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Issue #78: I'm Gonna Wreck It! – July/August 2025
🕑 Added 2025-06-24 15:19:46 +0000 UTCEMERGENCY!
Emergent gameplay is emerging with escalating frequency! Be warned that you are now at increased risk for an upsurge in personal creativity!
You might’ve heard that term getting kicked around more and more in recent years, but what does “emergent gameplay” really mean? Well, it’s when video game designers, rather than crafting specific gameplay moments that play out the same for every player, instead focus on creating systems out of which an untold number of unique and interesting events can emerge.
Take Breath of the Wild, for example. Nintendo’s designers built a vast, open world, which was one of that game’s main draws — but the real magic was in the physics systems they put in place to dictate the myriad different object interactions that would be possible within that world. I was playing a Shrine challenge recently that involved using metal objects to conduct electricity across broken circuits in the floor — but I needed one more point of connection than the environment provided. No problem! I simply opened my inventory, selected a big metal hammer from among my melee weapons, and dropped it on the ground. It then conducted the electricity perfectly! A unique solution, dreamed up on the spot. Thousands of other players solved that same puzzle in different ways than I did, too.
Fire setting off blazes across wooden objects, water being splashed on muck to wash it away, wind giving you a boost to your paragliding flight speed in the air, or blowing away items you were trying to just pick up off the ground (Tulin! Stop that!) . . . both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were filled with emergent moments that only you ever saw. No other player ever witnessed the exact same interactions.
And I bring all that up now because we’re on the brink of the next wave of great, unique, emergent moments — courtesy of Donkey Kong Bananza! Its novel gameplay system is centered on destruction. Terrain deformation. You can break the whole world around you, bashing it to bits with DK’s sensational simian strength!
The technology that Nintendo has developed over time to allow for a game in which we can freely wreck the world around us is mind-boggling. Video games truly still have not peaked in realizing their potential! Gameplay like what we’re about to enjoy in Bananza just would not have been possible decades ago. (Or if they tried, it would’ve been much more limited in scope.)
So in this NF issue, we’re celebrating this specific flavor of emergent gameplay — the freedom to destroy — by offering a brief history of “wrecking” games that have helped us build up to this point over time. You’ll find guest star Wreck-It Ralph hosting our central feature “I’m Gonna Wreck It!” starting on Page 26. We’ve also got a retrospective on the Wrecking Crew series, our first wave of Switch 2 reviews, and much more! So read on. Who knows what great memories will emerge in your mind after absorbing this issue!
Print subscribers, your physical copies are in production now and will be mailed to you by the end of this week. Most of those copies should reach their destinations within the early days of July, but as always, please be patient — especially if you live outside the United States. Global deliveries continue to be difficult to some countries — for example, Canada has been dealing with a potential postal strike on and off again for the last several months.
Digital subscribers, things are easier for you! The link to download your PDF copy of this new issue will arrive in your inbox this Thursday, June 26. Keep an eye out for it!
We've already got our theme set for our next issue, so we'll be diving straight into work on it now! I hope all of you who've had the chance to play the new Switch 2 already have been enjoying it. We'll be zeroing in on its new mouse control feature for Issue #79!
~ Lucas M. Thomas
