Games I Played in January 2026

Billion Road

[Delisted]

I picked this up for just a few bucks before it got delisted. And after finally seeing TheRunawayGuy's... attempted showcase of it, I was struck with two thoughts: 1) I want to play this (always good to have that one), and 2) It seems like a lot of people's opinion of this game has been influenced by bad luck. It's like showing someone a game of Mario Party but one of the players never rolls above a 5 - mostly an accurate picture, but noticeably more punishing than the average game.

I played the single player "Tournament" mode - where you have to make sure at the end of every "5 year" increment, you're not in last place. The way the game describes this mode is slightly misleading: if one of the two AI opponents are "knocked out" the AI coming in to replace them keeps all their assets, along with the boost they will always have. I think a proper battle royale mode could be neat, but the logistics of that scare me. Anyways this mode was a lot of fun as the stakes steadily rise and it becomes harder and harder to keep up with the AI opponents and their boosts. I actually ended up in second place rather than first as the final gets so many good items for that final stretch. Not opposed to trying it again, but 360 turns per player does take a long time, even when the turns are short.

Since then, I have ended up doing a 3-player quick play of my own. And... the TRG experience is maybe not as uncommon as I expected. The game has a follower mechanic where the player furthest away from the goal (a cash bonus for landing on a specific space) receives a penalty. There's a small variety in the negative followers but the ones that feel the most harmful, Debt Boy and Teamrex, seem to be dramatically more likely to appear in early years. There are absolutely ways to counteract negative followers or even use them to your benefit, but those mechanics can be hard to wrap your head around or even have access to.

Despite what seemed to be a negative experience for one of the people I played with, they have thrown it out as a suggestion during some games nights. If you go in understanding that luck can be cruel, I think you're in for a good time.

... Or maybe I just really want to get my hands on a copy of Fortune Street...

Pokemon Red

[Currently Unavailable for Purchase, I tried this time]

I've lately been clinging to the opinion that remakes should be more than updated textures, additional cutscenes that were never intended to be part of the story anyways, and quality-of-life changes that are of variable improvement. A game isn't inherently unplayable because it's only 10 years old. Now, the line between playable and not is actually blurrier than I like to pretend. If you ask a lot of Pokemon fans, the first games in the series are pretty unplayable, at least compared to the rest of the series. Even beyond mechanical differences, there are a lot of details in these games that legitimately don't work they way they are intended to, or have consequences that upset the balance the development team admittedly made a strong effort to cultivate. This is exaggerated of course, children have been completing these games for nearly 30 years, but in an effort to put my opinion to the test: I played the original games for the first time in at least 15 years.

Kanto is such a fun region to play in. It encourages exploration to an extent very few others in the series do. As early as Vermillion, you have the option of following Diglett Cave back to the early towns of the game. Constantly circling Saffron until you finally are able to buy a drink for the guards really builds up the city in a way that visiting Lumiose early in Kalos just doesn't deliver on. And there are moments where you can take two different routes to get to the next city, which is really cool. Exploration is often possible in mainline games, but Kanto is a region with it as a core feature.

Onto the Gen 1 games specifically, I had so much fun with the "broken" systems. Sure, some are purely detrimental like Focus Energy lowering your crit chance instead of raising it, but many of the design decisions allow for strategies you rarely get to use in other games. The first of three favorites was my Dugtrio learning Slash while in Silph Co. Critical hit chance is dependent on a pokemon's base speed, so Slash having an incredible eightfold chance on top of Dugtrio's high speed guaranteed each hit to be a critical (I've seen one comment suggesting it's actually a 96% chance, but most sources give higher number and I don't recall ever seeing it fail).

I chose my starter randomly and ended up with Venusaur. Beyond early game type-advantage there were some fun exploits with Leech Seed which it learns early on. First, it does damage after the opponent attacks, which meant damage reduction was more consistent. Second, it's damage increases alongside the badly-poisoned condition, and the Toxic TM is given to you from a gym leader. Venusaur still had attacking moves, but watching HP bars melt after each attack was wonderful. And there's even one more element to this part. Leech Seed heals the half the expected damage, not damage dealt. So if it's boosted by Toxic, even if Toxic damage finishes off the enemy before Leech Seed activates, it still gives a huge amount of healing before the battle ends or the next pokemon is sent out. Broken? Yes. Feel-good? Absolutely.

My last favorite "trick" is the least broken of the three, but is still very Gen 1. Snorlax starts with the move Amnesia, which raises the Special stat multiple stages. This alone made Snorlax a very effective Alakazam counter. But in this game, that stat determines both Special Attack and Special Defense. Snorlax can learn Blizzard, which has a much higher accuracy than it will have in later games. Now my wish was to have this be used against some late-game Dragon types and that unfortunately did not happen. But it still made for some funny moments against late-game ground types. An additional bonus with Snorlax was that Rest normally lasts for 2 turns, but the Poke Flute can be used during battle to effectively reduce it to 1, which meant faster turnaround on some snowstorms.

My other 3 final team members (Gyarados, Jolteon, and Arcanine) didn't have exploits connected to them but this was still a very fun team to use. The closest member to a weak-link was Arcanine due to limited Fire moves and my plethora of other strong attackers, but once Fire Blast was obtained they more than carried their weight during some late-game battles. Still more impressive than level 50 Charizards using Rage, a 20 power move. Did this playthrough make me a Gen 1 truther? No, I don't think so, but it was absolutely a much more entertaining journey than I expected it to be, and I'm looking forward to playing either Gold or Silver (probably the latter) before long.