I host several movie events each year, and Bond films come up all of the time. Over the years, I’ve taken my own unscientific polls of everyone’s favorite villain. Dr. No comes up now and again. Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me) gets a mention here and there, and Le Chiffre (Casino Royale) seems to pop up from younger fans. Two names come up more than any other, with one edging out the other. The runner-up is Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by several actors starting in 1963’s From Russia with Love, where two different actors portrayed him — one providing the voice and one providing the visual of just his hands and the back of his head. Blofeld tops many Bond villain lists simply because of his proclivity for appearing in so many films. He’s the Moriarty to Bond’s Sherlock Holmes. No shock there.

What was originally a surprise is that the villain whose name comes up most often in my events is Auric Goldfinger from 1964’s eponymously named Goldfinger. When I ask my friends why they choose him, the response generally boils down to a simple reality: Auric Goldfinger doesn’t need a physical ailment to convey his megalomania. He’s just clearly, purely, fully evil.

My impromptu polling has colored my view of Bond villains to the point of becoming critical of the way that Bond producers handicap their bad guys. In 2021’s No Time To Die, there are three main antagonists who each have some terrible affliction branding them as villains. It’s as if the producers think that the audience needs these obvious visual aids to decipher the difference between good and evil characters. No Time To Die stamps Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) with a missing right eye and a nasty scar. Primo (Dali Benssalah) sports a snazzy, multipurpose, glass left eye that’s clearly oversized (just so that you don’t miss it, I’m guessing), and Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) lives with an entire face — and I assume body — disfigured by a nasty nerve agent.

Damaged eyes seem to be a personal favorite of the producers and shared by Bond’s creator Ian Fleming. A cursory look finds no less than 10 villains with eye issues. The rogues of Fleming’s novels are often grotesque in a list of ways that could leave a mortician with a queasy stomach. Fleming grew up at the dawn of cinema in an era where moviegoers distanced themselves from anything viewed as abnormal. That combination pretty much guaranteed that, on-screen and off, villains would be portrayed and described as anything but commonplace. Those days are now long behind us, and Bond’s producers haven’t grasped that yet. Outside of Disney movies, the antagonists of most of today’s blockbusters are just like the rest of us, but bad.

The takeaway for me is that the most effective — and, thus, best — villain is the one whom the audience never sees coming. Nothing is scarier than a psychopath who looks like your average neighbor, and that’s why Goldfinger works so well. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t need a menancing prosthetic to make your hair stand on end. He’d fit right in at your local book club meeting… right up to the snack break. It’s one of the core reasons why Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) and Walter White (Breaking Bad) drew so many fans each week.

Sure, quite a few Bond baddies sport no outward signs of internal strife, but most of them are written as so over-the-top as to be laughable. I’m looking at you, Raoul Silva (Skyfall). Personally, I find myself pulled right out of the plot of new Bond films because of the distraction of whatever outrageous affliction the antagonist is saddled with. I literally missed a few lines of Safin’s opening dialogue because I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell happened to his face. It’s much more satisfying to slowly piece together tidbits of telling dialogue and actions before finally realizing that you’re dealing with a lunatic.

Such props are not only distracting, but also insulting. Today’s audiences are far more sophisticated. They’ve been exposed to decades of stories and no longer need to be spoon-fed cues to tell them who’s who. Most concerning is that this also reinforces the woefully misguided idea that a person’s outward appearance reflects who they are inside. If history teaches us anything, it’s that, if such people are evil, it’s likely that they ended up that way as a by-product of the evil way that people reacted to and treated them throughout their lives.

If I could ask for one thing in the next generation of Bond films, it would be to spend more time effectively masking the villains’ disturbing personalities and less time masking their faces.

/comment:  Maggie, thanks so much for spending a few minutes with us.

Maggie Q: Thanks for coming.

/c: For starters, tell us how you ended up in the film.

MQ: I got a call from my agent who, you know, said “Hey, listen, we know you’re not looking for action right now, but we’ve got this great script and [director] Martin Campbell is attached and Martin was ready to get on the phone with him. That’s really how it all began, you know. It was my love affair with Martin Campbell and what he wanted to do with this film. I mean, that’s really what sold me.

/c: In The Protégé, you play a character with a dark childhood history in Vietnam. Did you spend any time there?

MQ: Yeah, you know, we — the actors — we didn’t end up being able to go, unfortunately.

/c: At all?

MQ: No, not at all. Our crew did go, and they did shoot a lot of stuff.

/c: Vietnam is listed as a location in the credits.

MQ: Yeah, no, they did. They went there. Martin went there. The crew went there, and they shot a bunch of stuff there, but because of the pandemic — at the height of it — especially in March in Asia, we weren’t allowed to go because it was too risky for us. Yeah.

/c: It’s not as if you haven’t played deadly characters in the past. Did you do anything differently to prepare for this role, or was it all the same as before?

MQ: Yeah, I did something very different. I had no time to prepare for this movie (laughs deeply). Normally, I have a good lead-up to prepare, but I was just coming out of a recovery period after a surgery, and I had to jump into this movie, so there was really no time, like, for any of it, so I just had to pull from the skill sets I’ve acquired in the last 20 years.

/c: So you winged it?

MQ: Yeah, -ish. Yeah, yeah.

/c: In the film, you spend a lot of time interacting with two screen heavyweights: Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton. Did the title of the film extend not only to your character, but to you personally in any way?

MQ: (laughing) I guess so. I mean, you know, I honestly, like you said, sort of film with legends. You feel like you’re on the set with them that you, you know, have a lot to learn and, you know, pick up on all those things, but they brought so much knowledge and experience and joy to the set that we had a really good time making it.

/c: How does working with that caliber of actor impact your work?

MQ: Oh, hugely. I mean, part of acting is reacting, right? When you have someone who is just so skilled, who is a great collaborator, which they both were — which is not always the case. You can have a ton of talent, but if somebody is not willing to collaborate, you’re not going to get the product that I think we got on this.

/c: You said in the past that you like doing your own stunts. Who gets to make the final decision on films like this regarding your doing them or not, and is your stunt double pretty much bored the whole time?

MQ: Bored to tears (laughs). On some levels she is, and the answer to the first question is, it’s usually, well, myself and the director and sometimes the insurance company. (laughs heartily) It’s the three of us.

/c: I’m wondering if they (the insurance company) make most of the calls.

MQ: They don’t make most of them, but if it’s really something they do feel is way too dangerous where I wouldn’t be able to finish the rest of the film with something happening, then they’ll yank it.

/c: What do you feel with that? Is it sort of, “No I really prepared for that?”

MQ: Oh, I’ve definitely had those battles for sure, but it’s part of the process. Yeah.

/c: On the lighter side, do you have any funny stories to share about the shoot whatsoever?

MQ: Oh, well, (laughing) we were filming in eastern Europe in the dead of winter, so that in itself was a laugh/cry situation, but you know, some of the locations, you know, we had to double for Asia ’cause we couldn’t go there because of the pandemic, so you know, we had this enormous Vietnam set, and it would start snowing (laughs). So there were a lot of changes because of weather.

/c: This is most assuredly an action-forward film. What would you say is one of your favorite action films, and why?

MQ: One of my favorite action films? (looks off contemplatively) Hmm…

/c: That you’re not in…

MQ: That I’m not in… Oh, god. They’re all my favorite ones that I’m not in. Well, I love Casino [Royale] a lot. That opening sequence is probably one of my favorite sequences of all time. I think some of the Lethal Weapons have some really great sequences as well.

/c: They’ve actually not aged that badly.

MQ: They look grrr-eat. I know! It’s really unbelievable, but these old-school action sequences that are really long, which I thought that Martin really threw back to when he did Casino [Royale] because it was just, um, it was just jaw-dropping sequences. Just so creative and, technically, you know, as a film person, are so hard to pull off that you’re watching it with just an amount of respect that you can’t even believe what you’re watching.

/c: It’s amazing how many of those films of that era we’re starting to basically reconsider given today’s political environment, and those films we had just recently rewatched — the four of them. I think it’s four, and we were, like, “Hey, they still hold up.”

MQ: They do.

/c: We don’t feel guilty about anything in them.

MQ: One hundred percent, and the action holds up, too, as you say.

/c: I’m very curious to know if you’ve earned enough money yet to get that veterinarian degree?

MQ: (deep laughter) Soon. Soon, we’ll take a break and do anything else but films.

/c: When you retire, that’s your whole plan — retire into veterinary school.

MQ: Retiring with animals, yeah, for sure.

/c: How many dogs do you have at home now, and what’s your favorite dog breed?

MQ: I have a German shepherd, I have a German shepherd mix and I have a terrier. I call him a terrier risk.

/c: Yeah, terriers are always the pain, and he thinks he’s a German shepherd?

MQ: I love a good German shepherd, I have to say. I grew up with pit bulls and sort of mixed shepherds, so those are, like, my two favorite that I have a soft spot for ’cause I’ve known them my whole life.

/c: As a vegan, are you a fan of advancements in plant-based meats like Impossible and Beyond burgers? Not that they’re health foods.

MQ: They’re not. They’re absolutely not. I don’t think anything processed is health food, so for me, it’s sort of, like, I like to eat, sort of, as close to nature as possible. I don’t have a need for junk food on any level, so I don’t care if it’s something I would eat or wouldn’t eat.

/c: I’m jealous. (MQ laughs) I owe you a thank you. I read an article you did an interview for a while ago. I was having some issues with gut biome.

MQ: Oh, there you go! Like most of us.

/c: You had said something like, “Look here,” and I took that to my doctor who said, “Hey,” and it turns out I needed to have my gall bladder out. Antibiotics wiped everything out, and I happened to trip over your piece and thought, “Hey, this is what I’m dealing with.”

MQ: Yeah, yeah. This is sounding like, well, a lot of us are struggling, so it’s nice to have a company where I’m out there helping people, and that makes me happy.

/c: Are you finding anything in Philadelphia, not that you’re here for a long time? Is there anything you like about the city?

MQ: We went to a Phillies game, and that was really fun ’cause I got to see what your fans look like here, which was awesome.

/c: We have a bad reputation.

MQ: (genuinely surprised) Do you have a bad reputation? How come?

/c: We snowballed Santa Claus.

MQ: How come? Was he not a fan of the Phillies?

/c: It’s a long story, but the short of it is that in Philadelphia, long before there was a history, we had the chance to draft O. J. Simpson, and the team was that bad. All they had to do was lose the last game of the season to get that draft pick, and they decided instead to win one of the few games they won, missing that draft pick, so then Santa comes in, and all the fans just grabbed snow and snowballed Santa.

MQ: (laughing) Stop it! They took it out on Santa? Come on, Phillies.

/c: Yeah, they took it out on Santa. That was the Eagles fans, but the same Philadelphia fans.

MQ: Yeah, the Philly crowd.

/c: So have you had any of the food here?

MQ: I had a — don’t be mad. Are you from here?

/c: Yeah, oh, yeah.

MQ: I had a vegan Philly cheesesteak. I know that sounds somewhat illegal.

/c: Oh, no, no, no.

MQ: But is was available, and I had it, and I really enjoyed it.

/c: There’s a place here called Govinda’s that makes a phenomenal one, and in fact, it was picked one year as the best cheesesteak, and it’s vegan.

MQ: (shocked) What?! I don’t think that’s the one I had. What was it called? Govinda’s?

/c: Govinda’s. Just ask anybody around, and they’ll tell you where Govinda’s is. [Interviewer’s note: Sadly, I didn’t know that Govinda’s didn’t survive the pandemic and closed in 2020.] Finishing up, what’s next for you?

MQ: I have a show on Fox. I start in a few weeks. It’s a comedy called Pivoting, which will premiere in January, so we’re going to film a season from September to sort of like the end of November.

/c: I’ve gotta say I’m still mad at the whole Designated Survivor end and how that all happened. My wife and I were hooked.

MQ: Well, here’s the thing. If you die on a show and people are upset, it’s a good thing. If you die on a show and they’re, like, finally, then you’re in trouble, so I’m really glad people were upset.

/c: When they ended your character, we were, like, “Well, there’s no reason to watch the show.” Honestly, there was no reason to keep watching.

MQ: See? That’s what my brother said, but he’s related to me, and he has to say that, so it’s nice to hear that from someone I’m not related to.

/c: No, I didn’t have to. Thanks again for doing this interview.

The Protégé, starring Maggie Q, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton and Robert Patrick, opens on August 20th.

A short while ago, I became aware of a new product from Jolly Roger Games called 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Word of the game suggested that it was a lighter version of Struggle, which, of course, immediately appealed to me. I decided to pick it up and give it a spin.

To call this a lighter version of Struggle understates the situation entirely. It goes way beyond that simple description. Upon reading the rules, my initial thought was a bit negative. It seemed as if designers Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen did little more than apply a narrower theme with fewer turns while calling it a new product. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then this is one flattering product. It’s not as if the games industry hasn’t experienced this sort of cloning process before. Words with Friends is clearly Scrabble, but with a larger online audience. Cards Against Humanity is pretty much just Apples to Apples, but taken to a whole new hilarious level. Was this game more of the former, the latter or something entirely different?

The Box and Components

The glossy, sturdy box is slightly smaller in height and width than a typical piece of copy paper. It looks like it can handle some abuse. Inside, you’ll find a basic cardboard insert, a small game board, 13 Agenda cards (13, I get it), 39 Strategy cards (hey, 13 x 3?), one Personal Letter card, 34 small wooden influence cubes (17 blue and 17 red), 6 small wooden DEFCON markers (3 blue and 3 red, although my box actually came with 6 of each), 6 cardboard Flag counters (3 U.S. and 3 USSR), 1 small wooden Prestige marker (to keep track of scoring) and 1 small wooden Round marker. You’ll also find a comprehensive, well-written, 22-page rule book (of which only nine pages are the actual rules and the rest is a step-by-step game overview that I didn’t end up needing), plus a bonus 15-page backgrounder on the actual history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. There are also two advertising cards for other Jolly Roger games and two pieces of foam to keep things nicely separated. The cards are well designed and feature a nice linen finish. The artwork on the Strategy cards is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s played either Struggle or 1960. You won’t find any unnecessary miniatures included, and that’s more than fine with me. What’s here is well thought out and presented.

The Rules

13 Days puts players in the role of either U.S. President John F. Kennedy or USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev during the tense standoff of the Cuban Missile Crisis (as if you hadn’t realized that already). Each player tries to gain the most Prestige (points) while, at the same time, trying to keep the DEFCON levels low enough to avoid launching nuclear missiles. Any player who launches their missiles is the loser, and that can easily end up being both players. If neither player launches their missiles, then the winner is the player with the most Prestige.

The board includes three Political “battleground areas” (Cuba, Italy and Turkey), three Military battleground areas (Cuba, Atlantic and Berlin) and three World Opinion battleground areas (United Nations, Television and Alliances). The board also includes a DEFCON area that tracks the levels for each of the players in each of the three battleground types (Political, Military and World Opinion). At the start of the game, each player will have one DEFCON marker on each of the three tracks (or columns). The U.S. player also starts with one Influence cube on Turkey and Italy, while the USSR player starts with one Influence marker on Cuba (Military) and Berlin.

The game is broken up into eight phases repeated each round:

1. The DEFCON markers are each moved up one space on the DEFCON track toward DEFCON 1. (Each track has a total of eight spaces between DEFCON 3 and DEFCON 1.)
2. Each player draws three Agenda cards. These cards will represent the focus of the player for that round. Agenda cards generally relate to the battlegrounds on the board or the DEFCON tracks. For example, the MILITARY agenda card will award that player Prestige points based on how much higher, if any, their Military DEFCON level is above the other player. The TURKEY Political battleground card will award that player Prestige points based on the number of Influence markers they have on Turkey above those of the other player. Each player then places their three Flag counters on the board next to the areas matched by the three Agenda cards that they’ve drawn. This might seem strange at first as you’re now telling your opponent exactly which three cards you’ve just drawn. The catch is that you’ll keep just one of the cards while reshuffling the other two back into the Agenda deck.
3. Each player then draws five Strategy cards. After looking them over, the player with the lower score decides who plays first. At the start of the game, this Initiative choice is given to the USSR player. The order of card play can make or break your efforts, so this is no small decision. Sometimes, it’s better to go first, and sometimes, it’s not. Whoever is determined to play first then plays one of their five Strategy cards, then the other player follows by playing one of theirs. This repeats until both players have played four of their five cards.
4. The last unplayed Strategy card is then placed facedown under the board to be used in the final Aftermath phase. This phase will award two final Prestige points to whichever player has the most points stored up in the Aftermath cards; thus, it’s important to not just stick your least useful card here each round. I’ll touch on the details of this shortly.
5. The player with the most influence on each World Opinions battleground gets a specific bonus. Those bonuses are calculated during this stage.
6. Players then simultaneously show their hidden Agenda card and apply any Prestige due. For example, if your Agenda card was the TURKEY card. then you’ll now receive one Prestige point for each Influence cube that your country has on Turkey above the total cubes of that of the other country. If you have four Influence cubes there and the opponent has two, you gain two Prestige points. If you didn’t achieve your agenda, then you’ll get nothing that round.
7. Time to check for Nuclear War. Missiles can be launched in one of two ways. First, if either or both players have a DEFCON marker in the DEFCON 1 area, the game is over and that player or players lose. Also, if either or both players have all three of their DEFCON markers in the DEFCON 2 area, the same result happens.
8. If the game didn’t end in Armageddon, you then advance the Round marker. There are just three rounds followed by the Aftermath.

It’s important to note that Prestige is tallied on a singular track that runs from five points for the U.S. down to zero and back up to five points for the USSR. Every Prestige point gained is taken from the other player’s total in a classic tug-of-war battle.

Game Play

This is a game all about balance, bluffing and risk. Since the opponent knows which Agenda cards you were dealt, they have at least a one-in-three chance of knowing where you’re hoping to focus your attention. Remember also that you can’t just focus on your own goals, but also need to thwart your opponent achieving theirs. This is done through the playing of the Strategy cards. Each card is made up of several key parts:

1. Each card is a U.S.-specific card, a USSR-specific card or a UN card. This refers mainly to the Event text on the card, but during the Aftermath portion of the game, it functions differently.
2. Each card has a number of Command cubes shown on it which relates to how many Influence cubes you may alter on the board with that card.
3. Each card has an Event that you, or your opponent, may trigger during each play. Some events also affect the DEFCON track.

Strategy cards can be played in one of two ways. All cards can be played for Command. In this case, the number of Command cubes shown will allow that player to affect that many Influence cards on the board, but only in one battleground area or one DEFCON area. The Event text on a card may be triggered by the player only if it is a card from their country or a UN card. If the card is from the opposing country, it may only be played for Command, but the opposing player is given the option of triggering the Event text on that card first. This is a major part of the game play and deviates a bit from both Struggle and 1960. In those games, this can happen, but only for one card each round. Here, if I draw a hand of nothing but my opponent’s cards, he can trigger four of them. That will seem insane to players of the other games, but it’s also one of the most beautiful parts of the design of 13 Days. All of the cards are wonderfully balanced, so even though a bad draw can happen, its impact can be heavily reduced or even eliminated with the right order of play and careful use of the Command/Influence cubes.

I also mentioned the Aftermath stage above. The last unplayed Strategy card is placed into the Aftermath area. After three full rounds of play, this deck is examined. You then simply sum the total of Command cubes shown for each country (ignoring any on UN cards), and if either country has a majority of cubes, they receive two additional Prestige points. It’s quite easy to underestimate the value of the Aftermath cards. Remember that no player can have more than five Prestige points, so these final two points can often be the difference between victory or defeat.

There are two huge game play differences between 13 Days and the other older games. The first is that Influence cubes are not only important to place onto battleground areas, but just as important to remove from them. This might really throw veterans of the other two games at first. Remember that, in 13 Days, each player only gets 17 Influence cubes to spread around and 2 already start on the board. You’ll run out quickly. The only way to get more is to remove them from areas where you feel your influence isn’t currently as important. The second difference is the DEFCON track and how it works. In Twilight Struggle, there’s a mini-game known as the Space Race. In 1960, that same element is The Debate. Both the Space Race and The Debate feel quirky in comparison to their core games. They just feel pasted on. The DEFCON track is an entirely different, totally fascinating experience. It results in play balance that neither of the other two games can match. So how does this work?

Every time you play Influence cubes to battlegrounds via the Command section of a card, you may end up also impacting the DEFCON level. Remember that playing Command limits your Influence cubes to being played to just one battleground area for that card. Placing or removing one cube in an area is considered a minor move and doesn’t impact the DEFCON track for that battleground type (Political, Military or World Opinion). However, for every cube placed or removed above one, the DEFCON track for that type is moved up or down one level less than the total number of cubes moved. If I play a Strategy card with three Command on it and place three Influence cubes in Italy, which is a Political battleground, then my Political DEFCON marker moves up two spaces towards DEFCON 1. If I remove three cubes from Italy, then my Political DEFCON marker moves down two spaces. This is how balance is maintained, and it’s no easy feat. There’s this constant pressure of wanting to maximize your score with more Influence cubes, but then the DEFCON track gets out of hand. Without a constant eye on its status and everything that impacts it, you can quickly end up on the losing side of a nuclear launch.

Conclusion

In the end, where does this leave us? Is this a better game than Twilight Struggle or 1960: The Making of the President? That very much depends on what you’re looking for. From a depth standpoint, 13 Days doesn’t come close to either of its predecessors. However, its key advantage is that an entire game can be played in roughly 45 minutes compared to 90-240 minutes or more for the other games. That advantage alone should guarantee that it appeals to a wider audience and makes it to the table far more often. Where it doesn’t compete as well is in the immersion and theme areas. It just doesn’t have the same aura as its kin. In the other games, I read the flavor text of every card and feel transported into their worlds. In 13 Days, I don’t feel the need or desire to bother with the flavor text. While functional, the board itself does little to help deepen the experience. The battlegrounds are just big rectangles that obscure a nearly-ignored map beneath them. I don’t believe that I ever once thought of any facet of the Cuban Missile Crisis while playing.

There are also a couple of minor missteps that could have eased learning; they boil down to confusing terminology. The game includes a Personal Letter card that plays a small part in the game that I didn’t detail, but there’s also an Agenda card called the Personal Letter Agenda, and confusing the two is far too easy. There’s also the confusion between the term “Command” and “Influence.” It would have been much easier to simply drop all of the references of the former and just call the cubes on the Strategy cards Influence. I also have to mention that it does feel a bit strange to win the game when the loser launches his nuclear arsenal. That’s like trying to wrap your head around a time-travel paradox. I wish that it had a better explanation.

Other than those fairly trivial concerns, this is a wonderful two-player game that you can grab for well under $40. It plays fast and has nice components, a solid rule book and great game play, especially with respect to the DEFCON facet. The designers deserve much praise for creating far more than just a simple clone of a more complex game. This is a winner in its own right.

On September 8, noted science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle passed away quietly in his sleep. Jerry was yet another amazing individual whom I had the very good pleasure to know personally over many years and one whom I’ll miss more than most. He was quite a unique man.

In 1985, I was in the third year of running my quality assurance company, Top Star, which was the first such company of its type in the fledgling computer games industry. One of our clients was a little known company called Binary Systems. They were developing a game that would go on to become my all-time favorite, Starflight. One day during its development, I had an argument with Binary’s core designer, Greg Johnson. What we argued about specifically is long forgotten, but Greg mentioned that someone else with whom they’d been talking had the same exact criticism. He suggested that the two of us should get together and compare notes to better help the game. That person was Jerry.

Understand that, by 1985, Jerry and his longtime writing partner Larry Niven had written countless top science fiction books. While I was a fan of some limited science fiction novels, I only really knew the names of a few of its authors like Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. In other words, I had no idea who Jerry really was, and I hadn’t read any of his books (a fact that I was too embarrassed to ever admit to him). To me, he was just another guy writing about computers (then for the amazing Byte magazine). This was also at a time when the PC community was so small that you could still get people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others on the phone simply by calling them. It was a totally different world than it is today. The two of us were introduced, and we talked often over the next several months, bonding over our mutual love for this unique little space exploration game. That discussion led to a fairly regular back-and-forth dialogue about all things technology that continued for more than 30 years.

In those days, we were both addicted to chasing the limits of what a PC could do. We spent ages burning our own BIOS chips. (That was a thing then.) We’d call up one another if either of us found a setting or tweak that would provide another 1% boost in performance. (Ah, the memories of Microid Research and Mike Meisner‘s incredible MR BIOS.) Memory management was another major topic of the day. It was nearly an art form, given the hard limits of what you could do with the meager RAM of a DOS-based PC. When Quarterdeck put out a product called QEMM and, later, its incredible management tool Manifest, it sparked near-marathon calling sessions comparing each of our approaches to saving another 4K of RAM. We’d spend hours going back and forth over the smallest adjustments to our settings. Another favorite topic was a product called 4DOS (and the great support from Mike Bessy), which was a replacement command interpreter that allowed you to pull off all kinds of advanced operating system magic now common in products like PowerShell. Jerry would also spend much of our early relationship trying, in vain, to convert me over to using one of his favorite products, Norton Commander. We both shared a deep love of and countless discussions over products like DESQview, GeoWorks, Qmodem, OS/2 Warp, Stacker, ViewSonic monitors, Perstor hard disk drive controllers and so many others.

We both received the most cutting-edge products, usually for free, from all of the various manufacturers who were hoping that we’d write about them in our various columns. We had a great laugh when we realized that one of our biggest challenges was dealing with all of the cardboard boxes and most especially the oodles of packing “popcorn” that could be found all over both of our homes. Talk about a great problem to have. The one time that I visited his house, he took me to one of his rooms where boxes and products filled every available space from floor to ceiling and books on all topics filled much of the rest of the house. Most of the boxes were unopened, and many were filled with multi-thousand-dollar monitors and other equally valuable products.

There were even times when the two of us would tag-team manufacturers to have them make key changes to hardware that we felt would benefit everyone or, at the least, us. One of the earliest examples that I can still recall is with a now-defunct PC company called Northgate. Northgate’s PCs were decent, but nothing special. However, what they did have were the best keyboards on the planet at that time. Their most popular keyboard, the OmniKey, was a byproduct of a then-recent shift in keyboard design. The earliest PC keyboards all had 10 function keys on the left edge in five rows of two columns. Newer systems came with keyboards that moved the function keys to where they are today (and added F11 and F12). That sort of overnight radical change annoyed a huge number of people. Northgate responded by putting out a keyboard that moved the function keys back to the left side where their marketing folks claimed that they belonged. It was such a popular move that Northgate quickly realized that they were selling far more keyboards than computers. Everyone wanted one. However, Jerry and I were both sure that they could do one better. We suggested a few changes, including offering function keys on both the left and across the top to appeal to every consumer. The results were another two keyboard designs, the OmniKey Ultra and OmniKey Ultra-T, which quickly became their best sellers. Northgate sent both of us countless keyboards over the ensuing years, and when the last ones finally gave out, we searched high and low for comparable alternatives — a search that would go on until just recently. In fact, one of the last interactions that we had was when I informed him of the recent unexpected resurgence of mechanical-type keyboards and his muted excitement because his own ability to type had been hindered since suffering a stroke in 2014.

Another wonderful example of this great access and input involved the current design of the computer mouse. I don’t recall the year exactly, but it was likely near the tail end of the 1980s. Logitech sent us both a sample of what they were calling a revolution in mouse design. It was a three-button mouse in the literal shape of a half-cylinder, and they were calling it the first ergonomic mouse. It was nothing of the sort. When Jerry and I discussed it, we both immediately took issue with the “ergonomic” claim and told Logitech’s PR person that the claim was a joke. The very next day, she called back to ask if we’d both get on a call with Logitech’s founder, Pierluigi Zappacosta. He wanted to know, firsthand, what we were both going on about, so together, the two of us made our mutual case that an ergonomic mouse was one that followed the actual shape of a hand. We suggested that he take a chunk of clay and form it to a relaxed hand sitting on a desk. The resulting shape would be a real ergonomic design. Much to our surprise, Zappacosta said, “Give me a few weeks and I’ll send you something.” We’d heard this sort of comment before and forgot all about it. Roughly three months later, a FedEx package appeared in both of our mailboxes, and inside was the very first truly ergonomic mouse designed exactly the way that we described. That afternoon, we were on the phone again with Zappacosta praising him for an amazing new product. That basic change is still the driving force behind nearly every popular mouse on the market today.

Personally, Jerry was a curious individual. He could be entirely chummy with me and completely different with someone else. A classic example of this happened whenever he’d call my house. If I picked up the phone, he’d say, “Hey, it’s Jerry.” If my first wife, Cheryl, picked up the phone, even if it was for the 10,000th time, he’d say, “This is Doctor J. E. Pournelle calling for Rich Heimlich. Is he at home?” Cheryl would crack up every single time. “It’s Doctor Pournelle again,” she’d say laughingly. People would often tell me of their challenging, sometimes negative interactions that they had with him, but I never had any such experience. I guess that some people just rubbed him the wrong way. More times than not the issue was that Jerry was simply smarter than most people. Then again, Jerry traveled in circles that placed him in an orbit that few of us ever get to experience.

I found out about this on one of our calls back during the Bill Clinton administration. We were talking about robots and space when Jerry shared a story about his involvement with NASA. That alone should give you a hint. His voice became very animated as he described his view of the X-Robot project, which later became Mars Pathfinder (the first Mars rover). He was upset about how he felt NASA was screwing it up. Then he said, “So I marched into Al’s office and gave him and General Johnson a piece of my mind.” I asked, “Al who?” and he responded, “Al Gore, you idiot.” I made up the General’s name as I’ve long forgotten it, but it suffices to say that he was one of Clinton’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Here was this guy whom I knew as just another person working to put food on the table, only to find out that he’s able to march into the Vice President’s office and dress down him and a top General. Okay.

Jerry was also pretty well known for his political views, but for much of our relationship, it really rarely came up. I’m a left-leaning independent, but from his perspective, I might as well have been Mao Zedong. Jerry’s idea of conservatism was so hard right that it would circle clear back through the left before landing on the hard right again. Whenever we did talk politics, he was often one of the most open-minded people. His responses might be spirited now and again, but rarely would they ever be insulting.

Over the years, a number of people who found out that I was friends with Jerry would ask how I could stand the guy. Whenever this happened, I’d just have to shake my head and tell them that he’d been nothing but a stand-up, straight-shooting fellow who, more than a few times, put in a good word for me when he thought that it might help. He did this for many people. That’s the Jerry I knew and the one that I will miss for the rest of my days. If there is an afterlife, I have no doubt that he’s already hard at work turning it into a better place.

Critics of Obama’s numbers jump immediately to the argument that the two periods are not comparable, citing that the Obama administration “cooked the books” by not counting those who stopped looking for work. The problem with this argument is that the Reagan administration did the same thing. The labor participation rate varied no more than 3% for both of them. Obama’s tenure includes the mass retiring of Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) that started officially retiring in his third year in office (2011). Roughly 4.02 million of them retire each year on average. That’s approximately 32 million people during Obama’s two terms (including millions of early retirees).

Here’s the chart:

The numbers tell a rather difficult story for proponents on the Reagan side. First, you’ll notice that Obama’s entry into office also coincided with job figures already marching skyward, while Reagan inherited a flat jobless number. Consider that Reagan’s predecessor, President Jimmy Carter, resided over four years of fairly flat unemployment that vacillated slowly between a lackluster “low” of 5.6% and a high of 7.8%. Carter came into office with it at 7.5% and left with it at the same number. Reagan supporters also generally credit his cutting taxes as the main reason for his low job figures, but as you can see from the data, that clearly isn’t the case. His tax cuts — passed into law in July of his first year — were part of the Economic Recovery Tax Act. The results were immediate and obvious. Employers started shedding employees at a record pace, culminating in the highest unemployment rate (10.8%) since the Great Depression and higher than Obama’s high water mark of 10.1%. In response, Reagan and Congress passed the Tax Equity & Fiscal Responsibility Act a year later. It was the first of several major tax increases during his two terms, and like the first act, its impact was quickly felt, resulting in a decline in joblessness nearly identical in sharpness to its previous rise.

Reagan’s jobless numbers then enter a long flat period, hovering mostly just above 7%, until the final major tax increases that came with the Tax Reform Act of 1986 just before his last two years in office. Only then did Reagan’s jobless numbers finally dip into the low territory that many supporters recall as the norm during his tenure. In fact, discounting the precipitous rise and fall of his first term, Reagan’s jobless figures would, at best, represent six years of stagnation above 7% before finally falling at the end of his administration. Unfortunately, that also coincides with the beginning of the recession that would ultimately cost his successor — President George H. W. Bush — his job.

By comparison, Obama’s jobless figures paint a much different picture. After riding out their initial climb to their peak in October of his first year in office, they were on a fairly reliable downward trend.

Another interesting footnote is that, in May 2012, Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney made a bold prediction: “I can tell you that, over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we’d put in place, we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6% and perhaps a little lower.” Obama managed this same feat more than two full years ahead of Romney’s promise. The best figure under Reagan’s administration was 5.3%. Obama’s administration reached that point 17 months before Reagan. Obama also surpassed Reagan’s best number in August of 2015 with unemployment reaching 5.1%.

The better argument for Reagan proponents is the average unemployment rate over a full administration. Reagan’s average was 6.3%. Obama’s average was 7.4%. Reagan came into office at 7.5% and left at 5.4%. Obama came in at 7.8% and left at 4.8%.

The big unknown is what Obama’s numbers would look like if he had worked with a more engaged Congress. Those on the Left would obviously suggest things could have been much improved, while those on the Right would say that the numbers were only low because of their opposition. Regardless of your view, the numbers are still quite interesting.

Well, it turns out it’s popular with far more than just a bunch of beloved bubbes. Mahjong is played by countless millions worldwide with nearly 8 million players in Japan alone. As a board game enthusiast, I must admit a distant fascination with the game. Like Bridge, it’s a game that I always planned to investigate but never seemed to get around to — until just about 10 days ago. My family broke out a tile set, and we sat around learning some basic rules. It was strange to be sure, but oddly captivating with much the same fascination one gets watching a cat play inside a box.

After that first half-digested game, I was curious enough to start doing some research. Little did I know that my modest intention of simply “learning the rules” would take on such monumental proportions. I would later find out that what I was introduced to was the American variant of the game. It turns out that Mahjong has nearly as many variations as Baskin-Robbins has ice cream flavors. Each one has its own rules, scoring, accessories and even tile sets. In fact, I would quickly come to learn that the rules are so fluid that a variant of the same name played by people in one home could be vastly different than the one being played right next door. So how the heck did such a chaotic hobby become so popular? I had to find out.

A Brief Description

At the heart of every flavor of Mahjong is a core game that shares an ancestry with Rummy-based card games. In fact, Mahjong was itself a card game at one time before evolving into a tile game somewhere in the latter half of the 19th Century. As long as you don’t mind holding a hand of roughly 14 cards, the game can be just as easily played with cards today. I should mention that this game has very little to do with the solitaire tile-matching game also called Mahjong that many people are first exposed to.

Players take turns drawing tiles from a larger supply arranged in what’s known as The Wall. Their “hand” of tiles depends on the variant, but the goal remains fairly consistent — draw a new tile from the wall and try to use it to make sets of related tiles. When a player is done, they discard a single unwanted tile. That discarding process is what drives much of the strange language we hear from old Aunt Gert and friends. Players announce the tile that they’re discarding so that the other players can decide if they want to steal it. The wording identifies the rank (most tiles have one) and its suit. There are three main suits made up of Characters, Dots and Bamboo (or Bam for short). The suits range from a value of 1 to 9 so a discard of a Bamboo three gets us the call of “Three Bam” I mentioned previously. Each of the three main suits includes four copies of each tile, so there are four 7 of Bamboo tiles, four 6 of Dots tiles and so on.

Most variants require a player to amass a few sets of related tiles along with a pair to complete a winning hand. For example, in Japanese Mahjong (and many others), a typical final hand might have a 1, 2 and 3 of Characters; a 7, 8 and 9 of Dots; a 9, 9 and 9 of Bams; a 1, 1 and 1 of Bams; and a 1 and 1 of Dots. In total, Mahjong tile sets range from roughly 130 tiles to over 160 tiles depending on the type of Mahjong played. The American version includes many additional tiles (like Jokers) not used in other versions. Several Asian variants also include the use of Dragon tiles and Wind tiles.  A player with a complete hand scores points based on its complexity, and everyone’s points are adjusted accordingly. After several hands, the winner is the player with the most points.

The description of Mahjong that I just provided is about as complete as suggesting that, if you’ve visited my neighborhood, you’ve seen all that the world has to offer. The depth and options can be quite mind-boggling to say the least.

Politics, Politics, Everywhere

One of the very first conundrums that I encountered on my journey of discovery was the polarization of the Mahjong community. Political parties would stand in awe at the vitriol that I’ve seen offered up from proponents of one variation of Mahjong toward another. It seems that everyone everywhere knows the very best way to play this game and none of them agree on what that is. The obvious one for me to start with was the most surprising. The American game seems incredibly popular anywhere in America and almost nowhere outside of it. Even within the country there are clear lines drawn on generational fronts. The few younger players tend to prefer other more Asian versions, while older players swear by the American version. It’s not until you delve into the details that you realize why.

American Mahjong is so distinct that the larger Mahjong community won’t even refer to it as Mahjong. It has now become known as Mah Jongg. There are also two main ruling bodies that oversee the rules for the game. The largest is the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL for short). These two organizations produce new scoring sheets that literally change the rules of the game every single year. Players pay the league $8 or $9 (2016 pricing for regular and large-print cards) and receive scoring cards filled with a myriad of tiny printed characters outlining the various official winning hands for that year. If they all agree, players can use cards from any past year, but more serious players update yearly. This assures that they’ll be playing the same game as their peers. The surprising part of all of this is that the company behind it charges that fee for every single card. Thus, four large-print cards cost a whopping $36 plus shipping costs. That seems, on first blush, a bit harsh. Then again, that’s less than the cost of those same four people heading to see one movie. I’ve heard vague rumors that the organization donates the proceeds to charities or that they use it to host tournaments, but it still strikes me as excessive. It also makes sense that this only seems to appeal to seniors. Why? They’re retired, can invest the time to play more often than anyone else and new rules essentially keep the game fresh. In my humble opinion, it also drives off the vast majority of people who might be interested in it. It’s one thing to learn some house rules for Monopoly, but imagine if those rules changed every year and you had to buy a new copy just to be able to play with your friends.

In Asian communities, there’s a huge divide between the more popular Hong Kong variant and the Japanese variant known as Riichi (or Reach in English). The latter variant is the one most often used in gambling-based Mahjong video games. Online Internet play generally focuses on Asian varieties, especially because of the legal copyright issues surrounding the American game. The main draw of these versions is that the rules and scoring are static (aside from any local house rules). If you learn Hong Kong Mahjong, you’ll pretty much be able to learn all of the nuances and play that game for the next 50 years.

The Devil is in the Details

Anyone curious enough, or perhaps brave enough, to give the game a shot would be best advised to prepare for an overload of detail and complexity beyond almost any other game of which I’m aware with the possible exception of Bridge. First, new players will have to be okay with learning entirely foreign terminology. Some of the variants pretty much depend upon it to stand any chance of playing beyond a single game or two. Second, scoring of many variants is so incredibly complex that countless scoring applications can be found on every type of phone, tablet and computer. Here’s a typical example from the Japanese game.

In order for your winning hand to count, it must have “yaku.” Yaku defines different types of combinations of tiles. It’s not enough to just get sets of tiles. They have to be the right sets of tiles to count. One yaku involves collecting four sets of three related tiles all of the same suit plus a pair of that same suit. Another involves collecting identical sequences of each suit (the 3, 4 and 5 of each of the three suits, for example) plus any pair, but it only counts if you build the hand using only the tiles that you draw and not any tiles stolen from other player’s discards. Some more complex hands are called “yakuman” hands. Each of these yaku are worth different levels of points called “han.” Easier yaku are worth one or two han, while more complex yaku can be worth much more. Sound confusing? Well, that’s just one part of the puzzle.

Scoring a valid winning hand involves a mathematical equation that would scare away almost any new player (thus explaining the popularity of scoring apps). There are subpoints called “fu” that add to your score. Just winning a hand gets you 20 fu. You’ll get 2 fu if you draw your own final winning tile. The kind of tile that you need to go out also will determine additional fu. Once you add up the fu, you round it up to the nearest 10, so 28 fu becomes 30 fu. At that point, a player applies this equation to the score — fu × 2^(2+han). Yeah, you just read that right, and you’re still not done. That number is rounded up to the nearest 100 and multiplied by another number based on which player went out and how. For example, when the dealer goes out by drawing their own final tile, the three other players pay the winner 2 times the last point total. I just know that you’re dying to find out what happens when a non-dealer player goes out the same way. In that case, the dealer pays the winner 2 times those points, while the other players each pay the winner the regular value. A typical Riichi hand will score in the single-digit thousands.

Rain Sucks Unless You Like Singing in It

It’s enough to literally make your head spin. Despite all of this, I chose to tackle Riichi because it reminded me most of my favorite card game, Tichu. Tichu isn’t the easiest game to pick up, either, but once you do, it’s absolutely wonderful to play. It makes most other card games seem almost silly by comparison, so I hoped that I might find the same payoff waiting for me at the conclusion of learning Riichi. It’s been 10 days, and I still don’t have even a loose grip on the game. It’s clear that the endeavor could take me years to get comfortable with, yet I’m absolutely addicted already. Remember that there are four players involved and hands can end in draws. This means that the best players will go out roughly 20% of the time or, better stated, not win 80% of the hands. The sheer anticipation of building a hand, changing your mind, going for something else, coming within a single tile and then watching another player go out before you is absolutely without equal to any other game that I’ve played. Likewise, the euphoria you feel when you finally do draw that last tile is exhilarating. Pulling off a major hand? Priceless.

Perhaps the most stupefying part of learning any form of Mahjong is the speed at which seasoned players play. New players can take minutes to figure out what to do and longer to consult their NMJL player cards and list of 30-plus Japanese yaku to decide what tile to draw. Watch Grandma play, and you’ll think that someone juiced her julep for sure.

If You Decide to Dance in the Puddles

For those of you who still think that this game might be for you despite all of the complexity — I really hope that some of you do — there are countless wonderful resources all over the Internet to help you get started, including thriving online communities filled with great people who are eager to help you learn. There are also a slew of great apps out there to help you along your way should you want to learn in a more solo environment at your own pace. I highly recommend the following sites and resources to get started.

If you want to play on your Android phone against computer players or even real people online, then try out Maujong. For Windows PCs, I recommend Four Winds. It’s a bit dated, but it boasts incredible support and the ability to play almost any major variant of Mahjong. The full version costs $30, but it’s well worth it. If you want to try out something free, give GameDesign‘s online Japanese game a shot.

I also recommend posting any questions that you might have to the wonderful mahjong subreddit. You’ll also be amazed at how thorough and respected the Wikipedia articles are on all of the different types of Mahjong and their rules. It includes countless detailed pages on history, scoring, rules and much more. You can get started here.

One of the interesting things about VR right now is the competition between the Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. The thinking behind my purchase of the Vive over the others was that it had an edge in terms of room-scale game play. There is also a mentality behind Steam and HTC to not buy out companies to make exclusives for the Vive. That’s something that the other two companies are doing, which can cause an already small market to be split even further. I also just moved into a new place that has a room with enough space to utilize the room-scale stuff, so why not?

Once I got my Vive, it was time for setup, which would’ve gone a lot smoother if I had known about a small problem with the sensors. The Vive has two Lighthouses that you set up on opposite corners of the room that face toward each other to track you in a full 360-degree view. I did a little bit of drilling, set up the Lighthouses and booted up the SteamVR tutorial to get started. The aforementioned problem became apparent when I faced one side of the room and my controllers lost tracking. I tried and tried to figure out the problem, but I decided to push on to see if I could play any games at all in this broken state.

I was a bit excited until those damn windows in the background caused some problems.

I tried some of the free experiences on Steam like The Lab, Rec Room and Google Earth VR, but the tracking problem and being sick really were downers on the whole thing. Later that night, I did some Googling and discovered what could be my problem: there are no blinds or curtains in my room. Because my house was still being worked on, the blinds weren’t put up yet, and the windows were causing serious issues with the tracking. I tacked a bedsheet over my windows, and sure enough, the tracking problem was solved!

Once I got this fixed, it almost seemed like my body followed suit, and I started having an absolute blast. All the podcasts and videos that I’ve watched of people talking about how transformative VR is were a bit hyperbolic, but there was definitely something special there. The room-scale technology just works so well that it feels like the natural evolution of what motion controls were years ago. One of my gripes is that the resolution of the headset still isn’t quite there, as a “screen-door effect” is certainly apparent. The other gripe is that the games aren’t where they need to be, either, with a flood of wave shooters and short “experiences” dominating the market.

With me coming to the Vive seven months after it was released, there has been some time for a few great games to come out that I’ve been keeping my eye on. Luckily, a Steam sale was going on, so I was able to buy a bunch of great stuff for cheap. The few that stood out to me were Climbey, Space Pirate Trainer and the previously mentioned Rec Room.

As someone with a fear of heights, Climbey certainly made my knees wobbly at times.

Climbey has been by far my favorite game so far, and it has caused me to accidentally (read: embarrassingly) break the light dome on the fan in my room. It’s a fairly simple climbing game with not much pizzazz in the graphical department, but where it shines is the awesome locomotion of climbing. You can grab on certain type of walls and ledges, and climbing is as easy as pulling yourself up hand over hand. Jumping feels intuitive as you leap from platform to platform and handhold to handhold. The multiplayer support is great as well; joining up with other people as they grunt and wheeze their way through these user-generated levels of climbing hell is loads of fun.

Space Pirate Trainer is a wave-based shooter where you’re stationed in one area and shooting robots that fly all around you. What Space Pirate Trainer does that separates it from all the others is the presentation and polish. It looks and feels like there has been some effort put in there, which can’t be said for a plethora of games on the VR market right now. It also plays like a dream as you bob and weave through bullets raining toward you in slow motion while firing back. Nothing has ever made me feel quite more badass than Space Pirate Trainer.

Finally, we come to Rec Room, a whimsical social experience where you team up with other VR enthusiasts and kinda just hang out in a locker room filled with little recreational toys. After screwing around with people, you can team up to go play some paintball, frisbee golf or my personal favorite — 3D Charades. Social games have existed for years, but because of the expensive buy-in and the unique experience of interacting with other real people in a virtual space, something really special happens. It’s something that I imagine that I’ll continue to visit, maybe on the weekends after having a couple of drinks or something like that.

Rec Room is dumb, silly fun at its finest.

As the weekend ended and the work week started back up, I began to realize what VR was going to be. It’s not this thing that I just put on my head and play for hours and hours. It’s not going to change the way that we play traditional games — at least, it won’t in its current state. What the Vive will do is give me an hour and some change every few days of a wholly unique play experience that I can’t get anywhere else in the gaming scene. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about VR, but after now spending a couple of weeks with it, I’m optimistic for the future as VR continues to grow and developers continue to learn how to make great games for the platform.

Nintendo finally unveiled its new hardware called the Nintendo Switch, a console/mobile hybrid device like many fans and critics were speculating. It sports a tablet-style screen with detachable controllers on both sides that can also dock into a station connected to a TV to play on the big screen. The idea is a novel one, but I’m not entirely sure if it’s quite enough to get Nintendo back in the game.

Nintendo has been struggling in the console space ever since the Wii U launched back in 2012. Caught in an awkward phase between console cycles and with a name that confused consumers, Nintendo never recovered from the get-go despite delivering a slew of wonderful games for the system. However, the 3DS has been doing much better than its console brethren as the supreme market leader in the mobile space. Still, it never quite lived up to the massive sales of the original DS because of the encroaching market of the smartphone scene.

Nintendo Switch

What does the gaming landscape look like today, and how does the Nintendo Switch make an impact? The two dominating consoles of PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One are bonkers in terms of numbers, outselling their predecessors’ rate in the life cycle. Both Sony and Microsoft are chasing the power dream with half-step console upgrades in the near feature as well — an unprecedented move in the console space. Mobile devices continue to reach more and more casual audiences on smartphones and tablets, and with Nintendo producing a few games for these devices, everything starts to get a little murky.

Looking at the Switch, it’s trying to satisfy two markets at once, sacrificing some key parts on both sides. Because of its mobile nature, there’s no possible way it will be up to par with the PS4 and Xbox One in terms of sheer hardware power. On the mobile side, the system as a whole looks to be too big and bulky to truly be conveniently portable. Then there’s the problem of battery life if this thing is going to be outputting games on the scale of Skyrim and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the trailer demonstrated.

If the power of the system isn’t as strong as the PS4 and Xbox One, then third-party developers aren’t going to want to develop for the platform unless the install base is high (e.g., the Wii). If Nintendo can’t get third parties on board, then they aren’t going to get a piece of the pie of the console competition because of a lack of games. It’s the same rippling effect that had a part in destroying the Wii U.

Who exactly is this thing for? People who like their Madden and their Call of Duty series aren’t going to care about this thing. Kids already have their tablets and phones as far as mobile gaming goes. This leaves just the hard-core Nintendo fans who have been slowly dwindling over the years, and these gamers couldn’t even save the Wii U. This then leaves the Switch acting as a secondary console — the one you buy when you already have another console or mobile device. Then again, because we’re in the middle of a console cycle, there are plenty of PS4s and Xbox Ones out there, so maybe people might be ready for a secondary console/mobile thing.

The Nintendo Switch will allow your hipster friends to have Mario parties on rooftops.

The one key advantage that the Switch does have now is that all of Nintendo’s development is focused on one platform. No longer will games be stranded to one device or another. Before, you never knew if that year was going to be a drought for your Wii U or 3DS as Nintendo tried to support whichever system needed it at the time. Now, you only have to buy one piece of hardware, and you get the full package. Every Mario, Zelda, Pokémon and Monster Hunter game is coming to this thing.

On the other hand, some third parties may be scared to leave behind the massive install base of over 58 million 3DSes out there. It’s possible that the 3DS may live on a couple of years into the life of the Switch, similar to how companies created games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 long after their successors launched. If this were to happen, it could possibly reduce the likelihood of customers abandoning their old devices for the shiny new Switch.

It’s just so dang hard to predict what’s going to happen because there’s still so much information that we don’t know about the Switch. What’s the launch lineup look like? Is the network of the Switch going to be just as terrible as the previous generation? Does this thing even have a touch screen? Will it give me cool friends who have rooftop parties like in the trailer? Well, we won’t have to wait too long with March 2017 just around the corner. Until then, I think the absurd number of games coming out this autumn will satisfy me.

Ratchet & Clank is a reimagining of the original game that was released for the PlayStation 2. It comes packed with a new graphical flourish, streamlining of levels, a weapon upgrade system and other little quality-of-life changes. The story this time around is a retelling of the events that happened in the original game but told by the still-unfunny Captain Qwark. The characters have their classic sense of charm, but most of the humor feels like cheap jokes that younger kids would have a laugh at. Between game play sequences are cinematics ripped straight from the movie with context often missing. There is little effort in developing the characters so that I care about what I’m doing in that world. I see a lot of comparisons to the Pixar movies, but Ratchet & Clank doesn’t even come close because of a distinct lack of subtlety.

The story and characters feel poorly fleshed out.

Ratchet quickly comes into contact with Clank at the beginning, and their adventure begins. You immediately come into contact with some guns and doodads to destroy countless numbers of baddies. The best thing that Ratchet & Clank pulls off is how well it’s paced. Sections of combat are interspersed between sections of platforming in a way that it never becomes stale because of the number of gadgets introduced. In one world, you could be flying around in a jetpack, while in another, you might grind on rails. While the depth of these situations is rather shallow, the pace at which new gimmicks are offered almost makes up for it.

On the other hand, the combat sections are painfully boring despite there being a good number of wacky guns to use. Enemies fall into three categories: weak melee guys, medium-strength guys with guns and big guys with heavy weapons. The tactic for beating all three is always the same — use the few weapons that you have upgraded and blast them away with no challenge. Guns are so overpowered that very rarely did I have to stop to think which specific gun that I should use for that situation.  While there are about a dozen guns to use, many of them overlap with each other. Why would I use the flamethrower when the Pixelizer does the same job much better? It’s not as if there aren’t large numbers of ammo boxes and vendors around to constantly restock your favorite guns. Furthermore, putting a lot of points into your mostly used guns means that you’ll have less viable weapons to battle the tougher enemies later in the game.

The weapon upgrade system is a good idea, though. The more you use a weapon, the more experience it gains. As it levels up, you can put in skill points that increases certain attributes for that weapon. It feels awesome to have my weapons slowly grow more and more powerful, but at the same time, the combat is so poorly designed that the upgrades just make it increasingly less challenging. I’m not saying that Ratchet & Clank has to be insanely difficult, but designers should instead implement interesting situations that call for different uses of guns.

They key to beating these guys is the key to beating pretty much every other enemy.

One of the most talked about aspects of Ratchet & Clank among critics has been the graphical fidelity, mostly for good reason. Ratchet & Clank does indeed look pretty nice. Where it lost me was the frame rate cap being 30 frames per second. Amidst the chaos of bullets and explosions and the flurries of nuts and bolts, the low frame rate muddles it all together. It’s a shame that more emphasis was on lighting and textures instead of providing a smoother experience at 60 frames per second, especially considering that the cartoonish art style allows for it.

Ratchet & Clank is interesting because it’s a mascot platformer/shooter from 2002 brought to the modern age of gaming with some tweaks while still maintaining that old-school feel. The problem is that old-school feel doesn’t quite hold up, despite some nice additions like the weapon upgrade system and better controls. While the pacing of new gimmicks is great, the numerous combat sections coupled with bad gun design create shallow, frictionless game play that consistently bored me. The rotten cherry on the top is the lack of development of the characters and story for which little is done to make you care about them. Maybe it was the fact that we haven’t had one of these types of games in a while that caused critics and the public to fall in love, or maybe I’m just a cynical asshole overly criticizing a children’s game. Either way, I think that this is something that the world and I will just have to disagree on.

Ratchet & Clank is available for PlayStation 4.

Doom is a fast-paced, first-person shooter that basically put the genre on the map when it was first released back in 1993. It’s full of demons from hell, big shooty guns and all the blood and gore that the 1990s could conceive. It came at a time before experience bars, weapon loadouts and linear level design turned the genre into the unoriginal slog that it is in the modern world. It’s also still a damn good romp, even today.

Doom is split into multiple chapters where you power your way through a series of stages that eventually top off with a massive boss fight. These levels are pumped full of enemies to dispose of using the six unique weapons at your will. You have your typical shotgun, minigun and rocket launcher that are each valuable in their own respective manners. The catch is that ammo is scarce, so it becomes about sparing ammo for when you really need it.

The pump-action shotgun is both reliable and deadly.

This scarcity in ammo is a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, I want to be able to use my super-badass weapons all of the time to blow up some baddies, but on the other hand, it creates strategy and a high skill ceiling for those who know how to balance their weapon set. For a majority of the time, you use the shotgun because of the abundance of shotgun shells lying around as well as the fact that it’s just a pretty reliable gun. As strong as it may be, the downtime in between shots is smartly designed in that it creates momentary instances of tension. You constantly have to bob and weave around the enemies to get enough shots in. While it may be more fun to mow demons down with the minigun, the focus on the shotgun is the key to making Doom feel empowering yet still incredibly tense.

If the weapons are the Yin, then the enemies are the Yang. Doom has a small but varied cast of enemies that each play their part in how you approach a situation. Pink, oinking Demons charge at you for melee attacks, while Imps hang back to fire slow moving projectiles. While the enemy types aren’t numerous, their difference in attack patterns allow for a variety of different situations. You may have a small room full of Demons charging at you or a wide room spattered with more difficult and beefy Barons of Hell. This mixing and matching of enemy types makes no two situations ever feel the same. The sounds these monsters make are also great at letting you know what type of enemy is around the corner while at the same time instilling a bit of tension.

What ties Doom all together is the brilliant level design. Levels are carefully crafted labyrinths where you have to search for keys and switches to progress. Some contain claustrophobic rooms with enemy ambushes around every corner, while others have sprawling open areas. Throughout each room are secrets to be found in hidden walls activated by switches that give you the upper hand in the form of additional weapons or health. What I love about the secrets is that they are almost always followed up with an enemy ambush. While you may have just picked up a handy-dandy rocket launcher, chances are that you’re going to have to fight your way out with it.

The wide-open boss areas are perfect for epic battles.

The level design also serves as a great way to encourage exploring. The nonlinear nature means that you have to backtrack to different rooms after finding certain keys. “Backtrack” is usually a bad word in video games, but Doom alleviates the pain due to how fast you move in the game. It also allows you to find secrets that you may have missed out on previously. Sometimes, the labyrinthine levels can be a bit grating to explore because the aged graphics make it hard to remember where you were, although most of the time, it works.

The holy trinity of the weapons, enemies and level design all come together to form this entirely well-knit package of bombastic kickassery. It never stops being satisfying blasting enemies with the shotgun while dodging in and out of deadly projectiles. Despite Doom being 23 years old at this point, it is more interesting and still plays far better than most shooters today. It’s safe to say that my nostalgia-filled love for Doom isn’t unfounded, while at the same time, it reaffirms my worries that the upcoming Doom reboot might fail to achieve similar success.

Doom was originally available for Windows PC.