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Werster World’s Worst Speedrunner
For legal purposes all things here are allegations and are under Fair Use. So Werster has caused problems in the Pokemon Community. Also water is wet and the sky is blue some things don’t change. Now I am not saying he is a bad speedrunner his gameplay and skill are pretty good, I am saying he is a bad person though, and shows no sign of taking responscibility or changing his ways. Werster was originally part of the Sonic the Hedgehog community he has also done speedruns of most of the Warioware and Warioland games and a few random games here and there so he is an established runner. For the record that is only the Speedrun.com history, but according to Pulse Effects this history goes back to before a ligitamate site and rules were established.
Werster seems to have problems with everyone and while there isn’t really an account of everything he did in the Sonic community, if anything, he doesn’t seem banned from it though it has been 4 years since his last Sonic speedrun was submitted. There are accounts of everything he did to damage the Pokemon Community though and probably contributed to the poor reputation of toxicity even though it is actually a good and friendly community. The most egregious is his behavior overall towards everyone in the speedrunning and Pokemon community in general. His history dates back to 2013 before speedrunning was even a thing at the time he tried to ban 90% of runners and prevent times run on emulator which is common practice now and even then.
For the record the original Red and Blue cartirges were already collectors items so over a hundred dollars roughly even more now. Further the ability to record gameplay on the aging software would cost hundreds. You can do all that or use an emulator and any screen recording feature for free. Now, Werster did have an advantage as he likely had original carts and a gameboy advance or color on hand, but that just isn’t viable for some. This is where his worst moments to others came he was adamantly against Emulator runs and sadly due to his entire personality refused and banned multiple runs. The true reason for this is likely a World Record run by the then newcomer Evarion hitting a 1:50 in red despite being legit and an excellent run Werster rejected it leaving the first record by one of Pokemon’s best runner lost and kept Werster at the top of the leaderboard since he had console and was a moderator. To add salt to a wound Werster submitted a cheated run on emulator under a different name, Sarah Hagan, to prove a point only he was making and a minor one at that. How did everyone figure out it was him? He recently admitted it and several pointed it out that “Sarah Hagan” used strategies that weren’t common and only an established runner would use despite being completely new.
After that a pattern began anytime someone beat Werster at something there would be some sort of incident. After another runner did a impressive run of Pokemon Yellow, one that took years of practice and beat the record. Werster decided to run the game, but something was odd the run and commentary from Werster seemed to take place at different times meaning he seemed to know what would happen before it did. Meaning this run wasn’t live and thus no way to tell if it was even legit only difference he beat the other runners time by three minutes, but was mysteriously never posted to Speedrun.com. Similarly, Werster also insulted both the Pokemon Challenges and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (PMD) Speedrunners the latter of which he is a former moderator before being banned by the current head mod.
First the PMD Speedrun community has different rules and most of them are community driven. One rule that is upheld is you can close a DS and pause the timers for legitamate reasons. Despite him never interacting with the community in any capacity decided to ban the head mod, call them an idiot, reject times that followed rules that were voted on by the community, then said that Pokemon Mystery Dungeon wasn’t an actual game so didn’t matter. The head mod, Halqery, messaged Speedrun.com and had him banned.
Next the Pokemon Challenges community rather went once again ignored by Werster. Pokemon Challenges tend to focus on battle facilities and tactics with more advanced ai. Werster decided to not only insult LGRX a fairly small long form battler, but aimed to use speedrun techniques to cheat in the Battle Facility. Unfortunately, RNG Manipulation and save scuming is frowned upon in this community. While RNG Manip is good in speedruns to save time if you try manipulating the game it goes against the idea of a challenge thus was banned alongside save scum. His save scum was caught by Magpie someone who knows more about the Battle Facility and its strategies than anyone. who pointed out at the pace he was going would be impossible to have win rates that high and despite giving benefit of the doubt found it didn’t match his in game time. Even if offline play was pointed out most who do that post the full vod which never was posted likely due to save scuming to inflate wins.
Sources:
Speedrun.com “Werster” Speedrun.com, https://www.speedrun.com/users/werster?view=fullgame
“The Werster Situation is More Ridiculous Than You Think.” YouTube, uploaded by Pulse Effects, 1 August 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7mLRnqNEa8&t=679s.
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Pokemon Reborn Trilogy
Recently I was watching Ayrei for fan game recommendations and he did a full video on Pokemon Rejuvination. I did agree with some points, but I disagree that it is the best Fan Game. I’d think that title is more deserving elsewhere for me Arcana Force, Solar Eclipse, or Miragea’s Traveller are more deserving I’d pick Ayrei’s own Fan Game, Vanguard over any of the Reborn Trilogy.
Now, why don’t I like the Reborn trilogy. This includs three games Reborn, Rejuvination, and Desolation. The games are actually good, but everything works against the player to me. Storytelling and writing is some of the best I have ever seen in any fan game. The charcters are amazing and I would say that is one of the better reasons to pick these games up. Music is great too and I have no complaints on presentation.
That does not mean these games are flawless while they can be fun I personally don’t like the new mechanics they add. Story and writing are good to an extent except for the begining of Desolation which just reuses the premise from Rejuvination. Being on a cruise ship then the evil team causes the ship to crash or be destroyed and the player is one of few or the only survivor. Next the Terrain mechanic is one of the most annoying things ever added to a game. For every area you traverse a different Terrain will add buffs or debuffs on paper this sounds amazing in practice it is awful. For example being in the volcano in Desolation causes super heated air and a Sunny weather. Both of these effects are identicle powers up fire type moves and lowering water type moves a significant amount so you are dealing with Sunny weather on top of more of a down grade to your power and to make things worse any kind of fire type move will ignite the battlefield and causes eveything not a fire type to take damage every turn so you have to either use a fire type against other fire types or rock and ground types with high hp. Shortly after that part you would think the second gym would be a cakewalk the leader uses flying types and since there are not really any good electric types up to that point, rock is your best bet then you learn the terrain here lowers power and acceracy of rock type moves second it also adds a tailwind to the opponent which means they move first I had spent some time grinding to prepare and despite being 10 levels over I still lost because of this.
I feel like I’d give these games more credit if terrain was optional. The games already let you customize pretty much everything why not Terrain? I know I’m not the ony one who hates that mechanic every time some of the discriptions in other Fan Games mention being inspired by the trilogy someone in the comments basically begs them not to add terrain and while I agree these people need to yell in a different void I don’t disagree with their points. As I said there are good points, some of the best story and writing in any game finds their home here, but that just makes the flaws stand out even more.
Score 7/10 It is still an impressive game and there is a lot to love about them, but there are things that need work
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Pokemon Miragea’s Traveler Fan Game
I know I don’t usually review things till they are complete and this game isn’t, but there are exceptions to those rules in the fact that I made the rules I can break them. Further, this game is actually good and surprisingly better than it was a few months ago. I first played this game a little over a year ago and while I found the environments and Pokemon selection amazing it did have a problem with difficulty. Pokemon and trainers often had items that the player just didn’t have access to yet or trainers often switching fortunately this has been changed with the addition of difficulty modes.
The games strongest point is its characters often fan games release with tons of characters that really don’t stand out and some feel the same or copied from another character in that same game. That isn’t the case here each major character has been written with care so far. Although this game has tons of characters they have different goals, personalities, and actually go through their own arcs of development rather than being bland.
Other good things include how you traverse each area. The Union acts as a hub and rather than have you travel through routes to get to new towns you go down a path and a selection of areas comes up. The first time through you need to walk to each town and unlock fast travel to that area. The overworld is absolutely beautiful and the addition of overworld Pokemon and some story content available here makes these places seem more alive.
Next progression and mission structure. Unlike most games no quest here feels like filler there are a few early on, but those are more to help get rare items and levels for the next boss. Characters you help in the past often reappear and assist you. Rather than the get eight gym badges and fight the Champion this game sets out to tell a story set in the Pokemon world which I love.
Lastly gameplay this game utilizes a lot of more modern mechanics in pokemon affection can lead to Pokemon surviving on 1 hp, boosted exp, and higher critical hit chances as well as exp all. Even if you don’t like any of that you can turn them off. The game excludes as much grinding as possible by giving access to a cave full of high exp Pokemon early on and the Pokemon in there scale with areas unlocked so long as they are visited at least once.
What I also enjoy about this game are its well implemented fake mon. They don’t overstay their welcome and there are enough familiar Pokemon that I don’t mind using them too much further there are tweaks to existing Pokemon so you can still use your favorites and try these new ones.
After all of that you would think there must be an entire group of people behind this game. Not really the game is mostly by one person who clearly put a lot of love and care in this game. Yes they do have a credits page for people who helped out and do encourage messaging if anyone was missed, but for the most part they made the game on their own.
Score: 8/10 (An actually positive review someone will think the apocalypse is on us)
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Spyro 4 The Realm Beyond Trailer Opinion
I’m still going through the recent Nintendo Direct and writing my thoughts on that. So while watching that and realizing that there would be little news that would excite me aside from maybe the Zelda Ocarina of Time Remaster. I was looking at other announcements and that is how this happened.
Now, Spyro 4 is a game that has been anticipated since Crash 4 It’s About Time. Much like Crash it is likely they will acknowledge the games that came after the trilogy through easter eggs and come after the first three games. This is because after leaving the original developers Spyro got confusing. There was A Hero’s Tale, Enter the Dragonfly, Orange, Season of Flame, Season of Ice, Ryhnoc Rampage, the Legend Trilogy, and Skylanders.
The only thing I am afraid of is repeating mistakes from Crash 4. Now don’t get me wrong Crash 4 has some of the best platforming, most rewarding gameplay, and is overall amazing. Unless you go for 100%. I loved the hidden gem addition and the wumpa fruit gems, but found the inverted levels and death gems annoying and needless. I didn’t mind time trials since they have been there since the original Crash 3 Warped, but the whole game is just padding. There is so much needless padding you could use it to cushion a room.
Toys for Bob is not a bad company even their more mediocre titles have some fun and charm to them. I have confidence they learned their lesson from Crash and will pour everything into Spyro and who knows maybe Vicarious Visons (the team behind the amazing N Sane Trilogy Remaster and some new levels) can help after all we don’t know what they have been up to since Microsoft bought out Activision.
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Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Review
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is a game with no stakes, no difficult gameplay, and no challenge. I know the Yoshi and Kirby games are not exactly hard, but there is a difference between not hard and too easy. First, there is no repercussions for taking tons of damage Yoshi cries in pain, but that’s it. Yoshi’s Story had you lose lives and the Yoshi’s Island series had you lose star points that help your timer and both Crafted and Wooly Worlds have a health system. Here I actually stood in a swarm of bees and nothing happened.
Now, Yoshi games are Explorative Platformers you explore entire levels grabbing all collectibles available to you. The game has two collectibles: Stars and Smiley Flowers. Stars are collected when you make discoveries about the creatures and at first this is a sort of interesting concept, but the levels are short and several discoveries require you to make other discoveries about other creatures which sounds nice until you realize the creatures rarely interact and what is there is minor. Smiley Flowers are the main collectible there are 3-5 in each level they aren’t so much hidden as you simply need to figure out how to get them. While not that changed from before without stakes it can be rather tedious to do anything.
Also the whole game seems to take place in a book more than being a level select. You are seemingly looking for Bowser Jr. and Kamek and helping a book discover creatures. The worlds not at stake, yoshi’s island will be in one piece regardless, and there is no reason to do anything other than the game wants you to care and I just didn’t. Why am I making discoveries on creatures when this knowledge means nothing? Why should I save Bowser Jr if Kamek seems to be taking care of it? Why do I need to replay the same level over and over if there are no changes except minor ones?
I understand wanting to expand Yoshi’s World of games more Mario has his own platformers and RPGs that have built the world around him, the Pokemon games all have a Pokedex to tell you about the creatures, and the legend of Zelda has companions and characters such as the Figures and Navi that tell you information about the world. I understand wanting the same for Yoshi, but there needs to be a fun game around it.
Score: 2/10
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Mixtape: A Conversation No One Wanted
Mixtape is a “game” published by Annapurna Interactive. Game is to generous a term prolonged quick time event? Movie? Piece of software that we are better off without? Now I will be upfront I have not played Mixtape nor do I plan to. So how did this game get released and published? Annapurna Interactive is a game studio that honestly, I thought went debunked a year ago when all of its developers and workers walked out in protest (explains this games lack of gameplay). The studio is run by Megan Ellison, the daughter of Larry Ellison (quite possibly one of the richest people on the planet). Kind of taking away the struggling Indie studio, but remember Annapurna published the game Beethoven and Dinosaur developed it. Is it possible that Annapurna simply bought the rights? This isn’t uncommon after all Tiny Build, Krafton, and Tencent do the same to promising games, but that doesn’t seem the case either. One this game has 28 tracks that are all licensed music and I mean some of these songs were paid for an amount that would make the average indie developer cry. If Beethoven and Dinosaur were truly indie they never would even consider these tracks. Second the games writing seems like what someone thinks people act and fight about without actually understanding it. Finally, take away gameplay which barely exists, music written by someone else, and graphics and writing that I believe were created by AI (even if they weren’t is so poor it may as well have been) and what is this game: a nothing burger. No creativity in gameplay or art. though I will now make a short list on how to get a 10/10 to gaming websites or media.
- All the characters are either boring or a minority and that is their entire personallity.
- Short uninteresting bland story and characters can’t review a deep story if it barely exists.
- No Gameplay can’t review what isn’t there and reviewers can’t fail a tutorial or read gameplay prompts if they don’t exist.
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Krafton, Subnautica, Legal Threats, And Chat GPT
Full disclaimer I am not a lawyer nor have I ever had any past in legal stuff, but to be fair could probably do better than Chat GPT. So that is a title, one situation that has burned trust, money, and if AI’s reputation wasn’t already on fire it has now been thrown to the core of the earth burning even worse than before.
So I would understand if this situation was hard to follow and while I will be providing a gist of the situation Bellara News and Mujin have put together more comprehensive videos on the subject and I would recommend watching them before trying to decipher what this is. This starts with the release of Subnautica a marine exploration game that managed to break 1 million in sales really good for an indie game.
Now, this is where Krafton came in but who are they? Where did this company come from? Krafton is a South Korean publisher that often buys smaller development studios and Indie game studios. They are known for publishing PUBG and INZOI. Krafton saw the potential in Subnautica and the potential sequel and thus posed a deal: buying 100% of the company that made the game and if certain milestones were hit during Subnautica 2’s development they get a substantial amount of money. So an estimated $750,000 was paid to acquire the studio, but Krafton didn’t want to pay the additional $250,000 that was part of the deal if Subnuatica 2 was ready for early access in 2025.
The CEO tried delaying the game as much as possible, firing three of the games leads, breaking many clauses in their agreement, and worse taking advice from Chat GPT even over his own legal team and after it said that getting out of paying was difficult and possibly illegal. Krafton’s CEO asked the Chat bot for ways to avoid paying including attempting to destroy the devs reputations, a failed take over of the company, and delaying to 2026. All of this led to a lawsuit and Krafton’s once okay reputation (honestly, they really never had a good reputation) in the dirt. Now I was planning to cover this situation when it first started, but honestly everything I just told you happened within three weeks and every time I wrote something about it something else equally insane would happen which led to a loop of writing something then scraping it to update then scraping it again as more information came out.
It seems Krafton will have to pay the Subnautica devs far more than originally planned and after Krafton got sued again by the same people after they put a release date for the full game without asking. The trust is gone, money is going to legal fees, and I would not be surprised if the devs found a new publisher and distanced themselves only doing what is left in the contract then leaving. Now Krafton has to pay the original amount, legal fees, lost the IP, damages, and who knows what else, and possibly back pay to the original leads.
Bellular News. “Krafton’s CEO Got What He Deserved: The Judge Went Hard. Youtube, uploaded by Bellular News, March 26 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StOG9ZiLXw4&t=43s.
Mujin. “How to Lose a Fortune by Trusting ChatGPT as your Lawyer – The Krafton VS Subnautica 2 Disaster.” Youtube, uploaded by Mujin, May 3, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGaUWKyNkag.
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IGN: A Slow Downward Spiral
IGN is a name that rarely needs introduction as one of the largest gaming news and review websites it has had ups and downs though the newest controversy is hardly surprising anymore. This doesn’t even start recently IGN has been going downhill for years and you barely even hear much from them unless their reviewers do something so outrageously stupid the rest of us can only laugh at them to the point they are just the biggest laughingstock now, but how can one website do this.
They really have no idea what they review anymore. Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby were given 7/10 for too much water. In a game halfway covered in water in which you surf over it a total of 3-5 times short distances. They gave Mouse PI a 6/10 for not being a puzzle game and not being great at the LA Noir style, but anyone looking at the marketing will tell you it is a FPS with a cartoon mouse asthetic similar to old Micky Mouse or Felix the Cat. If that wasn’t bad enough they gave Highguard and Concord, games that were so bad and buggy they were removed higher scores.
I don’t think we need to share the same opinion on games in fact I think it is helpful if people don’t, but I don’t see how someone looked at Mouse PI as well as its marketing and thought a complex story, LA Noir, and puzzle game. I will be upfront here I don’t like shooters so I will not play or review Mouse PI as interesting and fun as it looks I know it isn’t something I will enjoy, but that also makes me wonder why IGN would ask someone who clearly wouldn’t enjoy this to review it. As big as they are not one reviewer who enjoyed FPS games played this? Could they pay someone who knows about shooting games to do this and outsource the review? Was this just an attempt to get views back on that site or something and they believed even if the review was bad the game was small so no one should care? It is precisely because this is a small indie game that people care and at the moment people on Steam and Metacritic are giving the game proper credit and reviewing it properly. Maybe all this will force IGN to start reviewing things properly again though I doubt it.
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Pokepia First Impressions
The thing about Cozy Games is they are absolutely dominating the gaming industry right now. I have talked about the oversaturation in gaming, but this is the one genre where I thought people wouldn’t care. So what is this game it basically is Animal Crossing meets Pokemon with Minecraft mechanics. I wouldn’t mind this so much, but the Pokemon fail to stand out. Rather than making the Pokemon interesting NPCs it is more they seem to cycle through pointless dialouge.
This game is in competition with multiple cozy games too and it fails. It doesn’t focus on towns and NPCs like Grand Bazaar, it may remove the destruction of your tools, but the Animal Crossing games somehow feel better, I wouldn’t mind some combat like Rune Factory or Harvestella rather than none. Another problem is spin off Pokemon games give a lot of attention to Pokemon in their natural environments such as Pokemon Snap and its sequel or focus on the Pokedex and their interactions with other Pokemon like the Mystery Dungeon series.
The Pokemon habitats don’t feel unique or interesting putting them together is mostly easy, but these also act as the residents homes and unlike Animal Crossing or Story Of Seasons it seems the same even different habitats. This is actually the worst part in Cozy Games one of the first things most do is explore the town and see where the townspeople live and work most characters have decor that matches what the like or pertaining to their jobs while I understand this really wouldn’t be the case for Pokemon it makes them more bland than anything.
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Indonesia Law Backfires Insanely
This is something that has been a mix of weird, bad, and absolutely hilarious for all the wrong reasons. So Indonesia recently passed a law that requires all games to go through a rating system. Sort of like the USA’s ESRB or Europe’s PEGI rating. They decided to adopt a version of PEGI which means rather than a letter system like ESRB’s E for Everyone or M for Mature, they chose the age range 3+ is the lowest to 18+ as the highest. Unfortunately, rather than manually grade the games based on content they may have just asked an AI or worse took one look at titles or cover art. This means more family friendly games with no violence like Story Of Seasons were slapped with a 18+ and games targeted towards adults were given 3+. Now depending on where you live this can mean a game was completely unavailable to you. In several countries they won’t put up games of a certain rating. In the US this is equivalent to something rated AO an older possibly retired rating simply due to people no longer holding that kind of game. I would assume any rating above 18+ would not be held so wouldn’t even be put up on the storefront. They claimed this was to protect kids, but how are people going to protect kids if the system put in place to do that harms them because from this situation alone many games rated for their violence and themes were recommended to 3 year olds.