I've got plans for another big feature coming soon. I'll likely put it under the "MegaFeatures" section of the site, but it won't take as long to get through as the Atelier one, and the nature of the games involved mean I can run it alongside the Atelier stuff easily. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, and I'm finally in a decent position to do it.

I love Bizarre Creations' work, and my recent acquisition of (and subsequent loss of) an original Xbox reminded me quite how much. So I think it's high time I gave them some love — going right back to their earliest days as Powerslave Developments and Raising Hell Software, onwards through their surprisingly arcadey Formula One games for PlayStation 1 and into their most well-known work: the Metropolis Street Racer/Project Gotham series.

There are plenty of interesting games to talk about along the way, and not just driving games, either; the team's first few games were action games for various 8- and 16-bit platforms — including a couple of memorable titles for Psygnosis — and they also put together the rather fun third-person shooter The Club, and even a James Bond game shortly before their demise at the hands of Activision.

I'm going to kick this off in the new year because it feels odd to start something like this right before we roll over into a new year, but expect some ongoing pieces on the subject in the very near future, beginning with Combat Crazy on the Commodore 64, and eventually ending up with James Bond: Blood Stone for PS3 and Xbox 360. I think it's going to be a lot of fun!

Now I finished Atelier Ayesha. I like the fact that it keeps going after you beat the "main" story; it allows you to use all of your remaining time to try and hoover up as many events as you want, and pursue the character-specific endings. I managed to get two of them knocked out — Regina and Wilbell — so I'm pleased with that; there are at least three others, to my knowledge, some of which require some tough fights, so which may be best saved for a New Game Plus run.

I really enjoyed that game. Obviously there will be a lot more words on it on MoeGamer very soon, but I'm already starting to see why the Dusk trilogy is so well-regarded. Its atmosphere is altogether unique, and the juxtaposition of its core melancholy with the typical positivity of Atelier is very effective.

It's on to Escha & Logy next, which I know is an absolute favourite of many diehard Atelier fans, so I'm very curious to see what it has to offer. Soundtrack-wise, Ayesha's final boss theme "MARIA", which I shared yesterday, is going to take some beating, but I'm really looking forward to exploring it.

Other stuff to do in the meantime, though! Now Ayesha's out of the way, I think I'm going to plough through Nekopara vol. 4 before starting Escha & Logy, because I'm keen to get that done and written about. And with the New Year imminent, I should probably think about some sort of "game of the year" arrangement too, huh? Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!

Finished Atelier Ayesha this evening. Well, I finished the main story, anyway; the game keeps going until its time limit is up, allowing you the opportunity to try and clear up as many outstanding tasks as possible in order to unlock as many endings as you can. I've done the "hard" bit now though; the main scenario is fully resolved.

And whew. What a journey. While the Atelier series — particularly in its more recent incarnations — is known as being wholesome and pleasant, I was expecting the Dusk series to start piling on the emotion a bit. In contrast with the Arland series, which is all colourful and nice throughout, the Dusk series — or, more specifically, Ayesha, which is the only one I've played so far — has this wonderfully melancholic feeling throughout where you know something is just… wrong. The world is "wrong" somehow. And there doesn't seem to be anything that anyone can do about it; there's just some sort of tragedy around the corner, waiting to happen.

Said tragedy for humanity doesn't happen during Atelier Ayesha, but Ayesha does have her own personal tragedy to deal with: the disappearance of her sister, and the worry that if she's too long about her investigations, she really will never see her again. There are some wonderful scenes throughout the game where Ayesha catches a brief glimpse of her sister's "astral form" but has it snatched away before she's really able to process anything, and for the entire duration you can tell that, as positive as Ayesha is, she's keeping herself busy so that she doesn't have a complete breakdown from the emotional trauma.

Those emotions, those feelings, all of that — they all come out in the final boss theme. I won't spoil the details of the encounter for those who haven't yet played the game or who don't know the narrative, but I will share a link to the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVcc16o0SaY 

Absolutely incredible stuff. This wonderfully moving theme is now second only to Blue Reflection's incredible finale, which still brings me to full-on tears every time I hear even the first few notes of it. Gust's sound team are something else, man.

So now that Christmas is over and done with I can think about what I want to achieve between now and the end of the year, and perhaps into the start of the new year, too. Here's what I've got on my "To Do" list so far:

• Finish Atelier Ayesha. I'm nearly there; can probably get that polished off tomorrow.

• Record another two weeks' worth of all my regular series; I'll spread that through my week off so I don't have to rush. I already have two weeks in the can — it'll be nice to be a month ahead of schedule though.

• Record at least a couple "adventure game specials", one of which will be Rise of the Dragon, which I know how to zip through in less than two hours. I haven't decided on a good name for this occasional feature yet; maybe it doesn't need one and "adventure game special" is good enough. Tentative other episodes for that include the Brok prologue demo thing, and perhaps one or more of the old Legend games, though I haven't beaten any of them before.

• Play through and write about Nekopara vol. 4.

• Figure out how I want to handle Jaguar videos in the new year, now I've got the GameDrive all set up and ready for action.

Plenty to think about, for sure — and hopefully in the new year I'll have more time and be in a better frame of mind to think about a lot of these things. There's a lot I can get done in this week off though, particularly as our region entered "Tier 4" lockdown today, meaning we're not really supposed to go out at all if possible. Might as well make the most of government-mandated stay-at-home orders, huh?

Playing Brok yesterday got me in the mood for some adventure gaming, so after today's Christmas celebrations were over with (by which I mean "we ate our meal" — it was just me and Andie this year thanks to the whole pandemic thing) I had a rummage through my GOG.com library for some classics, and settled on a trilogy of games I haven't played through before: Steve Meretzky's Spellcasting series. These are three pretty racy illustrated text adventures from Legend Entertainment, which makes use of their hybrid point-and-click/text parser interface also found in Eric the Unready, which is a game I played a lot back in the day.

Spellcasting is a noteworthy series for its wry sense of humour — much of which still remains oddly pertinent today — and the ability to switch it between "Naughty" and "Nice" mode, with the former featuring some rather suggestive scenes plus the ability to bang your way through several members of the cast. (There's no explicit imagery, mind; most of it is implied or, at most, written in lurid prose.) This isn't just mindless smut, however; much like Meretzky's previous games Leather Goddesses of Phobos, there's a solid adventure to be had here, too; already I've seen both some interesting puzzles and a well-crafted, believable world that continues to go about its business as you stand in the middle of it all, somewhat bewildered.

I'm not far in yet, but I have been enjoying a bit of casual exploration this evening. Perhaps I'll make this a game I do an "Adventure Special" on at some point — as I mentioned previously, a few people have indicated interest in seeing some more adventure game videos on YouTube at some point after previous episodes on games like Uninvited and Jinxter. We'll see! If I'm going to do some, now's the time, after all!

Anyway, it's 2:30am. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and that you can have a suitably relaxing day tomorrow. Sleep off all that Christmas dinner, stuff yourself with terrible snack foods and prepare yourself for the arrival of a new year. We can do it!

Just a reminder to S-Rank folks that you can still submit your questions this evening. I'm going to record the next Q&A over the weekend so fire away with whatever you want! I'll take all the questions in comments on this post and from the last announcement post.

Remember, you can ask me absolutely anything! It can be about Atari, it can be about modern games, it can be about whatever you like. It doesn't even have to be about video games, it doesn't have to be about anything I've covered on the site or on YouTube — it can be whatever you want. I reserve the right to veto anything too overly personal or which might cause any sort of… "issue", but I'm pretty open to whatever you want to ask. If you want a look around my game shelves or at some limited editions, or to see an old computer or console in action, that can probably be arranged.

You can ask more than one question if you want, too. Just keep it reasonable! 🙂

Fire away! I'll put regular reminders in the daily posts if you don't have time to think of something now. I look forward to your Qs so I can A them good and proper!

S-RANK PATRONS: Get your questions in for December Q&A at https://www.patreon.com/posts/s-rank-patrons-q-45110887 or see the pinned post on https://patreon.com/petedavison/posts

Merry Christmas! I'll have a proper Christmas message for you all tomorrow as I technically haven't had my Christmas Eve sleep yet, so it's still Christmas Eve.

The reason I stayed up late is because I was investigating the recently released "Prologue" chapter to a game called Brok: The InvestiGator. I'll have a full writeup on this next week, but I did want to throw out a quick recommendation now.

Brok is the work of Fabrice Breton, aka COWCATgames, the person who did the console versions of the lovely pixel art games Riddled Corpses, Xenon Valkyrie and that other one from the same developer that I can't remember the name of. Demon's Tier?

When not doing great ports, Breton works on adventure games that are clearly passion projects. Brok has been in the works for a while, but its playable prologue (about 3 hours worth of gameplay!) released recently, so I was keen to check it out. Breton describes it as a fusion of point and click adventure and beat 'em up, and those are two of my favourite things.

And it really works. The adventure side is most prominent, as you might expect, but the beat 'em up side is solidly implemented and enjoyable. It occurs during times when you choose a more aggressive solution to a problem — but there's usually a "brains" approach you can take too.

Brok unfolds in a sci-fi vision of the future, but the twist is all the characters are anthropomorphic animals. The titular hero is an alligator, hence the pun in the title. The world is filled with pollution called the Haze, and societal inequality has escalated to where the "Drumers" of society live the high life in domed cities, while "Slumers" have to make the best of a decaying world.

There's plenty of interesting characterisation and a ton of emotional engagement. The case you work in the prologue is intriguing, and there are lots of optional things to discover. I won't spoil any of them for now, but if you enjoy the sort of investigative game where you have to gather clues and then effectively "show your working" in a final interrogation, you'll love this.

This game is going to be very special, though I know Breton has struggled to get the press to pay attention to it so far. I'll be doing my bit after the Christmas break, and I encourage you to check our the free prologue yourself in the meantime — it's really good. You can get it on GOG or Steam, I believe (I'm writing on my phone, otherwise I'd provide a more convenient link for you!)

Anyway. That was my Christmas Eve. Hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow!

S-RANK PATRONS: Get your questions in for December Q&A at https://www.patreon.com/posts/s-rank-patrons-q-45110887 or see the pinned post on https://patreon.com/petedavison/posts

Having a peculiar issue with the new Xbox. It works fine for the most part, but there's one specific environment in Project Gotham Racing that it won't load: the New York – Central Park map. I went out and bought a second copy of the game today (it's 50p) in the hopes that would fix the issue, but nope — exact same problem in the exact same place. Very strange!

I'm hoping this doesn't indicate some sort of DVD drive issue. It seems the Xbox I have is equipped with one of the crappy Thomson drives the initial models came with, though it hasn't shown any indication of fault other than this issue in Project Gotham, so I'm hoping it's just a random little bug. I've bought a DVD lens cleaner for the first time in about twenty years to see if giving the laser a little scrub will help. Fingers crossed! Worst comes to worse, I should be able to replace the drive — though it seems Xbox drives have a few peculiarities about them that mean you can't just swap in a regular old drive that would normally go in a PC without a bit of extra effort. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Aside from that, it seems to be working fine. I ripped a bunch of CDs to it last night and that had no problems — if the drive was failing, it would likely display a "dirty disc" error at least once, based on my past experiences with the platform — and the other games I have seem to work fine, so I've ordered a few more. I'm eyeing up a complete library of Xbox-exclusive stuff in the long term — that's only about 90 games or so if Wikipedia is accurate, so it's well within reach. Plus then there's the multiplatform games that run better or look nicer on Xbox too; will likely pick some of them up as well.

All in all, aside from the aforementioned issue, I'm very happy with it. Been meaning to grab one for ages now, so it's nice to finally have it. Here's hoping it lives a long and happy life!

Rather remarkably, I ordered an Xbox Advanced SCART cable from eBay yesterday and it arrived today. Evidently the seller was feeling some Christmas spirit, because I did leave them a message asking if it was possible to get it sent out before Christmas and that I'd pay more for shipping if necessary, but they just did it, no questions asked. What a fine human being that person is.

Anyway, I'm now fully equipped with OG Xbox and I've spent a fair bit of this evening fiddling with it. I've been playing some Project Gotham and ripping a few CDs for the custom soundtrack feature — the latter was always one of my favourite things about the original Xbox and I was sad when the 360 didn't really latch onto the concept in the same way. There's something wonderful about playing games — mostly driving games, because it always felt faintly sacrilegious to do it with other types of game — with your own music, particularly if you pick tracks that are either completely inappropriate for the game in question, or at least are not the sort of thing you typically hear in that type of game. I was always a fan of playing driving games with dramatic orchestral soundtracks, for example; it made those races seem that much more important.

As I don't have many CDs left these days — a few years back Andie and I both got rid of most of our CDs by sending them to Music Magpie — the discs I'm ripping are all game soundtracks, but that's still going to be fun, I think. I'm picturing racing in Project Gotham to the Corpse Party soundtrack and it's a very appealing prospect. Still a little while to go yet, though!

I've also been making a wishlist of Xbox exclusives (and "better on Xbox" games) to pick up, so there are likely going to be a lot of new acquisitions in the very near future. Some of these exclusives I've never heard of, so I'm looking forward to finding out more about them — particularly if they were things that never got much love back in the day. I've already spotted a fair few intriguing titles like that.

Anyway, I've got a few more CDs to rip before bed, so I'll wish you all a good night. Not long until Christmas now — I hope you all have the opportunity for at least a bit of time off. We all need it!

S-RANK PATRONS: Get your questions in for December Q&A at https://www.patreon.com/posts/s-rank-patrons-q-45110887 or see the pinned post on https://patreon.com/petedavison/posts

My OG Xbox arrived today. Unfortunately I didn't notice with the dispatch note that CEX were unable to ship an Advanced SCART cable with it, so at the moment it looks like ass on the big TV. Composite is not pretty; I've officially been spoiled by RGB. Still, I think I've managed to track down a suitable replacement from elsewhere — the only question now is whether or not it will arrive before Christmas chaos. I hope it does; I'm keen to play some stuff like Dead Or Alive 2 Ultimate and its ilk over the holidays.

At the same time, I happened to be online when a retailer indicated that they were putting the Jaguar GameDrive up for sale. This, if you're unfamiliar, is a cart that you can slap a microSD card in, load up with Jaguar ROMs and enjoy to your heart's content. With the price of Jaguar games seemingly rising quite a bit, this is the most practical way to enjoy the system right now — particularly since most of the games that were commercially released have been effectively "abandoned" and placed on archive.org, and modern homebrew stuff can easily be distributed as downloadable ROMs. The GameDrive itself is pricey, but it pays for itself when you look how much individual carts go for. There's even talk of supporting images of Jaguar CD games at some point.

So far as the Jaguar goes, I intend to use the GameDrive as a means of exploring the Jaguar's library, then anything I find myself particularly enjoying I'll look into acquiring an actual copy of. I will do a Jaguar series at some point; not sure how that's going to work right now, since the end of Atari A to Z Flashback is still a fair way off and I don't really want to add anything extra on top of what I'm doing right now. Perhaps either the 8-bit or ST series can take a break for a bit, since there's no real "end" to either of those — or perhaps I can do some sort of alternating or rotating schedule. We'll see. I haven't got the thing yet and I don't know how long it'll take to get here! I do have some spare microSD cards, though — I'm glad I kept them now!

Anyway. Fingers crossed all these fun times arrive in the next day or two, because it'd be nice to have a holiday filled with retro gaming goodness. I have time off from the day job from Thursday until the new year, so here's hoping they're here by then at least!