Ten years ago today, we posted an article titled “Press START“ to kick off the KelleherBros.com website. It was extremely short, not much of an article really. Just a pithy little post to get the ball rolling on what I hoped might become everyone’s favorite retro gaming blog. A decade later, as the website carries on its journey through video game criticism, a similar arcade-themed "Continue?” post felt necessary.

Now it’s fair to say that Kelleher Bros. did not become everyone’s favorite retro gaming blog, though that was always an unlikely proposition. With the rise of social media and corresponding decline of blogs overall, we’ve been lucky to get any views at all. And for our part, I feel that this website has stayed pretty true to its mission over the past decade. We set out to review retro video games, discuss issues related to games, media, & society, and to shamelessly promote our own artistic projects. And by gum, I think we stuck to that!

Over the past decade, KelleherBros.com has featured over 200 individual posts. Some of these were video game reviews, some were posts of our original music, some were opinion articles. Other posts were card game reviews, device reviews (like for third-party controllers or gaming handhelds), Tip & Tricks articles, or DIY project walkthroughs. We’ve done book reviews, movie & TV show reviews, and even a few Top10 lists. Honestly, there’s been quite a lot of content for your reading pleasure.

So let’s take a look at the past 10 years of KelleherBros.com and reflect on some of the highlights.

Kelleher Bros. Website Timeline

2014

Starting in September, we managed to post 11 articles before the end of 2014. Our first game review was for Donkey Kong County, and we closed out the year with a review of Donkey Kong ‘94 (Game Boy).

With those two Donkey Kong games reviewed, two X-Men games reviewed, and a review of Spider-Man for Game Boy, the few first months of the website really set the tone for what was to come. We also did our first book review (Console Wars) and posted a few opinion articles. Luke was writing almost all content for the site from the start, but Patrick also starting contributing articles very early on as well.

2015

The self-promotion train really got running in 2015 when we started posting Kelleher Brothers’ original music tracks. Both Mike and Patrick had numerous songs available to stream on SoundCloud and Luke was determined to single-boost their work as much as possible. The first track we posted was an untitled Kelleher Bros. collaboration, an instrumental piece written by Patrick, remixed by Mike, and featuring drums by Denis.

Outside of music, we created our first Tip & Tricks feature with an article about how to play Mario Kart. We speculated on what form Nintendo’s next console might take and posted our first movie review. On the Opinion side, we continued to express our unique experiences/perspectives with ultra-specific articles such as Gaming with a Broken Hand. For such an oddball article, that piece garnered a surprising about of attention for years after its posting. You could say that it brought a whole lot of new readers to the website singlehandedly. (Please hold your applause.)

It was also sometime in 2015 that Luke started creating merchandise designs, both for the Kelleher Bros. website and also for his book, Shakotan Blue. The merch shop quickly became a running joke with the brothers, as just a bunch of crap—t-shirts, mugs, bags, water bottles, stickers, etc.—that almost no one would ever want, but people could still buy with actual money. We say “almost no one” because Luke has been known to purchase the merch himself, often seen wearing his own t-shirts around town. “Always be self promoting!”, he would say with a smile.

2016

By 2016 the tone and aesthetic of the Kelleher Bros. site was pretty well established, so we just kept on trucking: more music posts, more game reviews, more riveting Opinion and retrospective content. Not to be left out of the fun, Kevin contributed a review of the game No Man’s Sky. We did our first Top10 list, covering the most Underrated Video Game Soundtracks.

This year we leaned a bit further into comic books, reviewing the X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills graphic novel and discussing the weird/gross propaganda comics of Jack Chick. Oh yeah, and Luke got all existential with his ruminations on the internet and identity in his article titled Your Online Persona is More Real Than You.

2017

With the release of the Nintendo Switch in 2017, the website suddenly gave new releases more attention than retro games. The Legend of Zelda BOTW and Super Mario Odyssey both got game reviews, our second Tips & Tricks post was a cooking guide for BOTW, and even our first DIY project feature outlined how to put a D-Pad on the Switch’s Joy-cons. We shifted to talkin’ Nintendo pretty much all the time.

There were some fun Opinion articles this year as well, such as a list of 30 games we hoped to see included on the SNES Mini Classic and a piece lamenting the decline of local cooperative game modes in favor of online multiplayer.

Even cooler though, was one Opinion post that included the input of multiple brothers discussing a topic in a new conversation format. Skill Gap, Player Types, and Street Fighter started with Mike recommending a YouTube video about reducing skill gaps in fighting games and then Kevin, Luke, and Patrick all responding with their thoughts. (Denis even chimes in at the end, though this is mostly just a joke.)

2018

In 2018 the website managed to strike a good balance between new game coverage—including a growing focus on Indie Games—and retro game features. On the new game side we had reviews of Celeste, Kamiko, Ultra Street Fighter II, and Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection.

On the retro side we featured reviews of Mega Man (Game Boy), Kirby’s Dreamland, and Super Castlevania IV. We even posted our first Device review, covering the very handy Mayflash Magic-NS controller adapter.

Not content to limit ourselves to only video games, Kevin wrote our first Card game feature, a review of Keyforge by Richard Garfield.

And in another diluted moment of self-importance, Luke waxed poetically about The Importance of Story & Character in Fighting Games.

2019

For the Kelleher Brothers, 2019 was the year of Device reviews. The BitBoy, PocketGo, CARBY 2 GameCube adapter, GBros. Switch adapter, and the 8Bitdo Sn30 Pro+ controller were all covered. Additionally, our second DIY project post featured a Nintendo Switch dock customization.

On the video game front, we reviewed Indie darlings like Fighting EX Layer and Minit, but also big-budget spectacle like Sony’s Spider-Man. And we didn’t forget about retro reviews either, as Luke covered one his favorite GBA games, Final Fight One. (Seriously, he is way too fond of Final Fight and it makes everybody just a little uncomfortable.)

There was a new Tips & Tricks post explaining How to Play Tetris 99. Kevin gave us another Card game feature with a preview of Modern Horizons – a new set for Magic: The Gathering. And, of course, Luke rambled on and on about how the Dreamcast was a fighting game powerhouse.

2020

The Kelleher Brothers in pixel art and fighting game style.

Looking back on it now, 2020 was an incredibly strange year. But you know what they say, hindsight is 2020. (No, no—Please hold your applause.) We reviewed a lot of Indie games: Katana Zero, River City Girls, Panzer Paladin, and A Short Hike just to name a few. Retro favorites like the arcade game X-Men Vs. Street Fighter and Samurai Shodown for Game Boy got reviews as well, and Luke wrote an absolutely scathing review for the loooong awaited Shenmue III.

Responding to the state of the world at the time, our next Tips & Tricks feature was about How to Play Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and we also took the time to review the (now discontinued) mobile game, Dr. Mario World. We also returned to our discussion of the internet and identity with Online Persona Vs. The Real You: Part 2.

In an ill-advised stroke of laziness, Luke actually combined his video game review of Spelunky—the revolutionary rogue-like indie game—with his book review of Spelunky—Derek Yu’s excellent book about the development of said game—thereby confusing everyone who tried to read it. Not a good plan.

But the highlight of the year was probably the return of the conversation format for two more roundtable-style discussion posts, Difficulty Discussion: Hating the games you play and Difficulty Discussion: Death & Boss Fights. Both posts essentially follow one long conversation in which Kevin, Patrick, Mike, and Luke discuss difficulty and frustration in video game design. (Unfortunately Denis didn’t have anything to add this time.)

2021

There were plenty of notable video game reviews in 2021, both for indie games—Spelunky 2, Streets of Rage 4, Yoku’s Island Express—and for big tentpole titles—Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Metroid Dread, the Switch remake of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Two recent Hitman games were also covered, and Wario finally got some attention with retro reviews of Wario Blast for Game Boy and WarioWare, Inc. for GBA.

In our biggest Device review yet, we featured Arcade1up’s X-Men vs. Street Fighter cabinet. (It’s a video game, it’s furniture, it’s a 90’s kid’s dream decor!)

On the Opinion side, articles like How “Free-To-Play” Ruins Our Favorite Games and our lamentation that There Are Too Many Games kept the thought-provoking media discussions flowing. Luke even threw in a Top10 list of his favorite podcasts when no one was looking. But without a doubt, this year’s most popular post was Kevin’s latest Card game article, Kaldheim’s Hottest New Combo Can’t Last for Long.

In April of 2021, Luke also posted an article to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of his move to Japan. This was notable because he later wrote a book about his time in Japan—again, it’s called Shakotan Blue and easily available on Amazon—and so that date represented the very beginning of the journey. (And come to think of it, we’re essentially doing that exact same type of commemorative post here. Hmm.)

2022

This website has always aimed to maintain a high level of journalistic integrity, usually emulating the video game magazines of the late 90’s and early 2000’s as faithfully as possible. But it’s also a labor of love, and thus the creation process needs to be fun or we’re simply not going to keep it up. With that in mind, 2022 is definitely the year we loosened up the format and experimented a bit with what we selected to cover.

For example, our review of Game Phone Case: 168 Classic Games—a famiclone device built into an iPhone case—was not something we would’ve ever considered doing previously. The legally dubious quality of the famiclone market, and just the overall shady vibe of such a cheaply manufactured gadget, put it well outside of our usual scope for device reviews. It’s certainly no Legend of Zelda Game & Watch after all, another device we reviewed this year. But, you know, it just seemed like a fun thing to cover.

Similarly new to Kelleher Bros., we finally reviewed TV shows, starting with a couple animated series. Granted, the two shows we chose to cover were both based on video game properties—Shenmue the Animation and Tekken: Bloodline—so they made a fairly good fit for us to look at. But despite previously looking at a few films here and there, reviewing a whole TV series was something we hadn’t attempted before.

However, the cheekiest move we’ve pulled on this website has to be our feature on Duolingo, where we review the free language-learning app as a video game. Despite Duolingo being heavily gamified in seemingly every way possible, I don’t think anyone else has written a game review of the app. But we did, because we’re crazy like that.

We also reviewed the ninja action platformer Cyber Shadow, Pac-Man Collection for GBA, and Ghost of Tsushima for PS4.

2023

Admittedly, our pace slowed down in 2023. I have a feeling that we probably started more drafts than posted completed articles during this year. That said, we did review the Gamecube classic Pac-Man Vs., the beat’em up revival TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, and both Mario Strikers: Battle League and Super Mario Bros. Wonder for Switch.

On the Opinion side, Luke decided to tackle the topic of The Greatest Stories in Video Games.

2024 (so far)

And that brings us up to the present. In 2024 so far we have reviewed multiple great indie games, like Lunark, Murtop, and Gravity Circuit. We also covered one of the first great interactive documentaries in The Making of Karateka, and of course reviewed the latest entry in everyone’s favorite fighting game series, Street Fighter 6. Plus, we finally post a retro review for one of our all-time favorites, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins.

On the Device side, we reviewed the FunnyPlaying FPGA GameBoy Color, as well provided instructions for its assembly.

We also reviewed the Playdate (which was a long time coming) and separately posted reviews for a handful of Playdate games.

And for you Game Boy fans out there, we posted a DIY article about restoring an old DMG Game Boy to its former glory.

Our most recent music feature was a real treat! Vacay is a new Nova Maru track that is actually written by Mike’s daughter, June. Great stuff!

In a weirdly academic move, we wrote an article Defining the Platformer Genre—which is actually a lot more fun than it sounds—and for the fitness-minded gamers out there, we made a Top10 list of the best Video Game Soundtracks to Workout To. (Luke is genuinely very proud of that one.)

And finally, back in May, we announced the release of our jokebook, Legendary Puns. Three Kelleher brothers (Kevin, Luke, and Mike) and their father collaborated to create this ultimate book of wordplay. So if you enjoy puns, you really should check it out. And if you don’t enjoy puns, should still check it out—you know, as like a favor to us.

Alright, so that’s more or less the first 10 years of KelleherBros.com. Riveting stuff, eh? Now you might be asking yourself: After such an illustrative first decade, where does Kelleher Bros. go from here? Well, for the most part, we mainly plan to keep doing what we've been doing.

We might choose to refocus on retrospective content, covering more old games than new releases. However, even in that case, we’re still likely to continue to cover new indie games. Plus we’ll probably continue to do select device reviews as new products that interest us get released. I guess we’ll just have to see…

One thing that should become more prominent on this site is coverage for the brothers' own projects. Sure, we’ve made music and written books, but hopefully soon we will have our own video games to promote. When that happens, you of course know where you can play them.

So before that CONTINUE? screen counts down to zero, let us plop a couple more quarters into this metaphorical coin slot and press the START button once again. The retro game party isn’t over yet.