The year is 2009. Square Enix releases a digital sequel to the long-loved Final Fantasy 4, titled "The After Years". It concerns the story of Ceodore -- the son of FF4's protagonist, Cecil -- and his journey in saving the world from a mysterious moon that appears. The After Years pulls in all of the characters from the prior game, extends character development and story for a lot of characters, and introduces more; most of them simply the progeny of some main character from the prior game. Fan bait!

I had recently 100%ed Final Fantasy 4 Advance, back around 2008, so naturally I bought its sequel! However, it was not quite what I expected. While the new characters were welcome, a lot of the changes to gameplay negatively impacted my experience for the entire game, despite my initial interest in them. This article isn't a review, per se, but I will briefly discuss what I didn't like about the game, to add context.

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Welcome to ZLG's quest to beat twelve games in 2021! My backlog has exploded to over 100 games, so it's time to burn through it!

A Brief History of 12-in-12

/r/12in12 was started on Reddit in 2018 to help people get through the list of games they want to beat, i.e. a backlog. I discovered it shortly after it was created, and have participated independently ever since. It's a good initiative for people to motivate and encourage each other to play through and enjoy their games more.

In 2023, the subreddit was shut down in protest of Reddit, Inc. charging for bulk access to their API. The original community was effectively killed. In late 2025, it was reopened by a random person claiming moderator status. The quality of the new community remains yet to be seen as of early 2026.

Some people choose 12 games to beat and try to stick to it, while people like me just try to focus on beating games at all and, if you hit 12, awesome! If not, that's fine, too. It's about putting in time to play and enjoying what you paid for.

My 12-in-12

With that out of the way in my maiden post on the subject...

Here's the successful hit list for this year:

• Painkiller: Hell & Damnation [Steam]
• Super Hexagon [Steam]
• Koi-Koi Japan [Steam]
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD [WiiU]
• Unravel TWO [Switch]
• Minecraft [Switch]
• Mighty Gunvolt Burst [Switch]
• Final Fantasy 4: The After Years [Wii]
• Strikey Sisters [Switch]
• Golf Peaks [Switch]
• Hatsune Miku: Project Diva MegaMix [Switch]
• Metroid Dread [Switch]
• Risk of Rain 2 [Switch]
• Street Fighter [ARC]
• Street Fighter II [ARC]
• Hammerwatch [Switch]

For a whopping SIXTEEN games beaten in 2021!

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Nintendo recently launched a year-in-review tool on their site that will show you your play statistics in 2019. Some may see this as a cool little feature, but this is exactly what I saw happening when I came home with my Switch on day one and realized it showed my play time over the network.

This is similar to how Spotify has used some of their gathered data to create meme billboards to drum up interest.

At the bottom of the page are buttons you can use to get fun little images for your stats. So, I guess badges to feel proud of being a commercial data faucet. Curiously missing from the page are links to download the raw data used to come up with the numbers, options to NOT track play statistics, or options to delete the data they've presented. Even after disabling my adblocking and tracking protection, the download links for the images didn't work.

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Video games that teach without tuturials are superior and do more to engage and/or inspire the player. The first hour of a video game is often the most important; it's where the player learns how to interact with the machine, explore the rules and mechanics, and form an understanding of the game world. Games that effectively communicate this lead to a better-informed player that isn't slowed down or interrupted by verbose tutorials. The flow of the game remains smooth, and the player feels a sense of accomplishment or skill because they figured it out on their own, with the design of the game as their guide.

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I received Metroid: Samus Returns in the mail this week, which is a 3DS remake of the original Metroid II: Return of Samus for the GameBoy. Before I started playing Samus Returns, I wanted to take another romp through the original, so I hopped on OBS and recorded myself on a casual run. This morning, I watched Emptyeye's great single-segment 100% run of Metroid II, which inspired me to record another run. Before that, though, I wanted to see what I could do to make the game pop a little bit, so it looks and feels good to watch. Here's the end result:

Verdant Miasma - a palette for Metroid 2: Return of Samus, by zlg

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