One frustrating thing about the human brain (or possibly just my brain, I don't know) is the fact that the number of things it feels like it wants to do appears to be inversely proportional to the likelihood of doing any of them.

One can refer to this phenomenon as "analysis paralysis" and it rears its ugly head in all manner of situations.

Playing a board game and have several different options on how to proceed? Why not agonise over it for a good ten minutes while your tablemates get increasingly frustrated and/or drunk.

Feel like playing a video game? Great! But which one? You don't want to start playing one and end up feeling like you "should" be playing a different one for some vague, amorphous reason that doesn't really make any sense.

Want to read a book? Fabulous! See above.

Go outside and do something? Sure, but there's all these things you could be doing inside, and you're not doing any of them right now.

The eventual result is inevitably the same: staring into space, inner monologue caught in a constant loop of "But if I…", nothing actually getting done, depression, death. Maybe not the last one. Hopefully, anyway.

I constantly catch myself doing this and it's hard to break out of, because noticing that you're doing it is just the first step. In order to break out of the cycle you not only have to recognise that the cycle is taking place, but also take decisive action: pick something to do, and damn well go and do it, sod what anyone else (or the rest of your brain) thinks.

"I don't know what to do" becomes "I should do something" becomes "I think I might…" and finally, with any luck, "I am definitely going to go and…" — at which point it is best to stop thinking altogether and simply go do whatever went in that last ellipsis.

At times like this, I also find it's best to eliminate distractions once you're doing the thing you decisively decided to dedicate your time to. Put the phone away, somewhere out of reach. Make sure you have a drink and/or snacks on hand if applicable. Get comfortable. Open/close windows and turn on heating/air conditioning as required. Focus on that thing. Enjoy it. Embrace it.

You don't need to do anything else (except maybe empty the dishwasher, it's been like that for three days) — just dedicate your time to doing that one thing rather than panicking over all the things you think you "could" or "should" be doing instead.

I'm off to go and take my own advice having just caught myself doing the perpetual doom cycle of Twitter, email, Discord for more minutes than I'd care to mention. Sophie is calling; we've got monsters to bash and I have ingots to make. Lots of ingots.

[Before I forget, S-Rank Patrons, I'll have a wallpaper for you by the end of the week. I've been quite busy getting all manner of other things done but I haven't forgotten about you!]

"Ooh, it's a lovely day today, innit?" says some hypothetical middle-aged woman conversing over her fence to her neighbour in that way that never actually happens in reality, only on television.

"No," I respond in my mind, silently, because disagreeing with another human being's face when it comes to the weather is tantamount to taking a shit on their lawn right in front of them. "No, it fucking isn't a lovely day. I hate it when it's hot. I really hate it when it's hot. There's no air, it's sweaty, it's uncomfortable and I get sunstroke if I stand out in direct sunlight for more than approximately 5 seconds."

I hate this time of year. I'm pretty sure I didn't used to, though it's also entirely possible (likely) that the climate has changed considerably from the time that I "didn't used to mind" this time of year. I certainly don't remember the summers of my youth being quite so unpleasant to endure — though I do remember them being nice.

Lunchtimes on the school field doing shoulderstands with my friends because we all thought they were the best way to make yourself fart on demand (an opinion I was pleased to see Mike Wozniak shared on the recent series of Taskmaster); cold drinks with ice; Screwballs from Mr Piccadilly Whip (the name we gave to the mysterious foreign ice-cream man who showed up on the school premises every lunchtime and was completely indecipherable on the rare occasions he spoke)… ah, 'twas bliss for a young'un, so it was.

These days, of course, I'd much rather have Wet Play (not like that, filthmonger) because that means you get to stay inside, play board games or hide in the Wendy house and fiddle around with all the fake food and coins. These days, kids would probably be on their smartphones regardless of where they were — though even that is something I enjoy much more indoors than out in the blazing hot, Pete-melting sunshine that is summer in 2021.

Anyway, I am an adult now and I have an air conditioner in my bedroom. So instead of sitting here moaning I'm going to go and use it while I play Atelier Sophie. In your face, primary school me.

Did not sleep at all well last night. Woke up roughly every two hours having had peculiarly vivid dreams — and it was one of those situations where the dreams seemed to pick up where they left off when I fell asleep again. So on the one hand it was sort of interesting and enjoyable in a strange kind of way, but on the other, I really didn't sleep well at all and as such failed to get up early and go to the gym like I intended. Try again tomorrow — I would have gone this evening, but that tiredness is really catching up with me now so I figure it's probably best to get an early night and attempt to "recalibrate" somewhat.

Dreams are funny things. I feel like as I've got older they've gotten more vivid. I remember as a kid and a teenager being fascinated by the subject and doing my best to "force" myself to dream about something by thinking about it really hard before going to sleep — and inevitably failing, of course. I don't remember dreaming a lot when I was young, but as I got older, I definitely started experiencing it more.

Some I remember for a long time after the fact; others I forget almost immediately. I've forgotten most of the details about last night's, but I vividly remember the recurring dreams I have about it being the day I have to move house and I haven't packed anything except a couple of boxes of knick-knacks; bookshelves and the like are all still absolutely full of "stuff".

I think probably the strangest one I've had on more than one occasion is where I was on the London Underground and all set to have sex with someone, but I was unable to go through with the act because I didn't have the sheet music for it. Evidently some residual performance anxiety going on there… in more ways than one.

Some of these dreams have recurred so often I find myself wondering if they're actually memories. I often recall being back at school and deliberately avoiding my music teachers when they were expecting me to attend things like the school orchestra and suchlike. I know that didn't happen, because I was a committed member of the school music department until I left, but these dreams have happened so often they almost feel like false memories. Perhaps I should remember to practice the piano more often to fend those specific ones off.

Anyway. Dreams are interesting. One day I'll finish the piece of creative writing I've had stuck in my head since the age of about 15 about a girl with the power to enter the world of dreams. That is, if I can ever find time amid all the other things I want to do! Never enough hours in the day… and apparently never enough years in your life, either.

Yesterday I was in town, primarily for an eye test, but I also wanted to take a moment to check out a new place that has recently opened: Nu Game Arcade, found on the top floor of the Marlands Centre in Southampton, where a crappy phone repair shop used to be.

The place isn't particularly big or chock-full of machines, but it's clearly something that's being run by enthusiasts, and it has some nice stuff in there. At the time I visited, there was a working Space Invaders machine (albeit one which appeared to be running a bootleg version called Space War, in which you could enter your name for the high score) along with a Neo Geo MVS containing Puzzle Bobble and Metal Slug, a NAOMI machine running Guilty Gear XX, Street Fighter… somethingorother, possibly an Alpha?, one of the more recent Tekken games, plus full-size Point Blank and Chase HQ 2 cabinets.

There's no entry fee, unlike some other arcades; all the machines simply need 50p to play, giving the whole thing a pleasantly old-school experience. Some might baulk at paying 50p to play a Space Invaders bootleg, but honestly that cabinet is a frigging antique now, so it's worth it for the sheer novelty value.

The highlight of my visit was very much Chase HQ 2, which I had no idea existed. Well, I mean, I knew Chase HQ 2 existed for home computers, but it turns out that was not the same thing as arcade Chase HQ 2 — I believe it may have been one of those "home-only" sequels to arcade titles.

Chase HQ 2, meanwhile, comes in a full sit-down cabinet with a force-feedback steering wheel and features roughly PS2/Dreamcast-era graphics, including the one and only Nancy in glorious FMV form. The game actually plays just like the original Chase HQ but with fancier graphics; despite the environments being full 3D, you're still railroaded down a specific route and your "steering" simply moves you from one side to another on the road rather than actually "turning". I am 100% fine with that.

It was great to play Point Blank, too; I used to love that game back on the PlayStation and judging by my excellent performance on the arcade version, I haven't lost my touch. I did find it quite amusing to look at; I always have it in my mind that light-gun shooters had absolutely massive displays and thus aren't anywhere near the same if you play them on a dinky CRT back at home, but the screen in the Point Blank machine was probably about the same size as the telly I had when I was at university. The force feedback guns were pretty great, though.

Apparently there's another arcade elsewhere in Southampton that offers an hour of unlimited play for £9.95 — I'll have to check that out next time I'm in town. But I'll definitely be paying Nu Game Arcade another visit; although its selection is relatively limited, the games they do have are absolute corkers, and I'm sure their selection will change and improve over time.

Hello everyone! I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone supporting me through this page right now, because once again you've been a big help in renewing my WordPress subscription for MoeGamer.

If you're following me primarily for my Atari A to Z work, MoeGamer is my site where I write things; initially the site focused exclusively on Japanese games, which are one of my main passions, but over time it expanded to cover a wide variety of other things including retro titles.

While I'm not posting as much on it as I used to thanks to my day job at Rice Digital consuming the majority of my creative energy each day, there are still over two thousand posts on there covering a wide variety of different games and cultural phenomenon — plus, of course, it's also the home of my ongoing Atelier MegaFeature, the most comprehensive exploration of Gust's long-running Atelier series that you'll find anywhere on the Internet.

In other words, while I'm not as active on MoeGamer as I used to be, maintaining it remains important because it still gets an impressive number of visitors per day looking for information on specific things — plus it's an archive and portfolio of my own creative work from over the course of the last seven years and counting, as well as the main means through which I have developed my own skills of research, explanation, expression, observation and criticism.

It is, to put it simply, very important to me — and a big part of why and how I'm doing what I do now.

So thank you very much for helping me keep it up and running. It means a great deal to me — and I hope you continue to enjoy the work I do, whichever aspect of it you enjoy the most!

If you're yet to check out MoeGamer for yourself, here's a few links you might be interested to explore:

The main page 

The "All Games" page listing everything I've covered 

The "Cover Games" page listing all the in-depth features I've done 

The Atelier MegaFeature 

Inadvertently went down an interesting rabbit-hole earlier. At lunchtime I decided to play a couple of OG Xbox games just for the hell of it, and one of them was Yager, a game I've never played before but remember a lot of people liking back in the day. With good reason, as it turns out; I'm looking forward to exploring that one further.

While I was playing Yager, though, I found myself thinking "hmm, Yager [for the devs share the name with the game] did something else, didn't they… what was it?" It was Spec Ops: The Line, a game which I thought was quite interesting, if perhaps a little overrated by chin-stroking navel-gazers of the day.

But then I noticed something else. I figured that Yager had just been quiet since Spec Ops: The Line, but I discovered they'd been working on a free-to-play game over on the Epic Games Store (boo hiss, whatever, I don't give a shit) called The Cycle — and it actually sounded rather interesting.

The Cycle describes itself as a "PvEvP" game, and it's kind of sort of an offshoot of the battle royale genre. The difference is that the sole aim is not to dispatch the other players; it's to score as many victory points as possible. And a significant number of victory points are acquired through doing things in the environment such as mining minerals, setting up gas refineries, collecting items and hunting monsters.

I've had little to no interest in battle royale games to date, but something about this concept really tickled my fancy, so I gave it a download earlier, played through the tutorial and enjoyed a match. And you know what, it seems to be pretty damn good.

I could do without all the "battle pass" bullshit that is de rigueur for this sort of game, but they do have to make money somehow, and that is at least a mildly less obnoxious means of getting people to cough up than energy bars and gacha. The base game seems enjoyable, though — and the sort of thing I can see myself playing off and on.

I don't know how much variety the game has in the long term, but I'm certainly intrigued to try it out at least a few more times in the near future. And if it sounds interesting to you too, give it a shot — it's free, after all!

My cat is presently asleep. She is sitting on the back of the sofa, happily napping while I type this. She has the right idea.

I am pretty tired. Despite there being a bank holiday this week, it feels like it's been a long and somewhat exhausting week. I can probably attribute that to feeling a bit unwell earlier in the week, but still. It will be a relief to reach the end of tomorrow intact and be able to enjoy the weekend.

I believe my wife Andie is having some friends over for a barbecue this weekend, but I can generally get away with just lurking and popping my head out when food is ready. I've got some videos I want to record this weekend — which may or may not include Evercade stuff if I'm feeling up to that on top of the weekly Atari stuff — and some games to play, plus of course the next part of the Atelier MegaFeature for MoeGamer.

I'm also attempting to set up a new installment of The Davison Cup to enjoy with my local friends. For a few years, this was my chosen method of celebrating my birthday, featuring a day-long tournament filled with games from over the ages. It's the main means I developed a strong fondness for a number of games I didn't expect to like as much as I do — most notably RealSports Soccer on the Atari 2600 and the arcade version of Canyon Bomber. Both of them are killer fun in multiplayer.

Getting people together is a bit of a pain these days, though, because several members of our group have children. With enough advance notice, we should be able to make it happen, though. After all, we got four out of the five of us together to play board games on Tuesday, so how hard can it be…?

Famous last words.

As the weeks pass by, I find myself feeling more and more keen to start making Evercade A to Z videos again — but at the same time, I don't want to overload myself by committing to too many things each week. As I've noted before, having a job I actually like now means that I have a lot less "downtime" to be able to work on personal projects, and thus taking on too much is a sure-fire route to burnout.

I do want to pick up on the Evercade videos, though, so I've decided: at the very latest, I will kick off the series again once I have my Evercade VS. Since that will have a permanent place hooked up to my TV rather than having to faff around with HDMI cables (and sometimes charging cables, depending on whether I remembered to charge the handheld beforehand) it will be a lot easier to just slap in a cartridge and record, whereas at the minute the slight faffing required to set things up for recording makes it feel like a lot more effort than it actually is.

I mean, I know that it's not actually any real effort to hook the Evercade up to the TV — I've even already attached the mini-HDMI cable to my HDMI switchbox setup, so it's literally just a case of plugging it in. That's why I say at the very latest I'll continue the Evercade A to Z series when the VS arrives. Right now I'm just… I don't know, in a sort of funny mood about things. It's probably the heat or something and the general sense of tiredness and lethargy which comes with all that; it makes the slightest inconvenience (like, say, having to untangle the HDMI cord) feel like a massive issue.

I'm rambling. Blame that on the heat as well. But anyway, if there's one thing to take away from this post, it's that Evercade A to Z will be back… at some point. By November at the latest. Possibly sooner.

Headache seems to have pretty much subsided today, which means I probably don't have brain cancer or anything, which is nice. I really do think it's just the heat; it's been extremely hot and sunny for the last few days — unpleasantly so. In fact, driving back from my friend's house this evening, I was struck by the feeling that in the summer months, we'd probably all be a lot more productive if we slept through the day and worked in the cool breeze of a summer evening.

But anyway.

Yes, I went to a friend's house this evening, what with us being allowed to for the moment. With all the scaremongering in the media about crazy new virus variants, I suspect we'll probably end up in another lockdown sooner or later, so we decided to take the opportunity to see each other for the first time since… last September, I think we worked out it was.

We played a tabletop game called "The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine", which proved to be a big hit with everyone. Thematically, it's a game about performing missions in space to track down a legendary mystery planet, but mechanically it's bollocks all to do with that; it's a trick-taking game where each "mission" tasks players around the table with accomplishing particular things — usually taking a trick containing a particular specific card.

The interesting twist is that some of the "tasks" you have to complete require you to take low-numbered cards, which means you need to win a trick but also ensure that the "bad" card is in there. Thankfully, the game is a cooperative affair with strict rules on limited communication with one another, so it's all about working together to ensure that everyone is able to play the optimal cards for any given situation.

As the game progresses, additional mechanics are layered atop the basic formula, such as having to complete the tasks in a particular order, with prerequisites or with limitations on who is allowed to do what. In all, there's a "campaign" of 50 missions of increasing complexity — but the game is highly replayable by virtue of the fact its simple card-based nature means it's different every time you play.

I enjoyed it a lot! It was just the sort of reasonably lightweight yet also a bit thinky game that is perfect for a summer's evening. Hopefully we'll get the chance to try it again at some point in the near future… assuming we're still allowed to see other human beings by the Tuesday after next!