It’s October, the quintessential spooky month, so of course the theme for this month is Spooktober. Any game nominated and voted upon for this month had to have some haunts, frights, or unsettling atmosphere to them, including our three winners. Get ready to play with the lights on!
GotX is the Retro Handheld Discord‘s version of a book club, and we’re once again playing the spooky games for the spooky month. Pull up a chair, light a candle, and let’s play something scary!
What is GotX?
GotX is short for “Games of the X“, which can be split into three categories: Game of the Month (GotM), Game of the Quarter (GotQ), and Game of the Week (GotW). Games of the Month are chosen according to a theme selected by community users who have previously beaten a GotM game for the prior month, aka “GotM Champions”.
Three games in total are selected, each falling within a range of release dates, nominated and voted upon by the GotM Champions. Winners each receive their own thread in the GotM channels in the Retro Handhelds Discord, where discussions, arguments, and ultimately fun are had by all.
Game of the Quarter and Game of the Week are selected independently in styles that are slightly different from Game of the Month, and they also don’t follow the same theme as the Games of the Month. Games in these two categories have either a runtime of under two hours (GotW) or a minimum runtime of 25 hours (GotQ), according to HowLongToBeat.
Completing a game (by posting a screenshot with ending credits, a date, and your Discord username) gets you an imaginary internet point that can be redeemed towards very real merch on the RH Store.
Game of the Month (Pre-1996) – Castlevania
- Console: NES
- Genre: Platformer
- Time to Beat: 3 Hours
Castlevania follows Simon Belmont, a descendent of legendary vampire hunter Christopher Belmont, who enters the castle of Dracula after the legendary monster reappears 100 years after his ancestor vanquished him. Simon will navigate six levels in Dracula’s castle filled with monsters, hideous creatures, and haunting entities. Simon must defeat monsters and bosses, navigate the castle while collecting secondary weapons and upgrades, and ultimately defeat Dracula himself.
What perfect timing, considering 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the original Castlevania. Konami even made the Android port free until October 24th! This is the one that started it all, and feels like a perfect fit for a retro game in October.
Game of the Month (1996-2001) – The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
- Console: N64, 3DS
- Genre: Action Adventure
- Time to Beat: 22 Hours
Months after defeating Ganondorf, Majora’s Mask has Link entering the parallel world of Termina in search of his lost companion Navi. Link is ambushed by the main antagonist Skull Kid, who steal’s both Epona and Link’s Ocarina of Time. Link soon discovers that the Skull Kid has also stolen a powerful artifact, the titular Majora’s Mask, which has possessed the Skull Kid with a powerfully evil spirit. Thus begins Link’s journey – alongside Skull Kid’s fairy Tatl – to stop the Moon from crashing into Termina, and ultimately free the Skull Kid from the Majora’s Mask.
Ah, the horror game that’s sorta, kinda not a horror game. Majora’s Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, and its main gameplay mechanics involve a repeating three-day time loop and using masks to transform Link into powerful heroes or provide helpful benefits.
After those three aforementioned days, the (very unsettling) Moon will crash into the world of Termina, destroying its inhabitants. Many mechanics and character models from Ocarina of Time also make their way into Majora’s Mask, like Z-targeting and third-person dungeon exploration.
Game of the Month (2002 and Later) – Hotel Dusk: Room 215
- Console: Nintendo DS
- Genre: Adventure
- Time to Beat: 16 Hours
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a noir mystery visual novel set in 1979 at a rundown motel in Nevada. Players explore the story of Kyle Hyde, a former NYPD detective turned salesman, who checks into the hotel to search for his missing police partner, Brian Bradley. Kyle checks in to Room 215, which is rumored to grant wishes. Here, Kyle delves into a series of mysteries about art forgery, kidnappings, murder, his missing partner, and the criminal organization Nile.
I’ll be honest, this one was a bit of a surprise, especially considering the games it was up against. Arguably the most interesting thing about Hotel Dusk, aside from its rotoscoped brushwork art style, is the fact that the game is played while holding the Nintendo DS like a book, with the two screens turned 90 degrees. Kyle interacts with hotel staff, navigates his surroundings, and solves puzzles using various features like the microphone, opening and closing the DS, and the stylus.
Game of the Quarter – Xenogears
If you’re looking for a meatier game to sink your teeth into, then the Game of the Quarter has you covered. GotQ consists of games that meet a minimum criterion of at least 25 hours to beat according to HLTB. Each quarter, four games are pulled at random from an extensive list of games that meet the minimum criterion, and then community users vote on which game they’d like to play for the next three months.
Completing a GotQ will still net you a single point, but there is also an opportunity to earn two additional points if you manage to 100% the game by completing all of the achievements through RetroAchievements and posting this as an additional screenshot.
- Console: PlayStation
- Genre: JRPG
- Time to Beat: 56 Hours
For the last quarter of 2026, we’re playing Xenogears, a japanese role-playing game developed by Square. Xenogears follows Fei Fong Wong, an amnesiac man who accidentally destroys his village, Lahan, while piloting a giant robot known as a “Gear.” Fei is exiled and embarks on a journey across a war-torn world dominated by the floating empire of Solaris and the surface nations of Aveh and Kislev.
Boy howdy, does this game feel tailor-made for GotQ. We’ve got mech battles, kung-fu, active time battles, and fighting deities; feels like a JRPG to me! Players will alter their combat between combo-based active time battles using strong, moderate, or weak attacks, and using the aforementioned “Gears” in mecha-driven, fuel-based battles. There are a lot more mechanics I won’t go into here, but needless to say there is a lot of content to fill that 50+ hour runtime.
Game of the Week, aka RetroBits
If short games and easy points are more your speed, then each Saturday at 5 PM PST, a new GotW is announced. Each game comes with a completion time of 2 hours or less, according to HowLongToBeat, and must be completed before the new GotW is announced the following Saturday.
Completion of the GotM and GotQ will earn you one point (three if you 100% the latter), but GotW will only net you half a point. Unlike the aforementioned GotM and GotQ, the GotW is chosen entirely at random by the GotX overlord Rapid99, selected from a large database of sub-two-hour games.
Above is an example of the four most recent GotW games that we’ve played in the Retro Handhelds Discord. Banjo-Pilot is the most recent, and we’re still playing it from Saturday, September 26, to Saturday, October 3.
