I’ve made a number of posts on Twitter and then Bluesky that I want to preserve and this page serves as a compilation of them. Some of these are just little observations that interested me, some are graphs or other images that I made. I have not included a lot of “look at this thing I found in a magazine” posts. Instead of making new pages for what were “small projects” I will probably just compile them here from now on.
These micro projects are listed in reverse chronological order.
Metacritic’s Average Publication Scores
Original Post Date: May 16, 2026
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3mlylouho4k2c
I had some intention of making an infographic showing every publication’s average score according to Metacritic for the Video Game Reviewers project, but never got around to it. I managed to dig up an additional 78 averages and updated several that had changed slightly since that project went live.
The Video Game With the Highest Metascore That Doesn’t Have a Wikipedia Page
Original Post Date: January 19, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3mct7r2c5qk24
Games with good metascores are generally well-known and notable enough to have a Wikipedia page, so what’s the highest scoring game without one?
While Out of the Park Baseball 17 and 15 are highly rated games without pages, there is a Wikipedia page for the series. There should be a redirect to that page when you enter the name of any game in the series into Wikipedia’s search bar, but there isn’t, so I decided these didn’t count.
All the way down at the 434th highest scored game is Kynseed, an indie farming sim akin to Stardew Valley, and it doesn’t have a page despite a metascore of 89.
This is all highly variable of course, and won’t be true for long.
Gender Ratio of Games Played on Sega Channel
Original Post Date: December 16, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3ma5gpsicwk2e
The Video Game History Foundation made various internal Sega documents about Sega Channel available in late 2025. Included in these was a survey about the demographics of who was playing what games on Sega Channel. I turned this data into a graph showing which games were more popular among boys and girls.
What Month Video Game Systems are Released
Original Post Date: June 4, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lqr3nngxtc2b
The Switch 2’s June launch was unusual, but how unusual? This shows what month major consoles released in the NA, EU, and JP territories.
Rolling Around With Shigeru Miyamoto
Original Post Date: May 24, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lpwyiu5zuc2a
When you read so many Shigeru Miyamoto interviews you notice when he says the same thing about rolling around in a park.
Final Fantasy XI’s PlayStation 2 Devkits
Original Post Date: May 20, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lpmsxzkubk2q
I kept hearing that Final Fantasy XI, the MMORPG, needed PlayStation 2 devkits to make new content, long after it was no longer playable on the system, but I never saw any source. I found a transcript and translation of the Japanese livestream where this was discussed by the developers. Dozens of devkits from around the world were gathered for this purpose.
Which Sports Video Games Are Named After the Current Year Versus the Next Year
Original Post Date: May 17, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lpfg44ylks2n
I thought this was interesting. I’ve never seen anyone discuss this.
The Most Bought and Sold Games on eBay?
Original Post Date: April 15, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lmvc76cnp22t
As far as I can tell certain Nintendo games for Wii are the most bought and sold games on eBay. Perhaps this is more broadly true of the used game market overall. PriceCharting.com keeps track of sold listings on eBay and I can’t find anything close to these numbers, though they have all gone down since I posted this. These are popular games that people in their 20s and 30s may be nostalgic for, but it still seems odd that they are bought and sold at such a high volume, much more than popular recent releases.
Every Clue on Jeopardy! About The Legend of Zelda
Original Post Date: April 10, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lmipdsvg4c2h
As of the original post, these 15 clues are every time The Legend of Zelda has been involved in a Jeopardy! clue.
Mario Kart Prices in Catalogs
Original Post Date: April 3, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3llx4chthcc2w
I made a collage of every Mario Kart that appeared in The Video Game Catalog and Circular Ad Archive, since Mario Kart World’s $80 price was a hot topic at the time.
Shigeru Miyamoto Almost Certainly Does Not Breed Dogs
Original Post Date: March 15, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lkhape4u522s
Hideki Konno says that Shigeru Miyamoto is “something of a semi-professional [dog] breeder” in a 2005 Eurogamer interview. This is the sole source of the idea that Shigeru Miyamoto is a dog breeder. It is on his Wikipedia page and taken as a fact. I am familiar with almost everything Mr. Miyamoto has said publicly and he has never mentioned breeding dogs. He has spoken many times about his hobbies and this has never come up. He has spoken about his dog Pikku on a few occasions and this has never come up.
On the subject of Pikku, Mr. Miyamoto has said that Pikku got his name because he’s colored like a guitar pick, despite some claims that he was named after Pikachu. Pikku is also not the dog featured in the “Time Capsule” (locket) in Pikmin 2.
I think Mr. Konno is trying to say that Mr. Miyamoto knows a lot about dogs.
Shigeru Miyamoto’s Interpreters
Original Post Date: January 17, 2025
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lfxyrr7ixk2c
Shigeru Miyamoto has had four main interpreters for English interviews.
Yasuhiro Minagawa is an NCL employee who at least at some point was Nintendo’s global head of PR. Shigeru Miyamoto had done many interviews by the time of his appearance at E3 1997, but this is the first appearance of an interpreter that I know of. Mr. Minagawa continued to pop up with Mr. Miyamoto for years to come, but was seen less starting in 2001, and the last I know of him working with Mr. Miyamoto was in 2015.
Bill Trinen’s first appearance with Mr. Miyamoto was at his GDC 1999 keynote speech. He had been working for Nintendo of America for just six months at the time, localizing games. He may have served as Mr. Miyamoto’s English interpreter more often than anyone else.
Tim O’Leary is or was also a localizer at Nintendo Treehouse and an occasional voice actor. He has had several appearances translating for Mr. Miyamoto, with some large gaps. The first I know of was a Metroid Prime roundtable event in 2002, but the next isn’t until 2005. He seemed to be an interpreter more for live events, rather than interviews.
Our final interpreter for Mr. Miyamoto is also a Nintendo of America localizer. Raymond Elliget made his first appearance as interpreter during an E3 2016 Treehouse: Live event for Breath of the Wild. Bill Trinen was last seen interpreting shortly after this.
How Often Video Game Companies Come Up In Jeopardy! Clues
Original Post Date: November 17, 2024
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3lb6lofoojs2v
Thanks to j-archive.com I graphed how often the words Atari, Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation, and Xbox were included in a Jeopardy! clue.
Most JRPG reviews on a single page of a magazine
Original Post Date: October 17, 2024
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3l6pwm2hxdu2v
I realize not everyone would consider Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness an JRPG, but this is surely the largest number of JRPGs ever reviewed on a single page of a magazine. Scan by Retromags.
Nintendo’s CES 1993 Domino Stunt to Commemorate Selling 100 Million Mario Games
Original Post Date: March 23, 2024
Original Link: https://bsky.app/profile/spritecell.bsky.social/post/3koftc3osxd2a
I came across this small story in Total’s August 1993 issue about Nintendo setting up a depiction of Mario made up of 10,000 SNES cartridges set up like dominoes. These cartridges would then be donated to charity after they were tumbled. I wanted to know more and eventually found a newspaper article that provided more details.
Here we learn that it was at the Consumer Electronics Show and that Nintendo was donating 10,000 SNES games to the Starlight Foundation. People tried to snatch up the games after the domino tumbling had ended, but realized they were “empty”. Total had said that the tumbled games were donated to charity, but it’s not clear if that means that actual game PCBs were put into these particular shells at a later time.
And even later I found black and white video footage of the event, from what seems to be a Spanish-language news report. Someone is interviewed, either the professional domino toppler, or a representative from Nintendo of America.
Shigeru Miyamoto’s Mario Kart Favorites
Original Post Date: May 3, 2023
Original Link: https://x.com/SpriteCell/status/1653842781897474048
There is footage of Shigeru Miyamoto playing Mario Kart on three occasions, all with YouTubers.
In a Smosh Games video they play Mario Kart 8 and he picks Toad. There are two races and he comes in 6th and 10th place.
In an iJustine video he again chooses Toad in Mario Kart 8 and comes in 4th place. There is brief footage of another race at the end of the video that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere.
In a Rosanna Pansino video they play Mario Kart 8 and Mr. Miyamoto races as Toad again. He seems to come in 4th place, as I think the race ends when Peach crosses the finish line.
Despite choosing Toad every time he has been seen racing, in a 2012 Entertainment Weekly interview (several years before any of these videos were recorded) he says that Toad is his least favorite.