I was reasonably productive today! I'd originally intended to spend the day recording gameplay for Atari A to Z, but decided to rearrange things a bit and ended up recording six episodes of Warriors Orochi instead. That takes me to the end of that game, finally, so watch out for the grand finale in… well, in six weeks, I guess. Please also look forward to me being absolutely on top of my cringeworthy pun video naming game with tomorrow's episode.

Warriors Orochi weighs in at 59 episodes in total. That's a lot, but I'm glad I saw it through from start to finish. As I talk a bit about at the end of the final episode, the video series was as much an excuse for me to play a game I'd always been interested in as it was to (hopefully) entertain people. I've found since starting both MoeGamer and my video work that having a sense of "structure" to my hobbies really works for me; it allows me to focus on something and enjoy it to the fullest rather than jumping around from thing to thing without really engaging properly — something that I very much used to suffer from.

Okay, I still buy a lot more games than I'm playing at any one time, but I see them as investments for the future at this point: I have plenty of games to keep me in both videos and things to write about for the foreseeable future, all of which are pleasingly off the beaten track rather than the stuff everyone already knows about.

I have an eye test tomorrow so I'm up early, then I'm going to spend the day doing Atari A to Z stuff and probably cracking on a bit with Senran Kagura Burst Re;Newal, which I haven't started yet. I think I will set more realistic expectations for myself — while it would be lovely to get 23 episodes of Atari A to Z in the bag this week (and probably possible?) I think it's probably better to take aim for 5-10 at most, like I'm intending to do for the ST and Flashback series. So that's the plan for now.

And with that, once again, I have a cat hassling me to go to bed, so I'd better be off. Have a lovely evening!

I got a fair amount done today. Not quite as much as I wanted to as there were some unforeseen circumstances that I won't go into now, but still a fair amount. Specifically, I managed to get 23 Atari A to Z videos researched, planned and short intros recorded for each. I didn't get to the actual gameplay side of things — I'm going to get a bunch of that done tomorrow — but I'm pleased I got that much done.

My S-rank goal for this week is to get Atari A to Z done up to Z (it was so nice last time I did this, as I could just trickle out releases for a long time) or, at minimum, get 5-10 episodes done; get Warriors Wednesday recorded up to the end of Warriors Orochi (not that far now); get at least 5-10 each of Atari ST A to Z and Atari A to Z Flashback done; and make some significant progress on the Final Fantasy Marathon.

Alongside that, of course, I've got stuff to write for MoeGamer and this blog, so I should be keeping myself busy!

Is it too ambitious? I don't know; I can get a lot done in a week if I really put my mind to it — plus this would give me a good idea of how much I can achieve if I can ever attain that perpetually out of reach dream of being able to do this stuff as my full-time job — but any progress is good progress, and this is stuff I really enjoy doing.

I'll keep you posted as the week progresses. Now, my cat Patti is suggesting I should go to bed — or at least pay attention to her — so I'd better sign off for now!

Hello! Housekeeping point first of all: apologies for any confusion, but I accidentally left this month's wallpaper post accessible to all Patrons rather than just for $5+ Patrons. I've made an edit to the post explaining the situation, but on the off-chance you see this first, I'm leaving the Senran Kagura wallpaper there for now rather than taking it away from people who might have already seen it, and I'll do something new exclusively for $5+ Patrons tomorrow so you still get an additional benefit.

Anyway, that aside I'm about ready to head to bed after a day of Peach Beach Splash and a late-night gym session. I have the next week off from the day job, so I'm going to make good use of it to get ahead of schedule on videos, write some articles, play some games and just generally chill out. It's been a busy few weeks with more than a few stresses (both inside work and out) so I'm happy to just have a bit of time to unwind.

I'm nearly done with Peach Beach Splash so you can expect a writeup on that tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest, then it'll be on to Burst Re;Newal after that. Knowing some of the things I know now having played Peach Beach Splash, I'm interested to see how this retconning of the series' beginning works in narrative terms. I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Hope you enjoyed the vlog  yesterday. I enjoyed making it! Like I say, I'll give that a shot for at least the next few weeks as I have a few bits and bobs I want to show you all and things I want to talk about, but it remains to be seen whether I still have things to talk about in the long term! I guess if I can write something nearly every day for five years I can probably find something to talk about to camera once a week, huh?

Anyway, my brain is melting so I'm going to bed. Have a lovely evening!

Hello everyone, I thought I'd try something a bit different for you all this week: a weekly "vlog" of sorts. I'm not going to make any sort of grand promises to do this regularly or over the long term as it will depend how practical it is to keep doing it… but sitting down in front of a camera and talking rubbish for a bit isn't that much of an effort, to be perfectly honest, so I can probably make this happen regularly if people enjoy it!

I just thought it might be an interesting experiment and a means of talking about a few bits and pieces that aren't worth an article, but which I want to spend more than a Tweet on — stuff like recent pickups and that sort of thing.

I also take you on a brief tour of my "retro room" where all the Atari computers live!

Hope you enjoy. Thanks for your support, as always.

$5 Patrons, I owe you a wallpaper — watch out for it in the next couple of days.

I was made aware of a wonderful new timewaster today — Talk to Transformer, which is a website that allows you to type in a "prompt" and then get it completed by an artificial intelligence routine. As a demonstration, the next few paragraphs of this post will be composed by it.

I would have to say that I feel particularly good about this timewaster. If it is even possible to be so pleased about something, that makes the whole effort worth.

A couple of years ago (the timewaster is a bit more new than that) I was on an airplane, listening to Radiohead's first album, "OK Computer." I've enjoyed that album immensely – I remember I was listening, and at one point, Thom Yorke said, "I don't want to sing, I want to just write music and just listen." And he kept singing for two hours; the flight from New York to Seattle was long, and we were waiting to cross the Atlantic.

Then again, his best lyrics are often the hardest ones to compose. In that moment, I listened, for several hours, to music written by Kanye West and had my life transformed. I felt my mind and life were being enriched. My music, in turn, changed my life. And my life, in turn, changed the world.

By writing poetry, we invite your imagination. It might, at times, be frightening. It might be liberating. Or, as I say, it might not even be possible. But that's the beauty of it. The best poetry is as a conduit. It allows your intellect to go through the ideas you want to explore on the page. We're all capable of doing this; it just takes a little more time. It's an act of imagination that takes so much mental power, but in fact can have many positive effects on our lives. After all, our experience of the world consists of our experience of what's written on a page.

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of poetry. I started writing poetry in second grade, with the hope of writing my own work of poetry.

—

Gloriously bizarre, isn't it? It sort of makes sense if you just casually read it, but is obviously complete and utter nonsense if you try and figure out what it's trying to say. It's interesting that it seems to draw from a wide variety of sources, though; refresh the same "prompt" several times and you can get very different results inspired by everything from business emails to explicit erotic fiction.

It kind of reminds me of a writing exercise I've done on a number of occasions in the past. I was first introduced to it as part of my degree-level English studies in the Creative Writing module. It's called "Freewriting".

The essence of Freewriting is that you just sit down with a bit of paper (or a blank document — though I always felt it worked better if you were actually hand-writing it), set a stopwatch or countdown timer for ten minutes, and then just write, non-stop, without looking and what is spewing forth from your mind into your pen, until that time expires.

The results can be very interesting, as they vary very much according to your mental state at the time. Sometimes pure creativity will flow out; sometimes incoherent nonsense; sometimes observations of the environment around you. It can be a good means of getting stuff off your chest, and because you're doing it just for yourself, you have no obligation for it to be "good" or even "readable" — but sometimes it can form the basis of something you can flesh out a little bit more.

Creativity is interesting, and seeing a machine try to understand this mysterious process is pretty fascinating! Why not confuse your friends and family by composing all your emails via Talk to Transformer today?

I enjoy taking surveys that analyse things like the way your mind works and your motivations. As such, I was interested to see this post by Angie from Backlog Crusader, who provided both a link to a survey about "Gamer Motivation" as well as some prompt questions to analyse the results a bit more.

That sounds like fun! Let's do it! I'll be back in a moment after I've done the survey.

(Time passes.)

1. What were your results? Share the link, headline, and the two motivation model graphs you received.

Here are my results. 

I'm apparently "spontaneous, independent, deeply immersed and creative".

The first chart doesn't want to show for some reason, but here's my "secondary motivation" chart:

2. How do you feel about your survey results?

Pretty accurate. Fantasy, story and discovery are top of the heap, as you might expect from my work, with things like challenge, strategy and playing with others a low priority for me. I'm happy with that.

3. Which category is the most accurate and least accurate?

I think the "Destruction" score is a bit high, particularly as the survey's definitions say that means I'd gravitate towards stuff like Call of Duty and Battlefield! Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy blowing things up — particularly in shoot 'em ups and more old-school first-person shooters — but it's by no means a high priority. It's just something I do if it's there.

Meanwhile, my "Creative" score at 90%… well, I think we all know that's pretty accurate. Whether it's exploring the game world and what interactive possibilities it offers, or spending ages customising a character I will then spend 50+ hours staring at the back of… yeah, I like this side of things.

4. Are there any major exceptions to your typical gaming motivations?

I'm not normally super-big on challenging games, but sometimes I get the urge to take on something a bit more difficult than my normal fare. Usually this is when I'm already super-invested in an RPG and decide I'd like to take on its superboss(es); in most cases that comes as a natural part of ongoing progression rather than necessarily wanting to jump into something that is immediately hard, though.

5. Do any of these motivations carry over to your non-gaming life? If so, how?

Creativity is absolutely a driving force in my day-to-day life, as is hopefully obvious by this point. I get quite frustrated if I don't manage to meet my own expectations, and I enjoy experimenting with different styles of article and video — or covering subject matter I haven't explored before.

 6. Which games in your experience best satisfy your gaming motivations and how do they compare to the “suggested games” list from the questionnaire’s follow up page?

Hmm. Not great. Especially considering I ticked the "Niche" option for the game recommendations, because as we all know, I prefer lesser-known, underappreciated stuff.

I did enjoy Dragon Age II when I played it — a lot more than many other people did, in fact — but it's by no means an all-time favourite, and I've seriously soured on BioWare over the years. There also isn't a single Japanese game in this list, despite the survey asking me for (and recognising) several favourite games and games I'd enjoyed playing recently.

I want to highlight Life is Strange in that list; while this is something that I, in theory, should have enjoyed a great deal, what with it being a story-heavy game with emotional themes and cool fantasy powers… the more I think about it, the more I feel like I kind of disliked it. I found Chloe to be one of the most loathsome characters I've had the misfortune of being stuck with for five episodes of an adventure game, I found the game's transparent and hamfisted attempts to highlight modern social issues kind of insulting, and the ending of the whole thing was exceedingly unsatisfying. I obviously don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of this game; I just came away rather unimpressed!

Also, Mass Effect: Andromeda? N-no. Just no.

As for stuff that does satisfy my particular urges? Well, most of the stuff I've given Cover Game features to on MoeGamer! Xenoblade Chronicles. Senran Kagura. Hyperdimension Neptunia. Blue Reflection. Atelier. And many more. You hopefully know me by now 🙂

So that's that! If you want to take the survey yourself, hit up this link. And be sure to add your favourite games to the recommendation engine at the end; that way, it should, in theory, get better over time!

I watched most of tonight's Nintendo Direct at the gym this evening. Unfortunately the gym's Wi-Fi is pretty shit so I had to reload the stream literally every two minutes, so I'm sure I missed a few little snippets here and there, but I caught most of it.

It was a pretty strong presentation all round, and if there's one thing I could take away from it, it is that Nintendo is serious about acknowledging not just its own past, but gaming's past in general.

This is obviously most apparent in the long-expected Super Nintendo app for Nintendo Switch Online, which I'm happy to finally see become a reality, but also in the fact that we're getting rereleases of Deadly Premonition, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and Xenoblade Chronicles. I'm not sure I'll bite on these when they come out unless they have some sort of significant extra content as I already own them all on their original platforms, but it's great that a new generation will be able to enjoy these titles, as they're all fantastic.

Biggest surprise of the event for me had to be Deadly Premonition 2; as much of a cult hit as the original was, I didn't expect it to ever get a sequel. Mind you, the stuff SWERY has been working on since then has been well-received — particularly The Missing, which I still need to try at some point — and so it's probably given publishers a bit more confidence in him and made him seem like less of a risky prospect. He's also become quite well-known on social media in both Japanese- and English-speaking parts of the Internet, whereas when Deadly Premonition originally came out it was still early days for interacting with each other online in general, so he wasn't as much of a "household name", if that's the right term for him.

It was cool to see some more Pokémon, too; Pokémon Masters is getting me nicely in the mood for Sword and/or Shield, and the features shown off tonight looked cool. I love that there's a Currydex now — if you needed any further proof that the Galar region is heavily Britain-inspired, there it is!

Even Animal Crossing looked vaguely interesting this time around. The addition of a crafting component immediately adds more of a "game" element to it, whereas in past installments I've always struggled to see the point of anything. Being able to actually collect materials and craft things from them adds a feeling of "progression" to the game that previous installments have always felt like they were lacking to me personally; I know I'm in a minority on this, however! Still doubt I'll pick it up as I've been burned twice on buying into Animal Crossing hype at this point, but we'll see what people have to say when it eventually releases. My wife will almost certainly grab it, so I might grab a glimpse over her shoulder while she plays.

One thing that did strike me during the presentation is what a massive waste of time the chat function for any sort of large-scale livestream is. I don't know why YouTube has it turned on by default, because it's just a wall of constantly moving text that you never have time to read, and most of it is people spamming emotes or going "DON'T CARE" anyway. Hardly meaningful discussion!

Anyway, that aside, it was a strong showing from Nintendo, and it looks like the rest of the year is going to be good for them — and onward into 2020. The Switch really is going from strength to strength; it's like a repeat of the good old Wii days, with Nintendo having the least powerful hardware but some of the most interesting and exciting games out there!

Enough excitement for today. Time to sleep! Have a pleasant evening!

As part of a conversation about developing your confidence to "speak" (i.e. with your voice) online, I happened to look back over my YouTube channel and I was astonished to discover that I've uploaded over 500 videos at this point. Not all of these have been published yet (30+ of them are for the beginning of my Final Fantasy XI run in the Final Fantasy Marathon, which is a long way off publication yet!) but that's still a pretty impressive number… and I had no idea!

I've really enjoyed getting a feel for what I want to do with YouTube. The "Let's Play" format that I spend most of my time doing may not be the most fashionable way of doing things any more, but I'm slowly but surely building up a thoroughly pleasant audience of supportive people who seem to enjoy what I do very much. I even got a "shout-out" from fellow Atari ST-related creator The Joy of Sticks earlier this week, which was really exciting and nice to see.

Creating cool things online really is about networking, even for antisocial bastards like me. You can create things in a vacuum all you want and there's a certain amount of satisfaction to be drawn just from the act of creating. But there really is something special about knowing that the things you do are actually "reaching" other people and affecting their lives in positive ways — even if it's just through simple entertainment or informing.

I digress. I was talking about developing self-confidence. While I'm still an anxious, nervous, depressed wreck in reality, I actually feel pretty confident with both my written and video content these days. I feel I've naturally settled into distinctive styles for both, and my complete lack of desire to be at the centre of any sort of drama or clickbait controversies gives me something that sets me apart from a lot of other stuff around today, too.

It's something that's come with experimentation and practice, though, and I'm glad I listened to people when they had things to say to encourage me. Probably the most noteworthy of these was my wife suggesting I should appear on camera in my videos rather than simply being a disembodied voice. I was extremely nervous and hesitant to do this as I'm not a big fan of my own appearance and I've always been afraid of mean comments about it — you know what the Internet is like.

But I gave it a shot anyway, and I feel all my videos have been much better since I started doing that, even if my actual camerawork has sometimes been less than optimal. (Hey, I'm doing the best with the equipment and environment I have available to me!)

If you're yet to check out my stuff on YouTube, please do take some time to have a look when you have a moment. I'm especially proud of my three Atari A to Z series, which look at Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari arcade games; I take great pride in researching these as well as providing some anecdotes from my own experience where applicable, and I love showing off stuff from those home computers that don't get nearly as much love as stuff like the C64 and Spectrum. Atari was such a defining influence in my life that I'm happy to have the opportunity and the capability to celebrate it in some way.

Anyway. As always, thanks for being kind enough to take a look at what I do and supporting it. I hope it's abundantly clear by now that I love creating stuff, and I love expressing my passion and joy for the things that are important to me, so it means the world to me that people want to come along for the ride. And I'm not planning on stopping any time soon!

I'm doing a bit better today, thankfully. I didn't really want to find myself falling into the black pit I was in a few weeks ago; that's a really frustrating and unproductive place to be, so I'm glad I've managed to shake off the negative thoughts I've been feeling.

The fact that I'm less than a week away from a week off is helping me stay positive, I think. I'm looking forward to this time off — I have nothing specific planned for it, but like last time I took a week like this, I'm going to take the opportunity to get ahead of schedule on a bunch of stuff like videos so I can concentrate on other things when I'm back at work.

Oh, I've also been contemplating the possibility of some sort of weekly vlog exclusively for you patrons. Vlogging is not something I've done before, but doing the intros for my various videos (particularly the Atari A to Z ones) has given me a bit of confidence at speaking to camera, so I might give it a shot during my week off. If that's something you might be interested in seeing on a regular basis, let me know — I could use the reassurance! 🙂

I'm also greatly enjoying Peach Beach Splash, as always because of its characters. I'm in the middle of the Crimson Squad story at the time of writing, and their tales of attempting to secure new work by becoming "NewTube" stars are consistently hilarious. I love those girls. Love them.

Anyway, with that in mind, I'm off to go play some more of that very game, then hit the gym a bit later. I hope you have a pleasant evening!

I won't lie, I've had a bit of a rough weekend mental health-wise.

The reason for this is the news I mentioned yesterday: the untimely death of independent game developer Alec Holowka after unproven accusations of sexual misconduct.

The reason this bothers me so much is that I feel like it could easily have been me. Not because of the sexual assault allegations, I hasten to add, but because I've been through a similar case of being abandoned by people I thought were my friends.

I've talked about the story of the end of my career in the professional games press numerous times at this point, but it still hurts five years later, as it had such a huge impact on my life and overall wellbeing that it's hard to let go of it, particularly when things remind me of what happened.

Before I continue, I hasten to add that I am by no means attempting to equate my experiences to that of Alec Holowka over the past few days. I am simply saying that in another timeline, I could see myself having been driven to despair just as he was.

For those unfamiliar, the end of my time in the games press occurred on my birthday in 2014. I received an email out of the blue from Rupert Loman, head honcho of Gamer Network, the parent company of USgamer, where I was working at the time, and their more well known, well established cousin Eurogamer.

The email was simple and to the point. It informed me that the decision had been made (without me) to proceed with USgamer with an all-American staff. I had originally been brought on board to populate the site with content during my daytime, meaning that Americans would have something new to read on USgamer by the time they woke up, thanks to me.

I did a good job. I covered a wide variety of topics, not just those of personal interest to me, but I also made a point of having a unique voice and perspective — and over time, my contributions resulted in USgamer being regarded as both a reputable, reliable news source and a site that was friendly to games that often found themselves treated unfairly by other sites out there.

But all that was thrown out of the window that day. I was cast out of my dream job for reasons that I still believe were spurious; I'm all but certain it was because I didn't participate in modern "progressive" culture — or, as we now know it, that side of the media that is perpetually offended about one thing or another.

The reason I believe this is that before I'd even left the site completely, editor Jeremy Parish brought on board two of his sycophantic cronies, both of whom played a part in undoing a lot of the goodwill I'd generated with parts of the community often not well represented by the press.

But this side of things isn't why Holowka's passing reminds me of bad times; it's what happened alongside all this.

To put it simply, I lost a lot of friends pretty much overnight. None of them were publicly distancing themselves from me as Holowka's friends did over the last few days, but I was still abandoned by people that I once spoke to on a daily basis, and had even met in person a few times.

People I used to podcast with. People I started out working alongside. People I just liked. So many of them turned their backs on me, and have not, to date, ever reached out to see how I'm doing. Not one of them has stopped by MoeGamer or YouTube and said "good job" or even attempted to start a discussion.

I've made a lot of new online friends since, thankfully, but sometimes it's hard not to feel very alone, particularly at times like this. I'm thankful that I was just "ghosted" rather than "cancelled" as Holowka was, but it's still not a pleasant experience to have gone through, and I freely admit that even my experiences led my mind to dark places on occasion.

I'm not going to preach to anyone here about how to live their lives or anything; I just wanted to take a moment to express how the events of the last few days have made me feel, and what they've reminded me of.

Thanks for listening, and may tomorrow be a better day for everyone.