Looking over this Fukubukuro, the Rudie 2025 Fukubukuro, it feels like a confession. Or an expulsion. In the surprise that is a Fukubukuro, it is not delightful essays about my year and how it related to video games.
These essays burst my feelings and emotions I had about video games before I forgot them. Not to hype myself up, but I’m not entirely happy with a lot of the words that follow, and there are a lot of words to follow.
Maybe the lesson here is that I should look for more stories in playing video games in 2026. Or I should appreciate that 2025 was exceptionally boring compared to 2024. That being a good thing.
If you’re joining me for the first time, a fukubukuro is a Lucky Bag given out at Japanese stores at new years to show customer appreciation and loyalty. The Rudie Fukubukuro is about my relationship with video games in a year. It won’t be the best or even worst games I played in 2025. It might not even be about the games I played. Just moments that define myself in video games in 2025.
To take a few more paragraphs before the actual essays, this year I accepted I loved Video Games more than any other art form. I will happily consume video games almost forever. Architecture, bread baking, prestige TV do not bring me the inherit joy that video games do. Almost everything else feels like work. A bad movie makes me miserable. A bad video game still makes me able to sleep at night.
Let’s hope some of this soul defining love comes across in the following essays.
Yamanashi Game Shop
SaGa in Transit
Level Design
Touch Pen
Pledge List 2025
Estopolis 2
Slave Zero Finished
Death Stranding 2
Redacted
It’s Gryph
Final Fantasy XIII
Double Dungeons
fukubukuro art by Bachelorsoft
NEXT: Famicom Shop
Hinge Problems 
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