Part of the beauty of those days was that nobody had to own every single game: you just found a buddy with a different console, or different cartridges and you got to play together. I don’t get that from online multiplayer.

My hours of Mario Kart 64, Contra, Super Mario Bros., and Star Wars: Racer instilled in me a profound affection for sitting next to a buddy, eyes glued to a screen, sharing trash talk and controller tossing.

Well one thing that my video game upbringing gave me was an appreciation for what has become known as the ‘Couch Co-Op’ genre of gameplay. That being said, where do I get off writing a review of a video game? So between being a few console generations behind the curve and too queasy to play some of the most popular of today’s video games I’m by no means an expert when it comes to video games and I don’t rush out day one to pick up the latest releases. I also get pretty intense motion-sickness from playing First-Person Shooters like Doom, Halo, Call of Duty, or Overwatch so there’s a huge swath of games I can’t even boot up. So I kind of missed out on the novelty of console games with online multiplayer modes, and when I had systems capable of running them, I didn’t really enjoy them. Even when I got to college and had some money to throw at a new console, I opted for a blocky used Xbox 360 which shortly thereafter gave me the dreaded Red Ring of Death. When it comes to video games I’m kind of a late bloomer: my gaming education in no way rode the wave of innovation or popularity: I had a NES console when I was 6 or 7 and could play Contra and Super Mario (and that’s about all I had) on a tube TV with broken channel knobs and wooden trim and when I was 10 or 11 my parents bought my sister and I an N64 and I played that and only that until I went to college. I don’t know much about video games but I know what I like.

Does cuphead have online multiplayer