One of the things that people seem most hesitant to do these days is to make their own mind up about things — particularly when it comes to opinions on popular media.

To simplify the model, some people find themselves in the role of "opinion leaders", and people who follow those opinion leaders take said opinion leaders' opinions at face value without taking the time to think critically for themselves.

This has, to an extent, always been an issue in one form or another. I vividly remember back in the '80s and early '90s taking the word of magazine reviewers as absolute gospel, for example, and yet in more recent years I've come to the conclusion that modern video game reviews are, for the most part, completely and utterly useless to me.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I've just finished a recording session for Atari A to Z. One of the games I was covering was, supposedly, a hot pile of garbage that had no redeeming value whatsoever — at least, if the reviews both at the time of its original release and a little later (early 2000s) were to be believed.

But then I played it… and while it had its limitations — it was still an Atari 2600 game, after all — there was actually a lot to like about it. And I'd go so far as to say that calling it "bad" would be doing it a massive injustice. You might not like it, you might find it boring or you might simply find it unappealing, sure… but from a technical standpoint, this game was pretty much flawless.

And herein lies the problem we've always had with video game criticism specifically: the fact that the "opinion leaders" (or wannabe opinion leaders) out there are still obsessed with making judgements of "quality" on something that is fundamentally subjective. Bad games absolutely do exist, sure… but there's a limit to what you can reasonably call "bad" before you're crossing over into "I just don't like this" territory. Which is quite a different territory, let me tell you.

Anyway. It's always a pleasant surprise when I cover something I'd been led to believe would be a pile of old toss, and it actually turns out to be rather enjoyable. You can find out what it is in a couple of weeks' time on Atari A to Z Flashback!

Reading these old Atari magazines is interesting for a variety of reasons, but one that continually stands out to me is how different today's hardware is… and not necessarily in a good way!

This evening, for example, I was looking for a way to reassign the function keys on my wireless keyboard. It's a Logitech keyboard I've had for a few years at this point, but I've hit the "why did no-one think this was a terrible idea" turn-off-your-PC button accidentally too many times to want to keep going as is. (Patti also hit it once during a work meeting. Thank heavens for the quick startup time of SSDs is all I can say!)

Eventually, I came across the apparent solution: download an application called Logitech Options, which allows you to change the settings for your wireless Logitech devices. I downloaded it, and was surprised to discover it was two hundred megabytes in size. This is obviously small fry to today's lightning-fast broadband speeds to download, but why on earth is a piece of software designed to change a few settings two hundred megabytes?

Even as (relatively) recently as the Windows 95/98 era, software that Made Things Happen with hardware could fit on a single 1.44MB disk, often with some bonus goodies thrown in there too — and if you look back to the systems being covered in the issues of Monitor and Page 6 that I've been reading recently, you're dealing with computers that had 1MB of RAM at the absolute most — more commonly somewhere between 48K and 512K depending on if it was an 8- or 16-bit machine.

What's amusing to me, given the ridiculous size of that Logitech Options application (which didn't even do what I wanted in the end — it would only let me swap my two mouse buttons over and nothing else) is that back in those early 8-bit days in particular, programmers were absolute masters of cramming useful things into tiny amounts of memory. It wasn't at all uncommon to see type-in listings act as programs that you would run then keep in the computer's memory while you were doing other things — and on all but the most low-end machines you'd be able to do everything you normally would with the computer with this little extra bit of software sitting somewhere in your 64K (or whatever) of RAM.

A good example is the "TYPO" software pioneered by (if I remember rightly) Antic magazine, which was subsequently also used by Page 6 here in the UK. TYPO was, as the name suggests, a program to help ensure that you were typing things in correctly — in this case while typing in program listings in BASIC from magazines. You'd load and run TYPO and it would sit in memory, then as you typed it would flash up letter codes at the top of the screen when you finished writing a line. If the two-character code matched the one printed in the magazine, you'd typed it in right. If it didn't, you needed to check it. Simple. Effective. Took up so little memory you could type in a full BASIC listing with it resident and be able to run the program flawlessly afterwards.

Two hundred megabytes for an application that lets me swap my mouse buttons over? What, exactly, happened?

It's 2AM and I finally polished off Atelier Escha & Logy's second playthrough, so expect a writeup over the weekend. I'm glad I made the effort for the second run — I'll write more about this over the weekend, but I was concerned the two runs would be too similar to one another, but there was enough different to make it worthwhile. Perhaps not to the same degree as Mana Khemia 2, but definitely worthwhile — and the True ending was a good payoff.

Escha & Logy took a while to get through fully, though not because I wasn't enjoying it. It just happened to hit around the time when I was starting to get more busy with the new job and figuring a bunch of things out. Now it's over and done with I can hopefully take a bit of time to get "ahead of schedule" on Atelier Shallie, too — this is another title I'm particularly interested to explore, as the conclusion to the Dusk series, plus the Atelier game from the "modern" era where they decided to ditch the time limits again.

I've also got Root Film to play, which I'm absolutely loving, and even better, I can justify playing that for work. If you enjoy visual novel/adventure game hybrids, Root Film is absolutely fantastic; it definitely lives up to the underappreciated and largely unknown original Root Letter, which I'm glad about — I just hope it sees enough success for us to see more "Kadokawa Mysteries" in the future!

It's interesting they seem to have ditched their original plan, though, which was to have a cast of "virtual actors" play different roles in multiple games. I wonder what happened to that? It's not a super big deal, as Root Film's characters are a delight, but it would have been an interesting twist on things.

Anyway, as I say, it's 2AM and I'm feeling less than coherent, so time to sleep, I think! Hope you all have a good weekend.

I love having cats. I absolutely loved having a cat growing up, and having two cats now is one of the best things about the life we live at the moment. And having been stuck indoors for so long, we've been able to spend a lot of time with them both, which it's very obvious they appreciate.

It does make me worry a bit that they won't like it if and when Andie and I have to go back to work, though with the way things are that is a long way off — and all being well in my case, I'll be able to do my work from home the vast majority of the time. For now, we can just enjoy their company.

I love how all of our cats have showed their own personality over time. Our dearly departed Ruby, who is still sadly missed, was very friendly and a little clingy at times; we think she might have had something wrong with her eyesight, so she often liked to have some "support" any time she was getting down from something. On one memorable morning, she somehow found herself stuck on the roof of our extension with no idea how to get down, so we (well, I'll be honest, Andie) had to get up the ladder and help her down, all before either of us had got ready for work.

Meg, meanwhile, is rapidly turning into Garfield. She's lazy, she enjoys food out of the fridge — she knows the sound of the fridge door opening and comes asking for food without fail — and this evening we caught her eating a bit of pasta that had fallen on the floor. I strongly suspect if we put a lasagne in front of her she'd devour it.

At the same time, though, she is an incredibly caring, kind cat. Any time either of us are feeling low, she will come and sit with us and keep us company. Earlier this evening, she led me into the bedroom so that we could spend some time just chilling and hanging out on the bed. And we'll often wake up in the night to find that she has snuck in to cuddle up against one of us.

As for Patti… well, Patti is a law unto herself. Since she was apparently "abandoned" before she was taken in by the shelter we got her from, we suspect that she never really learned how to "cat" properly, and as such has developed her own way of doing a lot of things. She's a very vocal cat who enjoys talking to us, she is fond of tapping us in the face in the mornings — she knows what my alarm sounds like and comes to wake me up if I don't respond to it — and she will do absolutely anything for treats.

I love them dearly, and I hope we enjoy many more years of happiness with them. I know that one day we'll have to say goodbye to them just as we had to say goodbye to Ruby — well before her time — and that sometimes makes me a bit sad, but that shouldn't mean I can't make the most of their company now and love them for all they're worth. Because they both love us a great deal; we can feel it. And it's the absolute best feeling.

Halfway through typing this post for the first time, Patreon's web page just inexplicably disappeared, losing everything I had written. I will now attempt to recall what I just wrote!

Anyway.

Ten new magazines arrived today — ten issues of Monitor magazine, the official publication of the unofficial nationwide Atari users' club. I had it in my head that Monitor was an Atari publication for some reason, so I was interested to discover that its origins were similar to Page 6. As far as I'm aware, Monitor never hit the newsstands, though, while Page 6 quickly outgrew being a "club magazine" within a matter of issues.

In terms of what's in the issues, it's the usual mix of stuff for the period: short games of reviews that don't really tell you all that much, reviews of "serious" software that are a bit more comprehensive, plus programming tips and tricks — many of which look like black magic to a modern audience.

Looking back on that latter aspect of things in particular always impresses me, because it was actually reasonably widespread knowledge at the time. You had to know that stuff, because there were no real "shortcuts" to achieving those tasks as there are today. Even something as simple as changing the font of the on-screen text involved redefining data in the computer's memory a byte at a time rather than just clicking "change font".

Whenever I look back on this stuff, I find myself wondering if anyone knows how to program modern computers in that way — or indeed if it's even possible to access the guts of a modern computer in the same way. I suspect not; the reason a lot of programming in the 8-bit era in particular worked the way it did was because the hardware was standardised within a platform — one 800XL was the same as any other (perhaps with some minor differences in revisions over time) and so it was possible to do thing like establish a "memory map" of which bits of the computer's memory did what.

Sure, today's machines are a whole lot easier to use, and the Internet allows us to do pretty much anything we'd care to think of with our computers. But I also sort of miss that feeling of directly interacting with a machine in that way — even if it's just through a bit of tentative POKE action in BASIC. I still remember that if you poke 1 into location 752, you hide the cursor; the number you poke into location 82 defines where the left margin on the screen is; and if you poke 0 into location 559, you turn the screen display off. That's about it!

Perhaps I'll learn something from all these old mags yet.

Been playing a bit more Deep Rock Galactic both with friends and solo recently, and I like it a lot. The procedural generation side of things makes it a whole lot more appealing than more "static" co-op games such as Vermintide and Left 4 Dead, and the varied objectives keep things interesting, too.

There's also a good sense of progression that just feels like it offers you more options rather than making you "better", which is ideal for a group of players who can't necessarily play the game the same amount as one another over time — no-one gets "left behind" as such, they just have fewer ways to supplement their basic abilities.

I'm particularly impressed with the fully destructible levels. I've played several missions recently where victory was determined by just saying "fuck it" to finding an "easy" way to an objective, and instead tunnelling through a wall. It's not always the most efficient approach — particularly when playing solo, as I found out to my cost earlier this evening — but it's impressive that it's even an option. Plus sometimes digging off in a random direction can net you some goodies — though it's worth remembering that this isn't Minecraft.

You need to play quite a lot before you start unlocking some of the interesting sounding progression mechanics and longer challenges in the game — but I think that makes a lot of sense, since all of those are geared towards people who are taking the game semi-seriously. For more casual players, it's dead easy to just boot up the game, pick a mission type and jump in — with missions generally lasting 20-30 minutes each (maybe a little more if you're playing solo), you can have a decent amount of fun and feel like you've achieved something even if your available time to play is relatively limited.

I think that's why it's resonated with our group of friends so well — we all have very different schedules and commitments, and this caters to most of us in one way or another. I'm glad I jumped on board with it, because I'd been skeptical to begin with — we've left a trail of abandoned multiplayer games in our wake. This one seems to be sticking for the moment, though, so I'm looking forward to playing a bit more.

Remembered to update the Patrons list at the end of videos this week and noticed that a few people have said their farewells, which is perfectly fine, of course, but serves as a good prompt for me to talk about something that has been weighing on my mind since starting the new job.

And that is that I'm extremely grateful for your continued support, even though I'm not producing as much "patron-supported" stuff as I was in previous months. MoeGamer is updating once or twice a week right now, and I've cut back video production to three Atari A to Z videos a week and nothing else.

Full disclosure: anxious old me has actually felt a bit "guilty" for cutting back that much, even though I know that with the time, effort and brainpower required for the new dayjob I simply don't have the energy to do things as I was previously of an evening. I was only able to be as prolific as I was back when I was working the old day job because that role bored the pants off me; it frequently left me with large chunks of downtime that I could fill with my own projects, so rather than sitting around twiddling my thumbs during particularly boring working days, that's exactly what I did — supported by a bit of extra time in the evening when required.

I've actually considered closing this Patreon down a couple of times since starting the new gig due to this "guilt", but this is where I'm particularly grateful for your continued support. Because I think all of you who are still here recognise some things that I sometimes forget: firstly, that despite the fact I'm doing less in the way of patron-supported projects, it doesn't mean that I'm doing no patron-supported projects. And secondly, the costs associated with said projects don't just relate to creating new stuff: they also relate to keeping all the old stuff online.

I'm genuinely proud of what I've been able to create with MoeGamer over the course of more than half a decade. I believe I've brought some much-needed attention and in-depth analysis to a wide variety of games that don't get the recognition they deserve — and that stuff should stay online, particularly as those games get older and run the risk of being "lost" to selective history.

With all the material on MoeGamer, that reached a point where it was starting to cost money to keep online quite some time ago — and even if I never wrote anything else for the site ever again (which is not my intention, I hasten to add!) it would still cost money to host all those past features, articles, interviews and everything else.

That's what I'm especially grateful for. Because although I'm not in a position to be able to hammer out an article every day for MoeGamer any more, that doesn't diminish the value of the stuff that is already there. And because you're still here, you recognise and understand that — and I very much appreciate that. On top of that, you recognise and understand that I am still doing worthwhile things — even if I sometimes forget that myself!

So thank you for that. I really appreciate it — and I hope you continue to enjoy both what I manage to get up on MoeGamer and YouTube, as well as the stuff for my day job too. And for those who follow me for the retro stuff rather than the overlooked and underappreciated Japanese stuff, rest assured that my day job will be incorporating a lot more retro stuff very, very soon — Technical Things are happening before I can start playing my role, so it'll likely still be a few weeks, but I look forward to revealing what I'm up to there, too. Please look forward to it!

Anyway, sorry for the incoherent ramble; I hope it at least made some degree of sense. And thank you again for your support. It is greatly appreciated.

Through various combinations of circumstances, I found myself on a Reddit threat discussing why Game Grumps don't use their old "cartoon-style" heads on their thumbnails any more, instead using actual photographs of themselves combined with imagery from the games they're playing.

The answer, as anyone who has spent any time watching YouTube will know, is, of course, "the algorithm". Supposedly thumbnails with actual faces in them get more views — or at least get pushed in front of more people than more straightforward thumbnails do — which is why we end up with pages and pages of people doing Macaulay Culkin impressions on their videos, even if they're clearly uncomfortable doing so. I mean, not to pick on the guy, but all you have to do is look at RGT 85's videos to see someone who really doesn't seem to want to be plastering his face over everything he does. Can you spot the ones where he copy-pastes stock photos of himself?

Trouble is, as frustrating as it is to see this sort of thing at times stifling creativity, it obviously works, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it. And you can actually see it in the viewing figures on the Grumps' videos; the videos with their actual faces are often pushing a million views or more, while the ones without tend to be 500k and under.

Annoyingly, I've even noticed this on a channel as small as my own. Anything I've done where my own face is the thumbnail — such as the Q&A videos and the recent channel update — has had about double the usual viewing figures I get for a typical video. Which, naturally, makes me wonder if I should be doing something like that a bit more often.

Trouble is, I rather like the consistency of presentation the Atari A to Z videos and other series have on the channel right now, and to suddenly start adding my gurning fizzog to them would feel a bit strange. I can't deny that it's tempting to try an experiment with some video thumbnails, though. We shall see.

Anyway, just thought I'd ramble briefly on that subject as I found it vaguely interesting. Hope you've had a good weekend and any mothers among you have had a pleasant Mothering Sunday (in the UK). Back to the grindstone again tomorrow!

Early night didn't really work out last night — there was a nasty storm which kept knocking the power out, which kept both of us and the cats awake, so a restful sleep was not had. I don't feel too bad though, as I managed to have a decent lie-in this morning at least, and got a decent amount of stuff done today. Andie had her first dose of the vaccine, too, and has been mostly all right aside from an occasional bruised, tingly feeling in her fingers. I don't know when mine will be yet. 

Tomorrow I'm going to bang out a few more videos and enjoy some video games. Andie is going to tile some more of the toilet. And I suspect Patti the cat will have learned nothing from the fact she just got her claws stuck in the back of my chair and repeat the process tomrrow, because she is an idiot. An adorable idiot, yes, but still an idiot nonetheless.

For now, I think it's time for bed with perhaps a few arcade games before sleep, perhaps another flip through ACE magazine, which I've read cover-to-cover now and enjoyed greatly — still waiting for the bunch of eBay purchases from the other day to arrive — and hopefully a slightly more restful sleep this evening! The storm outside seemed to have passed by the morning, so hopefully tonight will be more peaceful.

Feel like absolute crap this evening, so am probably going to get an early night. As I mentioned on Twitter earlier, this week's Atelier article will be out over the weekend as I had a few things I wanted and/or needed to take care of this evening first.

Been struggling a bit of late with anxiety and depression, as you may have noticed. Hopefully a nice quiet weekend will help a bit with some of that — I'm planning to record a few Atari episodes, read some magazines if they arrive by then and just chill out with some favourite video games — and some new stuff that might soon become favourite video games.

For now, I hope you've had a pleasant week and that you have at least a tolerable weekend ahead of you. I'm gonna go lie down and hope I feel a bit less zombified and sad — not a great combination, let me tell you — in the morning. Ta-ta!