My parents were somewhat sceptical of video games when I was growing up. I did have a SNES and then an N64 as a child, but I was allowed to play them only at weekends, so on Fridays I would come home from school and binge on Mario 64 with a huge pack of Haribo Tangfastics. My gaming horizons didn't broaden until I was a teenager, when I started earning enough of my own money to buy myself a PlayStation 2 and I started hanging out on forums with other nerds whose gaming worlds were significantly broader than mine. And the PlayStation 2 had some weird games. The N64 did to an extent – I nurture an enduring fondness for Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon – but not like Sony's console.

With the amount of news out of Japan this week, you'd think Tokyo Game Show had already started. That didn't stop a flood of trailers though, including new footage of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Project Judge, a new game from the Yakuza devs. Other than that, an avalanche of weirdness this week: Alan Wake's headed to TV, Pathologic 2 showed off its creepy village, Katamari Damacy's coming to PC, Assassin's Creed III is getting a remaster (for some reason), and Tencent brought a literal avalanche with its snowboarding battle royale game Ring of Elysium. This is gaming news for September 10 to 14. Much to my surprise, Focus's Call of Cthulhu is one of my most anticipated games in the back half of 2018.

Keita Takahashi is an unusual video game designer. His breakout hit, Katamari Damacy, was about picking up objects with an increasingly large, sticky ball. He then made Noby Noby Boy, a game about a colorful, worm-like creature that can stretch around animals, houses and planets. Now, the artist is working on Wattam, a light-hearted puzzle game about a little green mayor and his quest to find a group of long-lost friends. At E3 2018, I played a brief demo with Takahashi as my helpful guide.