Yesterday was a little bit bleak, and for that I make no apologies; these posts are all about "the uncut Pete", as it were, and thus there will be an element of taking the rough with the smooth.

However, I'm also conscious that nobody wants to read doom and gloom all the time, so I'll make an effort to talk about something positive today. And the first thing that comes to mind when I try and think happy thoughts right now is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

I wrote on MoeGamer the other day about how I've always had slightly mixed feelings about the Super Smash Bros. games, and attributed those mixed feelings to the fact that I've never really "stuck with them" for very long. In the case of the Wii U version, this was primarily down to the relative lack of good single-player modes — this isn't to say that they were completely absent or anything, but it lacked a sense of real "structure" to what you were doing.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Smash Ultimate hereafter) addresses this common complaint very well indeed, with a wide selection of excellent single-player modes alongside its flexible multiplayer options. I've been having a lot of fun with it since release day, and in the process it's also helping me to understand and appreciate the game as a whole a bit better.

The main feature for many people is the Adventure mode, also known as World of Light. Here, you begin with just Kirby and have to walk around a map, clearing various fights and unlocking equippable Spirits or playable fighters in the process. Each fight has its own distinct characteristics that relates to the Spirit in question, adjusting the game rules and overall "handling" of the match in various ways, forcing you to adapt to different situations and, where possible, to make good use of Spirits you already own to counter various situations.

Much like Mario Tennis Aces' similar Adventure mode, World of Light is designed to train you how to deal with various situations in the game. Sometimes you'll be up against a foe that spams a particular move, so you need to figure out a way to get around that. On one occasion, you face a giant enemy in a stamina-based battle; they don't attack, but you have a very tight time limit, meaning you need to figure out what are the best ways to inflict a lot of damage quickly. And sometimes there will be environmental hazards to deal with alongside your opponents.

I've so far found this to be a remarkably effective means of encouraging me to experiment with different tactics, strategies and usage of moves. There's a really satisfying sense of achievement when you clear a tough battle, and there's always a wide choice of things to do if you find yourself particularly stuck on one specific challenge.

Outside of World of Light, I've been playing a lot of Classic mode to unlock characters. This is a conventional "arcade-style" format in which you play through a linear sequence of stages; the twist is that each character on the roster has their own "route" through the game that is broadly themed around them in terms of both opponents and rules. Ryu, for example, has a series of stamina matches against foes whose colour schemes have been chosen to make them resemble various Street Fighter II characters — Donkey Kong with green fur to represent Blanka, that sort of thing. At the conclusion of each character's Classic mode, there's a boss fight in which you take on an enemy with an actual health bar; these foes aren't just Master Hand and Crazy Hand from previous Smash games, either. Instead, there are several different bosses to take on, with the one you confront being broadly thematically appropriate to the character you've picked. Simon Belmont fights Dracula, for example, while Young Link fights Ganon. Rathalos from Monster Hunter even puts in an appearance, though I forget offhand who gets that particular pleasure as their final confrontation.

Besides being mechanically solid, full of content and overall well-designed, the thing I'm enjoying most about Smash Ultimate is that it's just an unashamed celebration of gaming. It's ridiculous and doesn't make any sense; it's just designed to make you happy. It's one of many games where Nintendo is embracing its background as a toy manufacturer — and indeed, the very concept of Super Smash Bros. since the beginning has supposedly been a kid playing with action figures than any of this actually happening.

As nonsensical and joyfully ridiculous as it may be, Smash Ultimate is most definitely Nintendo at play… and inviting you in for the fun, too. It's hard to recall the last game I played that was so antithetical to modern cynicism and apathy as Smash Ultimate is; whether you love or loathe actually playing it, it's hard to deny the fact that, more than anything, it wants to make everyone around it smile.

One of the most common mental health complaints I see people talking about these days is "impostor syndrome".

The term was apparently originally defined in 1978, but, like many mental health issues, it has become much more widely recognised and understood over the course of the last few years. People are a lot more comfortable and confident talking about such issues now we have the Internet; for all we complain about our online world being full of "toxicity" and trolls, it's hard to deny the feeling of connection one can feel from being able to put something out there and hear back from people who truly understand you, even if they're thousands of miles away.

I wouldn't say I suffer from impostor syndrome regularly, but there are occasions when it does hit me. And when it hits, it tends to hit pretty hard, bringing with it a mild to moderate feeling of anxiety. The trouble with it is, that attack of anxiety doesn't have an immediately obvious, concrete trigger, and thus it's difficult to take steps to deal with it. And, as someone who has a bit of a problem with anxiety, those anxious feelings then tend to stick around for a while.

Ultimately I just have to try and "talk myself down", as it were. When I start feeling impostor syndrome at work, I need to tell myself that I'm not the only person who makes mistakes or doesn't understand things at times. When I start feeling impostor syndrome over my creative projects — particularly MoeGamer and my videos — I need to tell myself that my priority has always been having fun with them; I'm doing them for myself, and the fact that anyone is reading and watching them, let alone financially supporting them, is something incredibly special that I'm enormously thankful for.

On that note, I have a sincere request, dearest Patrons. I've been hovering somewhere between $70 and $80 a month for over a year now here on Patreon, but I'm really keen to grow this page and my creative projects in general. I'd love to, at the very least, break the $100 a month mark in the new year.

So my request is thus: if you enjoy my work, please do share it with your family and friends… and share this Patreon page, too, especially if you feel they might enjoy these daily updates alongside my work on the main site. And please feel free to tag me in when you do so! A simple share of an article on social media can lead to some interesting discussions.

I have always believed that creators should get paid for the work they do — and this applies to me, too. I work hard on MoeGamer as a passion project, but it's something I've grown to be really proud of over the course of the last few years. Just a simple like, comment or share on social media brings me reassurance that I'm not crazy for doing what I do and being so emotionally invested in it; someone signing up to become a Patron makes me more grateful than you can possibly understand.

Apologies if this comes across a little like e-begging, but my Patreon earnings have been yo-yoing like crazy recently and it's been bringing me a little of that impostor syndrome anxiety I've described above, off and on. So if you're able to help in your own small way, I'd greatly appreciate it… probably more than you realise!

Thanks for listening. Getting this off my chest has helped a little. Now to try and distract myself for the rest of the day!

You may recall that yesterday I was somewhat bamboozled by the fact I had received a "delivery failed" notification from Amazon for my copy of Smash Bros, yet somehow the game had still arrived.

Well, today I solved the mystery. I figured I'd pop along to the post office just in case someone had made a terrible mistake somewhere; the worst that could happen is that I'd end up with two copies of Super Smash Bros, in which case, yay, free trade-in credit.

Turns out the Royal Mail had messed up; while the Amazon package was delivered successfully, there were also two other packages (pictured above) which couldn't be delivered: one required a signature, and one was too big to go through the letterbox. As such, the postman had recorded the failed delivery and attached this information to the Amazon tracking; the other two packages had not come from Amazon, however. Confusion ensued.

Doubtless you're champing at the bit to discover exactly what was in these mysterious packages that I have now retrieved. So I shall keep you in suspense no longer, dear reader.

The white package was from CEX, our national chain of second-hand games stores. After writing my MoeGamer Awards piece the other day about collecting for the Wii U, I figured it was time to add a few more Wii U titles to my collection. The Wii U is interesting in that there aren't a huge number of games that are exclusively available for it, but those that are exclusives are well worth having. In other words, it's well within most people's reach to have a "complete" Wii U collection, of at the very least the exclusive releases; I'm probably not going to bother with the multiplatform games that also had a Wii U release, because the PS4 versions of those will be better in most cases. Also a lot of them are titles I'm not especially interested in.

Anyway, these are four games that I was missing from my collection, and prices seem to be dropping gradually for Wii U games, so I figured I'd pick these up while they weren't terribly expensive. I anticipate in a few years Wii U's small install base and status as a "failure" will make it and its software quite sought after by collectors, so I'm trying to fill out that library now while everyone still just thinks "lol, Wii U".

The second was from boutique publisher Strictly Limited Games who, like their more well-known counterpart Limited Run Games, release physical versions of digital-only games in strictly limited quantities. I saw a while back that they had some Vita copies of shoot 'em up Gundemoniums still available, so I snagged one. Gundemonium Recollection, a previous incarnation of this game for PC and PS3, is one of my absolute favourite shoot 'em ups, so I was very happy for the opportunity to own some sort of physical version of the game. I'm not sure offhand how Gundemoniums differs from its predecessor, but I'm interested and excited to find out.

Well, if I can drag myself away from Super Smash Bros. that is… I'm making good progress on unlocking the roster!

Moments after I wrote that post yesterday, I thought "I'll just see if Smash has been delivered yet", only to discover a notification from Amazon that they'd attempted and failed to deliver it.

Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed by this, but since the notification arrived just a few minutes before I was going to nip home for lunch anyway, I thought I'd see if I could catch the postman and acquire the bounty he was now holding hostage.

To my surprise, when I reached my house I discovered an Amazon package pushed through my letterbox containing a copy of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. And a card saying that the Royal Mail had missed me. So anyway. A happy ending, if a bizarre one.

Also Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is very good indeed, thank you very much, so I am looking forward to exploring that further over the festive period. Chris and I will also likely be talking about it in detail on the next episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, which should hopefully be in a little over a week or so, all being well. So please look forward to that! (In the meantime, catch up on our previous episodes here; we're really proud of what we've put together for this show to date!)

Anyway. Onto the main point of today's post, which is to share how much Christmas my wife Andie has successfully festooned our house with. Here's a tree with a cock in it:

For those curious, the cock in question is a Fleshlight-brand "Mr Limpy" big floppy cock that I bought Andie as a joke gift a few years back. And yes, just a joke; being a big floppy cock it's not… ah, "functional" as such, though I understand that some trans men make use of it as a "packer" (work it out) if they feel like they want to be particularly well-endowed. It's travelled around with us ever since, and I always like to see it in the Christmas tree. And occasionally whirl it around my head as dear Lord, is it ever gloriously stretchy and fun to swing around like a lasso.

The tree sits at the near side of the living room; here's the other aspect, which is actually looking surprisingly bare, now that I look at it! The game shelves remain unadorned, though the ceiling has now been decorated with some shiny chain things that are pretty much as old as Andie and me. They're still holding up surprisingly well, much as I believe my parents are still in possession of a number of Christmas decorations from my childhood and even earlier.

The TV unit is at least surrounded by fairy lights, however, which is a nice look. On the TV you see my YouTube video on Atari 8-bit classic Pharaoh's Curse, which I was checking a bit of information on while preparing another video today.

And this is the stairway up to, uh, upstairs. It is probably the most Christmassy part of the house at the moment. Though Andie still has some decorations left, so I'm pretty sure there are going to be more adornments in various locations before the evening is through.

Hope you're having a pleasant weekend. I am! Nothing to worry about, so I can just sit back and enjoy the grind of unlocking everyone in Smash…

It was an absolutely miserable  morning today, with torrential downpours. Not an environment particularly conducive to getting up and trying to be productive.

Still, it's brightened up a bit now, and I'm in a reasonable mood today. I'm not crippled with agonising pain like I was yesterday morning, I lost 3.5lb in the first week of Slimming World (a little less than I hoped based on past experience, but still a good result!) and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is out today.

I wrote a little about my thoughts on the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate over on MoeGamer the other day, so check that out if you want to know a bit more; I won't reiterate what I said there save for the fact that I'm looking forward to trying the new game, and feel like the more substantial single-player content is going to keep me interested in it for a lot longer than previous installments.

Last night, aside from the great weigh-in, was spent re-acquainting myself with Atelier Rorona via its recent "DX" release on Nintendo Switch. I was fortunate enough to acquire review codes for the whole Arland trilogy, so now I'm intending to cover those in January. I know I said a little while back that I wouldn't be doing a whole series in one go again, but… well, I just got £80 worth of free games on the understanding that I'd write about them, so I better write about them!

Besides, I'm already familiar with Rorona from playing its two previous releases, the games themselves aren't super-long for a single playthrough, and if necessary they're ripe for further exploration in my New Game Plus series of videos, where I take on various titles' postgame content. Well, currently just Project Zero's postgame content, but that's the long-term intention anyway.

I've been meaning to write about the Arland games in one form or another since their PS3 release, so it's nice to finally have a good reason and incentive to. Plus I get to have them in pleasingly "complete" editions on a handheld system — the only thing I'm a bit sad about is the fact they have no physical releases, but at least I have the original PS3 games boxed. And you never know, maybe Limited Run Games or some such boutique publisher will end up putting out a proper physical version at some point in the future. You never know!

Rorona is a game that is special to me, but it's hard to say exactly why. I just really like its "comfy", pleasant nature; it's a pleasure to play, and all its characters are just a delight to hang out with. That said, it also has a few bittersweet memories attached to it; it was one of the last games I covered at USgamer, and a title that I clashed with my "replacement" Bob Mackey over, because Bob Mackey is a massive bellend who thinks a game having cute girls in it is "creepy". But fuck him. Positivity! Breathe.

Anyway. I just have to survive the usual Friday tedium until this afternoon, when I can go home and enjoy being bad at Super Smash Bros. once again. I'm looking forward to exploring the new game, and no doubt there'll be some videos and/or some articles on the subject in the near future, so please look forward to that!

I hope you have a good Friday!

Good morning! I am feeling better now, but when I woke up this morning I was in pretty intense pain. The kind of pain that makes you feel like you want to cry, vomit and shit yourself all at once.

Thankfully I only did one of those three things, and the pain eventually went away. In the meantime, my cat Meg was good enough to sit with me while I was writhing in agony in bed. She's pretty good like that, as was our dearly departed Ruby. I am grateful for cats; they have a reputation for being grumpy and aloof, but in my experience, they have always been wonderful companions exactly when you need them the most: when you're sad, ill, in pain or just lonely.

Said pain was the result of a hernia I've had for a little while. Basically I woke up, got up, coughed a bit too hard and said hernia (which I've decided to name Hermann, with two N's) decided that now would be a really good time to provide a simulation of what it would be like to experience the Alien series for real. If you've never experienced the pain of feeling like your insides are about to burst out of your stomach, I do not recommend the experience.

Annoyingly, I can't get the hernia treated right now as I'm literally too much of a fatass. Well, actually, more specifically, as I am right now, the hernia is likely to come back even if they were to treat it, with something approaching 100% likelihood. As such, I need to lose a bit of weight. This is something I've been meaning and wanting to do for ages, but incidents like this morning only go to provide additional motivation to do so.

Those who used to follow my old blog may recall that I had some success a couple of years back with a programme called Slimming World. I lost somewhere in the region of 6 stone last time around, and it was legitimately nice to be the lightest and slimmest I'd been for a long time. I was still a fairly big guy, yes, but it was pleasant to be able to do things like cross my legs, wear jeans, sit in a chair without being uncomfortable and see my penis. Not all at the same time. Although I could have done so if I wanted to.

Anyway, short version is, a combination of medication that gave me an absolutely voracious appetite for the shittiest foods imaginable and some severely trying times in both my personal and professional life meant that I ended up putting most of that weight back on again, which was enormously frustrating and demoralising. Still, on the upside, having done it once, I know that I can do it again because the plan you follow for Slimming World actually works. It's not a miracle or fad diet, it's just a means of encouraging you to think a bit more carefully about what you're eating and drinking.

My wife and I joined a new Slimming World group last week, and tonight is our first weigh-in since starting. Last time around I lost a massive amount in the first week simply due to water retention or something like that, so I'm interested to see if the same happens this time around. Either way, I'm taking positive steps to try and improve myself, so hopefully you'll see further good news in this regard in these posts as time goes on.

Wish me luck!

I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet. I haven't even really thought about it, to be honest.

Christmas always seemed to be pretty straightforward as a kid. Write a letter to Santa that included a list of all the things you really wanted along with the assurance that you had "been good" (even if you were self-conscious of a particular instance of bad behaviour that had occurred relatively recently), get whatever your parents suggested as presents for other people and then sit back and wait for the bounty on Christmas morning.

As an adult, you actually have to think about such things. Not only do you have to contemplate what people might actually want, you also have additional considerations about the things you want. Is there anything you "need" that you can palm off on other people's generosity to save you having to pay anything? Is it "too much" to ask for purely selfish, enjoyable things?

Personally speaking, so far as presents go, I've always preferred fun things. I shan't say that I'm disappointed if I get a nice jumper or something — at least partly because my wife bought me a nice jumper a couple of Christmases ago and was worried I wouldn't like it because it was a "boring present" — but I still, at 37 years of age, prefer something that I can engage with actively… all right, play with.

Consequently, pretty much my entire Amazon wishlist this year consists of video games. In previous years, it would have included some board games too, but since two members of my regular board gaming group have had kids and become boring people who never go out in the process, it's proven impractical to keep adding to my board game collection, and I've even started getting rid of a few.

But video games… well, if you're reading this, of course you know it's my main passion. I'm always on the lookout for games I might like — and specifically games that I might want to write about for MoeGamer at some indefinite point in the future. Christmas is a great opportunity to acquire some stuff that is either still full price, or at the very least priced a bit higher than "impulse purchase" territory. 

Other people, though… that can be a bit challenging. There's a certain aspect of the British national character that kind of prevents people saying directly what they want at any point… and to a certain extent, asking other people what they want, too. I realise this might sound odd given that I've already talked about writing letters to Santa and provided a link to my Amazon wishlist (pretty much the modern-day equivalent), but I know certainly with regard to my immediate family, I never really have a good idea what they want.

My wife is typically indecisive about such things at the best of times, and it never feels quite… "right" to ask my parents and brother what they want. As such, I typically end up getting them something that I believe broadly aligns with their interests in some regard.

I guess that's as good a way as any of handling the whole present-giving thing, and despite me saying that I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet, I know I can almost certainly blast out all the presents I might need within the space of an hour with a simple Amazon session. I just need to actually find the motivation to do that!

Good morning! I'm going to make a proper go of this; looking back over my old blog, I used to really enjoy daily blogging, so I'm going to try and do this as regularly as possible.

I also left a message over there for former followers to migrate here if they're interested… it remains to see if anyone will pay up to help me out in exchange for reading my ramblings, however!

For those who are primarily here for other rewards, all these daily posts will be tagged with "blog" and "oneaday" so you can easily see them; likewise, the monthly $5+ wallpaper rewards are tagged with "wallpaper" so you can quickly and easily access all of them. Here's a handy link to access just the "wallpaper" posts.

So, what to talk about today? Well, I may as well talk a bit about why this is a thing and why I enjoy it, since some of you reading this won't have been around for my original #oneaday project.

The original #oneaday project started in January of 2010. I forget exactly who started the whole thing in the first place, but I became aware of it via Lauren "atheistium" Wainwright on Twitter. Lauren was working in the games journalism business at the time, and was someone whose work I enjoyed. She explained it as a means of getting people to think creatively and flex their writing muscles by writing something — anything — each and every day for a whole year. Even if you didn't think you had anything to write about. The whole point was to get you thinking about the process of writing and expressing yourself. It sounded like fun, so I joined in a little late on January 19, 2010.

A lot of people who were initially involved — including the creator of the tag, as I recall — barely lasted out of the first month, but a small but dedicated crowd of us pushed on, with various people dropping out over the course of the year. A handful of us managed the whole year, and in 2011 I decided to take the lead in another attempt, spawning what I called The One A Day Project.

This was a group effort where I invited people to sponsor us (for charity) in a year of blogging; I relaxed the "rules" somewhat to encourage more people to participate and this made some of the original participants who had dropped out within a few weeks very angry indeed — including, I recall, Matt "Jam_Sponge" Lees, who I thought was a massive wanker for his response at the time and, it turns out, really is a massive wanker — but this was a new year and a new beginning. Besides, if those original participants wanted input, they should have bloody lasted the whole year and played an active part in the community, shouldn't they?

We didn't make a huge amount of money in the process, but we did raise about £175 for Cancer Research UK in the process, so that was better than nothing; far more valuable to me personally was the sense of community the whole experience provided. Everyone involved seems to have gone their separate ways now, which is a bit sad, but I had some enriching experiences along the way.

Most notable among these was my getting to know a pleasant young woman named "Vee", who was both a talented, skilled archer and an actual bona (no pun intended) fide swinger… and very open about it. Vee helped me a huge amount in a very difficult time of my life; in 2010 my first wife and I parted ways and I ended up having to live back at home with my parents. I was in a pit of depression and anxiety, but Vee was a true friend who helped give me hope that things would be okay. She also helped me feel more comfortable and confident in talking about and expressing my sexuality — though I might add we never actually "did" anything. Unless playing Halo Reach and talking in great detail about who she'd fucked recently during co-op missions counts.

I miss Vee.

Anyway, as I've alluded to, blogging daily was helpful to me in more ways than one. It helped me meet new people. It helped me get to know others and to express myself. And during a particularly tough time in my life, it acted as a form of "therapy". It kept me going for 2,541 days in total; not bad considering the original objective was just 365 days.

In 2018, I'm in a somewhat better place in my life, though I wouldn't say I'm out of the woods so far as depression and anxiety is concerned; you never really escape those things, sadly. But hopefully these posts will provide a suitable outlet when needed — and those of you reading them will hopefully enjoy getting to know me a bit better!

Thanks for reading.

Hello Patrons. I'm going to start using this blog here on Patreon a bit more, and you get to join me! Lucky you!

I used to run a "one a day" blog over at https://imnotdoctorwho.moegamer.net but I ended that project for various reasons after 2,541 days of non-stop blogging. It was something I enjoyed, however, and I also found it quite therapeutic to have a place where I could write about whatever I felt like and have a small but reliable audience. So that's what I'm going to start doing here.

It'll provide you people good enough to support my work directly with an opportunity to get to know me a bit better, so please do feel free to comment, ask questions or give me some ideas about what you'd like to see me write about. It doesn't have to be gaming-related — if I happen to mention something in passing you'd like to know more about, let me know!

I don't know if I'm going to write here every day or anything but it'd be nice to get back into that habit. As I say, it was quite therapeutic for me to be able to get the day's stresses off my chest on my old blog — plus it ended up being an interesting record of a somewhat turbulent period in my life that helped make me the person I am today, for better or worse. So I'm going to aim to provide at least a short update every day for a little while and see how things go. I hope you enjoy them!