Mathew Kumar
(He/They)
Covers:
Video Games, Cinema
Writer of exp. magazine (expzine.com). Game developer for hire. Every Game I've Finished 14-24 OUT NOW: amazon.com/dp/B0DJPFPVFT
Articles by Mathew Kumar
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (Xeen, 2023)
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The Evil Dead (Palace Software, 1984)
Developed/Published by: Richard Leinfellner, Colin Tanner / Palace Software Released: 1984 Completed: 06/10/2026 Completion: 11,000 on BBC Micro, 28,700 on C64. I could do better on the C64 at least. Halloween is so connected with scary movies to me that I can’t help but dig out licensed horror games to play for our now yearly spooktacular, and it’s interesting how surprising all the early licenses have been. Poltergeist… exclusive to TRS-80?
The Exit 8 (Kotake Create, 2023) / Exit 8 (2025)
The Exit 8 (Kotake Create, 2023) Developed/Published by: Kotake Create / Playism Released: 29/11/2023 Completed: 26/09/2026 Completion: Finished it! It’s October, which it means it’s time for spooky games. Which is a great excuse to finally play The Exit 8 (yes, that’s its official title).
Dragon Quest Heroes: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon -Classic HD- (Square Enix, 2026)
Developed/Published by: Square Enix Released: 09/09/2026 Completed: 15/09/2026 Completion: Returned to the surface with the Chest of Cheer! On the 9th September I stuck on the Nintendo Direct, which isn’t something I always do (if I remember I’ll put it on in the background) and one thing caught my eye: a re-release of Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon, the first game in Chunsoft’s beloved Mystery Dungeon franchise.
The exp. Dispatch #23
Oof, late one today because I fully and completely forgot it was the end of the month. Still, October next month! Means I’ll be dedicating the entire month to spooky games! Something to look forward to. Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry! Cheeky ad-blocker? Sign up here! exp. Magazine: we work for you.
Mouse: P.I. For Hire (Fumi Games, 2026)
Developed/Published by: Fumi Games / Playside Studio Released: 16/04/2026 Completed: 08/09/2026 Completion: Finished it. Quake was in the news recently, what with it being the 30th Anniversary and that, and seeing all that hot Quake action got me in the mood to play a shooter of the boomer persuasion. I considered revisiting Quake, but to be honest, I was never that hot on it.
Letterboxd — Your life in film
Coyote vs. Acme is obviously a movie that's hard to be normal about, considering the history of the film itself and fact that Looney Tunes is foundational—laughing until I couldn't breathe to What's Opera, Doc? is probably one of my earliest memories—and the unfortunate fact is that while I enjoyed Coyote. vs. Acme very much, it also made me very sad as to what we've lost. My gut feeling watching Coyote vs.
Wanted! Monty Mole (Harrap, 1984)
Developed/Published by: Peter Harrap / Gremlin Graphics Released: 29/07/1984 Completed: 07/09/2026 Completion: Got to the end, having let myself save pretty liberally at screen transitions, and… somehow hadn’t collected all the coal so couldn’t actually finish it. Well, close enough! The Monty Mole franchise is a classic British franchise, the series that put Gremlin Graphics on the map, but it’s not one that I’ve ever really engaged with before.
Denshattack! (Undercoders, 2026)
Developed/Published by: Undercoders / Fireshine Games Released: 15/07/2026 Completed: 18/08/2026 Completion: Finished it. Are video games still… cool? I was trying to think about this. Being old, I remember the 90s and the era of the PlayStation, all Lara Croft on the cover of The Face and Wipeout demo kiosks at clubs, and when I think about it, the era of video games being actively cool feels like it ended with the Dreamcast.
Toxic (2026)
Uh. For real though, where to begin. Indian cinema is one that features almost exclusively supermen, by which I mean in the classic DC Superman mould: invincible heroes for whom it is almost hard to find a genuine threat for.
Door Door (Chunsoft, 1985)
Developed/Published by: Chunsoft / Enix Released: 18/07/1985 Completed: 31/08/2026 Completion: Made it to level 50, saving after ever level. After playing the first (well, at least on Famicom) Square game for Pixels and Polygons Quarterly, King’s Knight, taking a look at the earliest output of the other eventual half of Square Enix, Enix, seemed to only make sense.
The exp. Dispatch #22
Well, it couldn’t really be anyone else, could it? This isn’t exactly the kind of song that’s supposed to accompany you on the reading of a newsletter, but for better or worse my taste is largely sad bangers only, and this is such a perfect, fragile, heartbreaking object. Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry! Cheeky ad-blocker?
UFO 50 #8: Planet Zoldath (Perry, 2024)
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Titanium Court (Thomson, 2026)
Developed/Published by: AP Thomson / Fellow Traveller Released: 23/04/2026 Completed: 26/07/2026 Completion: I left. In a weird sort of way, Titanium Court might be the most hyped game I’ve played in the last couple of years.
Mathew Kumar (@mathewkumar.gander.social)
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Steel Worker (Taito, 1980)
Developed/Published by: Taito Released: March 1980 Completed: 08/08/2026 Completion: 3100 points, but if I wanted to stick with it I could do way better. Steel Worker is the third Taito game (chronologically) available via the Egret II Mini system, though they chose to skip over two balloon-based arcade games (Balloon Bomber and Crazy Balloon) that supposedly came out of the same month as this, both of which have seen modern re-releases.
Heiankyo Alien (Theoretical Science Group, 1979) / Heiankyo Alien 3671 (Mindware, 2017)
Developed/Published by: University of Tokyo Theoretical Science Group / Mindware Released: November 1979/Early 1980 / 13/10/2017 Completed: 23/07/2026 Completion: Played them both a bunch of times! Well, it felt like it was time–certainly chronologically, having recently played Lunar Rescue and Ozma Wars–to finally play the other game in the unofficial trifecta of Japanese video games that get referenced all the time along with Xevious and The Tower of Druaga.
The Odyssey (2026)
No one needs another lengthy essay on The Odyssey… is something I’m sure students have been saying since around the 3rd century BC, but, well, here I am. To be honest, the discourse around Nolan’s attempt to grapple with one of the oldest surviving works of literature has done nothing but depress me.
Find Your Words (Capy, 2026)
Developed/Published by: Capy Released: 08/04/2026 Completed: 10/07/2026 Completion: Made all the friends! Feel like I’ve been going pretty hard on articles recently so let’s have a nice easy one this week, eh?
The exp. Dispatch #21
Crikey. I’ve liked Beabadoobee since she put out her Space Cadet EP, but I’d somewhat fallen out of keeping up with her, so I had no idea she was now so fancy and popular she was playing stadiums. Obviously that should put me off but her recent single Sun Has Set has an emo-ey anger that has absolutely kept me on side. Excited to see what the upcoming album Pylon has got going on, considering it’ll feature guest spots from both Hayley Williams and Chino Moreno. Hey, do you hate in-line advertising?
UFO 50 #7: Velgress (Yu, 2024)
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Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi (Atari, 1984)
Developed/Published by: Atari Released: 09/1984 Completed: 05/05/2026 Completion: Destroyed the Death Star once, but on a later return trip Lando Calrissian and Nien Numb [“No! Not Nien Numb!”–Ed.] sadly died after destroying the reactor. Uh… July the 28th… be with you?
Vampire Survivors (poncle, 2022)
Developed/Published by: poncle Released: 20/10/2022 Completed: 05/05/2026 Completion: Beat the final boss, saw the credits. Vampire Survivors completely passed me by originally. But the genre it spawned–now apparently named “Bullet Heaven” by Valve, although I’m not sure if people have decided to accept it–is everywhere and it feels like I should probably know about it. Off the back of Vampire Survivors, my feeling is that it’s… something I know about now.
Goal! (Tose, 1988)
Developed/Published by: Tose / Jaleco Released: 23/12/1988 Completed: 22/06/2026 SCompletion: Won the “Championship” (it’s obviously the World Cup, there’s a picture of the World Cup at the end) with Italy Scotland (look, they play in blue, ok?) After the terrible experience of Match Day’s bare-bones port and antique play, I was definitely looking for something better to play to get my arcadey footy fix–but of course, the siren call of more retro beckoned.
NUTMEG! (Sumo Digital, 2026)
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How To Play NUTMEG! (Sumo Digital, 2026)
I’ve been playing Nutmeg! Sumo Digital’s “Nostalgic Deckbuilding Football Manager” during the World Cup and enjoying it a great deal, but I found it difficult to get into originally due to a tutorial I didn’t quite get and the game’s extreme (if charming) skeuomorphic UI.
Magic Sword (Capcom, 1990)
Developed/Published by: Capcom Released: July, 1990 Completed: 31st May, 2015 Completion: Finished the game by slogging from level 1 to 50, using continues. Trophies / Achievements: 100/100 I must have played this back in the day in the arcades. I remember it really well; the way the attract mode looked amazing, with all these heroes on screen and all this lovely chaos. It’s possible I did but just died so quickly that it never made an impression? Whelp, I’ve beaten it now. I like Magic Sword.
Alpha (2026)
The YRF Spy Universe has produced a couple of my favourite films ever in War and (in particular) the criminally unsuccessful War 2 (my favourite film of last year!) but it is, let’s say… patchy. I mean… several of the films star a very bad man–just look at his absurdly long controversies entry on Wikipedia–but I’ve been willing to give the franchise the benefit of the doubt because I’m such a sucker for Hrithik Roshan’s beautiful eyes. Christ you could drown in them.
The Three Stooges (Cinemaware, 1987)
Developed/Published by: Incredible Technologies, Cinemaware / Cinemaware Released: 1987 Completed: 30/01/2026 Completion: Raised enough money to repair Ma’s orphanage… but not enough to get married to her three beautiful daughters. This is the “real” best ending; who’d inflict The Three Stooges on some women? As celebration of the release of The Journal Of Stoogealogical Studies Vol.
'A new industry with a new identity:' How Canadian devs are faring in 2026
Now in its fifth year, Toronto Canada's XP Game Summit–a sister conference to the long-running Montreal International Game Summit–offered a unique opportunity to take the temperature of a Canadian games industry that, as in other regional industries, has found itself battered by the winds of change.
Thirty Flights Of Loving (Blendo Games, 2012)
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Mappy-Land (Namco, 1986)
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Unfair Flips (Flowers, 2025) / Q-UP (Everybody House Games, 2025)
Unfair Flips (Flowers, 2025) Developed/Published by: Heather Flowers Released: 25/09/2025 Completed: 17/11/2025 Completion: Nine heads with an unlikely 40% chance and then the coin landed on its side. I’m taking it. Q-UP (Everybody House Games, 2025) Developed/Published by: Everybody House Games Released: 5/11/2025 Completed: /11/2025 Completion: Finished it with the Medic. Oh, I didn’t think I’d do another one of these joint essays again so soon.
Rolling Thunder (Namco, 1986)
Developed/Published by: Namco Released: 09/11/1986 Completed: 18/09/2025 Completion: Finished it. Save states at each checkpoint… though I also had to use a few more in lulls just for my sanity on levels 8 and 10 for very obvious reasons. It’s strange, the games you remember, and the games that you don’t. I suppose it’s about the games that make an impression.
Avatar: Fire And Ash (2025)
I do not think the original Avatar is good, but I’ll be the first to admit that Way of Water had me both hootin’ and hollerin’ as I watched genocidal whiteys get murked, and I remember thinking “oh man, I enjoyed that enough I’d watch it again.” [Monkey’s paw curls] Did that mean I wanted to watch the exact same film again, but as a sequel? Because I did not.
The exp. Dispatch #14
A dispatch a little earlier than has become usual, but it’s the last newsletter of the year and feels like I should get it in before Christmas happens and we end up in that weird no-man’s land between it and the New Year. Hey, do you hate in-line advertising? We do too! We’re only ever going to do it here at the start of our newsletter posts because we want you to get these missives in your inbox a day early. Sorry! Cheeky ad-blocker?
Christmas Crackers (Micro User, 1986) - Part 2
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A Computer Christmas (Sierra, 1986)
Developed/Published by: Sierra On-Line Released: 1986 Completed: 02/12/2025 Completion: Well, it’s not really a video game. Watched it until I was pretty sure I’d seen everything. Christmas is drawing ever closer, so let’s relax, let’s have those Christmas party vibes, and let’s just watch Sierra’s 1986 “Christmas Card” A Computer Christmas together: (For maximum vibes, I suggest running it for real–well, at least with emulation.
The Running Man (2025)
Something I’ll say for The Running Man: usually it’s annoying and pointless when a movie gets remade, but considering the original had almost no relation to Stephen King(“Richard Bachman”)’s novel, I can understand why someone might want to make a more faithful adaptation than the Schwarzenegger vehicle from 1987. I can understand it, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, and especially not in 2025.
Christmas Crackers (Micro User, 1986) - Part 1
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Horses (Santa Ragione, 2025)
Developed/Published by: Santa Ragione Released: 02/12/2025 Completed: 04/12/2025 Completion: Finished it. “Artists must create, critics defend, and democratic people support . . . works so extreme that they become unacceptable even to the broadest minds of the new State.” –Pier Paolo Pasolini, in a 1974 debate as quoted by Naomi Green in their essay “Salò: Breaking the Rules”.
The exp. Dispatch #13
As has become traditional, in the month of December I try and make sure I write up as many Christmas games as I can manage.
The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
All of Powell and Pressburger’s films are, in my opinion, quite strange to modern eyes (even compared to their contemporaries) with unusual tones and pacing, but for me this is absolutely the strangest yet (and that’s including A Matter Of Life And Death, which is completely bonkers.) On the surface, our Colonel Blimp, Clive Wynne-Candy, reads as hero, played, as he is, by the iconically charming Roger Livesey.
Jingle Bells (Jack & Jill Software, 1986)
Developed/Published by: Jack Foster, Jill Foster / Jack & Jill Software Released: 1986 Completed: 01/12/2025 Completion: Finished it. *Ahem* time to drag out the old Noddy Holder impression again. It’s CHRISTMASSS! (Hmm, think I’m getting better at it.) Well, it’s December, at least, which means I get to spend the entire month playing Christmas games in an attempt to feel festive, but so far has meant I’ve accidentally mostly played BBC Micro shovelware.
Baby Steps (Cuzzillo/Boch/Foddy, 2025)
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Flotilla (Blendo Games, 2010)
Developed/Published by: Blendo Games Released: 03/25/2010 Completed: 13/07/2025 Completion: Survived an entire run with… caveats. Well, I didn’t get the Xbox out as I said I wouldn’t in my Gravity Bone essay, but I did decide to play some Flotilla on PC.
Frankenstein (2025)
Guillermo del Toro seems like a lovely guy who cares about the craft of cinema, but if it wasn’t clear by now, Frankenstein hammers home once and for all that he has absolutely no sense for story at all.
and Roger (Tearyhand Studio, 2025) / Florence (Mountains, 2018)
Developed/Published by: Tearyhand Studio / Kodansha Released: 23/07/2025 Completed: 06/11/2025 Completion: Finished it. Developed/Published by: Mountains / Annapurna Interactive Released: 14/02/2018 Completed: 06/11/2025 Completion: Finished it. This year for me (and perhaps for many others) has very much been the year of the short game, and I’m not complaining. In fact, I really think it’s the direction the industry has to go towards.
The exp. Dispatch #12
Everyone who ordered exp. 2602 (or the value bundle!) before mid-Oct should have (or soon be receiving if they’re far-flung) their physical copies! Digital copies were also sent out this week—check your spam if you don’t see them, and get in touch if you still don’t. I’ve been gladdened by the images people have shared with me of their copies (our header image here via Chris Baker) and if you’ve enjoyed the issues, please do share on social media.
Alex Kidd In Miracle World (Sega, 1986)
Developed/Published by: Sega Released: 01/11/1986 Completed: 1/09/2025 Completion: Finished it. Save states were used (for some obvious reasons.) The discourse has long moved on, but a while ago there was a “revelation” that the extremely French CEOs of Sandfall (of Clair Obscur fame) and Lizard Cube (of Sega remake fame) didn’t play Nintendo growing up.
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