Link Roundup 4/29/22

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Cian Maher for IGN, on players who obsessively chase rare “shiny” variants of Pokemon.

Ted Litchfield for PC Gamer, on the disappointment of FFXIV‘s producer on player taunting.

Morgan Park of PC Gamer tells us Call of Duty has lost 50 million players in a year, a third of their base

Andrew Kiya of Siliconera noticed a tweet in which Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai revealed facts about the origins of the Kirby Dance (what dance? this dance).

Keith Stuart of The Guardian (wow, drebnar!) on why Sonic the Hedgehog is great.

Michael McWhertor for Polygon tells us that Yuji Naka was kicked off the Balan Wonderworld project six months before it finished, partly for bringing up quality issues. He mentioned possibly retiring from the games industry.

Steven Blackburn of Screen Rant informs us that some fans are working on a third season of the old Saturday Morning Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon show. That’s the “darker” one, with Princess Sally and Bunny Rabbot. The other one from the time, made for syndication, was sillier, and the podcast What A Cartoon did an episode on it with Ian Jones Quartey.

Jody Macgregor for PC Gamer on the D&D Gold Box games coming to Steam, and why they’re great.

And Jason Fitzsimmons of Ghostbusters News points us to a tweet about a fan project to hack the character of Winston Zeddemore into the Sega Genesis Ghostbusters game, where he had been originally excluded.