The Week on MoeGamer (Birthday Edition)

Hello everyone! And welcome to MoeGamer's fourth year on this Earth. Somehow, it only occurred to me last year that I share my birthday with my site, but sure enough, if you look at the first ever post on the site, you'll see the evidence there plain as day. I guess I had blotted out the negative associations with that period, as that was also when USgamer laid me off… but ultimately that led to the creation of MoeGamer, so it turned out to be a pretty neat thing, huh.

Anyway. Here's what you might have missed last week on MoeGamer.

The MoeGamer Podcast Pilot Episode: Sega, Sega, Sega
My friend Chris Caskie and I have been talking about getting together to do a podcast for ages, and we finally got around to it. We were pretty pleased with the results, and we're going to try our best to make it a regular-ish thing; hopefully we'll be recording a new episode this coming weekend, all being well.

Blue Reflection: Sounds of School Days
I couldn't let Blue Reflection go without highlighting its wonderful and unusual soundtrack. It's one of the most distinctive scores I've heard for a long time — and the final boss theme (not in this post) made the whole finale an emotionally devastating masterpiece. Wonderful stuff — but I'd expect nothing less from Gust.

Waifu Wednesday: Milla Maxwell
I love Milla. I love Milla. I absolutely loved the two Tales of Xillia games, and Milla was a big part of that. I need more Milla in my life. Fortunately, as I discovered this week, she makes a guest appearance in Tales of Berseria, which I happened to pick up with some birthday money over the weekend…

Namco Essentials: Galaga '88
I didn't know anything about this game prior to giving it a go in Namco Museum for Switch, but now I'm a big fan. A wonderful "16-bit" adaptation of the Galaga formula, this is an underappreciated gem in Namco's back catalogue.

Blue Reflection: Narrative, Themes and Characterisation
Blue Reflection is a powerful game with some deep themes. It's one of the most beautiful, emotionally affecting games I've had the pleasure to experience for quite some time. Here's an in-depth exploration of how it tells its story, and the people in the cast who help make that happen.

Four Years of MoeGamer, 37 Years of Pete
Yes, as previously noted, it was both my birthday and MoeGamer's anniversary over the weekend, so I took the opportunity to look back over the best year the site has had to date. A sincere thank you to all of you who have helped make that happen, whether it's through simply reading, liking, commenting and sharing, or actually flipping some money my way.

I'd like to continue growing and improving the site this year, and we're reaching a point where there are some expenses involved in doing that. Specifically, I need to pony up for a WordPress premium package for additional media storage space, and ideally I'd like to pay up for a SoundCloud account too to host audio-only versions of the podcast.

Those of you already contributing, it's very much appreciated; please do me a favour and share this page with family and friends who you think might be interested! At $100 a month I'll pay up for the WordPress upgrade (which will also remove WordPress' ads from the site) as that's the priority right now; I'll figure out the SoundCloud stuff after that.

Once again, thanks for your continued support, and I hope you continue to enjoy my work!