Chocodile ➡️ Furlingame DD ➡️ Furlandia DD

Happy Woman Day or something! I think about this image all the time.

Rimworld: Do not play this game. If you've already started playing it: I'm sorry. You will not be able to put it down. It will ruin your life. You will launch the game and think "I'll play for 30 mins after work to relax" and then somehow it's 2:30 AM.

Psychonauts: Another one that's almost a free space. If you played this game you probably love it. The idea of levels based off characters' minds is such a fantastic hook with infinite potential and makes for some of the coolest platformer levels ever seen. So glad it finally got that sequel. :)

Zelda MM: Speaking of better and weirder sequels! This game is so moody & surreal & melancholy and I love it. Funnily enough, I didn't buy it at release because the preview in Nintendo Power made me think it would be too scary (I was 10). I think it would have been at 10, but glad I played it later.

Pikmin 2: Ahh Nintendo's weird fun eccentric era! One of those sequels that uses an existing engine/art assets to make something way better, weirder, & more polished. I wish games would do that more. I would buy 5 more games that were just Pikmin 2 exactly with more levels. I could never get enough.

DAO: Another "yes of course the pretentious character-focused chick likes this one" game. I honestly bounced off DA at first, but when I came back with Hyden as a blood mage it was like ohhh, ok, this is how you're supposed to play this. I'm hooked. One of the best role-playing games of all time.

BL2: Ok sure, some of the humor aged like milk, but not all of it! And it's still fun as hell with a great gameplay loop. Borderlands copies Diablo's homework in a good way. Loved to play this with my sister, loved to play it again with my wife. Saw me thru a difficult transitory period in life.

FF7: The atmosphere is peak & anyone who has a problem with the prerendered bgs used to achieve it is an uncultured rube. This game copies notes from 6's homework but that's fine, it puts its own spin on 'em. Also this game would get boycotted for "woke" if it was released now. We've fallen so far.

The Curse of Monkey Island: Classic for a reason with highly quotable late-90s nerd humor. The older Monkey Island games were good too but the jump from pixel art to this is mindblowingly impressive. Another one that was a big influence on my sister & I's writing.

ToTA: This & ToS were peak Tales, IMO, but Abyss eliminates some of Symphonia's jank and has a tighter story while still throwing a world-upending curveball at the player halfway through. The fantasy outfit design is still a huge influence on me & replaying it with my wife was an awesome experience.

AND PART TWO BECAUSE I COULDN'T PICK JUST 9.

RDR2: One of the most cinematic games of all time--does feel like playing a movie (in a good way). The characters are incredibly strong and the world is very lush and well-realized... if you can get past the janky controls. Another that made me cry.

Banjo Kazooie: It and Tooie are some of the best platformers of all time. The massive worlds & quirky art style blend perfectly with the fantastic score by Grant Kirkhope. It's just FUN. Every game should use the speech sound effects like this game instead of voice acting. EVERY ONE. Even that one.

Mother 3: Another that defined an era of my life! My sister @lsdolphin.bsky.social & I were super into this, even cosplayed at Otakon till all the Mother fans became Homestucks & we started feeling out of place hah. Huge influence on my writing & pixel art sensibilities. Guaranteed to make you cry.

FF6 (aka FF3): One of the best RPGs of all time. Incredible scale, legendary musical score, tiny pixel drama that makes you cry. Beautiful Yoshitaka Amano artwork. Another super influential game that everyone will take insp from but few will ever live up to. Yes, I liked it better than 7.

Fallout NV: It ends up on every pseudo-intellectual nerd's "best games" list because it really is that good. Every dev wants to make "NV but better" & they always fail. Laudable for its ambition! Fallout OCs and RP defined several yrs of my life in the mid 2010s & helped bring my wife & I together.

FFTA: Always played this while waiting ~1 hr for the bus in middle school. Super fun and I LOVED the art style so much. Best Final Fantasy experience I had since 6 & 7. The anti-escapism message was something I badly needed to hear, too. Ironic that they made MMOs with the Ivalice setting later!

Pokemon Silver: Clocked hundreds of hours leveling my Pokemon up to lv 100 without cheats. Was so mad that the next game made me leave them behind! Grr. The atmosphere of this game was amazing & really made Pokemon feel like a place/world with a distinct culture. Sad they never really revisited it.

Starcraft & Diablo II: Classic Blizzard at its best, infinitely replayable. Fond memories of being a wee child watching marines' heads explode in gore while my dad @skazone.bsky.social played. Still replay these occasionally!

I caught up on answering comments so here's my 9 BEST VIDEO GAMES list! Will explain my reasons in the comments. >:)

Haha that is the best way to enjoy him!

Thank you, that's exactly what I was going for~

Something that made me feel old: Apparently the rabbit in that famous photo, Oolong, died in 2003. I don't like that time is passing, it's kind of uncomfortable!

Oh please, those hose were made for legs like his! ...Granted, he doesn't exactly have the same calf muscles he had in his youth...

I've been keeping this image in my back pocket, a break glass in case of emergencies kinda thing (the emergency being "I am too busy to draw but I still wanna make people look at my character)

Noooo he was gonna eat that! And then probably eat the plastic cup it came in, too (gotta sand down those chompers)

He needs someone to bring it around to the front of him. If he tries to move it'll spill all over his fur and piss him off.

At first I was gonna draw his normal form here but I think that image would only have gotten a very specific type of attention, haha.

You may have seen him around before! ;)

I feel like I didn't quite capture the world-weary wizened look of the eye on the original photo! But I think he came through nice and aged here anyway, haha.