The Lie-In

Good morning, videogames. It's Sunday morning and this is the Lie-In, which makes it the perfect time to offer you a cryptic crossword. If you haven't done the first Jankword yet, go do so now. Marsh has constructed not only a set of moderately devious clues, but a primer on how to play cryptic crosswords for the uninitiated. And if you're still not convinced to try solving it yourself, there are jokes around the margins. Tried it already? Then you may proceed below to some articles worth reading from across the rest of the web.

For Remap, Rowan Kaiser writes about the ways Star Wars Galactic Racer might not be a racing game, or perhaps not a good one, anyway.

Likewise Galactic Racer seems wholly uninterested in getting you to learn its tracks by any mechanism other than crashing every time you're surprised. There are no maps of the tracks shown, no best lines while racing, and while there are a few corners worth memorizing because they're difficult and demand careful navigation, more of the ones worth memorizing are because they're simply too difficult to visually parse whether something is a tunnel or a wall, or whether you're turning left or right at any given moment – easily Galactic Racer's biggest annoyance.

There's much I like about Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, but it's a messy, compromised show which rapidly unravels over the course of its single season. It turns out I'm not the only person who thinks about it a lot, even 20 years later. Alan Sepinwall spoke to comedy writers about their enduring fascination with the series about their profession.

30 Rock ran for seven seasons, won multiple Emmys, and even got Sorkin to make a self-deprecating cameo midway through its run. Studio 60 is mostly remembered as a punchline, if at all by the general audience. But it remains an intense object of fascination within the real world of comedy, where writers and performers can still quote lines from it to one another like a shibboleth. As a new Blu-ray box set is hitting stores, I talked to some of those writers about what they feel went wrong with Sorkin's vision, and why they still care two decades later.

Michael Brough could be called the game designer's game designer, in that his games - 868-HACK, Zaga-33, Glitch Tank, Corrypt, among many others - are lauded by certain people in-the-know but have never broken through to either mainstream or cult success. Brough wrote recently about needing to find financial security by pursuing something other than game making as a job. This is clear-headed and written without self-pity, and yet...

I'm not going to stop making games! Games are my art, I feel like myself when I make them. It brings peace. If I go a while without making a game something's wrong. Of course I'll keep making games. But there are other times I feel like myself too: when I'm alone in the forest, when I dance, when I brew potions, when the waves roll me over, when I heal with my hands. When my heart is open children and wild animals come to me. A thing doesn't have to be job to count. Something else can job for a while, somehow, I need to figure out what but it doesn't have to be this.

ROM hacking and other hobbyist coding communities are being overrun by AI-generated work. SMW Central, the most popular hub for Super Mario World hacks, has a zero-AI policy, which the vibe-coders think is unfair. One of the leaders of that community wrote about the policy and the sense of entitlement from those who object to it.

What SMW Central does have is a large community. And, like all communities, the individuals within hold opinions. It just so happens that, throughout the lifespan of SMW Central, it has cultivated a community that tends to reject GenAi in favor of the celebration of human-made work. In this regard, what pro-GenAi individuals see as "crucifixion" are instead strong anti-GenAi opinions from many people on the site.

Sports games are a big source of multiplayer in my house, which is why I've played so many hours of even mediocre fare like Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and why I immediately bought the new Switch Sports Resort this week. For The Guardian, Keza MacDonald reviewed Nintendo's latest invitation to throw a controller at your television .

Touring the resort on a jetski or in a plane is more peaceful, reminiscent of Wave Race and Pilotwings, two long-dormant Nintendo series whose DNA is clearly evident in the Wii Sports lineage. On the jetskis, you can follow pink dolphins leaping through the waves. As you pass over the island's stadiums, cafes and beaches in the plane you will see that they are busy with tiny people, watching a match or lazing on the sand. When you're skating or soaring around you realise just how big and lively it actually is.

Los Campesinos' record label Heart Swells is printing vinyl for other bands now, and their first release is 'I expect the same of u', the debut album from Irish band Some Images Of Paradise. Below you'll find their song 'wool gathering', which is seven minutes of baritone longing over intricate and increasingly desperate guitar work. Like it? Support them on Bandcamp.

Sleep well, videogames.