This puzzles is about the & Knuckles meme about the sometimes ridiculous variations of names for different versions of a product, often in gaming. This puzzle consists of 12 such naming schemes, where the main root word or phrase making up the product has been replaced with a word.
For each set of items, the replaced word usually matches exactly one letter from the original product name. Furthermore, when the set is ordered by the canonical ordering of the product (usually release date) the nth item in the series has its nth letter as the common letter. However for each series one item matches no letters, thus solvers should extract the nth letter of that item. In no particular order, the groupings are as follow:
->The 4th item gives an E
->The 2nd item gives an R
->The 5th item gives an I
->The 4th item gives an S
->The 6th item gives an O
->The 3rd item gives an E
->The 1st item gives a C
->The 2nd item gives an E
->The 5th item gives a P
->The 1st item gives a V
->The 7th item gives an N
->The 3rd item gives an R
There are two letters which come from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th items each, and one from the 6th and one from the 7th. Since the answer is enumerated with the blanks at the bottom to be 7 letters and 5 letters, this implies the 7-letter word comes from a 1st-7th item letter, and the 5-letter word comes from the remaining 1st-5th item letters. The only way to do this to give a reasonable answer is to get the answer, VERSION CREEP.