I'm attempting to establish a new habit. I don't know if I will be successful, but today was a successful first step.

I mentioned back when I talked about new year's resolutions that besides eating a bit better by following the Slimming World plan, I also wanted to try and be a little more active, and with that in mind I decided to pick up Fitness Boxing for Switch. I'd previously had some success with Wii Fit and EA Sports Active, so I thought I'd give this one a shot — the fact it required less setting up than EA Sports Active in particular was rather appealing, and I enjoyed the demo.

Anyway, the habit that I'm attempting to establish is to get up early and do a Fitness Boxing workout first thing in the morning before breakfast, before a shower and before going to work. I've heard from numerous people that doing an early morning workout is supposedly a good way to give yourself energy for the rest of the day (though right this second I'm not quite feeling it!) and so I wanted to give it a try.

I've been wanting to get up earlier for a while. The habit I need to break is letting my alarm go off and snoozing it until literally the last possible minute before I need to get up and go to work. I may have trouble getting to sleep at night, but for some reason in the morning I seem to have no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, even this morning despite getting up earlier than usual I was still later than I intended because I fell asleep after my first alarm… and had a very odd dream in the process, but that's a story for another day.

I know that getting up early in the morning is a good thing, particularly if it allows you to do things you wouldn't have time to do otherwise, or that would interfere with your "free" time in other ways. I could keep getting up at the same time I have been and do my Fitness Boxing workouts in the evening, but that takes up a chunk of the evening I'd rather spend writing and/or gaming. This way, I get to do something positive first thing in the morning then have my whole evening free to whatever I want (or need) to.

I actually used to get up super early in the morning back when I was working in teaching. Of course, part of this was necessity, since I was working in a school 35 miles away from where I lived, but I managed to train myself into the habit of getting up early enough that I could watch a full-length episode of Alias on DVD before leaving the house to face the day. So I'm pretty sure I can get myself into the habit of getting up early enough to do a 35-minute workout before heading to my work that is just a couple of miles from my current house. At least it doesn't mean getting up at 5am.

Anyway, this is the intention. Who knows if I'll be able to stick to it? We'll see, though. We'll see!

Inspired by Irina over at I Drink and Watch Anime, I thought it high time I took a look at the search terms that are bringing people to MoeGamer.

At least, that was the plan. Turns out that the search results bringing people to the site are all rather boring (albeit thankfully to the point and relevant to what I write!), and there aren't even any funny or awkward questions in there to share. Shame. I used to get some real crackers on my old personal blog, but that was because I wrote about any old bullshit day after day (much like I'm doing here, in fact, funny that), and thus I would get a selection of results that can be best described as "eclectic", ranging from "why teaching sucks" to "monster cock". 42 people found my old blog by searching for "erect penis". Good work.

The whole "optimising for search engines" thing kind of annoys me these days, because it's so flagrantly transparent when sites do it. Imagine there's a TV show you want to watch — let's say, I don't know, Game of Thrones or something. You don't know what time it's airing and you don't have any streaming services, so you head to Google and type in something like "what time is Game of Thrones on?" Before you get any information direct from the source, there will be approximately 76 pages of tabloid-style garbage all with the headline "What time is Game of Thrones on? What channel does Game of Thrones air on? How can I watch Game of Thrones? Everything you need to know about Game of Thrones tonight. Game of Thrones." And I don't click on any of them when that happens.

This is also why video game sites publish "guide content" these days (with very similar "question" headlines), and why bigger sites like IGN have "wikis" set up for every game in their database. I say "set up"; they have a blank page ready to be filled in for everything in their database, but so far as Google is concerned, that counts as a relevant page about the game in question — so if you're looking for information on a semi-obscure title, good luck trawling through all these empty pages before you actually find any helpful information.

This is also why video game sites publish "reviews in progress" of big games on release day. They need to get a page up that has /call-of-duty-review/ in its URL, even if they haven't finished (or indeed played) the game. It's part of clickbait… and once again, I don't click on it.

I'm not sure at what point I became so cynical about commercial online content, but given the existence of numerous "Saved You a Click" Twitter accounts, it seems I am not the only one. And all this is why you will only ever see simple and clear headlines on MoeGamer that — hopefully at least — give you a good idea of what it is you are about to read. (Patreon teasers are another matter, mind you. You'll hopefully forgive me for that at least.)

Playing around with Honey Select Unlimited Extend yesterday reminded me in many ways of how I used to play with toys growing up.

Obviously I'm not talking about the explicit sex scenes or anything; I am, instead, referring to the Studio NEO app and the Honey Unlimited Studio software that came before it. These pieces of the overall Honey Select experience are nothing if not pure, true digital dollhouses — they provide you with a selection of environments, some "dolls" to play with (bonus: you get to design them yourself!) and no objective whatsoever besides letting your imagination run riot.

When I was a kid, I liked to spend any time that I wasn't playing video games with toys that stoked the imagination — toys that allowed you to set up some sort of situation, and then explore it somehow. I was particularly fond of anything that had lots of "bits" that you could arrange in various ways to create dioramas; I'd try and imagine how those components would come together, how they might move, how they might interact and what their "story" might be.

A favourite of mine was a set of toys called Manta Force. This consisted of three main playsets: the large Manta Force "mothership", which contained a variety of air, sea and land vehicles along with little figures to put in them; the Red Venom "mothership" for the "bad guys", which was very much along the same lines, and the Manta Force Battle Fortress, which was the most interactive of the three, featuring targets you could fire discs at to catapult vehicles and people off platforms, working guns of various sizes and a pleasing sense of "solidity". I never owned Red Venom, but both the original Manta Force and the Battle Fortress had enough "Venom" figures to allow you to set up a few villainous situations.

When I played with Manta Force, I'd get down on the floor with it and play with it "up close". I'd try to imagine the vehicles life-size, like I was right there with the little coloured figures that represented Manta Force's air, sea and land specialist troops. I'd make sounds, I'd make up stories, I'd perform dialogue. I must have looked like a right cock. But I enjoyed myself.

Despite this, some part of me was always slightly aware that I was playing with a toy; this stuff wasn't real, I couldn't really get into the ship and see things from the perspective of the little spacemen and, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't really fly, drive or dive in the smaller vehicles. I wished that there was a way I could shrink myself down and play in "their world", but I couldn't. So I made do.

Now, here's where stuff like Honey Select comes in. While I'm not quite "inhabiting" that world in full 3D like I really want to, I am afforded the opportunity to get up much more close and have much more control than I would have done with my childhood toys. I can move my viewpoint wherever I want, I can pose the characters however I want, I can imply whatever interactions I like by placing them in various circumstances.

In short, when I fire up Studio NEO or Honey Unlimited Studio before it, I'm finally able to pretty much realise those dreams I had when I was a kid. Okay, I'm playing with pretty girls rather than spacemen, but really, the context doesn't matter all that much; the thing I enjoyed with my childhood toys wasn't sci-fi spacemen pewpewpew, it was the simple joy of expressing myself and exploring my imagination. Don't tell anyone, but I actually kind of envied the female friends I had as a kid; I always sort of liked the idea of toys like Barbie as they were prime material for imaginative play. But I also know that if I'd had Barbies as a boy in the '80s, I would have been beaten up at school even more than I was already, so it's probably for the best.

Oh well. I can make up for it now with my digital dolls. And I'm certain I will!

A little while back, I decided that, as much effort as it would be to get started, I wanted to catalogue my game collection. So I fired up Google Sheets and got underway. You can take a look for yourself here.

I'm glad I did this. I find it interesting and satisfying to look at. I'll probably add some more data to it at some point — such as whether I've played, beaten and/or written about the game already, and, since this only covers physical releases at present, I might think about some means of including digital titles too. Digital games are people too!

I enjoyed putting together the "analysis" tab, too, even if it's largely pointless. It's interesting to see how my collection has naturally developed over the years, and where my priorities have clearly been.

For those who don't care to look at the sheet directly or aren't able to where they are, here are a few facts about my collection:

• I have a total of 1,077 physical copies in my collection at the time of writing. Assuming I haven't forgotten to add anything I've picked up recently!

• The platform I have the most individual games for in physical form is PS2, with 216 titles at the time of writing (20.06% of my collection). This is closely followed by the Atari ST, with 183 (16.99%).

• The platforms I have the fewest games for are Game Boy and Game Boy Color, with two each.

• The most popular genre in my collection is the RPG (not including DRPGs, ARPGs and SRPGs, with 171 titles, making up 15.88% of the collection. If you include DRPGs, ARPGs and SRPGs, this figure goes up to 258, or 23.96% of the total collection. Nearly a quarter RPGs of various descriptions! That sounds like me.

• My Atari 8-bit library of physical games only consists of 16 games… but this isn't counting the mountains and mountains of pirated floppy disks I have, each of which have five or six games on them along with a bunch of utilities and other pieces of software. The situation is same for the ST, though we have a lot more "legal" copies of games on that platform as my brother got them as review copies.

• Of the current generation, PS4 has been my favoured system to date, with 65 games. Switch is on the way up with 26 physical releases acquired since I got the system last Christmas, and with Sony being dickheads about ecchi content now, most of the time I will be picking the Switch versions of Japanese games wherever possible.

• From the previous generation, PS3 is currently beating out Xbox 360. I have a few duplicates between these two systems, because the PS3 versions were typically expanded from the Xbox 360 releases. Eternal Sonata is a good example. Each system has a selection of good exclusives, however; interesting RPGs on PS3, shoot 'em ups on 360.

• I have no Saturn games despite technically owning a Saturn. This is because I have no idea where the controller, power cable and TV cables are for the Saturn, so it is mostly a display piece in my "retro room" at present. I should probably get it up and running sometime.

• I own all of the Atelier games released physically to date except (Shallie Plus on Vita) despite, before this month on MoeGamer, having only ever played Rorona and Rorona Plus.

• The copy of Shadow of Memories I still own today is the first game I ever bought for my own PS2.

• I own copies of the first games I ever played on SNES (Super Mario World), PS1 (Ridge Racer) and PS2 (Orphen: Scion of Sorcery).

• Five of the SNES games I own now are the same cartridges I had growing up, though the boxes and manuals are long gone as I used to keep the cartridges in the SNES carry case. I've only added Top Gear and Top Gear 2 to that collection since.

• The most expensive and/or valuable game I own is probably Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Other noteworthy games in this regard include Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GCN), Vib-Ribbon (PS1), the original .hack series (PS2), the Shadow Hearts series (PS2) and Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water (Wii U).

• That last point has reminded me that I picked up Koudelka on PS1 a while back and forgot to add it to the list, so now all the figures I've quoted are slightly off. I probably better finish there then before I drive myself insane…

Well, here we are! I'm getting this done now so I don't forget again. Hello. How are you?

Today's plan is to get a couple more videos done to pepper throughout the week — I like to pre-prepare video as much as possible so I don't find myself in a rush to make something on the day I'm "supposed" to publish it, since the nature of it means you can't just shit something out in the same way as you can with writing — and then settle down for an extended Atelier Totori session. I can probably beat it this weekend if I try, I just need to stop getting distracted by other things like the aforementioned Atari Flashback Classics. But you know how it is.

My wife is currently in the process of building a "catio"; a sort of lean-to structure out the back of our house that will form an enclosure for our cat Meg (and perhaps a friend-not-yet-met for her) that still allows her to be "outside", but safe and secure from the dangers of the roads. As I've mentioned a couple of times previously, the sudden passing of our beloved Ruby back in November hit both of us hard, so we want to do everything possible to keep Meg safe — and to have some suitable evidence that this is a safe haven for cats were we to head out to try and recruit her a new companion.

Aside from all that, it's a quiet weekend ahead — something we both need after heading back and forth across the country for the Christmas and New Year break. I hope you're having a pleasant weekend too, dear reader, and that the return to the first full week of work in the new year isn't too traumatic for those of you in employment!

You know, on more than one occasion yesterday I thought "I really should remember to do my blog", and then I went and just… didn't do it. I don't really have a better excuse than that.

Well, I sort of do, I guess; yesterday was quite a busy day, what with an appointment in the morning, videos to record, edit and upload, articles to write and games to play. It's still not a good excuse, but it is a sort of excuse. So, well, apologies for that; you will get two posts today as suitable recompense, since you can't fudge the dates on Patreon to make it look like I actually posted this yesterday all along and you just didn't see it.

So what is there to update? Hmm. Well, the main thing is that I've already launched my new Atari A to Z series, delving into the 150 games that make up the Atari Flashback Classics collection on Switch. I'm just going through the games in the order they are presented on the game's menu, so that means all the arcade titles will be first, followed by the 2600 and 5200 games that comprise the bulk of the library.

There's a lot of reviews of Atari Flashback Classics that have mumbled and groaned about these games "not holding up" today… but one thing occurred to me yesterday while I was playing Sprint 2 on the toilet: these games are absolutely perfect for handheld play, making the Nintendo Switch an ideal platform for this collection.

I'm serious. Your average timed 2600 game lasts for a standard duration of two minutes and sixteen seconds — if you were wondering why such an odd number, it's because this amount of time is 2^13 frames at 60Hz, which the original American 2600 systems would have been operating at. This duration was calculated by Atari's boffins to be that "sweet spot" for arcade games where punters wouldn't get frustrated at their game being over too quickly, and equally people waiting in line wouldn't get fed up of waiting their turn. In the words of Joe Decuir, who played a key role in the development of the 2600, the Atari 8-bit computers and Commodore's Amiga, "2:16 is long enough to have fun without being exhausting. Sometimes there would be others waiting their turn to play. Plus, the Arcade operator would want more quarters… In the case of a home machine, it doesn't overtax a parent's patience. 'Mom, wait until I finish this game.'" Now you know.

But I digress. The short average duration of a 2600 game or early Atari arcade game makes it perfect for handheld play, because although the Switch does play host to plenty of long-duration, "big" games, sometimes you just want to pick up the system to play for a few minutes. Sometimes you don't want to play a shitty tablet game that bombards you with requests for microtransactions every level, or ads, or crap like that. Sometimes you just want two minutes and 16 seconds of pure game. And that's what you get.

On top of that, the delightfully big, chunky graphics of 2600 games mean that there's no squinting at the screen in handheld mode to understand what's going on. Everything (well, almost everything) is immediately understandable and clear, so long as you know how to play the game, so you can just get on with enjoying it.

Of course, some people will continue to be flat-out resistant to these games, believing them to be "too old" or whatever, but eh. I'm more than happy with this collection, and it's a particular delight having it on Switch ready for both solo play on the go and multiplayer tabletop action at a moment's notice.

I apologise in advance for the somewhat self-indulgent post ahead, but, well, you're reading my daily personal blog, so a certain amount of this is to be expected, surely!

I've become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned over the past few years with the one thing no-one tells you about "growing up": the fact that, over time, you will probably lose most of your friends, and the ones you do manage to maintain become impossible to get hold of or do anything with.

To be honest, it's hard not to take that personally sometimes, even though I know in many cases it's down to different people various having busy, demanding jobs or a family that demands their attention. I just get to feeling like sometimes it would be nice to have someone go out of their way to do something enjoyable with you rather than doing the same old thing day after day. I'm aware how selfish that might sound — but I'm not asking for favours or anything here; often it's just simple requests to socialise that get stonewalled.

I noted yesterday that I was hoping to get some local friends involved with recording some videos for Atari Flashback Classics on Switch. Earlier today I raised the possibility, with a detailed, enthusiastic explanation of what I was proposing and why. So far I've had no response from three out of the four, and one rather blunt rejection because it "doesn't interest them". Despite us having had successful and enjoyable gaming days together in the past.

This is frustrating. Yes, this is more of a "favour" than a simple request to hang out in that it will help me produce something, but it's still something that should be fun and enjoyable as well as an opportunity to socialise. To be outright rejected apparently without a great deal of consideration… frankly it kind of hurts a bit, although I do accept that the feelings of anxiety it causes may well be brought on at least slightly by the fact I forgot to take my anti-anxiety medication this morning.

You know something… interesting? Out of all the people I'd regard as "close" friends, very few of them support what I do on MoeGamer, on Atari A to Z or on Videopac Games, even where it is relevant to their interests. I'll often enthusiastically share something I've written or recorded with them and hear absolutely nothing back, whether as a direct response or as a comment on the article/video… and they don't do social media so they can't do something as simple as a share or a like that would help me out at minimal inconvenience to themselves. I've got to the point where I don't really want to share my stuff, the things I'm most proud of, to my closest friends because their apparent total lack of interest in it is rather demoralising. 

All this is a massive bummer, of course, particularly when it concerns a project where it would be really useful to have people nearby to collaborate with. But on the other hand, it also makes me even more grateful for those of you who are kind enough to be reading this — those of you who have supported me; those of you who do believe in and appreciate what I do; those of you who understand how important my hobbies and interests are to me, particularly as someone who suffers considerably from social anxiety and consequently finds a lot of "normal" activities a rather daunting prospect.

So thank you for that. And apologies for venting. I will remember to take my pills tomorrow and hopefully my brain will be churning a little less. Have a lovely Friday night.

It may sound strange, but one of my most anticipated new games that is currently winging its way to me is Atari Flashback Classics for Switch.

For the uninitiated, this is a compilation of 150 old Atari games, encompassing arcade releases, Atari 2600 games and, for the first time in a bundle like this, Atari 5200 games. I already own the first two volumes of Atari Flashback Classics on PS4, but having all of these games plus a bunch more readily available on Switch is something I'm very excited about. You can find out more about the package here on Atari's site.

Firstly, I'm simply excited about these games because I love revisiting ancient classics. The 2600 was just slightly before my time, so I always find it interesting to check out the games that led to the experiences I grew up with on the Atari 8-bit. The Atari 5200, meanwhile, was effectively a consolised version of the Atari 8-bit computer range (although not quite so much as the later XEGS, which literally was an Atari 8-bit computer designed to more closely resemble a console) and as such has a number of games that outright are games I grew up with. And it's always cool to see arcade-perfect ports of both classics and lesser-known titles.

Secondly, I'm excited to cover the package in an Atari A to Z series of videos alongside my 8-bit and ST episodes. Thus far I've seen relatively limited coverage of the package online, and the majority of it is surface-level "these games are old and don't hold up very well" criticism that doesn't appear to be making much of an effort to engage with them. Sure, some of those games don't hold up very well, but in those cases they weren't much good in the first place. (see: Basic Math) Meanwhile, there are a bunch of games that do hold up extremely well, particularly if you have the opportunity to play them with a friend.

This latter aspect may make the video production process a little more challenging, as for titles like Combat and company, it will be important to have someone alongside me playing along rather than simply playing the game solo. I will do my best to try and rope someone into helping out, however, and I think there's scope for a lot of fun to be had. Last time I hosted a "gaming day" for my local friends, some of the most popular games on the agenda were the Atari 2600 titles — particularly RealSports Soccer, which even the most vociferous football haters among us had a blast with thanks to its unusual and highly entertaining mechanics.

Sadly for my European readers, Atari Flashback Classics for Switch doesn't appear to be getting a release in our home territory — PQube, who distributed the previous bundles for Xbox One and PS4, haven't been approached by Atari this time around for whatever reason — so I've had to import a copy from the States. And the physical release seems to be oddly limited, too, so I had to source one from a seller on eBay rather than a regular retailer. Still, it's on the way now, and for those who don't mind going digital, apparently it's straightforward enough to set up a US eShop account, too.

Anyway. This should be with me sometime this month (hard to be precise with mail from overseas — though apparently the package is already in the UK, according to tracking) so please look forward to my videos on it… because I'm really looking forward to making them!

The more I play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the more I think there's actually a lot of interesting things to say about it that I haven't seen talked about all that much.

To put it another way, I know I said a few days ago that I probably wouldn't give it a Cover Game feature… but I'm starting to feel like I might. It's a significant and noteworthy game for a number of reasons, and I feel like I might want to talk about it in depth.

It's also a massive game, however, so it'll take me a while to get through it to a stage where I'd be happy to write about it in detail, so at present if I do go through with it at all, I think it'll be the third Cover Game feature of the year, falling roughly in the March period. In the meantime, I need to plough through the rest of the Arland games and I've pretty firmly decided that I want to cover 428: Shibuya Scramble as the second feature of the year.

It really is a fantastic time to be a fan of gaming. There are so many wonderful titles around to enjoy at the moment… but I have to say, having put off playing them for year after year for one reason or another, I am really enjoying the Atelier Arland games. I'm impressed that a series of games that are, by this point, nearly ten years old hold up so well today. Yes, there are aspects of them that might seem a little dated in places (and with Atelier Rorona having been remade after Totori and Meruru, the series finds itself in the curious position of having its first installment be probably the most mechanically refined) but that most certainly doesn't stop them from being very, very interesting and enjoyable games.

In fact, I find myself constantly surprised and delighted that we're in a period where games from so many different generations of hardware still feel fresh and relevant as more than just "retro curios"… and where we have easy access to most of these games without having to make significant financial outlays. It's been a continual joy to explore the PS2 library in particular; PS2 games make up the largest part of my collection by a significant margin, and there are loads of games on those shelves that I'd love to cover in detail. Also, for the most part, they're cheap as all hell; while there are a few more expensive outliers (Rule of Rose is still the most pricy and elusive) for the most part you generally won't have to pay more than £20 for a PS2 game at the absolute maximum; more often than not you'll be paying single-digit prices, with lesser known, obscure or extremely common titles often retailing for 50p.

If you find yourself ever getting frustrated about the more idiotic aspects of the modern games industry — lootboxes, season passes, excessive DLC, constant updates, design-by-committee — then it's worth remembering this. All these amazing games from past generations are still out there — and there are still a bunch of developers operating today with distinctly "old-school" sensibilities, too.

I'm delighted to be a gaming enthusiast in 2019. And I can't wait to share some more of that enthusiasm with you in the coming months.

You're supposed to make resolutions for the new year, but I haven't really done so for the past few years. No-one particularly takes them seriously and you only have yourself to blame if you break them, which isn't necessarily a good motivator.

Now, if you were to share those resolutions on the Internet, on the other hand, so people can keep you honest? Well then!

1. I will eat better.

I'm not sure if this is "cheating" or not because Andie and I are already technically doing this (although the Christmas-New Year period has been… variable) but… yes, in 2019, I will eat well, lose weight and do my best to sort that particular aspect of my life out. Because I know it's self-inflicted, but it still bothers me a lot. So while I'm feeling motivated to do something about it… I should do something about it.

2. I will exercise more.

These are proper cliches so far, huh? Well, I do want to get some more exercise because besides simply being overweight, I'm tired of feeling exhausted anytime I do anything vaguely physically strenuous. I don't think I'm going to join a gym or anything though, at least not immediately; I will likely do some combination of walking (which I enjoy) and perhaps making use of either Wii Fit U or the new Fitness Boxing for the Switch. I tried the demo of the latter the other day and it seems quite good.

3. I will avoid the unhealthy side of social media.

I've talked about this a bit in the past, but I need to make sure that I specifically avoid the aspect of social media that is just itching to start a fight over the most stupid stuff. If someone decides they want to be a dick? Mute, block, disengage. The tools are there to not have to deal with nonsense, and there has not been a single instance I can think of where engaging with someone being a twat has made me feel better.

4. Maintain my positivity.

One of my favourite things about MoeGamer and my other projects — and something that I feel distinguishes what I do from a lot of other content creators out there — is the fact that I make a specific effort to remain positive. I describe it as "finding the good" — looking for the redeeming features in even things that have had a poor critical reception. I'm yet to find anything completely irredeemable, and in fact more often than not I've found great enjoyment from things that have been declared "bad" by others.

I fully intend to unapologetically maintain my positive outlook, celebrating the games I've found worthy of highlighting on the site for one reason or another. You won't see a "WORST [X] GAMES EVER!!" on MoeGamer or my YouTube channel any time soon.

5. Do more music.

I finally got my piano tuned now the room it's in isn't freezing cold, so I need to make some time to play it more. Specifically, I need to make some time to practice things rather than just playing a few things every so often. Doubtless this blog will help keep me honest… I'll try and share some things every now and then!

6. Return to studying Japanese.

I need to get back into this. I'm going to try and use the textbooks I've acquired rather than rely on Memrise and Duolingo, because although those two services are good and I've learned a lot with them, they don't go into enough depth about grammar and the like. I want to have a good understanding of the language as a whole, not just memorise and recognise key phrases.

Well, I think that'll do for now. What are your resolutions for the coming year?