My Shelf

The only purely collector purchase this month is this Japanese import of the new One Piece game, my favorite thing of all time. It is a game-key card, but I do not care: I bought it because I want it as decoration on my shelf. I will have the game digitally on several platforms anyway.

People say it turned out really well, which I probably will not get to see for myself until next year, with so many games piling up. I have never been much of a racing game player, but if there is one I got hooked on, it was the podracing game on the Game Boy.

I have been surprised by how well this adaptation of the mobile game has been received. Will the message that people still want turn-based combat get through, or will it just lead to more adaptations like this one?

When the music trailer announcing this game came out, the concept hooked me enough to buy it, even though almost everything said about the game since then has been pretty negative. Luckily I enjoy the bizarre, so I will probably have more fun with it than it deserves.

I no longer play Valorant or CS:GO. I decided to leave my daily competitive shooter sessions behind and spend that time on single-player games instead. After a lifetime spent playing those kinds of games, it still feels strange. At least I have figures like this Killjoy one to remind me of that chapter.

This print of me was a gift from my friend DiegoOnFire back in my esports days. It feels all the more impressive when I think about how it comes from before generative AI, xD. Ever since he gave it to me, it has always had a place in my geeky room.

The Game Boy Color is still one of the devices I have spent the most time with. I have always been a PC gamer first and foremost, but there was a stretch of my childhood when Pokémon was all I cared about.

I remember exactly how much I pestered everyone to make sure my next birthday present would be a Game Boy Color with Pokémon Blue. I played plenty of Zelda and Wario too, but not even a tenth as much as Pokémon Blue, Yellow and Crystal combined.

I played at all hours, wherever I happened to be. Eventually I swapped the disposable batteries for a battery pack, and I even had a magnifying glass with a light so I could keep playing at night.

This month's pick is Blood, Sweat, and Pixels. I have already featured another Jason Schreier book on My Shelf, and I know I will end up bringing in another one. I hope he keeps writing, because I am always interested in what he has to say about the industry.

To me, he is probably the best-known and most respected video game journalist ever. The criticism he has faced lately for talking about Kojima and Sony has not changed how I feel about his work.

Marvel's Wolverine is probably the most controversial game in Sony's recent history. Even so, it is selling rather well at launch. In the end, having people speak badly about you does far more for you than most people tend to think; I say that from experience.

Personally, I had been looking forward to it because I am a big fan of both Insomniac and Marvel. I have only played for a few hours, so I cannot properly judge the game yet, but my first impressions are good.

What I do find laughable are the viral reels built around people staging absurd, completely forced nonsense with the game. No gamer actually plays the way those edits suggest. To me, they are a waste of time, and anyone who lets them shape their opinion is either ignorant about how games are really played or has a worrying lack of judgement of their own.

I have not even started The Blood of Dawnwalker yet, but it looks very promising based on all the reviews I have watched or read, especially those from people with real expertise in its genre.

My goal is to finish it before GTA VI arrives. Wish me luck, because I am going to need it xD.

Capcom is on fire. Among the major companies, it is unquestionably the one in the best overall form right now.

That does not change the fact that, based on what I have played of Onimusha: Way of the Sword, my impressions are quite far removed from the glowing reviews that go as far as ranking it among the best games of the year.

I am enjoying it, but it has not blown me away at any point. I can also see the very same seams people criticise in Wolverine, yet nobody seems to care about them here: yellow paint, invisible walls, and other similar conventions.

Clearly, hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave has only just arrived, and there is no way in hell I will manage to play it before GTA VI. If I somehow pull it off, it will only be because I have put in some truly ridiculous gaming sessions with everything else first.

I will be happy if it is better than the previous Fire Emblem and comes even remotely close to the excellent Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

The latest hardware addition to my collection is the Steam Machine 2TB with Controller. I have only tested it for a few hours so far, so I am still in that initial stage of finding out what it can really do.

The most demanding game I have tried is The Witcher 3, a game that struggled quite a bit when I tested it on the Steam Deck but that, at least in these early tests, seems to run perfectly here.

In any case, my plan for this device is not to turn it into a machine for chasing graphics or pushing every new release. I mainly want it for smaller, relaxed games from the couch. Even so, I will try something newer and more graphically demanding, if only out of curiosity.

I still do not think it is a great value-for-money option. At the same time, though, it is one of those devices that feels essential if you are deeply obsessed with the medium. And I have obviously fallen for it completely.

Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad joins the shelf this month as a new addition to my personal collection of physical games.

I have not tried it yet. I am still busy with other games, including Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, and I would rather wait until I have room to give it the time it deserves than start it just to add another unfinished playthrough.

For now, then, this is one of those entries that represents both the collection and the inevitable backlog: the physical game is already at home, and its time will come a little later.

With One Piece Heroines, I wanted to compare both versions in a very specific order: first I waited to watch the anime special, and then I read the corresponding chapter of the novel.

I was surprised by how many changes the anime makes to the original material. And although people often assume that the written work should be the more complete or interesting version, in this case I prefer the anime.

The adaptation has much more of the One Piece spirit: more friendship, more fantasy, and, in general, more of that special energy I associate with the series. That does not mean the novel was not worthwhile; I enjoyed both versions, and their differences made watching and reading them back-to-back especially interesting.

Vi joins my figure collection and now stands alongside my Jinx figure in the entrance to my home. Both are official pieces from the Riot store, and together they make for a welcome that represents my tastes rather well.

This addition is also the perfect excuse to say again that, for me, Arcane currently represents the absolute peak of animation on a technical level.

And it is not merely a visual showcase. It has a great story and magnificent characters, which are what make all that technical excellence truly matter. Vi and Jinx are obviously a huge part of that, so it made perfect sense for them to end up together outside the screen too.

With GTA VI just around the corner, probably the most anticipated video game launch in history, I realize I have always been more of a tourist than a resident in this series. I have played fewer than half of its entries: the first one I tried was GTA III, but the first one I truly spent time with was Vice City.

Even so, my strongest memory is tied to San Andreas. I went to buy it on launch day with a classmate, and we ended up doing the classic move of stopping someone on the street so they could buy it for us, because the clerk would not sell it to us due to our age. After that came endless afternoons of playing and repeated days meeting at my friend’s house.

GTA IV caught me at a different stage and I ignored it completely. With GTA V, I did get that day-one ritual again, this time legally old enough, and I played it for days at the company office, on a PlayStation 3, with lots of people passing the controller around. Expansions, handheld versions, ports, and everything around the edges have always passed me by.

GTA is not in my personal top, but that does not make it any less important: Tetris and Minecraft are giants too, and I would not touch either of them with a ten-foot pole. I am not asking GTA VI for a life-changing revelation; if it is a game with absurdly high production values, that will already satisfy me.

And yes, I have it pre-ordered in a fake physical edition, code in a box, because I like having the case on the shelf. I would much rather it came with all its discs inside, of course, but for me that is a preference, not a requirement. The photo shows GTA V on PS4 because it was the first one I found; I do not keep that many GTA games around, since several of them were played at friends’ houses or digitally on PC.

I have a PlayStation on the shelf, but it is not mine in the classic sentimental sense: I never owned one back in the day. Still, I played it a lot. PlayStation was a console from other people’s houses, from afternoons in friends’ living rooms, and from long stretches when I managed to convince someone to lend me theirs.

I also inevitably connect it with piracy, although for me that story started earlier and was mostly a PC thing: before PlayStation exploded, I was already downloading and playing all kinds of games on my platform of choice.

What the console did have was a different ritual: whenever someone lent it to me, it came with several towers of pirated CDs, a kind of impossible-to-organize all-you-can-play buffet. I played a huge variety of games, and I absolutely destroyed some of them in terms of hours, especially the ISS Pro Evolution Soccer games, with the second one above all.

But if I have to choose the real before and after, I am not going to be original at all: Final Fantasy VII. That game marked me in a way that is still there today, and it will always be, without question, one of the best video games in history for me.

The photo shows the first Zelda games I ever owned. They were not the first ones I tried, but they were the first ones I completed from beginning to end with no help at all and without looking anything up anywhere.

At twelve years old, they were not easy for me, and that is exactly why they stayed with me: they were the games that turned me into an admirer of the series.

People often talk about system sellers, and for me Zelda is exactly that. As long as this series exists, Nintendo will always have a very effective way of making me buy its next machine.

Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons are nowhere near the best Zelda games. But they are mine. And because of pure affection, because of that exact moment when a series goes from something you like to something that stays with you, they are the ones with the most emotional value for me.

I have always leaned more toward Marvel, although I would not really call myself a fan of comics in general from either of the big two. What I do watch almost by default is everything connected to their cinematic universes.

When James Gunn, one of my favorite directors, arrived at DC, I decided to make an extra effort and look a little beyond the screen. One of the first great surprises was this comic: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which has already become one of my favorites in the genre.

And the movie? I do not share the widespread level of hate, but it was still a disappointment for me. Milly Alcock is magnificent; I already liked her a lot as an actress, I had seen all of her short filmography, and she always shines.

The problem is elsewhere. The movie is inspired by the comic’s story, but leaves out too many subplots, locations, and special moments, and the result is several orders of magnitude weaker than the original work. It also adds a new character who brings nothing to the table, and its villain is not up to the task, probably the worst part of the adaptation.

In this case, the comic absolutely crushes the movie. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it.

My first console of many. Even though over the years I have always leaned more toward the PC Master Race, the NES was the first console I had at home as a kid, and I have huge respect for what it represents in video game history.

It also carries pure nostalgia for me: some of my first proper gaming sessions are tied to it. I mostly associate it with Super Mario Bros. 3, a game I played for countless hours without ever finishing it.

Since you could not save the game and my mother never let me leave the console turned on, every attempt meant starting again from the beginning and trying to get further than the previous time, faster and faster.

On my shelf I keep it with two controllers and three games: Super Mario Bros. 3, Popeye —terrible— and Ice Climber, which I also played a lot in co-op with my sister.

I own quite a few art books, but this one is special because Expedition 33 went straight to the very top of my gaming life.

The first trailer already caught my attention; by the second look, I was sure there was soul in it, something that feels increasingly rare in this industry. And when I finally played it… at last, something that made me feel.

As an art book, I especially like that it is not just a collection of beautiful images: it includes a lot of development material, with contributions from many different members of the team, and offers a real glimpse into the creative process behind one of those games that will define an era.

And yes, I am fully on board with calling it the best game of the decade. Maybe even that is underselling it.

There are probably not that many books about gaming, regardless of the angle, so I wanted to highlight this one more for what it represents than for its specific story.

Play Nice offers a look at the transformation of a purist Blizzard, a company where game creators were in charge, challenged each other, and kept trying to hook players again and again.

But it also shows how the ambition of the industry, corporate growth, and money slowly transformed that soul into what we have today, where absolutely nothing remains of those beginnings.

I have never considered myself a Blizzard fan, even though I have played many of their games; if I had to choose just one, I would not hesitate: StarCraft. I wish there were many more books about video game culture and the industry behind it.

I have been subscribed to the Spanish magazine GTM for years for several reasons. The first is to support a project where the editorial line is sustained by subscribers, not by advertising or by the industry itself.

The second is that, as a physical object, its materials and design quality are far above average. I also like that it does not focus only on current news and game criticism.

Its pages include opinion pieces, video game history, interviews with studios, and conversations with relevant figures, which makes it feel closer to a cultural publication than a simple magazine about new releases.

And even then, when it comes to reviews and criticism, I often do not agree with their perspective at all. Even so, I would recommend it to any lover of the video game industry.