Hello! It's late and I'm tired, and I just happened to have this video ready, so please enjoy some Early Access to next Wednesday's short;Play video! This time around, we're looking at the action-arcade-puzzler Cyber Protocol for Wii U, a gorgeous little game with some interesting mechanics and a strong emphasis on forward planning.

If you have a moment to watch, like and/or share this week's short;Play video on Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold (don't share the above vid yet, please), that would be lovely! I'm enjoying adopting this format for more recent, non-Atari games, so it'd be great to see some more people watching. These things take time, I know, but if you have the opportunity to help me out a bit, I'll… I don't know, send you non-infectious virtual hugs and kisses or something.

Anyway. Hope you're all doing well. It's nearly the weekend! Just Friday to survive. We can do this!

It was my birthday today! I think, all things considered, I had probably the best day I could have possibly had under the circumstances. I had a day off work, I got some great presents from my wife (A Hat in Time for Switch, and a book of official piano arrangements of various Super Mario tunes), lots of money and vouchers from various friends and family members… and a ton of extremely kind, supportive messages from people who enjoy my work.

I'm feeling pretty humbled by that latter aspect in particular. I often say that I do what I do with MoeGamer and YouTube primarily because I simply love doing it, and that remains absolutely true — I take satisfaction from and pride in my work, and would do even if no-one at all was reading or watching it. But today the incredibly kind messages of gratitude and support, the even kinder gifts from a few people and the generally pleasant atmosphere that just surrounded my whole day… Well, I don't think I could ask for anything more, really.

It's back to work tomorrow… well, working from home, anyway. It's nice to be approaching a return to the inevitable grindstone with a pleasant feeling in my brain; the sensation that what I do matters not just to me, but to others too. I'd like to thank all of you reading this in particular for having enough faith in me and what I do to show your support in a direct, concrete fashion — and as MoeGamer starts another year on the Internet, I hope I will continue to inform, entertain and intrigue you!

Thank you.

I really enjoy looking back at old games magazines and, to a somewhat lesser extent, websites. Magazines in particular I have a lot of nostalgia for, because they're a part of everyday life that just doesn't really exist any more; browsing the latest argument on Twitter on your phone while dropping a deuce isn't quite the same as flipping through a glossy magazine for so long you get toilet-seat imprint on your bum cheeks.

One thing I find interesting is how much games writing has improved over the years. Looking back at some of these particularly old magazines, I'm kind of astonished by the general level of the writing therein — and the fact that I used to idolise the people who wrote these articles as something to aspire to.

I won't name names or be too mean, because I suspect a lot of the issues with early writing about computers in general — games in particular — was because the medium was still in its formative years, and people weren't quite sure how to write about them. It's interesting to see how different publications took different approaches — one back in the Atari ST era, for example, made the main body of its article pretty much a paraphrasing of the game manual (right down to including weirdly specific information about key commands) while another from the same period was probably overly critical, rarely rating anything over about 70% or so and picking holes in the strangest of things.

It's improved since the advent of the Internet and gaming websites too, though… in some areas, anyway. When I research games from the PS1-PS2 era and look back at articles written at the time, I'm often a bit disappointed to come across hastily written reviews that demonstrate very little apparent familiarity with the game in question — even from writers who, I know, were lauded as being the best in the business at the time. This side of things, regrettably, is still a reality of modern commercial games journalism, primarily due to the daily churn and the tight timeframes involved with everything — but there are plenty of people out there who have figured out how to analyse and discuss gaming in much more depth than we were ever able to in the past. These people are mostly enthusiast writers, but there are a few at smaller, profit-making sites who are able to make this work.

I hope it doesn't sound too arrogant of me to say that I'm very happy with what I do, because when I look at some of my own work, I can definitely feel satisfied and confident that, in technical and analytical terms, I feel like I've surpassed the people I idolised as a child. It's just a shame there's not really any money — or indeed jobs that aren't already doled out incestuously to members of the in-crowd clique, of course — in commercial games writing any more, huh?

Oh well. I intend to keep on keeping on for as long as I'm able to, so I thank you, very deeply, for your continued support.

Planning to release this on Wednesday as the first installment of a new series! As I mentioned the other day, the intention behind this series is not to be a long-running, episodic Let's Play, but rather something similar to Atari A to Z, only for modern games.

In other words, that means I'll be following a similar format: an introduction telling you a bit about the game, its context, its history and background (where available) followed by some gameplay demonstration. The difference from Atari A to Z is that I'm probably going to try and avoid going in completely blind to the games I cover on this series; I want these videos to act as a "tour" of the game in question, showing you what's interesting about it, the things you can do in it and all that sort of thing. If I've never played the damn thing before recording the video that doesn't really work!

Anyway. I've got the first couple of episodes of this lined up and ready to go, and I'll be having a good old think about what else to cover in future episodes. The nice thing about this series is that it's a flexible format — one week I can cover a slice of a long-term, narrative-centric game; another I can look at, say, a cool snooker sim or something. Plus when Sega hurry up and release G-LOC on Switch, you can bet your ass I'll be doing a video on that for sure — that was probably my favourite, most-played arcade game as a kid!

Anyway. I'm off work for two days now to enjoy my birthday, but that doesn't mean I don't need sleep. Hope you enjoy the video, and when it's officially released on Wednesday if you can indulge me with the usual YouTube shenanigans (like, comment, subscribe if you're not already, and sharing with your social media friends if you're feeling particularly generous) that would be very much appreciated!

For now, I bid you good night, and I hope the week is good to you.

I've had a productive weekend! I've recorded and edited two Atari A to Z videos, two Atari ST A to Z videos, two Atari A to Z Flashback videos, two episodes of Final Fantasy Marathon and two episodes of the new short;Play series. Well, okay, as I type this I have the last Final Fantasy Marathon video to finish off (it's currently matching audio to video, so rather than sit around waiting for it I thought I'd write this instead) but I'm nearly done!

It feels good to get stuff done. Or at least it does when the stuff you get done is the stuff you want to get done. Compare to the busywork of your average day job (not just mine) which tends to hold little in the way of personal satisfaction unless you've been very lucky enough to land in a vocation that matches your interests… and, yeah.

I guess the key is trying to get yourself in the mindset of feeling that sort of satisfaction from your daily tasks and the things you don't really want to do. Some form of positive reinforcement is probably key there; "if I finish [x] I'll reward myself with [y]". This is, of course, a remarkably simplistic way of looking at this sort of thing, but it turns out that in a lot of cases we human beings are remarkably simplistic creatures of habit, and sometimes all it takes to motivate you a bit is the knowledge that a packet of Wine Gums or a bit of time to [censored] is waiting for you. Maybe. Possibly.

I do know that I already don't feel like getting up tomorrow morning. But at least it's only one day of work, then two days completely to myself (at home, obviously) to enjoy my birthday celebrations (by myself… well, with my wife and cats, obviously) and whatever the hell I want to do for those 48 hours.

But ah well. Right now it is Sunday night (well, early Monday morning) and I should probably get to sleep. After this video's done…

Recorded a bunch of videos today, including some first attempts at the new idea I talked about the other day. I've gone with "short;Play" for the title because it sums up what the series is all about, plus the gratuitous misuse of a semicolon pays tribute to all the games and visual novels I've played over the years that have done similarly.

The first two episodes of short;Play will be on Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold and Cyber Protocol. I've got those pencilled in for the Wednesday slot; if I have time to record and edit, I'd like to start doing article "readings" on Mondays too, but that will depend on me being organised

I have two Final Fantasy episodes to record tomorrow so I'll see how I'm doing after they're done.

Exciting times! Feeling quite inspired at present, which is just as well, because I have plenty of time on my hands right now!

One of the best things I did for MoeGamer was take some time to hang out with other WordPress bloggers, read their stuff and leave some comments. I've made some good friends in this way and had a lot of fun… and I'm sure it's helped MoeGamer, too.

I'm pretty sure I need to start doing the same on YouTube if I want to grow by more than a trickle. Trouble is, making some time to engage with the YouTube community is even more time-consuming than making sure to read people's blogs — I read pretty quick, whereas a video's a video — so I often find myself struggling to get started, or, more commonly, going back to old favourites who are, at this point, much too big to pay any attention to any comments I might leave.

There are exceptions of course; I know one such example is reading this right now, and I'm grateful for your support! I think probably the best approach is to set aside a specific bit of time each day, watch maybe one or two videos and make a point of leaving a comment on them. If I can get into the habit of doing that — as I have done with the WordPress Reader — then that will probably be a good thing!

Well, maybe. Worth a try, anyway, and it'd be nice to "meet" some new people in the midst of all the worldly chaos right now, too!

If you have any fun, decent, small-scale YouTube channels you think I should make an effort to reach out to — people who enjoy conversations in their comments — then do please feel free to let me know. They can be retro or modern; the majority of my channel is retro right now, but I have some plans in motion for a little more modern stuff that I'm going to start experimenting with this very weekend!

I got a couple of days off next week — my day job gives me an extra day's holiday each year for both my work anniversary and my birthday, and conveniently those both fall in April, so I tend to take them together.

You might wonder if there's any point taking holiday in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that has us all shut in our homes, but to that I say absolutely and emphatically yes. While I don't have a problem with the "being shut in at home" part, I am very much starting to feel a strong sense of existential despair at the complete and utter pointlessness of my day job. It pays the bills and is easy, but that's sort of the problem — it's also boring, tedious and frustrating. It doesn't challenge me. And when my brain starts feeling that way about something, it kind of doesn't even want to bother starting things that are going to be annoying to do.

Don't get me wrong, I get what I have to do done, always, but mustering up the motivation to even care a little bit right now is just not something that's happening. So I'm counting on the couple of completely free days next week to relax, get my mind back in order and try to settle back in to the situation — this whole business is going to be lasting a while, after all, so I should probably try and approach things a little more positively.

On the plus side of all this, I have plenty of time to work on MoeGamer and other bits and pieces during the day, so it's not a complete loss! Going back to the office when all this is over is probably going to be a challenge…

I've been playing a bunch more Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold and while I'm not quite ready to talk about it on MoeGamer — I want to try and get to whatever the "endgame" is before I do that — I do want to spend a bit of time enthusing about it here!

My initial assessment of the game as a Diablo clone wasn't quite on the money; while its randomly generated dungeons and loot-grabbing certainly conjures up visions of Blizzard's classic series, there's also a strong amount of Monster Hunter in there, too — or, at least, having never played one, what I understand Monster Hunter to be all about.

This means that a lot of the loot you find is not necessarily equipment with increasingly large numbers in various categories, but instead various bits of crap that can subsequently be cobbled together into all manner of different things — usually armour and "style gear" (equippable items that affect your appearance rather than your stats) — or used to upgrade the "jaras" (weapons, shields and "rechargeable consumables") that you gradually acquire over time.

The interesting thing about Snack World's crafting and upgrading is that it isn't just about making things more powerful. Arguably more important is making the items more flexible; upgrading an item generally unlocks a new colour scheme for it, and colour is one of the several ways you can meet the "daily trends" along with brand and overall style. Wearing an ensemble that meets the daily trend means you're much more likely to find rare item drops, and also defeating an enemy with a weapon that is the same colour as them will also increase the item drop rate.

Weapons also have "banes", which means they're strong against specific types or colours of enemies, and the game mercifully minimises micromanaging this side of things by having both a helpful "auto-equip" option based on the enemies you will encounter in any given quest, and an even more helpful "quick weapon switch" button in combat, automatically giving you the optimal tool for dispatching the foe you're currently locked on to. There's a lot of helpful visual feedback, too; when switching to a particular weapon, any enemies on screen that have a weakness to that weapon will react through a speech bubble ranging from "huh?" (mild weakness) to "OH NO!!!" (extreme vulnerability), allowing you to see at a glance which targets to prioritise.

I'm having a ton of fun so far, and a brief stint in multiplayer the other night was really enjoyable. If anyone else other than my podcasting partner in crime Chris happens to be playing this underappreciated little gem, be sure to let us know and we can crawl some dungeons together sometime!

How you all holding up? I've been feeling a bit bleak today. Not really because of the whole quarantine situation — though the way I felt did mean that I had no desire whatsoever to leave the house and go to the shop for a few bits and pieces — but just… generally, really.

Now and then, I get reminded of the fact that I'm no longer surrounded by a lot of people that I thought were lifelong, always-supportive friends. Today was one of those days; there wasn't really any specific trigger as such, but I just happened to see some conversations online between some people I used to count among my circle of friends, and I missed certain aspects of times gone by.

A significant number of people pretty much ghosted me when I was laid off from USgamer. No-one said why; no-one attempted to bring up anything I might have done wrong; I was just suddenly "excommunicated". And the people in question weren't even necessarily part of the games press, either; there were folks I used to chat to online every single day who suddenly went radio silent.

Part of this is doubtless down to political differences. Many of the people who stopped talking to me, I've discovered, are now leaning pretty hard on the "overzealous leftie" side of things, seemingly preferring to talk about politics of various types more than pretty much anything else. Meanwhile, I was sick of politics talk more than half a decade ago — particularly surrounding gaming culture — and made no secret of that fact.

The stupid thing, though, is that despite not wanting to spend my days cancelling people on Twitter for wrongthink, I too am pretty left-leaning, judging by every political compass test I've ever taken. I mean, I'm almost totally apathetic towards politics, but the few things I do feel strongly enough to have an opinion on put me firmly on the left. And yet… what? I don't know.

I think that's the most frustrating thing. When friendships fizzle out seemingly overnight and you don't know the reason for it — and no reason is forthcoming — it's kind of depressing. It's been over five years at this point, though; I should probably learn to let go, as much as I do honestly believe a lot of these people — at least, the versions of these people I knew five or more years ago — would very much enjoy what I'm doing now with both MoeGamer and YouTube.

And thankfully, even as I've lost people, I've made many new friends, some of whom have been through the exact same experience as what I've just described. So they know, all too well, and in many ways some of those new friends have been more supportive and helpful to me than they might be aware of.

If you're reading this, you're almost certainly one of them, so thanks for being there. And if you need anyone to listen to you during these strange times, know that I'm here, too; I can't promise good advice, but I can promise a receptive set of ears and eyes.