Parents were really into hot wings. They kept ordering them hotter and hotter. It got to the point where my eyes would water being in the same room as them, and I have a high tolerance for spicy food. However, I don’t enjoy the texture of wings and usually got something else, and I remember commenting that this time they smelled “off.” My nose is sharp and something smelled unmistakably rotten. They brushed it aside saying it was probably just the new nuclear fission burn the hair off your tits tropical fuck storm flavor or whatever goofy name they were newly trying out. I was feeling nauseous from the odor so I took my food to my room while they plowed through the pile occasionally pausing to exclaim I was missing out.
I woke up to one of them crashing their way through the house to the bathroom in a blind panic. The door slammed shut, the fan whirred to life and I could hear muttering, gasping and cursing and then the lovely sound of their body forcibly ejecting chicken from both ends. “Goddammit what the hell.” And then a request for a bucket. Stepdad staggered out looking pale as a sheet. “I think I need to go to the ER. Feels like I have knives in my stomach.” My Mom hadn’t succumbed yet, it hit her while she was in the waiting room after she drove him there. They were sick for about a week from salmonella and I was freed from their trufflepig chicken snarfing noises for about a year.
Because we remember when they made good games and had several good IPs. Some are still classics. There also weren’t micro transactions or having to sign into their stupid portal or needing to be always online or the shambling corpses representing the sad remainder of their IPs trying to trigger our nostalgia. They made good shit. It was innovative at times. A respected studio. Now they are simply an example of chasing the dragon.