MudMan

I played them all. They’re not the same.

I’d say that Evil Genius sequel is the closest we’ve had, honestly.

That’s the same difference between a Big Mac and a fancy restaurant burger, but they’re both burgers.

So was my grandma’s Christmas dinner menu.

See, it’s the intricacy that makes it feel outdated and aspirational to me. It carries that mid-20th century stink of aspirational shows of status based on domestic labor.

I don’t think about beef Wellington enough to have ever made this connection, but it’s not wrong.

Is beef Wellington perceived as a genuinely posh thing? It feels more old and crusty to me, right? Like 1960s aspirational middle class, rather than genuinely rich bougie stuff. A thing for the kind of people that thinks of sushi as “exotic”.

The Nintendo DS was three years away. The iPhone was six years away (yes, Nintendo did it first and people often don’t remember that).

My recollection of following the absolutely ridiculous hype cycle is that they were talking about the mouse being your hand inside the game and pretty much nothing else, but it was remarkable prescient in terms of how that would work without the mouse on the way.

The B&W games feel weirdly… mobile these days. They put a lot of work into that 3D hand interface and it turns out they just ended up stumbling upon a semi-competent touchscreen UX.

Steam has a 4X sale going on now and the latest Theme Hospital spiritual successor made two spinoffs.

They made a sequel to Evil Genius in 2021.

Whatever interests from the late 20th century you think only you had are almost certainly disappointingly mainstream now.

But hey, keep at it. I’m still holding out hope for EA pulling off a Dungeon Keeper sequel at some point even if it’s a PR stunt.