us, the loaf-shaped, fur-covered, wiggly-nosed, pointy-toothed creature did indeed see its shadow, so we’ve got more Winter ahead of us. Will the imploding-building of Industrial Gaming provide us with something new to play during the extra 6 weeks of Winter? Will Indie developers come to the rescue? Or will we have to face our backlogs instead? Let’s dig into it!
We fortunately won’t have to get our shovels too dirty in February. It looks like there’s only one piece of Licensed Swill – a game based on the ‘My Hero Academia’ anime/manga – while there are zero Casual Trash games and zero Annualized Releases. There are a few Noteworthy Ports that are actually deserving of a mention: Three RPGs from yesteryear, “Dragon Quest 7,” “Tales of Berseria,” and “WiZman World” are getting thrown at a new audience (though, of those Noteworthy Ports, one is very much more noteworthy than the …
Last Year’s Best-Selling Console... Shouldn’t Have
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 02/01/26 at 01:23 PM CT
It seems that we may have jumped the gun in singing the praises of the Nintendo Switch 2’s glorious launch last year, as the latest and blandest from the Big-N only really sold “well” immediately after its launch, with Gamers quickly cooling on Nintendo’s milquetoast Launch Window games (and so, so many Ports/Remasters), leading to a massive drop-off during the 2025 Holiday season. Of course, neither Sony nor Microsoft did any better than Nintendo – and in fact, they actually did worse.
However, there’s one game console that kicked major booty while everyone else was failing... and it’s basically a toy that no serious Gamers or gaming hobbyist has probably heard of: The Nex Playground, a motion-controlled Casual game platform retailing for $250, with 5 pack-in games.
The real question, though, should be, “How in the world did the Nex Playground succeed when it did everything wrong?” Surely we have long enough memories to recall that a significant contributor …
GOG to Reboot? Purchase by Original Co-Founder Signals a Return to Mission.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/24/26 at 04:21 PM CT
Originally announced right before the end of 2025 during the Holiday Rush, GOG looks like it will be undergoing some big changes in the near future. According to the DRM-free game platform’s site and various Gaming news outlets, one of GOG’s original co-founders, a Polack named Michal Kicinski, will be taking GOG off CD Projekt’s hands and taking the platform fully private once again.
I can’t help but be somewhat excited about this move, as all of the blog-worthy headlines we’ve had out of GOG for the last... half-decade at least, has been about how the company is betraying its founding principles, going Woke, getting into bed with Amazon, begging for donations, etc. Anyone who has been paying attention and can follow basic pattern recognition and logic understands that a huge part of the reason why Steam is so dominant in the digital game sales space is the fact that it’s an entirely private company, with no shareholders or Venture Capital firms that it must please. …
Sony De-Lists 1000+ Shovelware Games! Is this Good or Bad?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/17/26 at 03:04 PM CT
This week, eagle-eyed industry watchers noticed that something was going on deep in the bowels of the PlayStation Network. ThiGamesDE – a Germany-based developer of Trophy-Farming shovelware games, who had the 4th most games available for purchase on PSN – just had all of its games de-listed from the PlayStation Store, rendering them unpurchasable. That comes to a sum total of OVER 1000 titles that have just vanished into the void!
On one hand, this is good news for the concept of Game Curation, which has been a major sticking point since the advent of digital distribution removed the financial blockers that typically allowed only games with a publisher and a moderate amount of effort behind them to find themselves generally available for purchase in the broader market. Ever since the rise of smartphones in 2007, and their accompanying App Store ecosystems, the low barrier to entry has seen exploitation by scammers and low-effort coders throwing all of their sh!t at the …
4~ish Games to (Try to) Get Excited About in 2026
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/10/26 at 10:22 PM CT
Welcome back to MeltedJoystick’s mostly-annual feature where we take a look at the most exciting titles slated to be released over the course of the coming year. While these titles frequently don’t come out when expected thanks to delays, when they do, they either horribly disappoint OR find their way into the MeltedJoystick Games of the Year list. Let’s take a look at the most promising titles coming in 2026!
1. Solasta 2
While the glorious hype for “Baldur’s Gate 3” is well behind us, and the hype for Larian’s next ‘Divinity’ game should be saved until we see more than a cinematic trailer, there’s another classic-style RPG coming this year to keep us waiting with ‘bated breath. “Solasta 2” is the sequel to “Solasta: Crown of the Magister,” a not-officially-licensed cRPG based loosely on the Open Game License content from D&D 5th Edition – so don’t expect to see any copyrighted critters like beholders or illithids. The MJ Crew has the original …
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