Chris and I recorded a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast today. It's going to be on the subject of beat 'em ups. We were going to talk about both retro and modern titles, but we spent so long talking about older games that we're going to save the modern talk for a future episode!

In preparation for editing tomorrow — and to save myself a bit of time — I've been recording a bunch of footage of the games we talked about this evening. It's been really interesting to play a bunch of these games in rapid succession and see how differently different games do things — and how experimental some of these games are. Sengoku on Neo Geo is really weird, for example — and I'm not 100% sure I like it — but Sengoku III on the same platform is a completely different beast — and I'm 100% sure I like that one!

It's been nice to revisit a few favourites and discover some new ones. Probably most notable in this latter regard is the Denjin Makai series, which Chris is all about and I'd never heard of. Now I have heard of it, however, I'm a big fan; it's exactly the sort of ridiculous I really like, and it has some fantastic playable characters to enjoy. I'll probably have to write something more substantial about these on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with them and found out a bit more about them.

Anyway, it should be a good episode. Tomorrow is editing day… but with it being 2AM now, I should probably go to bed. Have a lovely weekend!

I'm struggling a bit at the minute. I had an anxiety attack at work this afternoon that was so bad it made me want to go to the doctors and get signed off sick immediately. Unfortunately (or thankfully?) they weren't able to make an appointment for me at 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon, so I wasn't able to really sort anything out. But I'm starting to feel increasingly like I need to take some time for myself, away from the things that are stressing me out (none of which are my creative endeavours, I should hasten to add — they are a safe haven for me), so that I can get my head into a somewhat more… functional place.

Only trouble is, I'm kind of scared to do so. I've mentioned previously about my workplace's somewhat overbearing attitude towards sickness absence, and I kind of feel like they won't necessarily be super-supportive of mental health issues. This is probably the anxiety talking, of course — they may well, in fact, be super-supportive of such things — but right now I am a bundle of paranoid nerves, absolutely terrified of everything that goes on at work. When, rationally speaking, I know there is nothing going on that I should be terrified about; I'm still doing the things that are asked of me to a good standard, and there are still things I'm able to do that, say, my line manager isn't able to do.

But I feel crazy stressed. I don't think it's necessarily work itself that's causing it — although I suspect being a bit bored and frustrated may have contributed to it — but the workplace does not feel like a particularly healthy environment for me to be when I'm feeling like this. I'm worried that someone is going to "pick up" on something or other, and I'll end up snapping at them or saying something stupid that will make things worse.

I'll see how the weekend goes. I have my "coping with worry" workshop tomorrow morning, and I'll try and make a doctors' appointment first thing next week, if only to just talk about things and get their opinion on whether or not I should have some time off. I can't keep going like this though.

In the meantime, I'm going to try and have a pleasant weekend; we're recording a new podcast tomorrow, so that should take my mind off things.

One of the challenges I face running MoeGamer as a solo operation is coming up with things to write about each day, particularly as I prefer not to write too many news or opinion pieces. I mean, there's no shortage of games to write about… but I still need the time to actually play the games and get experience with them to write about them!

It's with this in mind that I've experimented with various ongoing feature formats over the last few years. I've had another idea that I'm planning to start experimenting with soon, particularly as I'll be wanting to devote my attention to Atelier from now on.

My idea is Genre Guides. What I'm thinking of doing here is breaking down broad categories — shooting, fighting, driving, that sort of thing — into specific subgenre, then composing an article looking at the history of that genre, providing some notable examples from my own experience and linking to relevant articles elsewhere on MoeGamer. I'll also update and expand on these pieces over time as I cover more relevant games so that they can really become a useful and/or interesting resource for people interested in exploring very specific types of game.

I may well be seeking some suggestions on specific genres soon! I've started putting together a list already but these sorts of things are always better with several perspectives. So once I think I've listed everything I want to do — each of which will correspond to one Genre Guide article — I'll share that with you lot and see if you have any further ideas.

Anyway, that's the plan for now! I'll probably kick this off next week alongside some Atelier stuff, so please look forward to it!

The name on the letter said, "Mary"…

Wait, no, no it didn't. It looked like this, although with less pixelated address information:

What could it be?

It's Atari goodness, is what it is! This first item goes with the Go-Moku/Renju game I covered a while back. I don't know how to play Bridge, but perhaps I can learn with this!

I never actually played this game. As I recall, it's a port of the NES game, rather than the arcade machine. There was an attempt to port the arcade game a bit later, but I don't think it was very good.

The Turtles box felt suspiciously heavy, so I wondered if it still had some goodies in it. Sadly, it seems the Panini stickers were long gone… but there were a bunch of mysterious other disks in there. They look like shareware or public domain software or something; the front one appears to be a Spectrum emulator for the Atari ST.

Indy! Sadly, it's not the good Last Crusade game — the point-and-click adventure — but I've always been curious to try this one.

Celebrity-endorsed sports games are not a new thing! Here we have "the Great White Shark" himself endorsing a golf game from Gremlin.

It's not all games; there's some programming and productivity stuff in here too. I don't know if I'll ever use this, but it's cool to have.

There are two packs like this; they look like the sort of package that came with the computer as a bundle. The cardboard case comes with full manuals for each title, plus another cardboard folder containing the floppy disks.

This is an interesting mix of stuff; STAC is an adventure game creation package that I was always interested to look at. Not sure what "Prince" is. A quick glimpse at Atarimania suggests it might be a strategy game I probably won't understand.

Here's the second of these two packs, focusing on productivity software.

Here's some educational stuff. I have quite a few of the educational packages I grew up with and that my Dad reviewed, so I thought it might be interesting to look at some more. These appear to be Atari-published, and might have been bundled with a computer.

This isn't a blurry photo; the inlay for that game is actually that badly printed. If you look at the "Atari ST" text at the top, you can see that the yellow print is misaligned with the rest of it, making the whole thing look like one of those old 3D glasses images. I have no idea what the game is.

Paranoia about viruses truly got started in the 16-bit era. Here's a delightful bit of software designed to profit from that panic.

I don't know virus history, but I thought this list on the back of the package was interesting as a historical record of some of the things 16-bit computer owners had to worry about!

Here's Yogi's Great Escape, which I covered on Atari ST A to Z a while back. Now I have a legitimate copy!

And some other Hanna-Barbera stuff from Hi-Tec, too. I'm interested to try these; their quality seems to vary quite a bit, judging by the two Yogi Bear games I've played to date.

Apparently this game is monstrously difficult, so you can look forward to me being terrible at it in the near future!

And then finally, the star of the show: a slightly dusty, slightly yellowed 1040STE, which I'm hoping has joystick ports in a better state than my existing STE.

Where did all this stuff come from? It came from Luke over at Hundstrasse, who got in touch with me on Discord the other night and asked if I wanted some stuff he was either going to throw out or donate to a computer museum. Of course I said yes, and it will most certainly be put to good use!

Luke is a member of the WordPress community and a fellow gaming enthusiast. He's a particular Resident Evil fan, and has done some incredibly in-depth comparisons of the various versions of each installment available — among plenty of other things, of course! — so be sure to give his blog a follow and drop him a nice comment.

A sincere thank-you to Luke for the kind donation — and if any more of you have any crap you think I might like that you want to offload on me, do be sure to get in touch and I'll happily help you clear out your loft… wife (and space) permitting 🙂

I've already mentioned this on both Twitter and MoeGamer but it bears repeating: I'm extremely pleased that the commercial, mainstream publication Nintendo Life has changed its tune with regards to niche-interest games, be they complex shoot 'em ups or sexually provocative anime-style games.

In case you missed all this: they've decided to hire freelance, specialist writers to cover the games in question rather than relying on their staff writers or regular contributors. In doing so, they will hopefully avoid the rather large disconnect there has been in the past with regard to some games, where a critic who had no intention whatsoever of engaging with a title on its own terms or with any consideration of its target audience would treat it unfairly and, at times, borderline offensively.

I've been arguing for the necessity of specialist writers for ages now, so it's good to see a publication experimenting with this approach. Whether or not this will go anywhere in the future remains to be seen, but for now I'm pleased to see it happening at all — both with my Prison Princess review today, and some recent shoot 'em up reviews, which have been looked at by someone who obviously knows the genre extremely well. (His reviews are, for me, a little too anal, to be honest, but I know some shmup fans are extremely picky about all sorts of seemingly miniscule aspects of the games in question, so he's a good pick, I feel!)

If you can do me a big favour when you have a moment and give my review a click, share it around, and perhaps send a supportive message to @NintendoLife on Twitter — or even leave a comment on the article, that would be great. For as much as it's fun to rag on the stupid things the games press does… it's arguably even more important to celebrate and show gratitude when things are done the right way. So let's do that!

You know how sometimes you do something and immediately afterwards you look at the fruits of your labours and think "yeah, I'm really pleased with that". That was me with this video on 198X, which I recorded almost immediately after writing and publishing the article on it today.

I hadn't really heard of 198X prior to this weekend, when my brother mentioned it to me and we sat and played it through together. It left a real impression on me immediately, so I played it through again today, and its impact hadn't diminished at all. In fact, having had some time to reflect on the things I'd seen and experienced in the game, I think it might have been more effective as a piece of art.

Anyway. I knew I wanted to write about it, and I knew I wanted to make a video on it. So I did. And I'm very happy with the result — particularly the video. I'm not sure what it is; I think I'm just quite satisfied with my delivery in this one, and think it fits well with the tone of what I'm talking about and the themes of the game in question.

198X isn't going to be for everyone, but it's a game that ended up being quite special to me, so I'm glad the work I produced relating to it is something I'm very satisfied and happy with. I hope you enjoy it.

Unrelated: $5+ Patrons, I owe you a wallpaper, I know; it's coming soon! I just haven't had time to put one together as yet.

For no particular reason, I feel like going through some personal favourite Atari A to Z videos and sharing them with you all. Because Patreon is stupid and doesn't let you embed YouTube videos in the body of a post, click on the link in the text below the thumbnail to go to the video page on YouTube to watch it! And if you've never watched an Atari A to Z video before… why not make today your first time?

These are all from the first "season" of Atari A to Z, which is where I was still getting my bearings a bit, and before I'd figured out the current format and camera setup I have now. As such, these are all just gameplay footage with voiceover. I still have a soft spot for many of these videos, though, hence today's celebration.

Bruce Lee is one of my favourite Atari 8-bit games, and it still holds up really well today. It's an unusual combination of beat 'em up and platformer, with some tricky environmental traversal puzzles.

I played Juice long before I ever played QBert for the first time and thus have very fond memories of it! Of course, now I recognise it as a shameless QBert ripoff… but for my money, the more varied level layout still makes it a superior game.

I never, ever beat a level of Pharoah's Curse when I was a kid, but when revisiting it for the series, I finally did so! Life goal: achieved. Well, okay, maybe not, but I was still pleased.

Yoomp! is a great example of what the Atari 8-bit is capable of when in the hands of a talented modern programmer. Genuinely impressive stuff.

And finally… the creator of  Zeppelin, known today as Cathryn Mataga, followed me on Twitter after I posted this video. I don't understand half the shit she tweets about — she seems to be super-into ham radio or something — but I was still honoured!

How about you? What are some of your favourites from what I've covered to date?

So I mentioned the other day that I'm writing about Prison Princess for Nintendo Life… I thought for today's post (or perhaps one of two posts today — I still need to catch up some more) I'd share a few screenshots that will perhaps give you an idea why I, rather than Angry Scotsman, was recruited to cover this one.

The two princesses are pretty awesome. I believe each was designed by a different artist; they contrast nicely, and in more than just looks, too.

The game is a point-and-click adventure, which is actually quite unusual to see these days, particularly from Japan. Rather than having fully animated sprites, though, the girls simply "appear" in various locations around the room in various poses according to what they're doing or looking at.

If you like bums, you'll enjoy this game.

I mean, really enjoy this game. These timed puzzle sequences where the princesses are attempting to accomplish something are fully animated with the full glory of Live2D.

I love Live2D. Whoever invented it needs a knighthood or something.

Lewd bits aside, the game is actually pretty good. I'd say it's quite short, but it's a point-and-click adventure, so 4 hours is actually quite long when you consider you can blast through a King's Quest or equivalent in 90-120 minutes in most cases. Assuming you know what you're doing.

Anyway, I'll refrain from talking too much about the game now as I have to save something for the review! Thought you might want to see some screens, though.

Forgot to write yesterday, didn't I? Sorry about that. And sorry in advance for any misspellings and typos in this post; I'm away for the weekend and using a laptop I don't usually use, and it turns out the keyboard on it is absolutely atrocious. Lots of keys simply aren't responding unless you really give them a bit of a hammering — apparently this computer really doesn't like punctuation.

 In fact, you know what, fuck it, I'm typing the rest of this on my phone. And I hate typing on my phone, so you know it must be bad if I'm doing it in preference to using the dodgy keyboard on this laptop!

It's a shame, it was a freebie from the mother-in-law, who didn't need it any more, and specs wise it's a bit better than my now ageing laptop with its dodgy trackpad. I guess now we know why she wanted to get rid of it, huh.

I'll catch up on the "missing" day tomorrow; I know none of you reading this likely mind if I miss a day, and I believe we established a while back that I've buggered up the numbers at some point anyway… but you have to understand, it's a matter of pride at this point!

I'm actually quite impressed I made it to 420, haha, blaze it, etc… obviously this is a far cry from the 2141 days I did on my old public blog, but eh. I like to think this one has a truly select audience.

I'll go into a bit more detail soon, but some of you may be wondering what I'm covering for Nintendo Life. It's a recent eShop release for Switch called Prison Princess, and it's a point and click adventure with lovely art.

It's also a bit lewd, which is presumably why Nintendo Life didn't want to have to deal with another shitstorm by Captain Puritan calling everyone perverts or paedophiles or something. I fully intend to address this fact positively in the review I'm writing;