Good morning. Here is a non-comprehensive list of minor annoyances. #relatable

• People who won't write emails like normal human beings

• People who ask you if you're doing the thing you've been doing for the last two hours

• The fact that the Internet has conditioned me to mentally add "…and so have I" any time I see the words "The time has come", regardless of context

• Masterchef

• YouTube jumpcuts

• That thing where you're carrying a cup of coffee and you don't bang it on anything, but it still goes "bloop" and splashes out of the top of it, seemingly in defiance of normal physics

• Needing a poo but having a sore bum

• Software tools that have been built for a specific purpose, but are infinitely worse than off-the-peg more general solutions that do the same thing

• Twitter

• Verification emails that don't come through immediately

• Notifications

• Notifications on sites that really don't need a notification system (hello, Netflix)

• That particular breed of pop-up ad that only appears when you've scrolled halfway down an article

• Wikia changing its name to "Fandom" and trying to make out it's some sort of legitimate journalistic source when in fact, aside from the fan-made content, it's just clickbait garbage

• Buzzfeed's continued existence

• Having an itch that won't go away

• Dry skin

• The fact that the PS4's "wake up from sleep" sequence takes longer than a cold boot of the Nintendo Switch

• Monday

• Tuesday

• Wednesday

• Thursday

• Friday

• Sunday evening

• The fact that however much you tidy up, it will always get untidy again within a matter of minutes, particularly if you're depressed

• Not knowing how to end lists

Really enjoying Death end re;Quest so far; it's got a nice blend of plot and gameplay that is keeping me thoroughly invested in what's going on so far.

The challenge factor is starting to ramp up a bit, too, and overall the game is feeling a lot more balanced than some of Compile Heart's previous work, which would often tend to get to a point where you were immensely overpowered quite easily — that or you got completely flattened by an enemy way higher level than you. Thus far in this, there seems to have been a nice gradual incline in difficulty, easing you into making better use of the game's various mechanics as you progress without bombarding you with tutorials.

This is quite an interesting aspect, actually; there are a few mechanical elements that the game doesn't tell you a lot about, simply that they exist, and what you do with that information is up to you. Probably of chief importance among these is the element system, which works in a sort of "triangle" fashion. Moon beats Sun, Sun beats Star, Star beats Moon. And by "beats" I mean "does significantly more damage, to the degree of several thousand more points of damage per hit".

There's another aspect to that part, too, though, which is the fact that some enemies can counter actions by characters of an element they're strong against. Not every enemy does this, because it would get exceedingly annoying if they did, but once you spot it happening, you need to do something about it. This is a much better implementation of a sort of "reaction" system from the enemies than the Order Break system in Omega Quintet — or at least, I should say, a little more understandable. After a while you sort of instinctively understood when you'd suffer an Order Break in Omega Quintet, even if you couldn't describe exactly how. Here, the conditions are a bit more clear.

The story is ramping up now, too. The horror aspects are increasing, and the Bad Ends are getting more… bad. Some are relatively short text sequences that effectively say "you fucked up, that was a stupid thing to do", but in those instances it was usually pretty obvious which one the "right" option was. But there have been a couple where the Bad End route actually led to a surprisingly substantial block of narrative — albeit one that ended with violence, death and Game Over.

Anyway. Lots more to write on this in the coming weeks, and I'm looking forward to it. For now, that game has kept me up until 1AM, so I should probably sleep. It is a school night, after all…

I'll be writing more on this in the coming weeks, but I've been really enjoying the games in the SNK Anniversary Collection so far.

As I noted in my piece on MoeGamer on Friday, it's been a real pleasure to discover some SNK games that aren't Neo Geo games and that aren't fighting games. As good as SNK fighting games are, fighting games are one of my least favourite genres — with a few notable exceptions — and thus I'd rather see other stuff from a company with such a long history.

I've been especially intrigued by some of SNK's early shoot 'em ups, of which there are several in the collection. Thus far I've been particularly enjoying Bermuda Triangle and its sequel World Wars. Both of these have an interesting power-up system where you build up a bar, and at various points on the bar all your weapons increase in power. You also have the ability to aim your air to air guns in 8 directions, though your air to ground bombs always drop in front of you.

Athena and Alpha Mission supposedly drew inspiration from RPGs for their power-up systems, and it's clear that games like Bermuda Triangle and World Wars followed suit. Following these conventions in disparate genres is starting to give me a feel for a very distinctive sense of identity that SNK's pre-Neo Geo games have, and I like it!

I also have to give mad props to the games that make early use of digitised or synthesised speech. Fantasy's opening dialogue of "How are you?" "I'm fine, thank you! AAAIIIIEEEEEE!!" is right up there with "ON THE GLEEN!" from Neo Turf Masters for me now.

Anyway. I'll be exploring each of these games in a series of articles in the coming weeks, and possibly in some videos too. Please look forward to it!

There's been a bit of consternation today over what appears to be an Octopath Traveller prequel… because it's only being released on mobile.

While some people — as always — have been getting irrationally, over-the-top angry about this, I can understand the discontent to a certain degree. It's not because I blindly dislike mobile games per se — longtime readers of MoeGamer will recall a fair amount of coverage on Granblue Fantasy, Fate/Grand Order, Girls' Frontline and Dragalia Lost — but instead it's primarily down to the "impermanence" of these games: the fact they can't be archived and enjoyed in the years to come.

Okay, we haven't yet come to a point where a big, high-profile game like Granblue Fantasy has reached its "end" and closed down, and it's entirely possible that Cygames and co will figure out some sort of solution for people to still be able to enjoy the games offline once the servers go down. It's not without precedent; I think it was Konami who, a few months back, took one of their mobile games offline but allowed its players to download all the data and continue enjoying it at their leisure. We talked about it on the podcast.

One potential issue with this, of course, is that with the way mobile games are structured and monetised, an "offline" version would need rebalancing somewhat to be more friendly to offline play. The successful games like the aforementioned are all successful because they're pretty friendly to free-to-play players, but there's still little denying that you can get yourself a significant advantage (or at least the chance at a significant advantage) if you pay up. How would that work if there's no means of paying any more? The game would have to be more generous with its "premium" currency, or simply provide alternative means of acquiring characters and other content that would typically be part of the gacha system.

And then you have the question of how that game is actually archived for future generations. Let's say some sort of disaster hits Apple and/or Google and their respective app stores are no longer available. On Android, this isn't so much of a problem because you can just sideload .apk files to install anything, but on iOS, as far as I'm aware, it's impossible without jailbreaking. Who will be responsible for maintaining these archives? Will the original creators allow their games to be distributed in this manner long after they've washed their hands of them? These are questions we don't yet know the answers to.

I think the reason why this is a big deal this time around is that it's a direct prequel to a commercially available game for which there is an archivable physical release on a non-mobile platform. This means that 20-30 years from now, someone will (hopefully) still be able to play Octopath Traveller, but might not be able to enjoy its prequel. That'd be a real shame; it's like putting an expiry date on art, and it's something I feel is happening more and more in gaming these days between post-launch updates, patches, DLC and all manner of other stuff.

And I don't see it getting better; people seem invested in going further in this direction rather than resisting it, all because of "convenience". I really hope this doesn't end up biting us in the ass in the future.

Chatting with my dear friend and podcasting buddy Chris the other day, it became all too apparent that we are most certainly living in the sort of futuristic dystopia all manner of fiction has been trying to warn us about for decades at this point.

Next month, the UK is supposedly introducing measures to prevent under-18s from accessing adult content online, with the "solution" in place apparently taking the form of an ISP-level block for sites that don't conform to the rules, and the rules in question involving consumers having to "prove" their age in some form or another — possibly through having to purchase a £5 "pass" from an actual physical store. I'm sure that's a conversation everyone is looking forward to.

Of course, like so many "doom and gloom" stories, I question whether or not this is going to happen — I'm still skeptical as to whether the dreaded "Brexit" is actually going to happen at all, on that note — but it's depressingly plausible in this age we live in. We live in an age of surveillance that would make George Orwell blush; an age where people get arrested and prosecuted for stupid YouTube videos, an age where beat cops will seize everything from butter knives to legitimate tools "just in case" they are used as weapons, and where "liking" an innocuous-seeming limerick that someone else wrote on social media will bring the police to your doorstep.

We also live in an age where advertisements on bus stops encourage you to "use your phone to interact!"; where every TV programme starts with an official hashtag; where the Twitter account of a deceased comic book legend is used to promote a mediocre superhero movie; where everything must be "shared", otherwise you're doing your life wrong.

Some of these things have been fun in the past, but over time it's hard not to become cynical about them, particularly when you start to recognise the true intentions behind some of them. But there doesn't seem to be a whole lot we can do about them; that is just the direction that society appears to have chosen to move in, and all those of us who don't like it can really do is either fall in line, or choose not to engage. I tend to choose the latter under most circumstances.

I happened to "overhear" a conversation on Twitter earlier, such as you do, among some retro gaming enthusiasts. The question posed was something along the lines of "which of these is your favourite: Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario Bros. 3?"

There was, of course, plenty of discussion of the matter, but my immediate reaction to it was, I must confess… "I don't really care".

To clarify, I'm not saying that I dislike either Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario Bros. 3 at this point. Quite the opposite, actually; I very much enjoy both games. My response was more to the discussion itself; this feels like one of many questions that has been discussed many, many times over and over, and it's just not a very interesting one.

Everyone knows by this point that Super Mario Bros. was revolutionary, and that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the perfection of the NES platformer formula. Any time I see something like this — or indeed, say, a respected games writer reveals that a "secret project" is something like a "deep dive into Super Mario Bros. 3", I just can't help but feel a bit bad for the thousands of other games out there that don't get discussed nearly enough. It's as if music critics only discussed Beethoven, or if literary critics only discussed Shakespeare. I'm sure that happens, but in each of these cases, the respective media are much broader than just a single, well-known example.

This is partly what I've always tried to do with MoeGamer. With only a few exceptions — I covered Final Fantasy XV because I was excited for it, and I think it was a noteworthy and interesting game to talk about — I've deliberately tried to explore these lesser-known games in the same amount of depth that the Super Mario Bros. 3s of the world get on a regular basis. Because they're absolutely worth it.

Okay, some of these games may not be innovative or genre-defining, or anything like that. But there are tons of fascinating things to delve into, discuss and contemplate. I've consistently felt since… probably the PS2 era, perhaps even earlier… that the most interesting games are the ones that people aren't talking about. It's why the first PS2 game I bought was Shadow of Memories, not whatever the "big" games around its launch were. It's why my PS4 library doesn't have any triple-A games in in (except, arguably, Nier: Automata, FFXV and maybe The Last Guardian). And why you're almost certainly never going to see a modern EA game on MoeGamer.

To reiterate: I'm not saying the more well-known experiences don't have any value, or aren't worth talking about at all. What I am saying, however, is that I wish a few more people would talk about a few more different games… both from a modern and from a retro perspective.

Oh well. I'm doing my bit, anyway! 🙂

I'll be starting the full Cover Game feature on this later this week, but I thought I'd give you fine Patrons some first impressions on Death End re;Quest, since I've been playing it for the past few evenings and am now about 9 hours in, coming to the end of the second main chapter.

Idea Factory's Galapagos studio has always been a bit experimental, as we've seen with games like Fairy Fencer F (which incorporated some interesting fighting game-esque mechanics such as launchers and pursuit moves into the Neptunia combat engine) and Omega Quintet (which had a gloriously batshit battle system emphasising showmanship over all else), and I'm pleased to report that Death End re;Quest very much continues that tradition, in terms of mechanics, structure and overall themes.

I will, of course, discuss the narrative, themes and characterisation in detail in the Cover Game feature, but suffice to say so far that the combination of isekai, techno-horror, urban legends, conspiracy theories and Japanese ghost stories is proving to be an intoxicating blend that I like very much. It's a really interesting melange of genres, and the divide between the "game" and "real" world you can switch between at will allows you to explore various aspects.

I'm early in the game so far so I suspect the structure will open up somewhat later on, but I'm also finding it interesting to play a Compile Heart RPG that isn't hub-based; instead, Death End re;Quest has an interconnected world divided into zones, and each of the main chapters so far (remember, I'm only just at the end of the second main chapter) seems to revolve around clearing one main, large dungeon. This involves a combination of navigating through the environment in the game world, finding key items (that are, at times, literally keys; at others, event triggers) and, when you run into a seemingly impassable obstacle, switching over to the "real world" for the protagonist not in the game to do some investigation.

It's interesting to play an RPG that has immediate visual novel-style "bad ends", but that's what you get in this game. Thankfully you can save during dialogue sequences as well as at save points, so it's a very good idea to do that just before you make one of the choices that come up over the course of the game! That said, there's actually some incentive to seek out the bad endings, since an "episode list" in the game rewards you with money and items for seeing the various events, including the bad endings.

So far I'm really enjoying it. It's both pleasingly familiar as a Compile Heart game and something a bit different from their usual fare, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops over time. I'd been looking forward to this for a while now, and I'm glad that it hasn't been a disappointment!

Watch out for the first part of the Cover Game feature later this week on MoeGamer.

Earlier today, I was immensely saddened to hear of the passing of Prodigy frontman Keith Flint from apparent suicide. He was just 49 years old; that's no age to go at.

I won't go over the usual platitudes that are usually shared at times like this because they've doubtless already been heard all over the Internet several times already today; instead, I'll simply say that I hope he has found peace far away from this troubled world.

I did, however, want to mention exactly what his music meant to me, and thus what his lasting legacy will be for me personally. Because it was a surprise to me that I even got into it in the first place.

Growing up, I wasn't really sure how to develop the "right" opinions about music. My parents mostly approved of me listening to classical music because I was studying piano (and later clarinet and saxophone) and presumably thought this would be a good influence, but as a youngster I craved something that would help me relate a little more to my peers. But what?

The first album I ever bought was Definitely Maybe by Oasis, who were super-cool at the time. Unfortunately I purchased this album literally the day before (What's the Story?) Morning Glory came out, so that didn't help my cool points at all. This is not relevant to the story as a whole, but it's a fun detail that I can look back on and laugh at now.

I wasn't big on electronic music of any variety at the time. This was partly due to a fundamental dislike of music that didn't really have much of a "tune" to it, and also, again, partly down to my parents' influence. They didn't like it, so I felt like I probably shouldn't look into it. (I'd like to clarify at this point that I don't resent my parents' tastes in music whatsoever and indeed there's a lot of stuff that they like that I now like; most of what I describe here is my own childish assumptions about how to develop my own tastes!)

There were two things that changed my thinking on electronic music, though. The first was my first girlfriend Anna, or more specifically her father Richie. Richie was cool. I wasn't familiar with this. I thought my Dad was pretty awesome in various ways (and indeed still do) but Richie was cut from a different cloth to my Dad. He listened to modern music, for one, and specifically he listened to electronic dance music. His daughter wasn't embarrassed to be interested in the same music as him, either, so through a combination of various "Ibiza" albums heard in the car while getting lifts back from various school parties (at which we absolutely were not underage drinking, nosirree) and the music we would typically make out to, I started to understand the appeal of electronic music.

The second was a school trip — I forget where to, but I do remember that for one reason or another, I ended up sitting next to my classmate and namesake Peter. I was never quite sure how I felt about Peter; sometimes we'd get along, sometimes we wouldn't. He wasn't cool, but I'm pretty sure I was even less cool than he was. One time the cool kids in our year tried to arrange A Fight between the pair of us after school. Neither of us attended. He's a furry now.

But I digress. While I was sitting next to Peter, in an uncharacteristic display of willingness to socialise, I asked what he was listening to on his Sony Discman. It turned out to be the single "Breathe" by Prodigy. He invited me to listen. I did. I was absolutely blown away by it; that single was the next CD I bought after that school trip.

From there, I decided to check out the rest of Prodigy's back catalogue, including The Prodigy Experience and Music for the Jilted Generation. I found myself really enjoying both, once again feeling like I'd discovered something that I'd been missing out on, that I was beginning to understand something that had remained out of reach.

Those albums were CDs that I regularly put on all the way through my time at university. They accompanied through late-night essay-writing sessions, through parties-for-no-reason held at various people's houses and flats, and just through life in general. While most of those tracks aren't things that you could "hum", they're all incredibly memorable tracks that, over time, became important to me; meaningful. Not for any particular reason, mind — they just became associated with a time in my life where, for a brief period, I was truly, unconditionally happy.

I think I will bust out those albums for the first time in quite a while this evening in honour of Keith. Rest in peace, sir; you and your friends made quite the impression on me during an exciting and scary period in my life, and I'll be forever grateful for those good times.

This weekend Chris and I recorded a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, and it's a good one that I'm excited to share with you all!

It's currently rendering the video version as I type this, so that should be ready by the morning, and the upload should hopefully be done by lunchtime or so. There will, of course, be a post on MoeGamer to share the episode when it's up.

The episode is on the subject of horizontally scrolling shoot 'em ups, a longstanding favourite genre of mine — though, as I discuss on the show, one that I kind of discounted as something of a "lesser" experience for a good few years during the late 8-bit and early 16-bit computer eras.

It's kind of interesting to me how things like this have ended up in the long run. I vividly recall games magazines complaining about games being "just another shoot 'em up" well into the 1990s, but now, the shoot 'em up is absolutely a beloved — if somewhat niche-interest — genre that is very well-regarded and respected.

Okay, some of the "just another shoot 'em ups" that were released throughout the 8- and 16-bit eras really were worthy of just being dismissed, but I have a funny feeling that there are a lot more interesting games that I passed up on in those periods than I might have originally given them credit for.

Oh well, no time like the present to investigate, is there? You can count on some of that investigation occurring through a combination of the Shmup Essentials column on MoeGamer, and the Atari A to Z videos on YouTube. Besides some of the favourites I discuss on the upcoming podcast, I'm sure there's plenty of cool games just waiting for me to discover…

For now, though, I think it's bedtime. It's 1am; after finishing off the podcast earlier I thought I'd have a quick go at Death End Re;Quest just to say that I've at least started it, and I'm thoroughly interested in what's going on with it. But more on that another time.

Hope you had a pleasant weekend, and that Monday is good to you!

Whew. Good mo… afternoon. Late again, I know, but what are you gonna do.

My lateness today is due, once again, to 428: Shibuya Scramble, which I have now absolutely positively and totally 100% completed with all of its weird secret content. Be sure to check out this week's feature on the game to find out a bit more over on MoeGamer.

So what's next? Well, I've got a podcast to edit first of all, so that's today's job. Chris and I are having a good (and long!) chat about horizontally scrolling shoot 'em ups, a genre we both absolutely adore, so please look forward to that, first of all. Then after that if I have any time remaining this evening I'm going to make a start on the next Cover Game feature which, as I've previously noted a few times, is Idea Factory's Death End Re;Quest, a game I've been very excited to look into for quite some time now.

Further updates as events warrant later today — and $5+ Patrons, I'll get a wallpaper done for you today, too!