Welcome to the weekly open discussion thread. Here you can talk about anything you want; tactics, results, players or even just general football discussion!
These threads will go up every Monday and stay stickied throughout the week, however other posts may take priority (match threads, announcements, etc.)
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This thread can also be used to discuss transfer rumours, jokes, memes, images, videos, tabloid news and other off-topic content and discussion.
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We also have a ShePlays Fantasy Football League that you are welcome to join and share your team, advice and goings on throughout the season here in these threads.
League Name - /ArsenalWFC Code - pw0vhh
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These threads are here to help discussion and offer varying points of view. Please remain respectful. Anything that crosses that line, directed towards other users or specific individuals may be removed.

Honestly, this is a super long story but ill try summarizing it as much as possible. So basically I've been friends with these guys since grade 11. It was all going smoothly up until University started and at this point, I don't know what to even say anymore. Ever since the summer of last year, they would start making fun of me for no apparent reason like just talking about my acne or how I can't do this or that or like how I haven't been able to find a job or just pinpoint random shit just to attack me. I took a stand for myself in October and told them to stop and got angry and stood up for myself but then they just completely banned me from the Christmas party and emotionally gaslighted me into making me believe it was my fault and that they were just trolling me when I have told them countless times to cut it out. This one guy in the group who I've known since grade 9 and who I considered one of my best friends always claims he has my back but ever since the summer of last year he's been talking behind the backs of my other friends too and always arranges small ball runs with a couple of guys without a certain majority knowing and its always been uncomfortable to me. Fast forward to January,
I put it all beside me and we moved on until again in March when they started doing the same shit again and made fun of me for failing my linear algebra midterm which was at a time I was suffering from immense depression due to the course situation at my university and then when I snapped again and quit playing games with them, they began to demand that I give them money for quitting( We ran ESPN fantasy and placed bets for the person who would finish last) and kicked me from the friend group. This was again a very difficult time in my life but again since I chose to fucking commute and making friends on res wasn't an option for me I just had to deal with it alone.
but again I DECIDED TO GIVE them another chance. Now fast forward to late May, it's happening to me again. they keep mocking me about how they have found a summer job and how I haven't and never seem to be happy for me when I say things in the GC like how I've gotten interviews and stuff and they always play it down or try to play down on my achievements and talk about how they are superior and then kick me out when I try to take a stand for myself. I don't understand why this happens to ONLY me when there are 8 other people in the gc who are trolling each other. For some reason, it's always jokes when it's them but when I say something to defend myself they emotionally gaslight me into believing it's my fault.
I understand this is a university subreddit but tbh idk who to even tell this. I ain't gonna tell my family cause fuck no and my uni friends wouldn't understand. I would much rather rant here and ask for advice as opposed to letting this consume me entirely and fuck over my mental health where I would have to be in position months from now in an academic shithole having to post here on Reddit about being on probation or failing classes because of my depression over this. I really just want some peace and advice on what I can do so I can start second year in peace and in general move on from this absolutely depressing shithole

The weekly Freo-centric thread for all things Fantasy Football.
Which Freo players are going in this week's fantasy team, and if you're feeling particularly traitorous, which non-Freo players make the cut?
Who is on your watch list? Which player is killing you and is on the chopping block?
Have you made a masterful trade that you want to gloat about?
This is also where you can engage in friendly bants - sledge your vanquished opponent from previous rounds, or let your upcoming opponent know how badly youre going to beat them etc
(Non-Freo fans welcome for intel gathering.)

Dont forget to set your line-ups (including subs, Captains and Vice Captains) each week once team sheets are announced

Top weekly score (last week):
Top weekly score (season):
Permalink to the FremantleFC subreddit Discord.

Every turn in our story has been a left.
It would have been like, so appreciated if you would have told me you had a partner, at any point, before leaving us to socialize together. Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no room to judge but like dang, bro. You welcome chaos on a level I could never hope to rival. Either you two are super casual and you didn't for a second think she'd percieve it as a threat if I dropped a "hey I made out with your guy at a bar a few weeks ago lol" or you have overdeveloped faith in my ability to keep my mouth shut. Brazen, misguided either way. She's cool though, I like her.
It was too wholesome. Sharing friends, secrets, childhood trauma under the patio lights, key bumps in the back of a new best friend's car. Emotionally productive. I can scarcely stomach the positivity when it exists in place of the fantasy I built up in my head. Look at us, championing friendship, drinking til 3 from a warm flask while we laugh. It's too manic pixie dream squad, too much lens flare, too rigged with the sound of a thousand coins falling in the arcade next door. A chime, a cigarette.
I know I said I wanted to be your friend. I guess that's true. I also want to fuck you, if I'm being totally honest with myself.
Things are fine. I won't shit where I eat.
The third possiblity, before I forget, is that she wouldn't feel threatened by me because she's way hotter than I am and we all know it. We pity the poor misguided souls on tv that kiss women out of their (football) league and later confess only to be met with dismissive forgiveness. It's insulting being Nate Shelley in this situation.
Urgh.

I know this ad was available online just a few months ago, but I never archived it and now I can't seem to relocate it. It was for some sports betting/fantasy company, and a lady was in her PJs in bed while a male voice- presumably her husband- told her which players to pick. Then it pans out and there was a "stomach" laying in bed next to her- she was listening to her gut. This aired somewhere between 2017-2020, and aired on TV. It was during football season, and I'm in Illinois, but I do not think it's local whatsoever. I've found some with a similar catchphrase by DraftKings, so I'm assuming it's them. I feel like I'm looking right over it haha. Thank y'all!

Hi (: getting ready for the succession finale tonight and would love a little company. I’m still on the hunt for my Reddit soulmate and trying not to lose hope 🆘
About me: 5’7, green eyes, brown hair. I love laughing and smiling. I have a great career and am passionate about my work. I enjoy being active and busy but also enjoy staying in and bingeing tv shows and movie marathons. I’m obsessed with sports and am always watching or going to a game or beating my brother and his friends at fantasy football. I love animals, especially my geriatric pup. I am into wellness and yoga. Big Gryffindor energy. Basic things like makeup and mani pedis and The Bachelor and Taylor Swift make me very happy (:
About you: You have a big…heart and care about the world. You are passionate about your work. You love sports and want to go to lots of games together. You have a good sense of humor bc life is so laughable sometimes. You want to go on three mile walks with an old dog every day. You want a partner who is also a teammate and best friend. Hopefully you are a good conversationalist (:
So what are you waiting for?! I hope to hear from you soon.

Hi (: getting ready for the succession finale tonight and would love a little company. I’m still on the hunt for my Reddit soulmate and trying not to lose hope 🆘
About me: 5’7, green eyes, brown hair. I love laughing and smiling. I have a great career and am passionate about my work. I enjoy being active and busy but also enjoy staying in and bingeing tv shows and movie marathons. I’m obsessed with sports and am always watching or going to a game or beating my brother and his friends at fantasy football. I love animals, especially my geriatric pup. I am into wellness and yoga. Big Gryffindor energy. Basic things like makeup and mani pedis and The Bachelor and Taylor Swift make me very happy (:
About you: You have a big…heart and care about the world. You are passionate about your work. You love sports and want to go to lots of games together. You have a good sense of humor bc life is so laughable sometimes. You want to go on three mile walks with an old dog every day. You want a partner who is also a teammate and best friend. Hopefully you are a good conversationalist (:
So what are you waiting for?! I hope to hear from you soon.

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

Hey, join my fantasy football league on Sleeper http://sleeper.com/i/L1nOYY1l2WOX

Looking to try and put together a local keeper league! If you are in NE Indiana (Fort Wayne area ideally) and have interest in doing a live in-person draft please contact me! Draft day and time most likely will change. Looking for a good group of folks with humor and are competitive!

I (27M) have a rather strained relationship with my parents (48F and 56M) that I can’t quite seem to get over. So, before anyone asks, yes, I have gone to therapy and have been going for the better part of 5 years, off and on, with a more consistent track record for the last 2 years.
I do apologize if I bounce around here. I write fantasy novels, not autobiographies, lol.
First, let me explain that I am the second oldest of 4 sons from my mother, and the middle of 7 sons, counting all my father's children. So, the core 4 (Me and my mother's sons) will be the most referred to throughout this. I love my other brothers, but one was born and raised in Germany (My father was a soldier), one was an affair child (My father just sorta cast him to the side for a good portion of our childhood, though we saw him frequently as kids <12yo) and the final is 6 (he just didn't exist until I was an adult).
As a kid, I always recognized I was a bit different from my brothers, (2 years older, 5 years younger, and 7 years younger). They were much more into sports and playing outside, and while I did participate in sports, I never found the same love for them as they did. I played soccer and swam competitively, while my brothers were all football studs in their respective positions. All would go on to get some form of scholarship to play in college, though none would follow through, or failed to complete their programs. Despite this, I love my brothers dearly, but I realized I was treated a bit differently than them.
My dad was the coach of my younger brothers’ peewee teams and was consistently in attendance at my older brothers’ games in high school. He paid for special camps, summer training, and the whole shebang. Meanwhile, I seem to hardly remember him in the crowd at a lot of my athletic functions unless there were several of us involved (when I swam, my younger brothers were on the same team as me).
My preferred field was that of creativity. As stated above, I write fantasy novels and enjoy bringing my imagination to life. Now, anyone else like this knows that your creativity isn't much of a light switch, but rather a faucet. I can't turn it on and off, the best I can do is dial it back a little while, though, the pressure will build, and I'll explode if I can't get it out of me after a while.
Now imagine being an 8-year-old boy with this massive level of imagination, what happens to them? That's right, medication. I was supplied a healthy dose of Concerta (children's Adderall essentially) from age 8 until 16 as a way to help me "concentrate" in school, which I have always felt was a copout to make me more docile and easier to handle. Most people are familiar with the effects, turning you into a zombie, loss of appetite, lack of interest in most things, etc., etc. What most people don't realize, is that form of drug turns off your imagination altogether. I contested the drug as often as I could, but the argument always went to my grades being subpar when I was off it, and my behavior worsens. Mind you, my kind of trouble was more of mischievousness than actual behavior issues. I respected adults and treated everyone well, even if I didn't like them. That never seemed to be a good enough answer, though, and I was continuously fed it until I began my senior year of high school.
As I said, I love my imagination, and only figured out how to make it constructive after I left to join the military at 17 out of high school. By then, I was severely underweight and never figured out how to form normal relationships since I had no genuine interest in them on the drug, and didn't have a good example of one at home to mimic.
My dad didn't have much of a father, and he joined the military and served a long and prosperous career in the army. Unfortunately, that meant he learned fathering techniques from the military, which we all know is not good. Eventually, my parents split soon after my dad retired in the southwest US. I think I was 12, and I remember having a wave of relief wash over me when they announced it. They were destructive with each other and the police were involved once or twice. My dad never hit my mother, but their arguments became explosive on those occasions and neighbors or my mother called. Both cheated, both hated, and both stayed with one another "for the sake of the kids." I can still vividly remember myself crying at 9 yo hearing them fighting in the middle of the night and my older brother coming into my room to comfort for me. He was my first best friend, and first heartbreak. Once they split, all my brothers chose to go stay with my mom and I chose to stay with my dad, out of sheer pity. Overnight, our once bustling 5-bedroom home became a quiet nightmare. It was just him and I for a long time after.
Once they moved out to my mom's apartment, I noticed a deep and awful shift in my mom. Her love had become toxic. She treated us like 5-year-olds again, and not like we were dumb, but like we were her little sweetie pies and nothing could ever happen to us. My brother had started down a long dark path of drugs and gangs at around 14 yo and my mom protected him from the harshness that he needed. She unintentionally fed his issues by pretending that he'll just spring back on his own. I remember the day he got kicked out from my dad's at around 16, I was so hurt. He was my first friend, and I couldn't even recognize him anymore. And it was, without misplaced anger, entirely my mother's fault. She allowed him to become this animal that would run out into the streets, get high, commit crimes, give him a warm place to be, and treat him like the little baby she knew so many years ago. It was disgusting to me. I would always turn away when she would offer me the same treatment. She would go on to blame my father and tell me "You're just like your father" I resented that statement so much. It crushed me every time I heard it. But I couldn't bring myself to tell her anything. She was the woman that birthed me, after all.
Eventually, she began to deteriorate. She went from being the gleaming example of a woman, who once coached my peewee soccer team to an undefeated season, into a horrible blob of a toxic love pit. I became so ashamed of her. I would avoid taking friends, the very few I had, to meet her out of embarrassment. I loved her, but I hated her too, if that made sense.
My dad wasn't much better. He would begin to date again and got heavily involved in a community Christian church. I didn't mind, they had a youth group on Wednesday nights, and it was a chance for me to leave the house since he monitored my activities so heavily. I wasn't allowed to do much under the guise of "poor grades," but I think my dad was afraid I would end up like my brother, who I was nothing like at that point. But he would date and sometimes be out of the house all day or night. I remember very well, for about a week or so, I would only see my dad when he woke me up for school, but never again for the rest of the day. So, for long stretches of time, I would be at home by myself, just sitting there, missing my brothers. I would sometimes pretend they were still there and have fake arguments and watch the shows that they liked, and I hated, to make me feel like they were still around. I'm crying again now, just thinking about those lonely days.
He was a terrible disciplinarian by that point. I was in charge of almost every chore around the house, considering I was the only one living there. It was very hard. I would miss some specs on the floor, or not put all the dishes back on, he would come down on me, hard like a drill sergeant. No, even my DS in basic training were more forgiving it seemed. He was critical of everything I did, it felt. Even my humor would earn me long hard scathing lectures. Like I could do nothing correctly, and if that weren't enough, he would embarrass me at every possible chance. I remember he caught me doing something that 15-year-old boys do when it’s 2 am and there’s internet access. He went and told the who church of his discovery, including the parents of the girl I liked, right in front of me. I would cry often, and started wetting the bed again at 16. Thank god he never found out. I just washed my sheets often. I couldn't tell my mom since she was looking for every ounce of ammo she could find to force custody of me. Well, they both did. They'd often interrogate me about the other's deeds during my time with them, looking for something. Eventually, I caught on after realizing they would argue about things I would talk about, so I stopped telling them things altogether and would never really let them back into my emotions, even as a grown man. I felt like a little tortured animal by the time I finally got out of the house.
I was free, but my ability to bond and form relationships was severely impacted. I couldn't make friends easily and would panic whenever I had intimate moments with girls. I just didn’t know what to do. I was so immature for my age. at 18, I was still pretty much a 13-year-old. Thankfully, the army doesn't give you a choice in friendships and will basically force you through trauma bonding and close quarters. I ended up making great friends and began to catch up on my lost time. They taught me so much, and I am still close to them, even if separated by great distances. A couple of them saw me for who I was, accepted me, and adopted me as their immature kid brother. For them, I'm forever thankful.
As I grew, my relationships with my parents changed as well. I still loved them. But as friends. I knew my heart and emotions weren't safe with them. My mom was still a toxic pit and my dad finally began to soften after he remarried. He wasn't quite as cruel with my stepsiblings. He took the role of father but vehemently declined the role of dad as often as possible. He's known them since they were just 4 and 6 and just recently watched the oldest graduate. He would complain about their misdeeds with me, and I would reassure him that they seemed like normal growing pains for kids. He would disregard and often throw the phrase "Then let your dad handle it" when dealing with their problems. I remember a couple of years ago trying to talk to him about this and how he had the opportunity to be a positive influence and be someone important to them. That THEY didn't really get a choice in him and how he could be such a good dad. Our talk went about as far as you'd think and ended with me in tears. He never saw the light, which hurt me greatly for them.
I have done my best to keep my emotional distance from them even when I came to visit, I lived about 3 hours from their city. Even when visiting, I would have to keep it a secret from the other or they would get butt hurt that I didn't go to see them. I usually just didn't have time to see them both and all my brothers. But they would try to guilt-trip me all the same. My dad was much better off than my mom, so I would usually stay with him since I knew he had a spare room for me. But my choice was purely economical, my mom's apartments were always so cramped and I didn’t want to add to the issue of space, so I would lie to her and say I've got a hotel or that I was staying at a girl’s house.
Recently though. My girlfriend and I have come close to the topic of marriage, and I want to mend my relationships with them. I can't imagine them coming to the wedding and me not feeling any actual emotion as I dance with my mom, or as I listen to my dad's speech. I just don't want to live like this. I've tried just about everything to rebuild, but therapy only goes so far. I need an unorthodox approach. Though I'm not opposed to just not having either of them included and have considered just running away and cutting all contact, but I know my brothers would just relay messages, and I don't want to make this their problem. I think this may be a part of some of the skills I never learned growing up. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all in advance. I'm just very lost here.
​
**TL;DR;** : Parents were emotionally abusive growing up and even with therapy, I can't seem to find that happy loving relationship with them that I see others have.

Looking to try and put together a local keeper league! If you are in NE Indiana (Fort Wayne area ideally) and have interest in doing a live in-person draft please contact me! Draft day and time most likely will change. Looking for a good group of folks with humor and are competitive

Prices do not include shipping unless stated, bundled will save on shipping. $5 to ship to US for most smaller items and calculated for international.
Accepting payment with Paypal F&F
Gameboy Motherboards: AS-IS for parts and/or repair
Some are complete, some are missing components, some look to have had repairs attempted. Moving on from them as they've been sitting here forever. They were purchased in multiple different lots on here and ebay. I have not tested them or worked on them. Assume not working, all untested.
Board Pics.
Gameboy Advance SP: 12 boards $350 for the lot
That's roughly $29 a board. Shoot me an offer if you're interested.
Steam Controllerwith dongle: $50
Gameboys:
Gameboy DMG Black Boxy Pixel: $350

• Anodized Aluminum shell & buttons
• IPS screen with OSD & brightness controls via wheel
• Fully Recapped
• New FP speaker
• Cleanpower board
• Glass Lens

Gameboy Advance Blue Boxy Pixel: $350

• Anodized aluminum shell & triggers
• FP IPS screen with brightness controls
• 2,000mah battery
• USB-C Charging port
• Recapped with SS Tantalum Capacitors
• New speaker
• Helders power cleaner
• Glass Lens with clear logo
• FP buttons & membranes

Gameboy Pocket: $135

• OEM Shell/buttons/membranes
• FP IPS screen with touch sensor for palets
• Brightness control wheel
• Helders GBP power regulator

Gameboy Macro Black: $50

• helders flex amp
• aftermarket shell/buttons

PS2:

• Cold Fear no manual $40

SNES: Loose

• Donkey Kong Country 2 (Player's Choice) $28
• NHL 97$10

GB: loose

• Bo Jackson $8
• NFL Football$2

GBC: loose

• Quest for Camelot $5
• Powerpuff Girls Battle Him $8
• Driver $9
• Toy Story 2 $6
• Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (label damage) $12

GBA Video: loose

• GBA Video All Grown Up Volume 1 $6

GBA: loose

• Backyard Baseball $6
• Backyard Sports Baseball 2007 $5
• Cabelas Big Game Hunter $5
• Cartoon Network Speedway $5
• Cruis'n Velocity $10
• Danny Phantom The Ultimate Enemy $6
• Disney Princess $5
• Dora the Explorer Pirate Pigs Treasure $3
• Dora's World Adventure $3
• Duel Masters Kaijudo Showdown $10
• Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls $20
• Final Fantasy IV $25
• Final Fantasy V $45
• Finding Nemo the Continuing Adventures $7
• F-14 Tomcat $3
• Ford Racing 3 $5
• Froggers Adventures Temple of Frog $3
• Golden Sun $35
• Golden Sun: The Lost Age $40
• Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets $8
• Hot Wheels All Out (no label) $4
• Lego Bionicle $6
• Mario Kart Super Circuit $20
• Monster Truck Madness $7
• Midnight Club $5
• Midways Greatest Arcade Hits $7
• Namco Museum $7
• Nicktoons Freeze Frame Frenzy $6
• Pac-Man: Classic NES Series $10
• Pac-Man Collection $5
• Peter Pan Return to Neverland$7
• Pokemon Pinball (holographic repro label) $20
• Power Rangers Dino Thunder $5
• Power Rangers Wild Force(no label) $5
• Shark Tale/Shrek 2 2in1 $10
• Shrek Hassle at the Castle $5
• Spy Muppets License to Croak $6
• Spy Kids Challenger $6
• Spyhunter $10
• Star Wars Episode II $6
• Star Wars Episode III $11
• Sword of Mana $20
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (label damage) $4
• Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (label peeling)$5
• Trollz Hair Affair $3
• Wild Thornberrys Movie $5

GBA JP:Loose

• JP Dragon Ball Z $10

**Take all the Gameboys games for $200
GameGear: Loose

• Sonic the Hedgehog & Sonic the Hedgehog 2 $15

DS:

• My Sims Kingdom(loose) $5

If you see something you like, let me know. I'm sure we can strike a deal!
Thanks for checking out my wares!

Hi all, I have a bunch of games I'm looking to sell. Only accepting Paypal F&F at this time. Free shipping on orders of $50+, otherwise please add $5 for shipping costs. Photos available upon request!

System	Item	Condition	Price
32X	Primal Rage	Loose	$60.00
3DS	2DS XL turquoise / black modded	Loose	$200.00
3DS	3DS XL NES Edition box	Box only	$80.00
3DS	Amazing Spiderman	Loose	$12.00
3DS	Amazing Spiderman 2	Loose	$12.00
3DS	Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer	Loose	$13.00
3DS	Bravely Default	CIB	$36.00
3DS	Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past	Loose	$60.00
3DS	Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth	Loose	$48.00
3DS	Final Fantasy Explorers	CIB	$30.00
3DS	Fossil Fighters: Frontier	Loose	$32.00
3DS	Kid Icarus: Uprising	CIB	$80.00
3DS	Kid Icarus: Uprising	Loose	$60.00
3DS	Kirby: Planet Robobot	Loose	$39.00
3DS	Madagascar 3	CIB	$9.00
3DS	Mario Golf: World Tour	CIB	$64.00
3DS	Mario Golf: World Tour	Loose	$58.00
3DS	Nintendogs + Cats Golden Retriever and New Friends	Loose	$22.00
3DS	Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity	Loose	$26.00
3DS	Senran Kagura: Deep Crimson 2	Loose	$56.00
3DS	Sims 3 (Heavily damaged / punctured case)	Game + case	$14.00
3DS	Ultimate NES Remix	Loose	$15.00
amiibo	Ness amiibo	Loose	$25.00
amiibo	Splatoon amiibo 3-pack (crease along top of cardboard)	NIB	$50.00
Books	Horizon: Zero Dawn Collector's Edition guide	Loose	$120.00
Dreamcast	Maken X	CIB	$50.00
DS	Barbie Fashion Show: An Eye for Style	Loose	$8.00
DS	Bomberman	Loose	$13.00
DS	Elite Beat Agents	Loose	$15.00
DS	Final Fantasy IV	Loose	$18.00
DS	Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift	Loose	$33.00
DS	Fossil Fighters	Loose	$27.00
DS	Geometry Wars Galaxies	CIB	$9.00
DS	Legendary Starfy	Loose	$15.00
DS	Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga	CIB	$9.00
DS	My Hero Firefighter	CIB	$11.00
DS	Need for Speed: Pro Street	Loose	$9.00
DS	Pac-Man World 3	Loose	$11.00
DS	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	CIB	$7.00
DS	Plants vs Zombies	CIB	$13.00
DS	Plants vs Zombies	CIB	$15.00
DS	Plants vs Zombies	Loose	$11.00
DS	Pokemon Black	Loose	$70.00
DS	Pokemon Black 2	CIB	$165.00
DS	Pokemon Diamond case only	Case only	$20.00
DS	Pokemon White	CIB	$85.00
DS	Power Rangers Super Legends	CIB	$12.00
DS	Rhythm Heaven	Loose	$43.00
DS	Rockman ZX (JP)	Loose	$26.00
DS	Spongebob's Atlantis Squarepantis	CIB	$7.00
DS	Yoshi Touch & Go	Loose	$12.00
DS / 3DS	Lego bundle Battles, Indiana Jones, City Undercover, Friends	Loose	$12.00
GB	Pokemon Red (JP)	Loose	$15.00
GBA	Metroid Fusion (label fading, wear on box)	CIB	$100.00
GBA	Pokemon Ruby (heavy wear on box	CIB	$240.00
GBA	Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 box only	Box only	$35.00
GBA	Wolfenstein 3D	Loose	$25.00
GCN	Animal Crossing Memory Card (Some fading)	Loose	$18.00
GCN	Conflict: Desert Storm	Game + case	$11.00
GCN	Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix	Game + case	$23.00
GCN	Finding Nemo	Game + case	$5.00
GCN	Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup (Blockbuster case)	Game + case	$9.00
GCN	Metroid Prime 2: Echoes case w/ Nintendo Power insert	Case only	$20.00
GCN	Nascar: Dirt to Daytona	CIB	$14.00
GCN	NCAA Football 2005	CIB	$14.00
GCN	Resident Evil 0	CIB	$17.00
GCN	Resident Evil 4	CIB	$30.00
GCN	Resident Evil Zero	CIB	$19.00
GCN	Resident Evil Zero	Game + manual	$14.00
GCN	Super Smash Bros Melee (cracked inner ring)	Loose	$45.00
Genesis	6-Pak (label wear)	Loose	$10.00
Genesis	Madden NFL 98	Loose	$9.00
Genesis	RBI Baseball 4 (Damaged art / case)	Game + case	$6.00
Genesis	Road Rash 3 (tear in label)	Loose
Genesis	Turrican (label tears)	Loose	$15.00
Genesis	World of Illusion	CIB	$35.00
Genesis	World Series Baseball	Game + case	$6.00
Genesis	WWF Raw	Game + case	$22.00
Genesis	X-Men (faded label)	Loose	$9.00
N64	Banjo Tooie (Not For Resale)	Loose	$150.00
N64	Donkey Kong 64 (JP)	Loose	$12.00
N64	ED64 Plus	NIB	$100.00
N64	Hey You, Pikachu! (JP)	Loose	$7.00
N64	Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask manual (N64)	Manual	$30.00
N64	Mario Kart 64 (Player's Choice)	CIB	$100.00
N64	Mario Party 2 (JP)	Loose	$8.00
N64	Mario Tennis (JP)	Loose	$9.00
NES	Gauntlet	Game + manual	$25.00
NES	T&C Surf Designs	Loose	$8.00
PS1	Bass Landing	CIB	$18.00
PS1	Brave Fencer Musashi	Loose	$55.00
PS1	Coolboarders 3	CIB	$6.00
PS1	Crash Bandicoot Warped	Loose	$6.00
PS1	Destruction Derby Raw	Loose	$11.00
PS1	Final Fantasy IX	Game + case	$16.00
PS1	Final Fantasy Tactics (Greatest Hits)	CIB	$50.00
PS1	Incredible Hulk (No cover art / manual)	Game + case	$11.00
PS1	Loaded	Loose	$10.00
PS1	Mega Man X6	Game + manual	$35.00
PS1	NHL Rock the Rink	CIB	$9.00
PS1	Parasite Eve (no demo disc)	CIB	$75.00
PS1	Resident Evil (longbox)(Cracked case and some art damage)	Game + case	$100.00
PS1	Revolution X (longbox)	CIB	$29.00
PS1	Rugrats: Search for Reptar	CIB	$18.00
PS1	Streak: Hoverboard Racing	CIB	$8.00
PS1	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater	Game + manual	$10.00
PS1	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2	Game + case	$10.00
PS1	Urban Chaos	Loose	$8.00
PS1	WWE Smackdown 2 (No cover art / manual)	Game + case	$10.00
PS1	WWF Attitude	CIB	$10.00
PS1	WWF WrestleMania The Arcade Game	Loose	$13.00
PS2	Another Century's Episode (JP)	CIB	$12.00
PS2	Art of Fighting Anthology (Water damaged art)	CIB	$12.00
PS2	Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2	CIB	$7.00
PS2	Dragon Quest VIII	Game + case	$20.00
PS2	Fight Club	CIB	$10.00
PS2	Fight Night Round 2	CIB	$10.00
PS2	Fight Night Round 3	CIB	$9.00
PS2	Frogger: The Great Quest	CIB	$7.00
PS2	Guitar Hero III	CIB	$13.00
PS2	Guitar Hero: Aerosmith	CIB	$9.00
PS2	King Arthur	CIB	$10.00
PS2	King of Fighters: Maximum Impact	Loose	$10.00
PS2	Medal of Honor European Assault	CIB	$8.00
PS2	Midnight Club (Sharpie on disc)	Game + case	$6.00
PS2	Mortal Kombat: Deception Premium Pack	Game + case	$25.00
PS2	Namco Museum	CIB	$7.00
PS2	NFL Street 2	CIB	$20.00
PS2	Onimusha 3: Demon Siege	Loose	$10.00
PS2	Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2	CIB	$11.00
PS2	Resident Evil 4	CIB	$15.00
PS2	Resident Evil Outbreak	Game + case	$18.00
PS2	Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2	Loose	$40.00
PS2	Sega Classics Collection	Game + case	$11.00
PS2	Silent Hill 2 (no music CD)	CIB	$120.00
PS2	Silent Hill 2 manual (Crease on top right corner)	Manual	$30.00
PS2	Silent Hill 3	CIB	$150.00
PS2	SSX	CIB	$8.00
PS2	Star Wars Racer: Revenge	CIB	$10.00
PS2	Tekken 4 GH	CIB	$11.00
PS2	Tekken Tag Tournament	Loose	$6.00
PS2	The Great Escape	CIB	$10.00
PS2	The Thing	Loose	$22.00
PS2	Thrillville	CIB	$6.00
PS2	Thrillville	CIB	$6.00
PS2	Thunderstrike: Operation Phoenix	CIB	$6.00
PS2	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4	Game + case	$7.00
PS2	Tony Hawk's Underground 2	CIB	$17.00
PS2	WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2006	CIB	$12.00
PS3	Amazing Spiderman 2	Loose	$18.00
PS3	Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel Overkill Edition	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Batman Arkham Origins	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Binary Domain	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Borderlands 2	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel	CIB	$6.00
PS3	Burnout Paradise	CIB	$8.00
PS3	Call of Duty Ghosts	CIB	$5.00
PS3	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2	Game + case	$5.00
PS3	Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3	CIB	$7.00
PS3	Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood	CIB	$7.00
PS3	Dark Sector	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Darkness	CIB	$16.00
PS3	Dirt 3	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Disney Sing It Family Hits	CIB	$9.00
PS3	Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition	Game + case	$14.00
PS3	Earth Defense Force 2025	Loose	$14.00
PS3	Fallout 3 GOTY	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Final Fantasy X / X-2 Collector's Edition (coffee stains on book)	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Grand Slam Tennis 2	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Hitman Absolution	CIB	$6.00
PS3	Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Lair	CIB	$7.00
PS3	Madden NFL 17	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain Day One Edition	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Minecraft	Game + case	$11.00
PS3	MLB 13: The Show	CIB	$5.00
PS3	Mortal Kombat	Game + case	$9.00
PS3	Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja: Storm 2	CIB	$7.00
PS3	NBA 2K16	CIB	$9.00
PS3	NCAA Football 12	CIB	$8.00
PS3	NCAA Football 12	CIB	$8.00
PS3	NCAA Football 13 (Water damaged art and manual)	CIB	$22.00
PS3	NCAA Football 14 (wavy art, minor disc art damage)	CIB	$125.00
PS3	Persona 4 Arena (Wavy cover art)	CIB	$16.00
PS3	Persona 5	Game + case	$14.00
PS3	PS Move navigation controller	NIB	$35.00
PS3	Remember Me	CIB	$12.00
PS3	Resident Evil 5	Game + case	$5.00
PS3	Rocksmith 2014	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Sega Rally Revo	CIB	$14.00
PS3	Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes	CIB	$20.00
PS3	Skate 2	CIB	$12.00
PS3	Skate 3	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Skyrim: Legendary Edition	CIB	$9.00
PS3	Soulcalibur IV	CIB	$10.00
PS3	Street Fighter IV (water damaged art)	CIB	$9.00
PS3	Tekken 6	CIB	$11.00
PS3	Tekken Hybrid	CIB	$32.00
PS3	Tekken Tag Tournament 2	CIB	$17.00
PS3	Top Spin 4	CIB	$14.00
PS3	Two Worlds II (Water damaged art)	CIB	$8.00
PS3	UFC 2009 Undisputed	Loose	$5.00
PS3	UFC 2010 Undisputed	CIB	$8.00
PS3	Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3	CIB	$19.00
PS3	Ultra Street Fighter IV	Game + case	$25.00
PS3	Ultra Street Fighter IV	CIB	$27.00
PS3	Uncharted 3	CIB	$6.00
PS3	Vampire Resurrection (JP)	CIB	$58.00
PS3	Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine	CIB	$19.00
PS3	Watchmen: The End is Night The Complete Experience	CIB	$36.00
PS3	Wolfenstein	Game + case	$12.00
PS3	WWE 2K16	CIB	$13.00
PS4	Abzu	Game + case	$13.00
PS4	Borderlands: The Handsome Collection	Game + case	$6.00
PS4	Dragon Ball Xenoverse	CIB	$10.00
PS4	God of War	CIB	$13.00
PS4	Horizon Forbidden West Launch Edition	CIB	$28.00
PS4	Lego Dimensions	CIB	$29.00
PS4	Minecraft	Game + case	$16.00
PS4	Paper Beast Collector's Edition	NIB	$62.00
PS4	Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville	CIB	$9.00
PS4	Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville	CIB	$9.00
PS4	Ratchet and Clank	Game + case	$9.00
PS4	Risk of Rain 2	CIB	$12.00
PS4	Rocket League: Collector's Edition	CIB	$13.00
PS4	West of Dead: Path of the Crow	NIB	$28.00
PS5	Life is Strange: True Colors	CIB	$15.00
PSP	ATV Offroad Fury Pro	CIB	$7.00
PSP	Bad Boys	Game + case	$8.00
PSP	Burnout Legends	Loose	$7.00
PSP	God of War: Ghost of Sparta	Loose	$41.00
PSP	Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition	Loose	$20.00
PSP	Midnight Club: LA Remix	Loose	$17.00
PSP	Need for Speed Rivals	Loose	$11.00
PSP	Need for Speed: Most Wanted 5-1-0 (clear piece set in slightly)	Loose	$12.00
PSP	Need for Speed: Pro Street (water damaged art)	Game + case	$8.00
PSP	Pimp My Ride	Loose	$8.00
PSP	Sonic Rivals	Loose	$12.00
PSP	Star Wars Battlefront II	Loose	$10.00
PSP	Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (Clear shell)	Loose	$15.00
SNES	Brain Lord	Loose	$50.00
SNES	Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers	Loose	$14.00
SNES	Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers	Loose	$14.00
SNES	Robocop vs The Terminator	Loose	$23.00
SNES	TMNT IV: Turtles in Time	Loose	$45.00
SNES	Top Gear	Loose	$11.00
Switch	Fitness Boxing 2	NIB	$30.00
Switch	Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild	CIB	$40.00
Switch	Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order	CIB	$34.00
Switch	Pokemon Shining Pearl	CIB	$30.00
Switch	Spyro Reignitied Trilogy	NIB	$25.00
Switch	Super Mario 3D All-Stars	CIB	$80.00
Vita	Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified	Loose	$17.00
Vita	Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified	Loose	$17.00
Vita	Lego Batman 2	Loose	$9.00
Vita	Litte Big Planet	Loose	$20.00
Vita	Need for Speed Most Wanted	Loose	$16.00
Vita	Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale	Loose	$17.00
Vita	Soul Sacrifice	Loose	$15.00
Wii	007 Quantum of Solace	CIB	$5.00
Wii	Alice in Wonderland	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Disney Princess: My Fairytale Adventure	CIB	$14.00
Wii	Disney Sing It Family Hits	CIB	$12.00
Wii	Dokapon Kingdom	Loose	$60.00
Wii	Family Game Night 4	CIB	$12.00
Wii	Freddi Fish: Kelp Seed Mystery	CIB	$11.00
Wii	Gold classic controller	Loose	$40.00
Wii	Guitar Hero 5	Game + case	$16.00
Wii	Guitar Hero Aerosmith	CIB	$9.00
Wii	Hot Wheels: Track Attack	CIB	$7.00
Wii	Just Dance Kids	CIB	$6.00
Wii	Just Dance Summer Party	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Karaoke Revolution	CIB	$8.00
Wii	My Ballet Studio	Game + case	$8.00
Wii	My Sims Racing	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution	CIB	$8.00
Wii	NBA Jam	CIB	$12.00
Wii	Nights Journey of Dreams (back art punctured)	Game + case	$8.00
Wii	No More Heroes 2	CIB	$23.00
Wii	Resident Evil : The Umbrella Chronicles	CIB	$14.00
Wii	Tony Hawk Ride	Game + case	$10.00
Wii	Tony Hawk: Shred	CIB	$8.00
Wii	Wii Play Motion	Game + case	$19.00
Wii	You Don't Know Jack	CIB	$9.00
Wii	Zelda Wii Remote (no battery cover)	Loose	$40.00
Wii U	Tekken Tag Tournament 2	Loose	$38.00
Xbox	Battlestar Galactica	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Buffy The Vampire Slayer	Game + case	$17.00
Xbox	Burnout 2: Point of Impact	CIB	$11.00
Xbox	Crime Life	Game + case	$11.00
Xbox	Destroy All Humans!	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Enclave	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Gun	CIB	$8.00
Xbox	Half-Life 2	Game + case	$10.00
Xbox	House of the Dead III	Loose	$13.00
Xbox	Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb	CIB	$15.00
Xbox	Midway Arcade Treasures	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Minority Report	CIB	$7.00
Xbox	Mortal Kombat: Deception Kollector's Edition: Baraka Version	CIB	$48.00
Xbox	Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks	CIB	$28.00
Xbox	Namco Museum	CIB	$7.00
Xbox	Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones	CIB	$6.00
Xbox	Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy	CIB	$11.00
Xbox	Spiderman	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Spiderman 2	CIB	$12.00
Xbox	Star Trek: Shattered Universe	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Star Wars Jedi Starfighter	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Star Wars Jedi Starfighter	CIB	$10.00
Xbox	Star Wars Starfighter Special Edition	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Star Wars: The Clone Wars	CIB	$7.00
Xbox	Terminator 3: Redemption	CIB	$19.00
Xbox	Terminator: Dawn of Fate	CIB	$8.00
Xbox	Time Splitters 2	CIB	$15.00
Xbox	Time Splitters: Future Perfect	Loose	$20.00
Xbox	Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x	Game + case	$10.00
Xbox	Tony Hawk's Project 8	CIB	$12.00
Xbox	Tron 2.0 Killer App	CIB	$13.00
Xbox	Turok Evolution	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	Ultimate Spiderman	CIB	$27.00
Xbox	Unreal Championship	Loose	$3.00
Xbox	Urbz: Sims in the City Special Edition	CIB	$9.00
Xbox	WWF Raw	Game + case	$8.00
Xbox	X-Men Legends	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	Alan Wake	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	Avatar: The Game	CIB	$42.00
Xbox 360	Batman: Arkham City GOTY	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	Blue Dragon	Loose	$13.00
Xbox 360	Borderlands 2 Add-On Content Pack	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	CSI: Hard Evidence	CIB	$9.00
Xbox 360	Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two	CIB	$7.00
Xbox 360	Fable III: Limited Collector's Edition	CIB	$12.00
Xbox 360	Final Fantasy XIII	CIB	$14.00
Xbox 360	Gears of War: Limited Collector's Edition	CIB	$28.00
Xbox 360	Gears of War: Limited Collector's Edition (no plastic sleeve or art book)	CIB	$24.00
Xbox 360	Halo 3 Collector's Edition (one disc holder fell off)	CIB	$12.00
Xbox 360	Infinite Undiscovery	Game + case	$10.00
Xbox 360	Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights	Game + case	$10.00
Xbox 360	Kinect Sports Ultimate Collection	CIB	$13.00
Xbox 360	Kinect Sports: Ultimate Collection	CIB	$14.00
Xbox 360	Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom	CIB	$9.00
Xbox 360	Lego The Hobbit	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	Midnight Club: Los Angeles (Blockbuster case)	CIB	$9.00
Xbox 360	Monster Jam: Path of Destruction	Game + case	$22.00
Xbox 360	NCAA Football 08	CIB	$6.00
Xbox 360	Ninety-Nine Nights (sharpie on disc)	CIB	$9.00
Xbox 360	Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures	Game + case	$10.00
Xbox 360	Rocksmith	CIB	$10.00
Xbox 360	Skylanders: Giants	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	Snoopy's Grand Adventure	Game + case	$8.00
Xbox 360	Spiderman 3	Loose	$14.00
Xbox 360	Star Wars: The Force Unleashed	CIB	$6.00
Xbox 360	Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (PAL)	CIB	$5.00
Xbox 360	Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan	Loose	$19.00
Xbox 360	Walking Dead GOTY	CIB	$8.00
Xbox 360	Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine	Loose	$10.00
Xbox 360	Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition	Game + case	$15.00
Xbox One	Grand Theft Auto V	CIB	$10.00
Xbox One	Guitar Hero Live	Game + case	$35.00
Xbox One	Guitar Hero Live (punctured back art)	Game + case	$30.00
Xbox One	Just Dance 2020	Game + case	$6.00
Xbox One	Kinect Sports Rivals	Game + case	$12.00
Xbox One	Marvel Avengers	CIB	$8.00
Xbox One	Red Dead Redemption Game of the Year Edition	CIB	$14.00
Xbox One	Resident Evil 2 Deluxe Edition	CIB	$26.00
Xbox One	Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order Deluxe Edition	CIB	$15.00

So this Is my personal experience with PVZ shooters, I used to play GW2 back in the day when it came out and just recently started again and it's really fun,(pirate imp is best). But I also recently got BFN as it was free with EA plus. I've had it for about a week and this is my experience. So far my first thing is, DONT GO TO GIDDY. after doing the main "story" you get dropped into on the plants side I loaded into the main lobby and immediately went go giddy as I saw real people going there and to my surprise it was active to I wanted to interact. I was over the week met with constant sweaty people, spaming emotes, glitching out, hiding everywhere, 3 citrons, 4 cactus with drones, acorns in trees the works and it was a terrible experience, now to my fault I went back because it seemed it leveled my characters really quickly, even when I didnt want to go to giddy I was also met with wizards standing all around the booths and crashing people constantly to no end, my favorite character(TV Head) I also learned had an ability just locked out completely and no styles even the universal ones didnt go on. Team vanqish was annoying at first with chomper spams and acorns but after I got better has been kinda enjoyable, the "story" free Rome maps are super fun and have alot to do, though I made the mistake of taking on the Unyielding Gnight as a zombie and I found only the Football one can actually win it, which brings me to another thought that all the plants have big advantages and the zombies really only have one (Brain Dead Supe) amd feel the zombies take a backseat to all the cool stuff plants have, i mean the cactus is basically a deadbeard clone and he has more advantages like a spam attack and small drone and bomb placing and straight up flying while Deadbeard falls behind also Acorns so small and annoyingly fast. All in all my Opinion on PvE is its pretty great the ai is pretty aim botty but its fun and i have had a nice experience with the funny dialogue and cool objectives. PvP wise I simply wish it wasn't abandoned so they could fix the constant crashes and lobby kicks, and a report button for the glitch spammers. I believe the game would be way more fun if the toxic players weren't given a free roam to be unchecked and they didn't lock out upgrades simply because of a bug and not fixing it. I feel if it was still given attention it would honestly be a great game and I'm not sure why the developer's don't see that. My final thoughts are, Give more skins for TV Head he is the bestest of all the boys and don't go to giddy and please remove the wizard glitch seriously people just stand around and do nothing but crash its pathetic. If I missed things or you want to correct me go ahead im really new and still don't know much. Also this game made me just hate plants, in my eyes the zombies are the good guys, these plants need to be weeded out.

Note: This is a series I want to create, centred around some given element or facet of worldbuilding and storytelling. Primarily, each post will either be a piece of hard science in terms of physics or logistics or otherwise core elements of the setting itself (such as military structure), or non-physical core elements of the people and their world (such as sports and personal enjoyment matters, for emotional regulation and social stability, among other reasons). In short: all the things that actually create a functional, realistic culture.
A random (meaning, I have just picked it at random for today), often overlooked element within space opera (and sci-fi in general) would be all things recreational. You might not find a good way to heavily feature this into your (say) novel, game, or screenplay, but it can be something to just touch upon, and have in your notes, as it will at least indirectly relate to the wider world you're building (so, it's worth knowing, as the author).
The logic is very simple: using humanity as a fundamental base (technically, an axiom), we can conclude that any humanoid or even alien species would have to gift themselves some kind of national sport, wargame, gambling system, or otherwise. The real-world examples literally encompass almost all of culture itself, making me believe that if your people are even remotely humanoid in their fundamental nature, then the recreational is a core facet of culture itself. This is so integrated into our real culture (rather, cultures) that we take it for granted, and don't even think about it when it comes to fiction-writing. But, it's a nice thing to add if you want added realism and stability, or an extra human touch.
For whatever reason, fantasy seems to feature invented sports and the like far more than sci-fi (unless such is the entire narrative of the sci-fi story, of course -- and, then, it's typically car-based). If we look to history, we clearly have the very creation of modern dice (India) as a gambling tool, and we have wargames (Go and Chess, etc.) as either direct military training tools (wargames proper), or abstracted wargames for more general use, since at least 3000 BC. Sports-wise, we see Blood Bowl (Warhammer fantasy sports game), Quidditch (fantasy; Harry Potter, which is akin to football mixed with netball in the air), and a dozen major examples from sci-fi, often featuring murder and cars (which we could see as a kind of replacement for the Roman and Greek sports), or else some kind of American sport hybrid. These include Real Steel, Futuresport, The Running Man, Rollerball, and Death Race (also, movies by the same names).
The aforementioned are obviously plot devices, and possibly don't have a place within your space opera setting and story. But, the fundamental drive and psychology are there. There are a few other examples from sci-fi board games and novels. Not to mention general sports and activities, such as Swimming.
Personally, I have made my national sport and recreation activity Swimming. The reason is four-fold: (1) it is a driver for both health and relaxation; (2) it can be social and peaceful; (3) for symbolic reasons; and (4) because there is likely not much water in space, yet humans still have a deep drive towards water (naturally, this is only applicable to any water-based culture, such as humans). It also occurs to me that water is a natural fitting for space, more so, if we take the TV trope, 'space is an ocean' (which does seem to be the natural categorisation, though it's not the only one). Another reason might be that it creates a reward system/social mobility, or at least the implication of such. Maybe, boarding a spaceship and taking a trip to the 'local' Swimming Centre is the week's holiday for your lower class people. On the other hand, maybe the high class types sit in Swimming Centres all the time. Not an uncommon trend throughout both fiction and history, as you might imagine.
That's just my own example, and may act as a springboard (no pun intended). You can justify dozens of real sports and otherwise activities, or invent your own. They may be readily accessible, or limited to certain classes of people or otherwise groups. There will likely be many different activities and sports for all your peoples, just as we see on Earth.
If you're writing a novel, just one trip to one sports centre or otherwise will do the trick, assuming you have planted in the reader's mind the notion that this is very normal and healthy for the culture/people. Best is to try and fit it into the wider plot, or else as a passing element (a few pages). One natural way to deal with this is to tie such into a wider theme or plot-point. Don't just have people randomly go Swimming just to inform the readers that they are Swimming. You need to work it in a bit better than that.
Depending on your culture, you may want a dozen violent/unhealthy sports and activities, or you (i.e. your culture's governing body, etc.) may only regulate more peaceful, healthy ones. I would try and tie this into the wider theme, anyway, and take into account the kind of people/culture you have. For example, you may or may not want Football with ant-like robots. On the other hand, bottle-tossing for big space Russians always sounds like a fun game.
If your culture is based on Americans or Hongkongian, for example, then you should think about their native sports and activities, and how that might fit into whatever you're doing with them in space/the future. Other than that, you need to consider the (a) disposition of your culture; (b) the history of your culture; (c) the function of your culture; (d) the state of your culture; and (e) the peoples of your culture. Although this is not an exhaustive list, it should suffice.
It also occurs to me, we just don't see enough sports in space outside of these movies/stories that are wholly dedicated to said sports, which is weird considering how sport-obsessed humans have become since 500 BC (but, especially since 1920 AD). This is often in relation to the ruling classes in rich, urban settings (cities/towns), or the average citizens in urban areas, finding a bit more free time on their hands (i.e. Scotland and England circa 1920 AD). Makes sense: you have bored, work-less nobles, or even workers with nothing to do. They need something to do; thus, they invented all sorts of games, wargames, and sports. You see this with horse-related games, ball-related games, and even something like fox tossing. Tennis was 'the game' (popular sport) of the middle classes and above by the 1880s through the 1980s (hence, most early video sports games of the 1950s through 1970s were all Tennis-based). Worth noting that most early video games were themselves sports games or wargames! Actually, most video games are wargames circa 2023 AD, with a vast number of the rest being sports. I stress this only to stress the importance of such things to human culture and entertainment... indeed, most of our entertainment is also either war-based (Boxing, etc.) or otherwise sports (Football, etc.). Not shockingly, most modern sports were invented, therefore, in the British Empire (sometimes with French or Dutch roots). Older sports are seemingly universal -- ranging from Africa to Native Americans to India -- and are typically ball-based (classically, often using heads, or else leather balls).
Of course, most sports are impossible in zero gravity, so I'm just assuming you're creating some kind of zero gravity war-based game, or otherwise sport (fundamentally throwing-based or ball-based), or your culture is on a planet or space station of some kind, which has artificial gravity.
Tron is a great example of offering some inspiration (duel type, and others), not to mention Spy Kids 3D (car race), Speed Racer (car race), and Ready Player One (car race). Then, you have combat training type games (I'll just call these 'physical wargames') and VR games (Gamer movie, for example), not to mention VR holiday trips.
Speaking of which, I'm reminded of Germany's vast, cheap, powerful cruise trip system by 1938, which saw millions of working (and fairly poor) Germans taking such Party-run trips and holidays (mostly a propaganda tool, funded with blood money, of course). In the more modern context, this is what we saw by the 1950s in America and England with various holiday sites, theme parks, modern cruise trips, and beach holidays (though these do date to at least 1920, but typically only by the middle classes and above). No less, Tolkien himself once came on holiday to the town I live in (on the coast, North of England), which was a famous holiday town back in the 1850s through 1960s. This was commonplace, including long walks through the woods and various built-up areas. Even in the 1700s, people began going to the 'sea air' for so-called health benefits. In reality, this was likely due to the fact the city air was unhealthy. The sea air was simply fresh, clean air (though, it likely is good for you, psychologically speaking, compared to the grey-state of city life). All of this to say that humans have a deep desire to be in nature, and to relax. This is true most of all for the rich and urbanised (as you can imagine).
Space theme park, anyone? Giant cinema on the Moon? Sure, why not. Titanic cruise trip across the galaxy? Doctor Who already did that, but you get my point! There is much to be done, and you only have to add a few such items, and briefly touch upon them, but I think it does wonders for the human connection, and some added realism (assuming such correctly fits your setting and themes).
There are many other activities of note, of course, including but not limited to art groups, acting/plays, drinking games, general board/video games, card/dice/token games, sword-based sports, hunting, Shooting (sport), and actual warfare.
The only other thing I should like to say is that gambling is not always wholly a negative, nor drinking. These ensure that people have something to do at the end of eacfh day/week, without rioting against the system or going insane/depressed. Gambling and drinking are about as old as modern culture itself (at least 7,000 years), so it's not a trivial matter. You may or may not want these in your setting in some manner: think that the key positive function to gambling is social mobility, as it allows poor people to climb up the social ladder by winning large sums of money (or, rather, gives them the hope of such). However, this needs to be contained, because (a) you actually need people to climb the social ladder, unless they are kept there; and (b) studies indicate that gambling doesn't actually work in this way, as most winners fall back to zero after 12 months. This assumes you have some kind of social caste system, which is money-driven, of course (which is very common). Drinking is simple: it keeps men off the streets and not as depressed, which is very good for a functional culture (despite the major negative social (and health) impacts of drinking itself according to studies). Alcohol comes to us via the Arabic, and I read that it comes from at least 7,000 BC. I read that gambling stems from many games/betting from 'knucklebones' (goats/sheep, mostly, around the Near East, then India, China, Greece, etc.), around 5000 BC (at least). I'm not sure if this was purely for gambling purposes, or the later form of divination (hence, the origin of dice). We still treat dice (such as in modern board games) as if we are fighting the gods of fate... as if we are making a bet with the future itself. This is part of 'divination', at least. This makes sense, if you think about it in a Jungian and Darwinian context (most of all, of the typical male brain pattern of high risk and high reward, clearly stemming from hunting). This would be pure speculation, but I like to think that these early gamblers were betting on Fate, struggling with the spirits of the animals of said bones (goats/sheep), maybe trying to get good omen/luck from them. We have certainly seen a great deal of such activity in the past, as evidenced by cave paintings and various omen rituals. I believe a future space human culture would have such things in place, too, just in different ways.
Right now, for example, the major form of gambling is hitting young boys via video games and their 'loot crate' systems, which is actually very dangerous and often illegal. These are almost always on war-driven games, so the connection back to hunting goats and bone-dice is not such a leap -- it's just a simulated, digital, nested form. Another major form of gambling over the last few decaes has been Boxing, which is literal combat/fighting between man. If your space opera has a primary focus on actual warfare, however, I think such sports and games are unneeded (for the most part). Only within a non-war context would your culture require such replacements (i.e. sports and wargames), but I do believe the royals/nobles of your setting would have such activities, as they are likely to have great amounts of free time, and not actively enage in warfare (though, you could primarily fill their time with politics and/or religion).
I have said enough for today. Ah, speaking of which: talking might be another consideration for your culture. This is literally as old as man, and does count as such an activity in the context of debate. You famously find this within the Jewish and Islamic worlds: likely because they don't enage with the other items I mentioned as much, and their religions require great moral debate and such. On the other hand, Buddhism requires a lot of silent thinking (which is a kind of debate, in a sense). This heavily depends on your culture's primary religion and otherwise. Some cultures are almost purely geared towards warfare, for example, like the Akkadian Empire (though we are likely a bit harsh on that). In this case, the focus would be on action. If your culture is anything like the modern West, then it's also going to be heavily driven by action, purely due to the speed of the culture and its workers. How this manifests itself depends on the type of government and culture you have in place (the Dutch Empire vs. the U.S., for example).
I'm sure I've forgotten a few key items and categories, and I'm sorry for that!
(Clearly, within a cyberpunk direction or more classical space opera context, the primary free-time activities and modes tend to be centred around sex, war, and/or slave-labour, as shown by Star Wars in general, for example. This may or may not fit your world and story, however. The other core negative item would be gambling, which is the only item which doesn't innately involve the body, though often bleeds over into various animal gambling games/activities. You may find that you have certain sci-fi/space creatures in your world, for example, and find yourself creating a gambling game out of that. Typically, you either make said creatures fight each other or race/run. This typically keeps the more lower classes engaged in the 'slums' sector (typically of a planet). Very common trope/theme, as noted in the bright-cyberpunk-space-opera sort of movie, The Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), when they go to a trading hub planet, filled with crime, sex rings, and gambling, including little weird creatures fighting each other, akin to dog fighting or such on Earth. But, again: you don't actually require this, it's just one popular way to go within the wider sci-fi context, and it serves a few purposes, in-universe.)

It was a tight fight for both the 1st and 3rd spot until the final day today. With two teams fighting for #1 and 6 teams fighting for the last place on the podium.
Congratulations to "The Bee Team" for winning the Fjantasy Fjootball league!
Also congrats to False Eto'o for their 2nd place, and Eventon for their 3rd place.
(sidenote): I had sort of a personal battle to beat Eventon, since they are from the same country as myself. Ultimately I ended up in 4th place, unable to close the gap to place on the podium on the final day. Here's hoping that the league owner will run it back next year. I have need of revenge, so don't feel too safe Eventon :)

Another Madden $70 re-skin is upon us, so let's take a moment to explore the history of all the people who have been featured on the cover of an pro football video game.
While the selection of the Madden cover athlete is now an event, there was a wild wild west period of football games from the 80s to the mid-2000s where anybody with a computer could and would build football games, with the selection of the cover being all over the place. Roger Craig was the first cover athlete in 1985 on NFL Challenge for MS-DOS. Madden's first game was in 1988, then by the mid-90s getting a cover athlete or spokesman for your football game was pretty standard.
I wanted to compile those games and covers based on this Wiki article (and a few that it was missing from that list) and see who was on the main cover of all of those games (some games were almost completely irrelevant, so I left them off this list). Some of these may have more alternates with other people, but I'll stick with the main cover.

Covers by Position

https://preview.redd.it/1dzua4o2hl2b1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=023c573335e64d21fccc937a44db0ae995510db6
*These are heavily boosted by John Madden being on 10 Madden covers
Obviously QBs dominate here, but I didn't realize how little defensive players have been on football game covers (9%), with none being on a cover since Richard Sherman in 2014. I'd love to see more defensive players on the Madden cover. Who would be the most likely defensive guy in the near future? Aaron Donald, TJ Watt, Nick Bosa, Myles Garrett, or Sauce Gardner?

Covers by Team

https://preview.redd.it/8f29df4ygl2b1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=3b93f8a4ddb26b2cee1f6abd74652f44b7fbfdcb
If a team's player was not a lead on the cover or was not any identifiable player, I gave them a *
The Re-skins/Commanders?, Jags, Panthers, and Bills have appeared on a cover but never with an athlete as the lead or with a real person. Only the Texans have never appeared at all on the cover of any football video game. I'd say the Bills are most likely to get one next (Josh Allen), then the Jags (Trevor Lawrence), then the Panthers/Texans if either hits a home run with Young or Stroud. The Commanders have a long road ahead to getting a feature cover athlete, unless you ask Sam Howell who thinks he should be this year's Madden cover athlete.

Most Prolific Cover People

https://preview.redd.it/5axoymcakl2b1.png?width=2871&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=9ecf9c52cad0647d1572d2d9c85ebdef0dd277c3
Kordell Stewart, Daunte Culpepper, and Donovan McNabb (and possibly Lamar Jackson, still too early for him) are the only players with multiple appearances that are either not or are unlikely to make the Hall of Fame. McNabb is the only guy to appear in multiple covers in the same year. Also of note, 7 athletes were on a cover without ever making a pro bowl in their careers: Brad Muster, Pat Terrell, Gordon Laro, Chris Zorich, Albert Fontenot, William Floyd, and Peyton Hillis (Hillis was the only one to be the primary cover athlete).
I'll list all the games and their respective covers by their era below. I'll also attach some of my favorite covers from each era. If the cover person was a Hall of Famer, I'll mark them with a ^\). If they're very likely to make the HoF but they're not yet eligible, I'll mark them with a ⁺

Covers by Era

Decade	# of Games	# of Games w/Cover Athletes	# of Cover Athletes
60s	1	0	0
70s	4	0	0
80s	11	2 (18%)	2
90s	36	32 (89%)	21
00s	40	38 (95%)	36
10s	14	10 (71%)	12
20s	8	4 (50%)	5
Total	114	86 (75%)	76

We didn't see the first cover athlete until 1985 with Roger Craig. They didn't really become standard until the early to mid-90s after Madden became a big selling point for the early Madden games. The dip in the last 2 decades is because there's just less games, so any generic football games will have a large effect.

The Early Days: 1965-1982

1978: Football! for the Magnavox Odyssey 2 was the first football video game with a cover, but obviously the cover athletes are generic.

Year	Game	Cover Athlete	Team	Position
1965	FTBALL	NA	NA	NA
1972	Football (Magnavox)	NA	NA	NA
1978	Football!	Generic players	NA	NA
1978	Football (Atari)	Generic players	NA	NA
1979	NFL Football	Generic players	NA	NA
1982	Realsports: Football	Generic players	NA	NA

The 2D Era: 1983-1996

1985: NFL Challenge was the first football game with a real cover athlete (Roger Craig). This was the original bar for realism in football simulation, to where it was used in a 1988 ESPN Program \"NFL Dream Season\" where they simulated the greatest teams of all time against each other.
1988: John Madden Football released on the Apple II, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64/128 (partly being developed by Bethesda), which was the beginning of the most dominant franchise in football video games. They featured no NFL teams due to a lack of an NFL license.
1991: Tecmo Super Bowl is probably still my personal favorite football video game. It's totally timeless, and if you pick the Raiders then you're a cheater.

Year	Game	Cover Athlete	Team	Position
1983	10-Yard Fight	Generic Jersey	NA	NA
1984	Super Action Football	Generic player	NA	NA
1985	NFL Challenge	Roger Craig	49ers	RB
1987	4th & Inches	Generic players	NA	NA
1987	Tecmo Bowl	Generic players	NA	NA
1988	TV Sports: Football	Generic player	NA	NA
1988	John Madden Football ('88)	John Madden*	None	John Madden
1989	ABC Monday Night Football	Generic player	NA	NA
1989	NFL	Generic players	49ers, Raiders, Oilers, Broncos, Re-skins	NA
1989	PlayMaker Football	Equipment	NA	NA
1990	Joe Montana Football	Joe Montana*	None	QB
1990	John Madden Football ('90)	John Madden*	None	John Madden
1991	John Madden Football II (or '92)	John Madden*	None	John Madden
1991	Tecmo Super Bowl	Generic player	NA	NA
1992	NFL Sports Talk Football '93	Joe Montana*	49ers	QB
1992	Front Page Sports Football	Generic players	NA	NA
1993	Capcom's MVP Football	Brad Muster	Bears	FB
1993	Madden NFL '94	John Madden*	NA	HC/Announcer
1993	NFL Football '94 Starring Joe Montana	Joe Montana*	Chiefs	QB
1993	Mutant League Football	Mutant	NA	NA
1994	ESPN Sunday Night NFL	Chris Berman	NA	Announcer
1994	Madden NFL '95	John Madden*	NA	John Madden
1994	Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition	Generic player	Cowboys	NA
1994	Troy Aikman NFL Football	Troy Aikman*	Cowboys	QB
1995	Emmitt Smith Football	Emmitt Smith*	None	RB
1995	Madden NFL '96	John Madden*, Pat Terrell, Gordon Laro	NA, Panthers, Jags	John Madden, DB, TE
1995	NFL Quarterback Club 96	Steve Young*, Chris Zorich, Albert Fontenot	49ers, Bears	QB, DL
1995	Sterling Sharpe: End 2 End	Sterling Sharpe	None	WR
1995	Tecmo Super Bowl III: Final Edition	Generic players	Raiders, Bills	NA
1995	NFL GameDay	William Floyd	49ers	FB
1996	Madden NFL 97	John Madden*	NA	John Madden
1996	NFL '97	Kordell Stewart	Steelers	QB
1996	NFL Quarterback Club 97	Dan Marino*	Dolphins	QB
1996	NFL GameDay '97	Daryl "Moose" Johnston	Cowboys	FB

​

The Parity Era: 1997-2004

1997: NFL Blitz came from Midway studios and was a breath of fresh air for football games. They had mostly been stagnant trying to hone in on realistic simulation in 2D form, whereas Blitz came out in 3D and threw realism out the window. I definitely spent too much money on the arcade version of this game.
2000: Madden 2001 started the tradition of having their games feature a cover athlete in this format, which consolidated into nearly everyone following this trend.
2001: Backyard Football 2002 was a more kid-friendly version of a football video game, and they also had other games for other professional sports. I definitely played this a lot on my old Windows Me computer, and Pablo Sanchez is a god.
2002: NFL Fever was Microsoft's foray into football video games on the original Xbox. All 3 of their games featured Peyton Manning as the cover athlete.
2002: NFL GameDay 2003 was 989 Sports' exclusive for Sony on the PlayStation platform.
2004: ESPN NFL 2K5 was the last great football game before the NFL exclusively gave their license to the EA. It was this game that definitely led to NFL's decision though, as they slashed their release price to an unheard of $20, which forced Madden 2004 to release at $30 instead of the typical $50. This pissed off the NFL, who decided to have less competition instead.

Year	Game	Cover Athlete	Team	Position
1997	NFL Blitz	Kordell Stewart	Steelers	QB
1997	NFL Quarterback Club 98	Brett Favre*	Packers	QB
1997	NFL GameDay '98	Jerome Bettis*	Steelers	RB
1997	Madden NFL 98 (64)	John Madden*	NA	John Madden
1998	NFL Xtreme	Mike Alstott	Bucs	FB
1998	NFL Quarterback Club 99	Brett Favre*	Packers	QB
1998	NFL GameDay '99	Terrell Davis*	Broncos	RB
1998	Madden NFL 99	John Madden*	NA	John Madden
1999	NFL Xtreme 2	John Randle*	Vikings	DL
1999	NFL Quarterback Club 2000	Brett Favre*	Packers	QB
1999	NFL GameDay 2000	Terrell Davis*	Broncos	RB
1999	NFL 2K	Randy Moss*	Vikings	WR
1999	Madden NFL 2000	John Madden*	NA	John Madden
1999	Backyard Football	Steve Young)*, Jocinda Smith, Amir Khan	49ers, Generic	QB
2000	NFL Quarterback Club 2001	Brett Favre*	Packers	QB
2000	NFL GameDay 2001	Marshall Faulk*	Rams	RB
2000	NFL 2K1	Randy Moss*	Vikings	WR
2000	Madden NFL 2001	Eddie George	Titans	RB
2001	NFL Quarterback Club 2002	Brett Favre*, Rich Gannon	Packers, Raiders	QB
2001	NFL GameDay 2002	Donovan McNabb	Eagles	QB
2001	NFL Fever 2002	Peyton Manning*	Colts	QB
2001	NFL 2K2	Randy Moss*	Vikings	WR
2001	Madden NFL 2002	Daunte Culpepper	Vikings	QB
2001	Backyard Football 2002	Drew Bledsoe or Donovan McNabb	Pats or Eagles	QB
2001	ESPN NFL PrimeTime 2002	Edgerrin James*	Colts	RB
2002	NFL GameDay 2003	Tom Brady+	Pats	QB
2002	NFL Fever 2003	Peyton Manning*	Colts	QB
2002	NFL 2K3	Brian Urlacher*	Bears	LB
2002	Madden NFL 2003	Marshall Faulk*	Rams	RB
2003	NFL GameDay 2004	LaDainian Tomlinson*	Chargers	RB
2003	NFL Fever 2004	Peyton Manning*	Colts	QB
2003	Madden NFL 2004	Michael Vick	Falcons	QB
2003	ESPN NFL Football	Warren Sapp*	Bucs	DL
2003	Backyard Football 2004	Jeff Garcia	49ers	QB
2004	NFL GameDay 2005	Derrick Brooks*	Bucs	LB
2004	Madden NFL 2005	Ray Lewis*	Ravens	LB
2004	ESPN NFL 2K5	Terrell Owens*	Eagles	WR
2004	NFL Street	Ricky Williams	Dolphins	RB

​

The Madden Era: 2005-Present

2005: NFL Street 2 was the second in the NFL Street series as a kind of spiritual successor to NFL Blitz. EA tried to have some diversity in their football video games outside of the Madden franchise, so they had the short-lived Street franchise under \"EA BIG\"
2006: NFL Head Coach was a new perspective on NFL Games where you play as the coach instead of the players. I enjoyed these although they could get a little boring.
2007: All Pro Football 2K8 was 2K's attempt at keeping the 2K football franchise alive without the coveted NFL license. They got three HoF players on the cover in Elway, Barry, and Rice, but not the actual license to any NFL team. This game received praise for its mechanics, but poor sales showed that a non-NFL licensed game would always struggle to make it.
2011: Madden 12 was maybe the last good Madden game. Also, Peyton Hillis. The only guy on a NFL football game cover to never make a Pro Bowl. This guy is an actual hero though, so good for him.
2019: Doug Flutie's Maximum Football was a mix of american and CFL football as another attempt at making a football game without the NFL license to poor results. They have announced a new game as a free to play title on new platforms, but no games in this franchise have released since 2020.
2020: Retro Bowl is a mobile game more in the style of Tecmo Super Bowl than Madden. It's probably the most successful non-Madden game since ESPN NFL 2K5, and it's pretty fun. People should definitely give this one a try since it's free to play on any mobile platform.
2022: Madden 23 gave the cover back to Madden for the first time since 1999 to honor the passing of the legend John Madden. Unfortunately the game inside the cover was crap, has been the style of Madden games for over a decade.

Year	Game	Cover Athlete	Team	Position
2005	Madden NFL 06	Donovan McNabb	Eagles	QB
2005	NFL Street 2	Jeremy Shockey, Xzibit	Giants, Pimp My Ride	TE, Rapper
2005	Blitz: The League	Generic players	NA	NA
2005	Backyard Football 2006	Daunte Culpepper	Vikings	QB
2006	Madden NFL 07	Shaun Alexander	Seahawks	RB
2006	NFL Head Coach	Bill Cowher*	Steelers	HC
2006	NFL Street 3	Chad Johnson	Bengals	WR
2007	Backyard Football '07	Ben Roethlisberger+	Steelers	QB
2007	Madden NFL 08	Vince Young	Titans	QB
2007	All-Pro Football 2K8	John Elway*, Barry Sanders*, Jerry Rice*	Generic	QB, RB, WR
2007	Backyard Football '08	Tom Brady+	Pats	QB
2008	NFL Tour	Shawne Merriman	Chargers	LB
2008	NFL Head Coach 09	Tony Dungy*	Colts	HC
2008	Backyard Football '09	Tom Brady+	Pats	QB
2009	Madden NFL 10	Troy Polamalu*, Larry Fitzgerald+	Steelers, Cards	DB, WR
2009	Backyard Football '10	Frank Gore+, Eli Manning+, Kurt Warner*, Peyton Manning*, Adrian Peterson+, Jason Witten+	49ers, Giants, Cards, Colts, Vikings, Cowboys	RB, QB, TE
2010	Quick Hit Football	Logo	NA	NA
2010	Madden NFL 11	Drew Brees+	Saints	QB
2010	Backbreaker	Generic player	NA	NA
2011	Madden NFL 12	Peyton Hillis	Browns	RB
2012	Madden NFL 13	Calvin Johnson*	Lions	WR
2013	Madden NFL 25	Barry Sanders* or Adrian Peterson+	Lions or Vikings	RB
2014	Madden NFL 15	Richard Sherman+	Seahawks	DB
2015	Madden NFL 16	Odell Beckham Jr.	Giants	WR
2016	Madden NFL 17	Rob Gronkowski+	Pats	TE
2016	Axis Football 2016	Generic player	NA	NA
2017	Madden NFL 18	Tom Brady+	Pats	QB
2017	Axis Football 17	Generic player	NA	NA
2018	Madden NFL 19	Antonio Brown+	Steelers	WR
2019	Doug Flutie's Maximum Football 2019	Doug Flutie	Generic (Stampeders)	QB
2020	Sunday Rivals	Helmet	NA	NA
2020	Retro Bowl	Generic player	NA	NA
2020	Legend Bowl	Silhouette	NA	NA
2019	Madden NFL 20	Patrick Mahomes+	Chiefs	QB
2020	Madden NFL 21	Lamar Jackson	Ravens	QB
2021	Madden NFL 22	Tom Brady+, Patrick Mahomes+	Bucs, Chiefs	QB
2022	Madden NFL 23	John Madden*	NA	John Madden
2023	NFL Pro Era	Lamar Jackson	Ravens	QB

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Links

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• Watch Summer Games Done Quick 2023
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• Official Schedule
• GDQ YouTube playlist

Schedule

Game	Runner / Channel	Time / Link
Pre-Show (before the marathon%)	Interview Crew	0:29:00
Sonic Frontiers (Any%)+	AlphaDolphin	1:07:08
Bugsnax (All Bosses Co-op)+	Konception and limy	0:34:51
Mega Man Maker (any%)+	megamarino	0:28:10
F-Zero X (All Tracks (Expansion Kit))	1davidj	1:25:28
Skate 2 (Any%)+	SupaScared	0:38:19
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Any%)	Myth197	1:38:20
BONUS GAME 1 - Ring Fit Adventure (Beat World 1 Intensity 30 Restricted)	Verxl	0:18:45
Luigi's Mansion (100% Race)+	HDlax and Jovin	1:09:20
Daily Recap - Sunday (Recap%)	Interview Crew	0:15:00
Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition (NG Devil Hunter - Nero/Dante)	DECosmic	1:14:29
Thief (2014) (Any% (Rogue, No DLC))+	DemonicRobots	1:25:00
Banjo-Kazooie (100% no FFM)+	duck	2:08:00
Dark Summit (Any%)+	flatline	0:50:00
Bloody Hell (Any%)+	BystanderTim	0:15:00
Loom (Any% VGA)+	LMMotoss	0:30:00
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (Any%)	RetroBrando	0:22:00
SuzukiBakuhatsu (Any% Hard)	quino	0:20:00
Metal Slug XX (normal Any% eri)+	sukimos	0:25:00
Anodyne (All Bosses)	LaserTrap_	0:27:00
PHOGS! (Solo Any%)+	Sean_A	1:05:00
Alien Swarm (Any% Co-op)+	Kykystas and mr.deagle	0:20:00
Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle (Season 3)	Froob	0:52:00
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion (Any% Race)+	desa3579 and BigSid	1:20:00
Peggle Deluxe (Any%)+	britsha	1:20:00
ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights (All Spirits)+	Keizaron	1:10:00
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (All Keys)+	Zenthrow	1:12:00
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Any%)	benstephens56	1:35:00
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Any% Ultimate)	The Blacktastic	0:25:00
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (Episode 1: Normal/Veteran)	DanTheVP	0:38:00
BONUS GAME 2 - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Randomizer- Any% Glitchless (Lycanthrope))	Dr4gonBlitz	1:05:00
Daily Recap - Monday (Recap%)	Interview Crew	0:15:00
StepManiaX (Game Showcase)	ZephyrGlaze, WDRM, and chezmix	1:20:00
Katana ZERO (All Stages Normal)+	Modulottie	0:24:00
Hearthstone: Knights of the Frozen Throne (Solo Adventures)	srd_27	0:30:00
Overcooked! 2: Night of the Hangry Horde (All (Hangry) Horde Levels)	RUBIEHART, Peace Egg, and Sunbrojade	1:00:00
Chained Echoes (Any% No CW - Fresh File)+	moonblazewolf	0:53:00
Alpha Prime (Any%)+	danejerus	0:34:00
Rose of Meat (Any%)	shmumbler	0:12:00
SNOLF (Any% No Coordinate Warp)+	dowolf	0:40:00
Marathon Infinity (All Main Levels - Kindergarten)	tbcr	0:35:00
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Any%)+	MixMastaPJ	0:25:00
Maniac Mansion (Any%)+	Sathdresh	0:08:00
Disney's 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue (All Levels, Inbounds race (PS2))	passere and TaintedTali	0:32:00
Ratatouille (Any%)+	adef	0:25:00
CrossCode (Any% No Menu Glitches)+	EpicYoshiMaster	1:35:00
Hi-Fi RUSH (Any% NG Easy)+	MoistRock	2:45:00
Bastion (Live Tutorial Showcase)	Cosmic_Bones and SeaAverage	0:35:00
Returnal (Fresh File Glitched (PC))+	cavecavecave	0:40:00
The Elder Scrolls Anthology (Main Series)+	Chronos_R	2:00:00
BioShock 2 (Any%)	bloodthunder	1:05:00
BONUS GAME 3 - Halo 3 (Legendary)	g3lk_jr	1:25:00
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (Any% - Normal)+	NickRPGreen	1:11:00
Daily Recap - Tuesday (Recap%)	Interview Crew	0:15:00
Silent Hill: Homepour (All Bosses NG+)	shmumbler	2:45:00
SIGNALIS (Any% Casual Difficulty / Memory Ending)+	DruciferPlays	0:50:00
Choo-Choo Charles (Any%)+	Bird650	0:25:00
Resident Evil 6 (Ada vs Jake, Coop, Amateur, NG+)+	TaintedTali and texan_red_wolf	1:20:00
Dead Rising 2 (TimeSkip NG)+	Ecdycis	1:00:00
Kidnapped (Any%)+	sharkhat87	0:10:00
Goosebumps: Dead of Night (Any% Normal)+	nyiddle	0:15:00
Beard Blade (Any%)+	janglestorm	0:54:00
Dharma Doujo (Any%)	Lizstar	0:40:00
Gauntlet (Any% Co-op)+	yelsraek and chessjerk	0:20:00
Sifu (WUDE Any% (Master))+	EileenCream	0:52:00
Exodus from the Earth (Any%)+	catalystz	0:35:00
Touhou 14.3: Impossible Spell Card (All Scenes No Items)	msm_smtn	1:20:00
Shatterhand (Any%)+	Amad	0:24:00
lil gator game (Any%)+	ItzBytez	0:18:00
Dangun Feveron (Arcade)	Qlex	0:22:00
Trine Enchanted Edition (Any% NG+)+	GrosHiken	0:25:00
N++ (Co-op Legacy X-row)	killingpepsi and XandoToaster	0:25:00
HITMAN 3 (Any% Freelancer Campaign)	Frote7	0:30:00
Shadow the Hedgehog (Glitchless Bidwar)+	MetalMedb	0:20:00
Sonic Adventure (DX) (All Stories Relay)+	SpacebarS, shovelclaws, Themimik, Yoshipuff, AlphaDolphin, and Allegro	1:50:00
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask (Blitz Randomizer)+	spikevegeta	2:30:00
BONUS GAME 4 - Super Mario Odyssey (Any%)	Dangers	1:02:00
Daily Recap - Wednesday (Recap%)	Interview Crew	0:15:00
Paper Mario (Any% no ace)	Mx_4	1:50:00
True Crime: New York City (Any%)+	pmcTRILOGY	1:00:00
Golf It! (Classic First 5 Maps 100% Race)+	Nichole Goodnight and Bathinjan	0:30:00
Hobo Cat Adventures (Any%)+	yoshipro	0:20:00
Batman Forever (Any%)	Faust4712	0:45:00
Give Me Toilet Paper! (Hand%)+	Asuka424	0:13:00
Pepsiman (Any%)	TheFlyingMarlin	0:28:00
Stair Quest (Stair%)+	davidtki	0:15:00
The Cat in the Hat (PS1) (Any%)+	Mildew	0:12:00
Wayne's World (Any%)	Ritzblues	0:30:00
The Incredible Hulk (Any%)+	Iceplug	0:20:00
Pocky & Rocky Reshrined (Any% Uzume)+	EODTexSR	0:25:00
The Curse of Monkey Island (Any% Mega-Monkey)+	frozenspade	0:24:00
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Any% (No 3rd-party FPS caps))	Joshimuz	4:20:00
Darkest Dungeon (Defeat Hag/NecromanceSwine Prince Bidwar)+	RebelDragon95	0:50:00
Mega Man 6 (Any% 2 Players 1 Controller)	DarkTerrex and Ppotdot1	0:41:00
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Any%)	mralberto23	3:00:00
Pizza Tower (Any%)+	SoaringSloth	1:20:00
BONUS GAME 5 - Titanfall 2 (Any%)	Blaidan	1:25:00
Daily Recap - Thursday (Recap%)	Interview Crew	0:15:00
Gunfire: Reborn (Qing Yan - Full Game - Reincarnation 1)+	Shockwve	0:35:00
Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (Full Trilogy Any%)	Murcaz	2:40:00
Amnesia: Rebirth (Any%)+	bloodthunder	1:00:00
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (All Dark Magic, Pirate Mode, No OOB)	TheSoundDefense	1:20:00
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series (Klonoa 1 Any% Easy Support Mode)+	Mr_Shasta	0:50:00
VVVVVV (Any% Glitchless)+	Metroid Crime	0:22:00
SaGa Frontier (Story Bidwar)+	Raclesis	1:00:00
Final Fight 3 (Co-Op Any% (Easy))+	JaekRock and Space Coast Gaming	0:25:00
Shinobi 3: Return of the Ninja Master (Expert)	dagronSR	0:30:00
Wild Guns (Any% hard co-op)+	giygasblues and Crak Atak	0:25:00
Lunistice (Any% Glitchless)+	Nestani	0:35:00
X-Men Arcade (2-player 1CC Attempt)	LRock617 and MetroidMaster	0:30:00
Dark Forces (Easy (TFE))+	CovertMuffin	0:26:00
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (Any% Co-op)+	AmberCyprian and TGH	0:30:00
Metroid Prime Remastered (Any%)+	Samura1man	2:00:00
Pokémon Colosseum (Any% Race)+	Swiftalu and Sparkle	4:05:00
Kaizo Monkey Ball (Story Mode)	IkeSMB	0:40:00
Sure Shot (100%)+	Shoujo	0:25:00
Spin Rhythm XD (XD Turntable Showcase)	AngryScootsman	1:00:00
BONUS GAME 6 - Clone Hero (Showcase)	Frif	0:54:00
Daily Recap - Friday (Recap%)	Interview Crew	0:15:00
Celeste (TAS- True Ending)+	Lmjacks, tmcalvins, and Vamp	0:36:00
Super Mario 64 (Randomizer- 70 Star Non-Stop)+	360Chrism	0:42:00
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix (Any% Proud Race)+	MistMaster1 and Violin	2:30:00
TimeShift (Casual Difficulty)+	ChurchnSarge	1:05:00
Neopets: The Darkest Faerie (Any%)+	Jaxler	0:50:00
Tony Hawk's Underground (Beginner Any%)	Biglaw	0:37:00
Spelunky 2 (Spelunker Trials Any%)+	Lavableman	0:20:00
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition (All Skills No OOB/TA)+	Primorix	0:35:00
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (Any%)	monkeysmb	1:12:00
Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster (Any%)	Zic3	2:55:00
I Wanna Be the Guy Remastered (Any%)+	LogicPQ	0:25:00
Superhot VR (Any%)+	davidtki	0:15:00
Super Mario Bros. (Warpless)+	GTAce	0:20:00
Fire Emblem Engage (Any%)+	Claris	1:15:00
Pokémon Scarlet/Violet (Victory Road)+	eddaket	2:30:00
Elden Ring (Any% Glitchless)	Mitchriz	1:20:00
Super Mario Maker 2 (Relay Race)	TheRileyC, Aurateur, PangaeaPanga, TanukiDan, Shoujo, Caspur189, LilKirbs, and Thabeast721	1:40:00
BONUS GAME 7 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Any% Blindfolded)	Bubzia	1:45:00
Baron Of Shell (100%)+	grandpoobear	0:48:00
Event Recap (Recap 100%)	Interview Crew	0:20:00
Super Metroid (Co-Op Any%)+	ShinyZeni and zoast	0:50:00
Finale! (The End%)+	Tech Crew	0:20:00