Happy Monday, folks! It’s time for the Weekly Video Games Thread!

Look, it’s literally Halloween today, my favorite holiday, and I just published a Halloween-themed listicle on Source Gaming an hour ago. I usually have October 31 on the brain, and today it is October 31! So, of course I’m gonna have a Halloween prompt.

Well, at least a Halloween-adjacent prompt: favorite optional costumes in video games (but only optional this time. Excellent fashion choices for standard outfits will be a separate topic some other day). Seems simple enough, right? I mean, you’ve got all those bonus costumes from DLC in your Overwatches, your Splatoons, basically any online game. Or a game with any amount of DLC; take a look at Zombie Mario up there in the header image! Mario Odyssey was filled to the brim with amazing costumes, and it just kept adding them for months afterwards.

But then, it gets closer to the Witching Hour of Halloween, things start to get weird. Alternative answers to this prompt sprout up like a revenant’s hand from a shallow grave. What about alternate costumes in a fighting game? What about really amazing palette swaps in a fighting game? A lot of video game fans decry the latter as not being as “special,” but one look at Ryu in Street Fighter or Samus in Smash Bros. proves how good a strong color change can be.

In fact, let’s take it even further! You could talk about dressing up as a gaming character for Halloween. Oh, and there are tons of games where the outfits give material bonuses, like in Contact or Breath of the Wild or Hitman. That counts! There are some that even let you make your own outfits. Man, this topic is just on fire, right?! Let’s keep this up!

Well, you can. I’ll be around more intermittently today, but I’ll try to come in with some other answers to the prompt. And to see how your weekend went in the world of games.