#oneaday Day 568: Doodling is fun

I'm going to make no attempt to convince you that my doodlings are in any way "good", because I know that I have precisely zero technique and don't do things "properly", but man, doodling is fun! I just spent a little while fiddling around with Clip Studio Paint (which I bought a copy of, because if I've got a tablet I might as well use some good software with it) and that resulted in the above nonsense. There wasn't any real thought behind it other than an experiment with how to bring the cartoonish representation of me into a slightly more "detailed" space than the stickmen I've been drawing up until now.

Don't get me wrong, I love stickmen and I doubt I will be abandoning them completely, but when one has better drawing tools at one's disposal, one inevitably feels like one should be doing a little "more" with them. And so we have the above.

With the above images, I was channelling some of my past cartoon-drawing experience — specifically that of my time in secondary school, doodling with my friend Ed in our "rough books". The styles I've experimented with over the years have a few influences, but one I keep coming back to is inspired to a certain degree by Jim Davis' work on Garfield — particularly in the area of the eyes. I've always liked Garfield-style eyes as two slightly "protruding" spheres on a character's face; it's not at all realistic, but it can be immensely expressive, which is why I think I've always been rather fond of it as a style.

The uncoloured top-right doodle in the above is somewhat akin to how Ed and I drew our shared "Edlock Holmes and Watson" cartoon strips when we weren't doing them as stickmen (which, eventually, we adopted as the "primary" style) — big noses, eyes inspired a bit by Sonic the Hedgehog's big "mono-eye with a perpetual frown. Fiddling around with that style today, I feel a bit less fond of it than the other approaches: the aforementioned "Garfield-style", and an adaptation of what I was doing with the stickmen, with simple lines for eyes.

One thing I've discovered with Clip Studio Paint that I'm quite fond of is colouring the images in! Using layers, you can leave your line art "on top" and paint behind it, and that, it turns out, is immensely satisfying to do. All of the above are coloured by hand using a paintbrush tool rather than a flood fill, and I really enjoyed doing that for some reason. Given the output of the tool is rather "solid" you probably can't see much in the way of "brush strokes", but I feel that colouring things in that way introduces just enough in the way of human imperfections to give it a bit more of a personal touch.

One thing I really like about drawing with a tablet on the computer is the smoothness of the lines it produces. There's still some "humanity" in there due to things like variances in pen pressure and suchlike, but there's a pleasing smoothness to lines drawn as one continuous motion that is hard to recreate even using real materials. You can't do that with a mouse, either — not even a fancy-pants high-DPI model — and, for me, it's one of the ways that computer art strikes a nice balance between the physical and digital spaces; a real way that the medium makes itself stand out as something unique, rather than an attempt to recreate something that already exists.

I'm looking forward to experimenting a bit more with this drawing tablet, and I'm going to try and scribble something as a companion piece to each post each day, just like I've been doing up until now with the stickmen. As I say, I can't promise that some days won't still have stickmen — I know they have their fans, and I still like them myself — but I also want to experiment with pushing myself a little more, and perhaps developing a bit of a style that I can absolutely call "my own".

Also the sassy gal in the bottom left is cute, no? She will definitely be making more appearances.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 567: I got a tablet

I got a drawing tablet for Christmas. It's something I've always wanted to experiment with a bit, but the price on previous occasions I've looked always felt a bit prohibitive for something I don't know if I'll stick with — but in more recent years, these things seem to have become quite a bit more affordable, so I didn't feel too bad sticking one on my wishlist.

As such, you can expect the stupid drawings on this blog to take on a certain… different quality from what they have been in the past. I am making no promises whatsoever that they will be better, but at least now they will be drawn by hand with a pen rather than scrawled using a mouse that isn't really fit for the job.

Drawing is something I used to love doing when I was a kid. I have particularly fond memories of being at my Nan and Grandad's house, armed with nothing but a pad of paper and some pencils, and that would keep me occupied for hours at a time. Sometimes I would draw things from my own imagination; at others I would attempt to recreate things I had seen myself elsewhere. I recall one of my best pieces of work being a recreation of Asterix from the famous comic book series; that was in full colour and everything and, of course, my grandparents were good enough to proudly display it on their fridge.

Doodling was a big part of my time at school also. I've talked on numerous occasions about the "Rough Books" my friend Ed and I had, and these were inevitably filled with silly cartoon strips, fake adverts and doodles of our favourite characters that we had created. On more than one occasion our predilection for doodling got us into a bit of trouble, but I think most teachers knew that it was ultimately fairly harmless compared to what some of the other kids got up to.

A tablet is half of the equation when you're talking about digital art. The other half is the software you use. Up until now, the free and excellent Paint.net has always been my tool of choice, but I feel like if I want to do a bit more with this thing, it might be worth looking at some other tools. I know Clip Studio Paint is quite well-regarded, so I may have to give the free trial version of that a bit of a go and see how I get on. I also have access to Photoshop via work, but modern Photoshop has so much shit going on in its interface that I find it borderline indecipherable compared to the CS2 and CS3 versions I'm mostly accustomed to, so I'd rather not get too involved in that.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having a play around. And you will hopefully excuse the inevitably variable quality of the illustrations you will see on these pages as I get to grips with my new toy!

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#oneaday Day 566: Merry Christmas

Just a short one for today, as it's Christmas and I'm very tired indeed, plus we have things to do tomorrow!

A very Merry Christmas to anyone reading this. It's been a pleasantly quiet one here on Davison mountain, as we've just had the immediate family together for the first time in quite a while, particularly after some have had a bit of a turbulent year, to say the least.

Everyone got a nice selection of presents. I got some books, a nice Samsung smartwatch/fitness tracker thing and some other bits and pieces. I bought Andie a Soda Stream, as I thought it would be fun and we use quite a lot of sparkling water generally anyway.

Tomorrow we are attending a "handfasting" ceremony for my brother and his partner — not something I'm familiar with, but it sounds like a nice little event for close family. After that, it's the long drive home to reunite with the cats, who have been having to fend for themselves (with the food and water we left for them, obviously!) since Christmas Eve.

Anyway, I'm pretty wiped out so it's time to sleep. I hope you all had a pleasant Christmas if at all possible, and that you at the very least get some nice time off for the end of the year.

#oneaday Day 565: It's almost Christmas

Which means it isn't Christmas, I know. Christmas where I am at the time of writing is in 52 minutes.

We're at my parents' place for this Christmas, as my brother is over from the States, and it's a rare opportunity for our Mum and Dad to have the whole family together at a special time of year. (We're going to the in-laws for New Year, then next year they get us for Christmas.)

I've waxed lyrical over the years about how Christmas kind of loses its magic a bit as you get older, but I think there might be a kind of inverse bell curve thing going on, as I feel like I powered through Christmas being a bit "meh" over the course of the last decade or so, and I'm back to it feeling rather nice to get together with family and share some good times.

Of course, there was a hefty period of my life where things were not going particularly well, and that didn't exactly help with the festive spirit, but while I'm not in a position where I can say my life is "perfect" or 100% where I want it to be, I'm a damn sight more grounded and, for the most part, content than I was back around 2010 or so.

As I say, there are plenty of things I want to work on and improve in the coming year, and the festive season, of course, always gets one in a reflective sort of mood and keen to kid oneself that yes, this next year will be The Year.

I don't yet know if next year will be The Year. I suspect we all have many uphill battles to continue fighting in our own respective existences — and the world itself, for sure, needs to overcome its current challenges and, eventually, heal.

No-one really knows what the future holds. So while you're in a pleasant present, you might as well at least try and enjoy it.

I hope any of you out there reading this have a pleasant conclusion to 2025, whatever you might be doing to see it off — if anything. I certainly intend to try — beginning with a nice long sleep right about now.

#oneaday Day 564: The lost art of playing together

There are many things I mourn about Times Gone By, but I think the biggest thing I miss is being able to enjoy video games together with other people. Oh, sure, you can play online with anyone in the world, but getting someone in the same room as you to play something with you — or even just sit and watch while you play! — feels like a distant memory at this point. And yet it used to be such an important part of our daily lives!

When I was growing up, I used to spend a lot of time "going on the computer". This was primarily a solitary activity, though I do recall my Dad and brother getting involved in the very early years, giving me an introduction to programming in Atari BASIC and teaching me how to use both the Atari 8-bit and ST machines.

One of the things I loved doing when I either went to a friend's house or had them over to my place was "going on the computer" together. At my friend Matthew's house, we'd play on his BBC Micro when we were younger, and later on his Archimedes. His Dad worked for Acorn, so these were the computers in his house; although I was an Atari fan by virtue of the computers we had in our house, I enjoyed the unique experiences that both the Beeb and the Archie offered, since they were often completely distinct from what I could enjoy at home.

I believe I went to my sometimes-friend Dale's house on just one occasion, and I remember that was the one and only time I played on a Sega Master System as a kid, but I remember really liking the few games he had. My friend Mike, meanwhile, had an Amiga, and we had a lot of fun with that — not just playing games, but also fiddling with creative programs like Deluxe Paint and the like.

Once we got to secondary school, my closest friends went to one another's houses a lot, and we would play on both computers and consoles together. At my friend Edd's house, we'd play on his Amiga and Mega Drive; at my friend Andrew's house, we'd play on his MS-DOS PC and Super NES; later, we'd all get Nintendo 64s and PlayStations, and we'd play together on those.

At university, we spent a lot of time going to one another's houses to play Nintendo 64 in particular, as that console remains unmatched for the sheer breadth of multiplayer titles on offer. But a little later, when the next generation of consoles rolled around, I would have friends over and we'd play Grand Theft Auto III together, despite it not being multiplayer, and we'd play through entire cooperative campaigns of games like Halo and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. I have some truly wonderful memories of enjoying games like that.

Today, though, it is almost unimaginable to play through an entire game with a single co-op partner in the same room as me. Hell, at this point, it's unimaginable to even have a few friendly matches on a fighting game, first-person shooter or racing game.

And this sucks! I've got easy access to more games than we have ever had at any point in our lives, but getting anyone to actually want to come play them with me is like pulling teeth from a particularly bloodless stone. That makes me intensely, terribly sad, and I wish things could be different. But the world has, apparently, moved on from this sort of thing as a regular, normal thing to do; I just have to take whatever opportunities I can get — which very occasionally come up, but not often — to enjoy this long-lost art of having fun together.

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#oneaday Day 563: My top 10 Evercade games for 2025

It is, of course, my job to love and appreciate everything we release for Evercade — and for sure, there is not one single game from the library that I have not been able to "find the fun" with to date.

But of course there are some that I like more than others. So in the spirit of all the "top 10" lists that are going around right now, I thought I would go through my 10 favourite Evercade games that we've released this year, drawn from all the cartridges we released in 2025: Indie Heroes Collection 4; Broken Sword Collection; Atari Arcade 2; Tomb Raider Collection 2; Gremlin Collection 2; Windjammers, Karnov & Friends; Roguecraft DX; NEOGEO Arcade 1; TAITO Arcade 1; TAITO Arcade 2; NEOGEO Arcade 2; NEOGEO Arcade 3; Activision Collection 1; Rare Collection 1 and The Llamasoft Collection.

DISCLAIMER: You are an intelligent person and I should not have to say this, but I am going to anyway. The following list represents my personal opinion and does not reflect any sort of professional judgement or the collective opinion of my employer. It should not be taken as any particular games or cartridges having received any sort of preferential treatment, either personally or professionally, nor that I have received any sort of incentive (financial or otherwise) from any of the license holders to feature their games on this personal blog that no-one reads. Also any cartridges that do not end up featured in this list does not mean I think those carts are shit, it means I have 10 slots and a lot more than 10 games to choose from.

Got that? All right, let's Top 10 this thing.

10. Twinkle Star Sprites

I think Twinkle Star Sprites was one of the first NEOGEO games I was ever introduced to, back when DotEmu did those absolutely terrible ports for PC a while back. I was sold on it by the promise of it being a blend of shoot 'em up and puzzle game — two genres I adore — and that is exactly what it provides: the frantic action of a shoot 'em up, combined with the competitive piece-matching, combo-building and garbage-throwing that is the competitive puzzle game genre.

It's a super-fun game, which I only put relatively low in these rankings due to the inevitable "arcade bullshit difficulty" that it pulls on the solo player from partway through proceedings. If you have the opportunity to challenge a friend, take it — there really is nothing quite like it.

9. Rohga: Armor Force

I'd never heard of this side-scrolling mech 'em up until we started work on the Windjammers, Karnov & Friends cartridge, but it quickly became a favourite with its gorgeous anime-inspired pixel art, its rocking soundtrack and its excellent gameplay.

Taking a strongly cinematic approach despite the relatively limited tech it's running on, Rohga: Armor Force is a thrill ride of a shoot 'em up that offers something just a little bit different from the norm. If you enjoy making things explode in a hail of bullets from a side-on perspective, this is definitely one you need to spend some time with.

8. Atic Atac

Atic Atac is a game that I played back in the day — I think on a friend's BBC Micro — and while I never understood what you were supposed to do in it back then, I found it immensely striking for a number of reasons: its top-down perspective; its personality-packed sprites; and the unusual "chicken" health bar, where your proximity to death is depicted by how picked clean of meat a chicken carcass is.

Now I know what you're actually supposed to do in Atic Atac, I like it even more. It's a nice evolution of the formula established in games like Atari's Adventure and Haunted House, and its randomised elements and multiple playable characters make it eminently replayable.

7. Murtop

I absolutely adore the minor trend there's been of modern developers making brand new games that look and feel like classic arcade games. Last year we had the incredible Donut Dodo, and this year we had Murtop, a blend of elements from Dig Dug and Bomberman. Best of all, the version for Evercade was specially redesigned to look great on a horizontally oriented display — it looks especially good on the 4:3 screen of Evercade Alpha.

Murtop is one of those games that is very easy to learn, but tricky to master. It's also a game where you will feel a sense of absolute exhilaration when you have "the perfect run" that just sees your score continuing to escalate. Also it has a brilliantly energetic soundtrack that has been stuck in my head ever since we featured it as a "Game of the Month" title in 2024.

6. Super Gridrunner

The Llamasoft Collection is a massive pile of woolly goodness from the one and only Jeff Minter, and there are a lot of games I really like in this collection — including some that I've only played for the first time between this cartridge and Digital Eclipse's interactive Llamasoft documentary.

If pushed, though, I'd have to pick an old favourite: Super Gridrunner, originally released on Atari ST. This frantic blastathon has beautiful, distinctive presentation, challenging gameplay and a wicked (occasionally sadistic) sense of humour. It's been a favourite of mine ever since we had the original ST version on floppy disk (I still have it!) and it's a delight to be able to play it on Evercade.

5. Garou: Mark of the Wolves

I'm not a Fighting Game Guy. I played and enjoyed Street Fighter II back in the day, and I've had some fun with the Dead or Alive ladies over the years, but most fighting games released post-Street Fighter II overwhelm me with their complexity. As such, I've never really found a good in-road to the genre, despite appreciating 2D fighting games in particular from afar thanks to their beautiful character art and animation.

For some reason, Garou: Mark of the Wolves clicked with me almost immediately. I think it's because it's specifically not overwhelming in any way: there's a relatively small cast of playable characters, making it easy to pick a character you want to get to know better; its mechanics are straightforward to understand; its special moves are relatively easy to perform; and it has an excellent "make the game easier for me" button any time you have to continue, meaning if you're primarily in it to see all the beautiful stages and the various endings, you can do that without too much frustration.

4. Tazz-Mania

This is another game I'd never heard of prior to our work on Atari Arcade 2, but it became an immediate favourite thanks to its simple but compelling gameplay. It's one of those games that you can feel yourself getting better at — and see yourself improving by climbing up the score rankings.

As an arena shooter, there's not a lot here that you haven't seen before, but its solid mechanics and little twists, such as the player character's rapid-fire machine gun and the walls closing in on you as you attempt to clear each stage, help elevate this well above being a simple Robotron clone.

3. MegaMania

Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for an official modern rerelease of Activision's Atari 2600 output? I absolutely adore these games, and it's always been a bit frustrating to me how dodgy the emulation of them is in their last official rerelease, Activision Anthology.

While our Activision Collection 1 cartridge may lack Tainted Love and its ilk on the soundtrack, it's a collection of 15 great games, all of which I absolutely love having easy access to again. I could have picked any number of these for my top 10, but going purely on the number of times I've played it since the Activision Collection 1 cartridge came in, I think MegaMania has to take the top spot.

2. Metal Slug

Metal Slug is a series that I've always meant to explore, but have somehow never gotten around to. Now I have no excuse — and as I could have predicted, I really like it. Now, I'm sure there are some of you out there with strong opinions as to which Metal Slug is best, but I'm going with the first one purely because, so far, it's the one I've played the most of and got the best at.

It's a brilliant example of why the NEOGEO is so beloved for its pixel-pushing capabilities — despite the series, collectively, being some of the worst-performing games on the platform in terms of slowdown — and just a great run-and-gun shooter that is easy to get into and incredibly satisfying to get better at, a little bit at a time.

1. Roguecraft DX

Finally, I have to put the wonderful Roguecraft DX at the top spot for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it's a really good game, taking the traditional roguelike formula and making it incredibly accessible while resisting the temptation to overwhelm players with mountains of persistent progression and unlocks. Secondly, it's a brilliant showcase of why the Amiga rocks. And thirdly, the folks at Badger Punch Games, whom we worked with closely to get this release out the door, are really lovely chaps.

Roguecraft DX is an endlessly replayable, delightfully fun game that is eminently suitable to both quick handheld sessions and longer session in front of the TV. It's my number one highlight from our releases of 2025, and I'm thrilled to have been part of making that release happen.

So there you go: my top picks for the year. It's been an incredible year to be part of the Evercade project, and next year promises to be even more exciting. But you'll just have to wait and see what we have planned for you, non?

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#oneaday Day 562: This is not sponsored by Manta Sleep

A while back, my pal RoseTintedSpectrum blew up on YouTube (in the good way) with his coverage of classic TV shows, which naturally caused the sponsors to come a-knockin'. Since Rosie is well aware of the number of scammy YouTube sponsors out there — he, like me, is part of a Discord group of YouTubers, and we frequently share and discuss news from around the platform — he wasn't just going to immediately jump at the first dodgy online counselling or grocery delivery service that came his way. As such, I knew that if and when he did take on a sponsor, it would be someone that he felt comfortable recommending.

That sponsorship deal eventually came in the form of Manta Sleep, a luxury sleep mask company. And a while back, I did something I don't normally do: I bought something that I had seen advertised online. Specifically, I bought a pair of Manta SOUND masks — one for me and one for my wife — during the site's Black Friday sales, which meant they were considerably cheaper than they would be under normal circumstances.

Manta Sleep's "thing" is that rather than just being a blindfold you put on to go to sleep, their masks are designed to be both comfortable and effective. The band is made from pleasantly breathable fabric and is nice and soft, and the front of the mask features padded eyepieces that completely cover your eye sockets, blocking out absolutely all light without applying pressure to your eyes. And they really do offer complete blackout to such a degree that you will see the same thing whether your eyes are open or closed: total darkness, even if a light has been left on in the room.

The Manta SOUND mask, as the name suggests, also comes with Bluetooth headphones integrated into the mask. Rather excellently, the part of the mask that has all the electronics in can be detached from the bit that comes into contact with your face, so you can actually throw the thing in the washing machine without having to perform surgery on it beforehand. (Or, indeed, frying the electronics because you forgot to perform surgery on it beforehand.) The two earpieces are very thin and light, meaning you can lie on your side without them digging into you, and can be easily adjusted forwards and backwards in the special little pocket they're in to match the shape of your head and the position of your ears.

The sound quality is very good, too! There seems to be relatively minimal audio bleed out into the room when you're listening to something, and the sound you're listening to has a decent amount of presence. Obviously by nature of the design they're don't have quite as much oomph as a pair of "proper" headphones, but when you're trying to get to sleep, you don't need oomph — you need comfort and reliability, and that's what these have provided so far.

I've been really impressed with the Manta SOUND. They're pricy — and I'm glad I got the Black Friday deal on them — but they're clearly a premium product. And it's worth noting that for those who don't want or need the "sound" part, Manta Sleep's other masks are a tad more affordable, and just as comfortable and luxurious.

So yeah. This blog post is not sponsored by Manta Sleep, but I decided to try them out because my friend was sponsored by Manta Sleep, and now I will quite happily and comfortably recommend Manta Sleep to anyone who asks about them.

Manta Sleep.

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#oneaday Day 561: A world of misinformation

We mock Donny Trump's obsession with "fake news" because he always busts that out whenever someone criticises him, but it's an unfortunate fact of life that we are living in a world that is riddled with misinformation right now — particularly if you're the sort of person who primarily gets their information from social media. And, distressingly, that is quite a lot of people these days.

Not all bits of misinformation are dangerous, of course, but they're no less frustrating to see. The other day, for example, I saw a post on Bluesky where someone commented that someone waxing nostalgic over the original Quake for being "from the days before you needed to spend thousands on graphics cards" or suchlike was "the funniest game they could have picked to comment this on". Funny! Except Quake didn't need a 3D accelerator card, as it ran entirely in software, meaning that while a decent non-3D graphics card would help in unlocking graphics modes, it was primarily dependent on how good your CPU was. Its 3D-accelerated version was never officially supported, despite being developed by id Software, and was primarily put out as a test for what they were planning to do with Quake II, which was 3D-accelerated by default.

Likewise, when a near-complete version of Resident Evil for Game Boy Color was unearthed and released to the public the other day, there were people talking about how it "included" the pre-rendered backgrounds of the PS1 version (it doesn't, they are low-resolution pixel art recreations) and how it "used the same isometric perspective" as the PS1 version (neither the PS1 nor the GBC versions are depicted from an isometric perspective).

I didn't comment on either of these at the time because that would have made me an "Um Actually" guy, and no-one wants to be one of those. But as someone who cares about this stuff — particularly about game history, and modern folks appreciating the many varied and wonderful things that classic games were doing — it was frustrating to see these statements go completely unchallenged.

The problem, as I've already alluded to, is people seeing someone saying something on social media and then immediately taking that as gospel truth without verifying it for themselves. In cases such as the above, perhaps younger people might not know what they would need to search for in order to verify those things — or indeed even if they needed verifying in the first place. Neither of those cases particularly matter in the grand scheme of things, but they're a microcosm of times when more serious misinformation — misinformation that could, say, seriously damage someone's reputation — has found itself spreading in one way or another.

They say "the Internet never forgets" — and with the sterling work the Internet Archive does, that's mostly true. Unfortunately, this sometimes means that the Internet never forgets something that was wrong in the first place. And once that misinformation takes root among enough people as being "the truth" — or, perhaps more accurately, "good enough" to sound like the truth — it's very hard to dig it out again to correct things, because not only does no-one like an "Um Actually" guy, even when they're correct, people are simply very resistant to having their assumptions challenged and corrected.

That feels like it might be a problem we should deal with sooner rather than later. But how…?

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#oneaday Day 560: The weapons-grade Game Boy

Earlier today, the company ModRetro announced that it would be producing a special edition version of its "Chromatic" FPGA-based Nintendo Game Boy clone.

ModRetro is a company that is already on the shitlist of a lot of people thanks to its founder, Palmer Luckey, also being the cofounder of Anduril Industries, a company that makes autonomous weaponry. Drones, in other words.

Up until now, a lot of people have sort of begrudgingly been able to separate the two — the Chromatic is supposedly a very good FPGA Game Boy, and the fact that the company has been releasing new Game Boy-compatible cartridges for it, showcasing a variety of modern indie developers' work on the platform, would initially appear to be quite laudable.

At the same time, the brand has had vociferous critics, keen to point out at every opportunity that Luckey is a dangerous bellend who profits from atrocities. Indeed, the man himself makes no attempt to hide this fact on a blog post on the ModRetro website.

The more… outspoken of these critics have, in the past, engaged in behaviour that I personally found a tad distasteful — by which I mean borderline harassment of people who had written about the Chromatic as simply being a very good FPGA Game Boy, without spending their entire article waxing poetic about how much of a warmongering shitbag Luckey is. On the one hand, I understood these criticisms, but the way in which they were expressed, on more than one occasion, was not, to my eyes, particularly acceptable or productive.

Today, though… I get it. Because the new special edition Chromatic that ModRetro announced is explicitly Anduril-branded, and advertises itself as being "finished by hand in America with Cerakote, the same ultra-durable ceramic-polymer formulation that protects Ghost — Anduril's flagship autonomous air vehicle". Later in the product page description, it spells things out even more explicitly by noting "the body of Chromatic is made from the same magnesium aluminium alloy as Anduril's attack drones".

This is… weird, right? Why would you explicitly sell an FPGA Game Boy that, in your own words, is made from the same materials as devices that cause death and suffering, if not to thumb your nose at the people who have previously criticised the brand for its association with an arms dealer? Granted, the thing looks classy and sounds like it can stand up to a lot more punishment than most other handheld gaming devices in the world — but if you're going to make a really durable handheld, why bring up "attack drones" and "autonomous air vehicles" at all, if not to specifically provoke certain people out there?

Not only that, but you can bet that there are certain types of people out there who are going to buy this thing specifically to spite people who have, in the past, spoken out against Luckey for one reason or another — even if it does mean paying over four hundred dollars for a Game Boy.

This whole thing leaves a particularly foul taste in the mouth. It's very clearly not about giving retro gaming enthusiasts the best possible experience, and all about whitewashing what "Anduril" means in the modern world. Let's not even get into how many modern companies doing terrible things (like Anduril) have adopted nomenclature from J. R. R. Tolkien without even the slightest trace of irony or understanding of what Tolkien was actually saying in his works.

It's going to be interesting to see who has the balls to actually call this out for being as odious as it is — and then standing their moral ground to back up their criticisms — and who treats it as just another silly little gaming story.

I certainly won't be touching anything ModRetro-branded any time soon.

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#oneaday Day 559: Event horizon

I've been thinking recently: with all the annoyance and frustration over CEO after CEO saying that their game development studios are using generative AI in their work, are we finally at a point where one could actually completely stop buying new stuff, and subsist entirely on titles developed and released prior to this AI bullshit getting everywhere?

I'm pretty sure we are. In fact, I'm pretty sure we've been there for a while. I still buy a fair few new games, but right now, given the size of my physical and digital libraries, I'm pretty sure I could just flat-out stop buying games altogether and still have enough to keep me occupied until my dying day.

I mean, hell, just on Evercade there is somewhere in the region of 700 games. There are over a thousand games in my Steam library. Another 540 in my GOG.com library. In my physical collection, I have 422 Nintendo Switch games, 169 PlayStation 4 games, 147 Xbox 360 games, 92 PlayStation 3 games, 282 PlayStation 2 games and plenty more besides. On the MiSTer Multisystem 2 I have every game from pretty much every platform I care about from the Atari 2600 up until the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64. I really could stop buying games today and I would still be entertained until the end of time. Hell, I think I could probably get by on Doom and Final Fantasy VII replays.

Part of me wants to try doing this, but a certain degree of FOMO prevents me from committing to it entirely, because I know there are games in the pipeline that I definitely want: the third Final Fantasy VII reboot; Ace Combat 8; the Trails in the Sky: 2nd Chapter remake. The limited print publishing companies — which, honestly, is where I buy the majority of my games from these days anyway — have been doing a great run of physical versions of otherwise digital-only games that I want to play, and new versions of games I enjoyed back in the day, but which are a pain to get up and running on modern PCs.

I think we have reached a sort of "event horizon" similar to that found in other media, where enthusiasts of the medium can comfortably drift away from the mainstream, popular, current side of things and subsist entirely on niche interest material from the past that they find personally resonant. This absolutely happens in other forms of creative media — there are people who enjoy listening to music who never touch chart hits; there are people who love movies who have never seen a "blockbuster"; there are people who love reading who read nothing but classic literature.

So I think what I'm going to do is not necessarily commit to a complete purchasing blackout, for the reasons I've already outlined. I am still going to buy whatever the third Final Fantasy VII remake project game is; I am still going to buy Ace Combat 8; I am still going to buy any limited-print games that come up which I have been eagerly awaiting a physical copy of.

But what I am going to do is curtail impulse purchases. A significant portion of the physical library I own I picked up because I knew I wanted to play the games in question someday, and when that day rolled around I didn't want to find myself in a situation where it would cost three figures (or more) to be able to do so. I already feel a great sense of regret from the day I traded in my copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on PlayStation, and I have no desire to feel that way again.

What I do find myself feeling to an increasing degree from modern video game publishers and developers, though, is… nothing. Honestly, I just looked through the list of everything announced at the recent The Game Awards, and the only thing that registered even a slight twinge of excitement for me was Ace Combat 8. Everything else just sort of drifted past me and I had no particularly strong feelings about it. And the recent behaviour of Larian Studios' head honcho has put me right off wanting to get caught up on the Divinity series.

So here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to finish all the "finishable" games I have on the go right now, which includes Yakuza 5, Death end re;Quest Code Z, an Ace Combat 7 replay, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Cyberpunk 2077. I'm already giving myself anxiety by having so many half-finished games on the go, some of which I haven't touched for months, so I want to check all these off my list because I've been enjoying all of them and want to see them all through to their respective conclusions.
Throughout the year, I'm going to buy anything that I already know I want without guilt. That includes the stuff I've already mentioned, plus any surprise announcements in series that I follow and appreciate, or from companies that I consistently enjoy the work of.
Throughout the year, I'm also going to buy any limited-print stuff that I already know I want. This primarily includes previously digital-only stuff that has been out for a while, and modern rereleases of titles I loved in the past like Heretic, Hexen and the System Shock games.
I am not going to buy games just because I see them while browsing a shopping site and think "ooh, that looks interesting", because these are the things that end up on the shelf and don't get played for literally years at at a time.
I am not going to buy games for previous-generation platforms unless I know they are games that I have already played and want to revisit, or games that I never got the chance to try back in the day.

I say all the above with the caveat that if something like this year's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes along and surprises everyone, I reserve the right to jump in and explore it for myself. While I was initially cynical about that game when it first appeared, it ended up being one of my top games of the year. (Conversely, I really didn't like Blue Prince at all.)

This might all sound a bit half-arsed and I freely admit that it is. But I wanted to acknowledge the feelings of… discontent that I have with the current direction of video games while still allowing myself the opportunity to enjoy the things that I am looking forward to.

I love video games, you see. Love them. And I always will.

I'm just not sure I love Video Games That Were Made In 2025 And Beyond, going by some of the recent happenings.

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