I made it! I was in the pool by 7.25am this morning, got in a good half an hour or so of swimming, then made it to work on time. This is, it seems, a thing I will be able to do — even if the pool's timetable was slightly wrong and they actually open at 7.30am on three of the five weekdays. And if their lockers are non-refundable — albeit thankfully only 10p.

The pool itself was enjoyably nostalgic, and reminded me a bit of the community pool where I grew up, which was on my secondary school campus. It obviously hasn't been particularly "renovated" for a long time — though it's all in good condition — and has some gloriously retro signs on the wall emphasising the expectation that there will be no "bombing" or "petting" during your time in and around the pool. I haven't seen a sign saying "no petting" since I was still at school, I don't think.

I enjoyed the swim. I'm not an especially strong swimmer and I'm very slow, but I don't really mind; I'm not doing this to be especially "athletic", I'm simply doing it as a means of getting moving a bit more and having some early-morning relaxation ahead of the working day. And it works; when I'm swimming, I tend to find that my mind gradually empties and the whole sensation is pleasingly anxiety-free, which for someone as naturally anxious as myself is an absolute delight.

Swimming up and down is boring, but it's a good time to sort things out in your head. I found myself composing the opening to articles, practising Esperanto and all manner of other things while I tuned out of the situation and ran on autopilot. So by the time I was finished it felt as much like I'd had a mental workout as well as a (very mild) physical one.

I'm going to try and make this a habit… although finding a 10p every day is going to be a pain in the bum given how little I tend to use cash these days!

Well, I didn't quite make it to the pool this morning… but I did successfully manage to get up considerably earlier than I have been up until now, so I count that as a partial success. I nearly got up in time to go to the pool, but then that last snooze of my alarm apparently knocked me out for more than half an hour rather than ten minutes. Whoops. Oh well, I'll try again tomorrow; the mind was willing and the intentions were pure, but the body was just slightly unwilling.

I do actually feel a bit better for getting up a bit earlier. I wouldn't say I feel especially bright-eyed and alert or anything, but I do think I feel marginally better than I normally do at this time in the morning. Which is nice.

I'm feeling a little frustrated today, though; I'm feeling oddly conscious of the fact that I never seem to be able to get beyond 25 patrons on this 'ere site. I've been bouncing back and forth between about 20 and 25 for quite a long time now, with that initial 20 representing a wonderful "core" of people who have supported me for a long time now. If you're one of those people, an extra-special big thank you for what you do!

That last 5 seem to come and go at various points every month, though. I know from my own Patreon habits that people often shift their pledges around every so often so they have the opportunity to support more creators than they otherwise would — and thus it's nothing personal or anything I've done "wrong" when they go elsewhere — it's just a bit of a shame that the growth of this page seems to have stagnated a little bit, with people coming and going at seemingly roughly the same rate.

MoeGamer itself is doing great, mind you; the last three years have seen incredible growth in both views and visitors, with most visitors sticking around to read more than one thing, which is wonderful to see. I'm not sure if we're going to beat last year's record (which was the site's best year ever to date) but we're certainly on track for similar performance at the very least.

Those who have been following for a while will know that I'm not generally one to care about figures; I'd be doing this even if no-one was reading, because I simply love the act of writing, and putting together my pieces for MoeGamer lets me enjoy my favourite hobby on a much deeper level. But it would be nice to know I have a few newcomers to my work now and again, and perhaps some people who feel inclined to support independent, ad-free games writing. It would be super-cool to be able to afford some stuff like rarer games, more obscure consoles I don't own (coughTurbografxcough) or better video capture hardware, for example.

With that in mind, dear patron, a humble request: if you particularly enjoy something on MoeGamer, please do share it, whether it's a simple retweet on Twitter, a quote tweet with a comment or using one of the "Share" buttons that are at the bottom of each post. It really does make a world of difference; a simple tweet helps a lot, and a single link on Reddit or a specialist forum typically sees my views and visitors for the day absolutely explode. Plus it's always nice to see new faces in the comment section. (So long as they're not, y'know, dicks.)

There are now over a thousand articles on MoeGamer, most of which have been crafted to be "timeless", i.e. you can refer to them at any point in time rather than them being particularly tied to then-current happenings. (This is why I make a point of not being a news site, and keeping "topical" opinion pieces to a minimum!) If there's anything from the archives that you particularly enjoyed, or a writeup on a favourite game, do please share it with friends and family so we can continue to grow.

Thanks for your time and your continued support! I really do appreciate it, and I'm constantly humbled that there are so many people of you already who think my work is worth pledging to support. I hope you have a pleasant Tuesday, and with any luck tomorrow's post will start with some sort of enthusiasm about getting into the swimming pool 🙂

I am yet to find a satisfying Asian-style pot noodle that purports to be low fat, low calorie and/or miscellaneously "healthy" that doesn't end up smelling and tasting like bile.

This is a real bummer, because I absolutely love good Asian noodles — we've just recently started to be able to get Nissin Cup Noodle over here, and those are delicious. Unfortunately, with how oily the particularly delicious noodles tend to be, they're not a brilliant fit when one is attempting to lose weight.

I continually get suckered in by the promise of such delicious bounty as chicken laksa, penang beef and Thai red curry, but every time they're distinctly… I can't really think of any word for it other than biley or vomity. I don't mean in terms of flavour; often the flavour is vaguely acceptable, although the smell is often pretty awful. Rather, I mean that on the way down, they kind of feel quite like I'd imagine them on the way back up again; a sort of burny sensation that isn't especially pleasant.

And when I say the flavour is "vaguely acceptable", I really mean that; not one of these noodle pots has come close to replicating the authentic experience of enjoying any of the aforementioned dishes, all of which I'm a big fan of in their super-unhealthy takeaway form. But I guess it was ever thus for "healthy" foods that attempt to replicate something else; to get rid of those calories and that fat, you're inevitably ditching the things that made it delicious in the first place.

But I say no more! No longer shall I fall for your noodly wiles, Naked Noodle and Kabuto Noodles! I know you're shit! Give me a good Pot Noodle (not authentic Asian) or Nissin Cup Noodle (more authentic Asian) any day and hang the consequences, I say!

I've had a productive weekend! Over the last two days, I've managed to get seven full videos done (three episodes of Final Fantasy Marathon, two episodes of Warriors Wednesday and two episodes of Atari ST A to Z).

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself, especially because planning things like this means I'm ahead of schedule on all my video work, meaning I can devote the next weekend to a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast. (We're likely going to be talking about the SNK Anniversary Collection in detail, so if there's anything you'd particularly like us to discuss about that, let us know!)

I've been experimenting with different camera and microphone setups — Andie bought a fancy webcam because she wanted to try streaming, so I gave it a go for recording facecam footage during gameplay. Unfortunately it didn't really offer any benefits over my current setup where I record facecam with my phone camera and audio using my podcasting mic, but I wanted to at least give it a shot.

I'm pleased with the upcoming episodes of Atari ST A to Z. Because my Atari ST packaged collection is the most substantial of all my Atari stuff, I have plenty of opportunities to examine the physical components that make up various ST releases. It's been a delight to rediscover things like glossy MicroProse manuals and the endearing bizarreness of ERE Informatique/Exxos' work — and I'm very happy to be able to show them off in these videos, as I believe this aspect helps set the Atari A to Z videos apart from being "just" Let's Plays.

I realised I released this week's Atari A to Z Flashback video out of order; it was supposed to be Sprint 2, but I apparently temporarily forgot my alphabet. I blame the Esperanto. Sprint 2 will now be next weekend, and hopefully I will find some time to record some two-player gameplay of Atari Soccer in the near future, too, as I've had to skip that one until a convenient time to make Andie play it with me 🙂

Anyway, it's been a good weekend. My intention was to get up early tomorrow and try to go swimming, but it's nearly 1am so I'm not sure that's going to happen tomorrow. I'd like to try and kick off that "new habit" this week, though, so I will at least attempt to get up early tomorrow. If not, Tuesday for sure!

Hope you've all had a good weekend. Take care!

I bought a stylus for my Switch today. (Well, yesterday, but it arrived today.) The reason for this is that I discovered at work that Super Mario Maker 2 only works using touch controls when you play it in handheld mode.

This isn't a problem as such, since the interface is clearly designed for touch interfaces, but I haven't smeared my disgusting fingers over my Switch's screen yet and I was somewhat hesitant to start. So I ordered a stylus.

I've used a capacitive touchscreen stylus before and wasn't all that impressed. It was a reasonably nice pen-shaped thing, but the actual end that you touched the screen with was this horrible squishy rubber with far too much "give" in it — so much that you usually ended up tapping the plastic of the "pen" on the screen itself, which I'm sure would eventually lead to scratches and marks.

A bit of shopping around indicated that there are better options, however; the most well-regarded stylus products on Amazon had a microfibre tip, so I thought I'd give one of those a go.

The difference is immense. It's actually incredibly pleasurable to use. I found myself deliberately playing with Mario Maker's level editor in handheld mode just so I could use the stylus more, so pleasurable was the feeling. It honestly felt like I was holding a paintbrush in my hand and was smoothly sweeping it across a canvas; as someone who generally derives great pleasure from "tactile" activities like this, it pushed all my buttons, and actually motivated me on to finish building a level I'd started a few days ago; doing so felt good on a primal, sensory level while I was doing it, and, of course, actually finishing off the level and uploading it (after a good hour of trying to clear it and tweaking the difficulty accordingly!) was even more satisfying.

If you fancy giving it a shot for yourself, here's the details. 2WD-2XT-81H

Be warned: it's quite tough… but also note that I can clear it, and I am not especially good at Super Mario!

Given how much enjoyment I've had out of this new-found liking for using a stylus, you can probably count on some more Mario Maker levels in the near future. Watch this space!

One of the key characteristics of Asperger's — at least in most people I've encountered who have it, along with my own experience — is an inability to make "small talk". In my case, I actually find small talk actively uncomfortable, even cringeworthy at times.

What I mean by small talk is those conversations that people have for no other reason than to fill the silence. At my workplace, for example, every conference call tends to start with asinine conversations about the weather or what people are doing at the weekend or whatever. No-one really gives a toss what each other is saying; they're just saying things for the sake of it.

I think the reason this makes me uncomfortable is because it's communication without clear purpose; or, well, no. I know the purpose — to fill silence — but I don't understand the purpose. Consequently, in a situation that would generally demand small talk, I will either remain completely silent or, on a rare occasion where I have a bit of confidence, blurt out something awkwardly, inevitably fail to get the exact reaction I anticipated and promptly clam right up again.

As you might imagine, this makes me not a ton of fun to go out to restaurants with, to be waiting for a bus with or to have a long car journey with. Thankfully, most of the people with whom I would typically do those activities know me well enough to understand that if I'm quiet or silent, I'm not being cold or rude, I'm just not in a particular position to be able to adequately process the apparently meaningless conversation unfolding in front of me.

There's a self-confidence issue here, too. When conversation does start to take on a bit more structure and move past small talk, I find it quite difficult to spot cues and provide my own contribution to a discussion. In the time where I "wind up" to give a response — which is often quite a lengthy process in my head — I often second-guess the things I'm planning to say and end up talking myself out of saying anything at all, worrying about coming across as stupid, ill-informed or somehow inadequate.

All these reasons are why I tend to avoid one-on-one social situations, online voice chat and the like… and why it surprises (and pleases!) me that I'm able to cope with this enough to produce a podcast with a good friend on a semi-regular basis. That "good friend" bit is probably super-important.

It's not you, it's most definitely me!

I've seen several posts from my writer comrades on WordPress recently that have something in common: they find themselves contemplating the value of critics, the obligations and responsibilities that professional critics have, and whether or not that "professional" side of things is truly representative of various forms of media today.

From my perspective, although I've worked as one of those professional critics in the past, I personally don't particularly ascribe value to the work of professional critics today. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say I actively avoid the work of professional critics today. This isn't down to any of the accusations that sometimes get thrown around — "paid reviews" and the like — but quite simply because in terms of the media I'm interested in, the gulf between how professional critics approach things and how I approach things has become too wide.

Conversely, I now tend to make my media decisions based on a few factors. Top of the heap is quite simply whether or not I instinctively feel like the work in question is something I will enjoy. I know my tastes pretty well by this point, and I haven't steered myself wrong on many occasions in the past. I don't look at reviews of something that catches my attention; I just pick it up and make my own mind up before looking anything else up on it. If I'm writing about it, I'll write about it before I read anyone else's work on it — with the exception of anything I stumble across during research, and there I'll tend to emphasise factual articles and interviews over opinion pieces and reviews.

After that, I'll tend to seek out the thoughts of people I know and whose opinions I typically respect, even if they don't always line up exactly. I enjoy the work of people who give things a chance even if they're popularly regarded as "bad"; I wrote a while back about this being a particular reason I enjoy Game Grumps' work on YouTube, but it also applies to people I have a bit more of a personal connection to, such as bloggers I know on WordPress or people I've encountered on Twitter, Discord and the like.

And that's about it. I don't give a damn what the Metacritic score of something is, or whether [x] publication gave it [y] score. For me, scores are meaningless, and have been for a while; some of my favourite games of all time have sub-60 Metacritic scores, which is regarded by some as a kiss of death, but I just don't care. I support what I enjoy, and I'll continue to tell people about the experiences I've had, and the interesting things I've learned while finding out more about the sources of those experiences.

This is why I don't consider the things I write on MoeGamer to be "reviews" as such — although one thing I've learned from interacting with the broader anime blogging community is that the definition of "review" varies somewhat from person to person, with not everyone regarding it as "judgemental piece with score at the end" — and why I don't think I'd even really describe myself as a "critic" in the same way that writers for the big sites of the day do.

I just write about games. I play them, I take the time to find out more about them, I occasionally have the good fortune to be able to talk to the people who made them… and then I write about them.

I love what I do!

I feel like I'm suffering somewhat from post-holiday depression. Rather than feeling super-refreshed from my time away, I'm actually feeling kind of exhausted, and at several points over the last couple of days I've felt somewhat on the verge of tears for no apparent reason. Not a great place to be in.

I think it's probably just culture shock at going from a whole week of being able to do whatever I wanted in a pleasant environment to being back in mundane old, boring old reality.

It's kind of frustrating when my brain works in this way because my day job isn't a bad one or anything — indeed, I'd probably go so far as to say it's the best one I've ever had — but when I start feeling like this, all the little frustrating things about it start to mount up and become incredibly irritating. But I shall save discussion of those things for another day; no-one from my work reads this, so that's not a problem, but one of the annoying things is that the things which frustrate me are so specific to my job that my complaining about them probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone except one of my colleagues! Oh well.

As I mentioned the other day, I think it's just a matter of getting back into the rhythm of things and establishing some new habits. It didn't help that I ended up going to bed a bit early last night because I wasn't feeling particularly well, and subsequently I ended up sleeping a little later than intended, waking up at the time I'd normally aim to be leaving for work.

From next week, I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and get up much earlier than I need to, and to start going for a morning swim. This will hopefully achieve a few things: improve my mental state of a morning (and in general), allow me to feel like I've "done" something before the working day starts, get some much-needed exercise and enjoy some daily relaxation in the water. (Judging from my time in the pool on holiday last week, I think it's good for my skin, too, which is a bonus.)

It is, of course, going to be a major effort to haul my ass out of bed in the morning in time to do this, but I think it'll be a positive thing overall. Check back on Monday to see how I got on!

Hello! Today I'm giving you, dear Patrons, early access to a new project that will be kicking off "officially" on Friday: the Final Fantasy Marathon, which I've previously teased with my Final Fantasy XI videos.

Now I'm finally ready to kick off for real, so here's the first episode, featuring the PSP version of Final Fantasy. I'm quite happy with how this turned out, and I'm really looking forward to continuing my way through the rest of the series in this manner. It'll take a LONG time to get through everything, but it's something I've been wanting to do for the longest time, and there's no time like the present!

I hope you enjoy the first episode, and check back on YouTube every Friday for the latest.

I'm back at work today. Boo! The adjustment hasn't been quite as horrendously harsh as I expected it to be, but I do have a bit of a headache and would rather be in bed right now. Patti decided that I should wake up at 5.30am though, so my sleep from that point onwards was rather broken, to say the least; Patti likes to "tap" me in the face, and she knows how to open doors, so I can't just shut her out of the room. (For recent followers, Patti is my cat, not my wife. My wife could sleep through the Apocalypse.)

After my holiday, I'm feeling reasonably inspired in a few regards. Both Andie (my actual wife) and I had been struggling a bit with our slimming efforts prior to going away, but I think a week of being reasonably free and easy with what we want to eat has probably got a lot of the frustration out of our system, hopefully meaning that we'll find it a bit easier to get back "on plan" for the foreseeable future. Of course, we'll almost certainly have gained weight in the meantime, but we're seeing this week's session as a fresh start and a new beginning rather than any sort of "failure".

My time in the pool at Center Parcs also made me feel like I want to do some more swimming generally. Since I prefer to keep my evenings as free as possible to work on MoeGamer, make videos and enjoy some games, my goal is to get up and go swimming before work. There's a pool just around the corner from my house that does early morning sessions from 7.15am, meaning I could swim for 30-45 minutes before work, so I'd like to do that. My big barrier to doing that is the fact that I find it very difficult to get up before I absolutely have to in the morning, regardless of whether or not I'm being harassed by a cat (which I usually am).

As I wrote a long while back, though, this sort of thing is all about establishing good habits. Good habits can be difficult to get going with, but once you establish them, the longer you keep them up the harder they become to break. I just need to make that initial "push" to get going in the first place, then I can very much see myself making (possibly daily) swimming part of my weekday routine.

This is all good intentions rather than actual good things right now, though, so I'll be sure to keep you posted on my progress in an attempt to keep me honest!