Well, now, here's an interesting thing.

You remember a while back when Nintendo Life reviewed Gun Gun Pixies and wrote an offensive, insulting article that belittled anyone who might be interested in the game? Remember how I stood up against that, and got a decent amount of support for it — as well as a few insults and a Twitter block from the writer of the article?

Today I received this DM from Damien McFerran, the director of Nintendo Life. I've cut off the last bit because it talks about specific details I'm not going to share right now… but you can get the gist:

"We're looking to change our approach with Japanese/anime games on Nintendo Life."

I've… got to applaud this, really. I mean, it's quite a long time since the whole Gun Gun Pixies incident, but for whatever reason Damien here has been reflecting and has evidently thought their past way of doing things hasn't been working for one reason or another.

I haven't been back to Nintendo Life since said Gun Gun Pixies incident, so I don't know if there have been any more situations like that — though I would have thought I'd see them blow up on social media if they had — but there must be some reason for this.

I'm not so arrogant as to assume I'm the sole reason for this… but I suspect what happened back then is at least something to do with this — and the fact that Damien has reached out to me to cover something with his new philosophy in mind says quite a bit, I think.

Well then. I just wanted to share that, because I think it's pretty cool. And, assuming all goes to plan, you'll see my name at least once on Nintendo Life in the near future! (Don't worry, though, MoeGamer's not going anywhere!)

EDIT: Sorry, correct link this time — I had to reupload to fix an audio issue! If the video doesn't appear for you immediately, check back in a few minutes — it's still processing as I type this.

Today's Coffee Talk video was primarily an experiment for myself to see how quickly I could turn around an article into a "feature"-style video — i.e. a reading of an article with appropriately accompanying footage. Turns out I can do it pretty quickly — I could have probably actually done this the same day I wrote the article if I'd been that way inclined.

I'm not going to make any promises that I'll be doing this for every article going forward, but I'd like to do it more often, as it's a means for my more "structured" stuff to get seen by people who prefer to watch and/or listen than read. Getting it done efficiently is reliant on one simple thing that I've changed recently: the fact that when I'm sitting down to play something I know I'm going to write about, I record it. All of it. Then I immediately back it up to Google Photos, which saves a good (albeit compressed) 1080p copy of it that I can retrieve if and when I need it, and then I can delete the raw recording files off my SSD if I need the space.

I take the Google Photos step because if you allow them to compress your footage (which is roughly equivalent to what YouTube does to it, so not ideal for very "busy" modern games, but fine for older stuff or things with less movement) you literally have unlimited online storage. This means that I can keep a complete archive of footage from the things I play, so that when I want to talk about it on, say, a podcast, or a video about a more general topic, I can search for relevant footage in my backup and reuse it as necessary.

I wish I'd thought of this sooner; besides allowing me to make videos more easily, it's also great for taking screenshots. Rather than having to carefully time pressing the screenshot button for when something cool happens — literally impossible to do on PS4, if you've ever tried it, but fine on PC and Switch in most cases — I can simply record a bunch of footage and then pick out the exact frame that something cool happens to use as a screenshot.

This is going to be my default method of working going forward, and hopefully it means you'll see a wider variety of videos as time goes on — assuming I make time to produce them. Like I say, I'm making no promises for the moment… but let's just say I have some "infrastructure" in place now! 🙂

Seems to be some sort of meme going around on Twitter right now where you make two avatars using a particular Picrew creator, one of which is your "persona", and one of which is your "person". Well, far be it from me not to join on a pointless trend that provides the opportunity to dress up an avatar… remember the mobile game I wrote about last week?

All right then, here we go:

Persona:

Not a bad approximation of Midori, considering the parts available! Very happy with that.

And person:

Yes, I had to MS Paint a beard on because there weren't any beard parts. Also I'm much fatter than that. I do have a black vest, though. It's very comfortable.

If you want to have a play for yourself, check out the Picrew creator in question at  https://picrew.me/image_maker/186583  — I will not be held responsible for how much time you waste on Picrew as a whole, however! That shit be addictive…

Made a minor little addition to MoeGamer's menus today: under Articles > Features there's now a "Mini-Features" section to collect together loosely related sets of articles that aren't a full-on Cover Game feature, but do belong together for some reason. So far I've collected together my articles on Skipmore and Stranga Games' titles, since people might want to read about all that stuff at the same time.

I'm pleased at the response to the Fairune videos so far; people seem to have liked them. Good, because there's a couple more on the way — and after that I'll probably do video versions of the Stranga Games articles, too. I think I've mentioned this before, but I've also got voiceovers recorded for video versions of the Shade feature from a while back — I just need to actually record some footage to go with the talking now!

I'm still coughing like an old man but I think I'm over the worst now. Going to drug myself up again this evening and hope I feel a bit better in the morning. I am very tired of this shit now. I have things to do, and wanting to go to bed at 9pm is not helping me get them done!

Ah well. I suppose it could be worse. Probably. Anyway. Time for bed, I think.

I've spent the day today playing a game called Coffee Talk. I can't talk much about it right now as it's under embargo until (checks) Tuesday, but there'll be something about it on MoeGamer then. I will say for now that if you liked VA-11 HALL-A for both its unusual method of interaction and storytelling and its glorious '90s-style pixel art, you'll definitely like this too.

I've done very little else this weekend because of frequent painful coughing fits making me, you know, not want to do anything other than sit on the couch and play video games. I'm not relishing going back to work tomorrow — though if I spend the day coughing like I've been coughing today, maybe I'll get sent home. That would be a desirable outcome were it not for the dumbass corporate bureaucracy I'd have to deal with upon my return. But whatever.

Coming up this week, we've got more LAMUNATION!, the aforementioned Coffee Talk, a shoot 'em up that is a spiritual successor to Castle of Shikigami and… and… some other stuff, too. Plus, of course, plenty of Atari funtimes and goodness for those of you who are hanging around for that! We've got an Atari ST game that is particularly special to me coming up this week, so please look forward to that.

Anyway, I'm going to attempt to get some sleep if I can lie down without my throat doing a weird rattly tickly annoying thing that makes me cough. Here's hoping I can shake this off soon and/or I don't have Coronavirus.

Morning folks. Don't think there's going to be a PATRONS ONLY! video this weekend, I'm afraid; I've had a bit of a relapse on the whole "being ill" front and feel like absolute garbage. I spent most of yesterday either howling in pain or crying with frustration, which is a lot of fun, so that's why you didn't hear from me then.

I'll be okay eventually. Today I feel… I don't know if "better" is the right word, but it feels like progress towards being better at least. The trouble I've been having is an unfortunate interaction between several things that are wrong with me; I won't bore you with the details right now, but let's just say that it's not been happy funtimes at all.

I'm going to have a nice relaxing day today. I have no commitments whatsoever and I'm ahead of schedule on video production, so I can just chill out with some nice games and do very little. So that's exactly what I plan to do. And here's hoping that the amount of Lemsip I'm filling my system with will eventually shake off the most irritating part of this sickness!

Well, it's that or I have the Chinese death virus. Hopefully it's not that, though.

Having now played through all three of Stranga Games' short-form horror adventures Just Ignore Them, My Big Sister and Red Bow (writeup on the former coming next week) — I have to say I feel quite inspired. These are clearly one-man passion projects where Stranga (or "Nathan", apparently) had a vision for what he wanted to achieve, didn't let his ambitions run away with him, and successfully accomplished what he wanted.

There's a clear progression from Just Ignore Them to My Big Sister and onwards to Red Bow; of the three, I think My Big Sister is probably my personal favourite, but it's obvious that he spent time refining his craft and taking on board feedback between each of the three games.

I'll talk more about Just Ignore Them in my full write-up next week, but oddly enough, this is probably the most inspiring of the three in that Stranga freely admits he was mostly "winging it" when writing it — something I know I certainly do a whole lot with both fiction and non-fiction pieces! It's the most clunky, cumbersome and full of holes of the three, but in some respects that makes it feel like the most charming and soulful of them all; a guy decided he wanted to make a horror game that paid homage to some of his favourite games of all time, and he successfully did that.

And these games may be short, but the dude made them by himself — and they're available on pretty much every modern platform now. That's pretty cool, and proof that if you really set your mind to something, you can achieve pretty sweet things.

He's never going to make a million from any of these games — but I bet he can sit back, look at them and feel a great sense of satisfaction with what he's achieved. And I have to respect that.

STILL ILL. Well, this is probably unsurprising, since I posted about being ill this morning, but… yeah. Still ill. Possibly worse. Covered in Vicks Vapo-Rub (which my cat Meg appears to be frightened of) and drowning in Lemsip. Unpleasant.

Still, I got an article out, but I'm definitely going to bed now. Hopefully if I'm well enough there'll be a substantial feature on LAMUNATION! tomorrow; if not I'll try and post that over the weekend. I've also got an article in the last (well, actually first; the last I have to cover) of Stranga Games' short-form horror adventures in me, too, though I need to actually beat that first and I'm not sure my brain is up to point-and-click puzzling right now.

Sorry these posts have been a bunch of moany old crap lately; I'll try and be a bit more positive, as dwelling on the negative clearly isn't doing me any good — either physically or mentally!

With that in a mind, here is a picture of my cat Patti doing her best to convince us that she is not, in fact, a cat, and is, in fact, an Eldritch abomination from beyond time and space.

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday, I was in bed by about 7pm feeling like absolute garbage. I slept until about 5am this morning, and I don't feel any better today. But here I am at work trying to be a good little cog in the corporate machine because I'm not "allowed" to be ill any more for some indeterminate period of time.

Ugh. Sorry, I won't keep harping on about this, but it is one of the things really heavily weighing on my mind at the moment, and everything is sort of feeding into each other. The anxiety and depression make my physical symptoms worse, which makes me feel worse, particularly if I feel like I might be ill enough to take a sick day. And on days like today when I've dragged myself in despite being in bed probably being the best option… well, you can add a touch of bitterness to that mix, too.

A friend of mine recently took a job where he only has to work part-time and can do a lot of that from home. While I'm sure he's not earning the same as me, particularly on a part-time salary, I'm certainly envious of him — as he seems to be so much happier than he was when he was working full-time for a company he despised. I don't despise my company, but I do despise the corporate culture. This is a more general problem rather than something specific to this place, though.

Well, only two more days to go this week, at least, and then a free weekend. I'm even ahead of schedule on all my videos so I don't even need to make any time for recording. I think I'm going to be having a very relaxing weekend. Assuming I don't cough up my entire lung first.

Have a happy Thursday!!!!!

I'm really flagging a bit in terms of motivation for… you know, everyday life outside of the things that I actually want to spend my time doing. I'm having real trouble shaking off the cold and the cough that I had for most of my week off, and I'm feeling utterly miserable and unmotivated when I get up at 6.30 in the morning to go to a job I feel completely apathetic about. All of this is making me feel depressed and stressed, which is causing the physical symptoms to stick around, which… you get the idea. Round and round and round.

These feelings have been kind of festering in my head for a while. There are two specific occurrences that I think kicked it off, and I've never been the same since either of them. One of them is an understandable "trigger"; the other might sound stupid, but it definitely had an effect on me.

The first was the passing of our cat Ruby in an accident on the road. This was back in November 2018, but it hit me hard, and I think I've subconsciously made the association between the journey to and from work and remembering that horrible phone call where I found out she'd died. Sometimes I'll be driving home, and I'll remember how I felt that day; how I was driving home as fast as I could, crying my eyes out; how I felt that evening, seeing her lying there, lifeless; how hard it was to say goodbye to someone I loved so much, but who had spent far too little time in my life.

I haven't felt the same since her passing. Patti, who we got last February to help alleviate both Meg's loneliness and the hole left in our hearts by Ruby leaving us, has helped a great deal — particularly because I'm absolutely convinced that Ruby's spirit is present in that silly black cat, just from her mannerisms and the way she is sometimes. But I still miss Ruby herself; I miss her a great deal, and I still feel bad not being there for her, not being able to do anything to prevent what happened. I can't let go. There's still an emptiness inside me.

The second — and this will sound absolutely dumb after what I've just said — was all our seats being moved around at work. I used to have a lovely seat in a corner by a window, with no-one behind me. I repeat: I'm absolutely 100% aware that this sounds like a stupid thing to trigger depressive episodes… but it definitely had an impact. The reason? When I was in that old seat, I felt like I could be more "free". I felt like I could be myself. I felt like when things got quiet and/or boring, I could occupy myself and no-one would be any the wiser. I'm a firm believer in the concept that the freedom to be unproductive when you need or want to actually makes you more productive overall. I'm certainly feeling that way now; my present seat is literally right in the middle of the office, on the aisle down the middle, and I absolutely hate it. I constantly feel like I'm being watched — and this feeling certainly isn't helped by things like the company's stupid sickness policy. I find it demotivating rather than encouraging.

Obviously I'm not saying that I was completely unproductive when I had my nice corner seat where no-one was watching me — but I felt much more relaxed and at ease while I was there. I got on with my actual work, I achieved it quickly and to a good standard — and then I got on with the things that were important to me rather than the company. An ideal situation, really. Now I feel like I need to be much more "careful" about this sort of thing, because while WordPress looks convincingly like something I'd be doing as part of my job anyway, doing something like Photoshopping a YouTube thumbnail would be harder to explain away!

It's hard to understand this. You'd think being in a position where you "need" to be more obviously doing your job would motivate you more, but it's had the precise opposite effect on me, to a point where I find a whole bunch of things about daily life actively annoying. The software tools are shit, the people I work with care far too much about things that don't matter and even people's daily routines make me irritable. I just don't like being there, and I want to be somewhere, anywhere else.

I don't know how to fix this, or even if it's possible. It's frustrating, because there's no "escape" from it, no easy way out. Changing jobs almost certainly won't help, because I know that I'd just end up feeling the same somewhere else — and besides, job hunting is something that stresses me out to a massive degree anyway.

Oh well. Apologies to unload like this, but perhaps talking about it to the amorphous masses online will help me process it all a bit better. Catharsis and all that.