Been enjoying Final Fantasy V as the bedtime game for the past few days. I've started this game lots of times but never really gotten further than a few hours into it, so I'm curious to see how things go. So far I'm enjoying it a lot; I particularly appreciate how the Job system is rewarding a willingness to go into a situation with perhaps an unconventional lineup of combatants — indeed, for a boss fight last night, I was really struggling with my "default" early-game lineup of Knight, Thief, White Mage and Black Mage, but then I changed everyone to Knight and absolutely obliterated said boss.

I suspect things will get easier and party lineups can be more flexible as the game progresses. The trouble in the early game is that you're so lacking in HP that mages can maybe take one or two hits before they're dead, making them a little impractical; however, I did spend enough time earning job levels on them that I can cast some fun spells while on other Jobs now, which is nice.

Thus far the world has been interesting to explore, and it gets you right in there with a selection of vehicles to fiddle around with and access various different areas. It suffers a little from NES-era Final Fantasy syndrome, where you're expected to pootle around the world you can access until you stumble across something potentially interesting — but one could argue that has always been an important part of early top-down RPGs. I know certainly since taking a look at the early Ultima games and their knockoffs such as Questron I've come to appreciate or at least understand the way some of the earlier Final Fantasy games and their ilk do things.

Mostly I'm looking forward to showing Andie things like Gilgamesh in their original context; as a Final Fantasy XIV devotee, she's been in contact with a lot of stuff from early Final Fantasy games through that title's numerous homage sequences, but not seen many of them in their original context. I have to confess there are a number of things I'm curious about, too; I've somehow managed to remain mostly unspoiled on the majority of Final Fantasy V's plot so I'm intrigued to see where it goes in the long term.

And on that note, it's time for a mug of hot chocolate and a bit more grinding. A pleasant evening to ya!

I'll say this again at the end, but please keep quiet about everything mentioned in this post until I've announced things publicly tomorrow. Thank you for your understanding!

All righty, here's the deal with my new job: starting today (well, likely with the first visible "result" tomorrow) I'm the Site Editor of Rice Digital — https://ricedigital.co.uk.

If you're not familiar with Rice Digital, this is a site that is focused on Asian video games and popular culture, emphasis on the games side of things. Rice has always had a store attached to it that typically sells limited editions of PQube's games, but the scope beyond that has varied somewhat over the years. Right now they've got preorders for the upcoming Gal*Gun Returns and Root Film; in the past, they've also done various bits of merchandise, figures and the like, and I believe the plan is to head back in that direction at some point.

Anyway. My role is on the editorial side of things. Aside from the store, Rice is a site with things to read on it! It's been largely "leaderless" for a few months but has been doing steady traffic thanks to a talented bunch of freelancers who have been keeping news stories and features flowing in the absence of anyone actually steering the ship. I will be taking charge of that rowdy bunch and writing a bunch of my own stuff, with a mind to carving out the site a nice, distinctive online identity as a place where people can go to find good-quality writing, news stories, interviews and other interesting stuff that relates to Japanese and Asian video games and broader popular culture.

I had several meetings today where we talked about various ways in which we can potentially achieve that, so I've now got to figure out ways to make those work and see how things go. As such, the overall "format" of the site is likely to be somewhat in flux while we get certain things established, but we already nailed down some interesting ideas in our initial meetings today, and I have plenty more brewing at the back of my mind. Long-term, hopefully I'll be expanding into doing some video work also — both fronting it and working with the freelancers to ensure we have some stuff to offer the audience.

This shouldn't affect MoeGamer and my work on YouTube, since the purpose of MoeGamer and the purpose of Rice Digital are both quite different from one another, despite sharing a subject area. The people in charge are well familiar with what I do — indeed, it's one of the main reasons they hired me — and have said that things should be absolutely fine to continue as they are; I'll just obviously have to ensure that things I'm doing in one place aren't cannibalising the other. I don't see that being a problem, however; if anything the two will support one another well. Obviously I will let you all know if anything is likely to change, but signs are positive right now. So thumbs up for that.

With all that in mind, I encourage you all to follow Rice Digital in your… reading things of choice, follow them on social media (which I won't be in charge of, as there's a Person For That) and check in every so often to see what the team and I have been up to. I should be starting to edit and post some things on the site from tomorrow, so watch out for my name — and be a good Internet citizen and like, comment, share and all that other gubbins so I get to make numbers go up and the people who pay me money like me more.

Last thing: I haven't publicly announced this yet — I'll likely do so tomorrow — so please don't say anything "out in the open" (on Twitter etc.) about this as yet. Once I've shared the news publicly on Twitter, it's all good, but until then, keep shtum if you please!

Once again, a big thank you for all your support; as I mentioned above, the work I've been doing on MoeGamer and YouTube has played a big role in getting me to this position — and your ongoing support of what I do in those places has been a big motivating factor in holding myself to a high standard and putting out work that I'm genuinely proud of. In a very real sense, you've all helped me get this potentially ideal day job — now I just have to jump in and seize this opportunity firmly so I can prove myself to the money men!

A sincere thanks; couldn't have done it without you all.

It's the end of another weekend, and tomorrow is a bit of a "new beginning" for me in a number of ways. Hopefully 2021 in general will mark a bunch of "new beginnings"; I've been saying I want to achieve fresh starts in a whole variety of areas for a long time, and so far I have a reasonably good feeling about this year being a good one in which to do just that.

So far the diet has been going smoothly. Carefully planning out calorie usage each day means I can enjoy myself while still being sensible, and the few areas where I've managed to shave off a few calories (the Tassimo coffees vs. Nespresso lattes, for example) are really helping. When I feel up to it, I'll incorporate some exercise in there, too, as I'm certain that will help, also. Other things on my mind first, though!

I'm pleased with the PlayStation Classic setup I've managed to achieve so far. I've got a wide selection of games from a ton of platforms on there, including Neo Geo, which the system appears to emulate beautifully. The Neo Geo ROM set I have seems to have a number of games that just don't work, unfortunately, but a lot of these games are notoriously temperamental, so it's not altogether surprising. I'm sure I'll be able to figure something out with the troublesome ones at some point — even if it means finding a more up-to-date set of ROM dumps.

Other stuff works perfectly. I did try Atari 8-bit and Philips G7000/Magnavox Odyssey 2 earlier, but I can't find a way of mapping keyboard commands to the joypads, so I think those are probably out of the question for the moment. I'm sure hooking up a USB keyboard will work, so I might investigate that at some point. For now, there's plenty of other stuff to be getting on with!

To put the thing through its paces, I've unofficially adopted Final Fantasy V as a bedtime game. It's a Final Fantasy I've never actually beaten but always been curious about, plus it's something Andie will be interested in, since there have been a bunch of FFV references in Final Fantasy XIV to date. When I'm done with that, I've got a whole host of RPG goodness stored on there just waiting to go — stretching right back to the NES, but with a fine selection of titles that I never got the opportunity to try on the original PlayStation back in the day taking pride of place. (Plus a few I loved playing back in the day, too — there's several I'm keen to revisit with more mature eyes.)

Feeling reasonably good right now, then. A bit nervous about tomorrow, but I'm sure there's nothing to be worried about! S-Rank Patrons, I'll have a new wallpaper and a Q&A prompt post up for you very soon — watch out for them in the next couple of days and/or when I remember to do them!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and stay safe as always.

Been fiddling around with the PlayStation Classic today and think I've got the whole "adding new stuff to it and customising things" pretty much sorted. I got an OTG adapter and a 128GB flash drive, and all seems to be working fine with those; 128GB is more than enough for most things I want to do with the system for now, since it is enough space to store complete(ish) libraries for most pre-PlayStation platforms, and plenty more room for PS1 games.

I've been sorting out disc images for a bunch of PS1 games this evening, including a variety of things that I always wanted to play back in the day but was never able to — primarily thanks to the fact that a lot of them didn't cross the pond from North America to Europe. Given how pricey some of these games are — and the fact that you're always rolling the dice a bit with preowned CD-based games — this seems like the best means of enjoying these games right now.

I've been impressed with how easy Project Eris, RetroArch and EmulationStation have been to use once the initial setup was done with. I had an initial hiccup with Project Eris being unable to add new PlayStation games — format your flash drive in exFAT format, not NTFS as the documentation says, to fix this — but now all seems to be working perfectly smoothly.

One thing I do want to experiment with is whether or not home computer emulation will also work on this thing. There's no reason why it shouldn't, but hooking up a USB keyboard would be a bit of a faff. I need to investigate whether it's possible to map controller buttons to keyboard inputs on home computer platforms — I'm sure it's possible to, but I just haven't tried it yet. Once I figure that out, there'll be some 8- and 16-bit micro goodness going on that flash drive, too, I'm sure.

The cool thing about this is that I'm effectively making an enormously portable little gizmo that is absolutely rammed to the rafters with every retro game you could think of. I've argued against this when talking about the Evercade and I do still believe curated collections are a much better means of celebrating retro games, but having one device with a huge library available at the touch of a button is certainly convenient, I won't lie. I'm picturing it being particularly useful if we're ever allowed to go and visit friends again; with just one device, we'll all be able to play a whole bunch of games that we used to love on a variety of platforms, without having to switch lots of cables around. That will be super-fun.

That and I'll be able to play all my dream RPGs in bed. Looking forward to that. Question now is: where to begin…?

In celebration of the last day of my (now previous) day job, the wife and I had a bit of a quiet evening tonight. We had a nice Marks & Spencers curry box and played some The Adventures of Willy Beamish, then we have a fairly relaxed weekend ahead of us.

Our desire for a quiet evening together meant that there was no Atelier Ayesha piece today, but instead I'll post one tomorrow, as aforementioned wife is busy doing Final Fantasy XIV things for most of the weekend so I have plenty of time to write and record. It'll be the first test of my new living room setup for recording, too, so that will be interesting.

I also spent a significant proportion of today installing "Project Eris" on the PlayStation Classic that my brother got us for Christmas. Normally I'm not big on modding these mini consoles and prefer to keep them stock, but the PlayStation Classic is renowned as being a great multi-purpose emulation platform, so I've loaded it up with a bunch of ROMs and now we have every retro game we could ever want easily accessible in the bedroom. Which is nice! I've got a bigger flash drive and an OTG cable coming tomorrow so I can use it to its full potential; the bigger flash drive will allow for more larger games (like actual PlayStation games) while the OTG cable allows you to run said flash drive off the USB power port rather than the controller port, meaning you can play two-player games again.

Anyway. More on that another time, I'm sure. I start my new job next week — a little more on that once I'm settled in and ready to talk about what I'm up to! For now, I hope you all have a pleasant weekend. I'm certainly planning to.

I've rearranged my living room setup somewhat. Gone is the coffee table which used to play host to my computer keyboard, mic stand and (when I'm recording) tripod holding the camera, replaced with a slightly smaller wheeled table that is about a thousand times more comfortable to sit at and use. I have actual legroom now, I can sit back on the sofa while recording, and the slightly raised height of the table over the coffee table feels way more ergonomic. I made a good choice.

It's nice when little things like this make you happy. This is a small change to my daily living situation, but with how much time I spend in the living room playing games, writing things and looking at the Internet, this is going to have a positive impact on me. I'll be giving it a go with recording a few videos over the weekend; the only thing I'm not totally convinced about at the moment is the fact that, by virtue of it being a wheeled table rather than something sitting on the floor, it's a bit more prone to "jiggling" around if I'm typing or using the mouse, and that could potentially be a pain with recording facecam for the videos. But camera stabilisation is a thing, so it's entirely possible it won't be a problem — that's partly why I want to record some stuff at the weekend.

There's also a nice little "tablet holder"-type thing at the back of it, which means I'll be able to make good use of my tablet, perhaps as a secondary display for the computer while recording or streaming. Plus the fact it's a bit smaller means I'm less likely to cover it with junk, which will make my wife happy. I call that a win all round, really; between my new pair of slippers and my new table, 2021 is getting off to a fine start so far!

Not really sure what to say after the chaos that apparently unfolded in the US earlier. These are strange and scary times we live in, for sure. I encourage everyone reading this to stay safe, and don't be afraid to just get the hell off the Internet if it all becomes a bit too much. Nobody would blame you right now.

It's peculiar to think that we're almost certainly living in a period of time that will be of historical significance in the future. Between the Coronavirus pandemic and the political upheaval in the US — not to mention all manner of other things going on all over the world — 2020 (and, judging by today, 2021) are going to be years that people study for years to come. It's fascinating, but also slightly horrifying.

Anyway. I'm not sure there's much I can say right now that won't sound flippant, so, as I say, I encourage all of you — American or not — to stay safe, stay sane and do whatever you need to do to put yourself in a good place mentally right now. If that means signing up for a Japanese eShop account and downloading Rod-Land, then so be it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find some Japanese eShop credit…

First couple of days of calorie-counting have gone just fine. I actually haven't found myself craving things anywhere near as much as I expected to coming off the Christmas binge — and I suspect at least some of that is down to making a few choices that might seem a bit counterintuitive when it comes to dieting. I guess it remains to be seen if they actually work.

One thing I did was deliberately swap out sugar-free Pepsi Max for full-sugar Pepsi. Now, they say that you shouldn't drink your calories, but I've actually felt… weirdly better after a couple of days of drinking these in moderation (and counting the calories) rather than just glugging through a bunch of sugar-free stuff each day. Ideally, I'd drink plenty of water — and I do intend to work on that — but I've suspected for a while that artificial sweeteners perhaps aren't the greatest thing for you, and that they perhaps don't entirely agree with me. Sugar isn't great for you either, of course — but if you have it in moderation and account for it in the rest of your diet it's arguably more "natural" than whatever the heck Aspartame really is.

One of the reasons I've done this is because I can often feel satisfied after a simple drink. I remember reading in a few places a while back that on many occasions where you think you're feeling "hungry", you're actually feeling thirsty. And if glugging a 140-calorie can of Pepsi means I don't scarf down 500 calories worth of cake or crisps, I call that an improvement.

We've also replaced our Nespresso machine with a Tassimo recently. Andie's wanted one of these for a while, so with some Christmas vouchers we finally picked one up, and it makes really nice coffees. Notably, because it uses some sort of "creamer pods" rather than requiring you to warm or froth milk manually, the amount of calories a Tassimo latte has is literally half what having one made with milk and a Nespresso pod is. And the Cadbury hot chocolate pods are both tasty and considerably less in calories than making "proper" hot chocolate, too. So those are all means of shaving off some calories, too.

On top of all that, we're going to try the odd meal replacement shake — not as a strict following of a meal replacement diet, but rather as another means of carefully controlling calories. Again, chugging a 200-calorie meal replacement shake is better than gorging on croissants — though the nice thing about doing things this way is that if I do fancy a croissant at some point, so long as I account for it in my daily countings, I can have one or two.

Anyway. Early days yet. We'll see how I feel in a week or two, but for now I'm feeling quite positive. Here's hoping it work in the long term!

I learned something today: that M2, the folks who have become so well-known for their excellent modernisations of classic retro games (particularly shooters) are also responsible for the excellent E-Mote animation system used in, among other things, Sayori's Nekopara and Love³ visual novels. (This also explains why it put in a surprise appearance in the Sega Ages Herzog Zwei release on Switch a while back.)

I'm not sure how I never knew this before, given that there's a press release on their site that dates back to 2013. But the credits of Nekopara vol. 4, which I finished off this evening, are the first time I remember seeing them directly credited for the engine — and yes, it's the same M2; their logo was right there in the credits.

If you're unfamiliar with E-Mote, it's a Live2D-esque engine that allows 2D art to be manipulated in a "3D-like" style. This allows for smooth animation of otherwise static artwork, allowing for transitions between gestures, movement beyond simply sliding the image around, and generally much more expressive characters without needing to switch to fully polygonal models. Sayori from Neko Works is the undisputed master of this engine, since the animation and movement in both the aforementioned Nekopara and Love³ is some of the most impressively natural I've ever seen in a visual novel, but a few other devs have made use of it, too — I've seen it used in visual novels from Qureate, for example, and M2 even used it themselves in the tutorial screens for Herzog Zwei, as noted above.

This may not be big news to you (or news at all — it's entirely possible that I simply just missed it over the years!) but it's something that makes me happy for reasons I can't quite pin down. I think it's the feeling of "coming together" that it represents; M2 make modern ports of retro games that I love, but they're also responsible for one of the most significant pieces of tech in modern visual novels — which I also love. How many other devs out there can boast quite such a diverse portfolio?

You may recall a while back I had an abortive attempt at counting calories for weight loss and all that. Then Christmas happened, so it all felt a bit pointless. But now it's the new year, which is the obligatory time to at least try and make things vaguely better for yourself, so from tomorrow I'm going to be trying the whole calorie-counting thing again. I'm also going to try and get some more regular exercise in because my back and knees are absolutely killing me and I suspect it's mostly from lack of activity during lockdown.

I'm going to start off exercising with Fitness Boxing I think, rather than Ring Fit Adventure. Ring Fit is good — and a genuinely fun game to boot — but I think the full-body thing is a bit much for me to jump right into with the state I'm in right now. Fitness Boxing, meanwhile, starts a bit more gently and also requires a lot less space, so in the early days of developing good habits that will help with motivation.

If anyone reading this has picked up Fitness Boxing 2 and knows if it has any worthwhile additions over the original, do please let me know; Misty already let me know that it's mostly an incremental upgrade that adds a very welcome ability to remove specific exercises from routines if you so desire, but if anyone has any detailed thoughts and experiences to share I'd love to hear them.

It's off to bed with me now. New podcast episode tomorrow — please look forward to it!