Scanline Talks

It all comes down to this: Best Game. Game of the Year. Call it what you like. We play a lot of games, and every year we make ourselves pick an overall winner. And people keep telling me 2023 was an incredible year for games, so surely this is gonna be a really hard list to cut down!

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @yonsoncb on Twitter!

When Scanline Media started, we wanted to focus on games. But over the years, from doing weekly anime podcasts and where our general interests as a site went, anime and manga became so much of our coverage. Here are the anime and manga that stood out to us as some of the best of the year.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @yonsoncb on Twitter!

In our longest category, we decided to let 2023 sing it's heart out. These tracks, be them anime OP or standalone songs, struck a chord with us.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @yonsoncb on Twitter!

Instrumental tracks have often gotten the short end of the stick in our Gimmick Awards, and it's high time we changed that. These tracks backed some unforgettable moments or created an unmistakable atmosphere in 2023, and the following stood out to us.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @yonsoncb on Twitter!

Every year, we fight over fighting games. We're enthusiastic about the genre (that's an understatement) and it's a delight to see the new ideas and spins on characters that surface as new games and DLC release. Sometimes, it's the little things that make all the difference: a few tweaks to a classic character to reinvent them. Sometimes it's an entirely new concept. Let's talk about the candidates for Best Fighting Game Toolkit this year.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @inkopolis on Twitter.

Most fictional writing runs on characters, and it is to these characters that fandoms attach themselves. It's these personalities, and often their visual designs as well, that people find so magnetic. Well, we're not looking for the most magnetic person here: some of these folks are not exactly easy to stan! That's fine. We're here for broken people. We just wanna pick the character we find the most compelling.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @inkopolis on Twitter.

I am open to other perspectives, but a lot of the love of games to me is down to how it feels to hit a button. When the jump feels bad, the game is bad. When the jump feels good, the game is good. That's oversimplifying, intentionally. But so many games ARE just a collection of button presses, and how good they feel to hit. Platformers, action games, shooters, MOBAs, all of these are represented on our nominees. Whose buttons feel the best to hit? Let's decide that.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @yonsoncb on Twitter!

While we have catagories for entire games and shows, it's important to hightlight the moments too. Sometimes the entire work isn't a winner, but that's what can make a moment more remarkable. These moments from games, shows, and real life stood out in 2023.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @yonsoncb on Twitter!

I don't mean to shock anyone, but I, Six, am a bit of a jaded exhausted 30-something. Depending on who you are, you might consider that a redundant descriptor. Regardless, a lot of my experience these days is seeing a game or anime release, and knowing pretty quickly whether or not I will care. And, frankly, usually being right! Not that this is an achievement, a lot of us feel this way. The media landscape is just more predictable than it once was.

This makes surprises all the more meaningful. Sometimes you're ambushed by something cool you've never heard of before. Sometimes you think you know what you're in for, and you are wildly wrong. Whatever the case, we have to cherish the moments our expectations are pleasantly defied. We don't get as many as we used to.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @inkopolis on Twitter.

2023 was... listen. We're here to celebrate. To have fun. But it wasn't a great year, all in all. There was a lot of dark shit. And when talking about it, even in a fun "year end podcast" situation, it's easy to get grim and depressed about everything. It's not that that's wrong. It's worth dwelling on the world's ills.

But the Gimmick Awards aren't about that, and we didn't want to have a bunch of downer awards. We don't do Worst Game for a reason. So as part of an effort to change the vibe around the (metaphorical) office, we decided to do the Community Effort award- a celebration of all the cool stuff fandoms did in 2023.

The Nominees Are:

Here's our write-up for the winners!

Our intro and outro music for the Gimmick Awards 2023 is Ippai by kamatamago, and our art is a commission from @inkopolis on Twitter.