I used the cruise control on my car for the first time today. I've previously been a bit frightened of it because I'm of a generation where handing over control of something like a car to something that isn't myself is a little anxiety-inducing.

But having got a feel for what cruise control in general does thanks to Euro Truck Simulator 2, and having read up on exactly how to operate the cruise control system in my car, I felt like it was probably time to give it a shot.

And while I won't pretend the experience was completely life-changing or anything like that, it certainly made the 2.5-3 hour trip back home from my parents' place a little more comfortable on my legs. They were still stiff and achey when I got out of the car at the other end, but they weren't quite as stiff and achey as they would have been if I'd been pressing the accelerator for most of that journey. To put it another way, I didn't feel like I needed to stop halfway through the journey just to stretch my legs a bit. It might have been nice, but it wasn't something I needed.

So yeah, that's probably the most exciting thing that has happened today, aside from YouTube taking several days to process the HD version of the latest Atari A to Z video. If you go to watch it and it's in 360p or 480p, sorry! Nothing I can do about that until YouTube ungums its workings and sorts it out — it usually happens eventually, even if it takes a day or two.

The cats are pleased to see us. They like Andie's mum, who was looking after them while we were away, but they're both clearly very happy to see us back where we should be. Patti is currently reclining beneath the TV staring at me as I type this, and Meg is curled up atop the duvet we left on our sofa after our recent visitors. They are both very content.

We're getting Chinese food this evening, then it's back on the diet proper after a couple of weeks off from tomorrow. And back to work for me tomorrow, too!

Still away at my family's place and deliberately without my laptop, so this'll be a brief one written on my phone.

It's been nice to get away for a couple of days midweek and not have to really think about doing anything useful. One of the advantages of everyone gradually getting older is that everyone is a lot more willing to see "sitting around doing nothing much of value in each other's company" as a perfectly valid use of one's time. To be fair, I've always been up for this, but it's nice to feel like everyone is quite happy to do it.

I introduced my brother to the TV show Taskmaster today, and he really liked it a lot — I had a feeling he would. That show is unironically one of the best things on British television right now, and my brother, having been living Stateside for more than 20 years at this point, finds it interesting that US TV doesn't really have an equivalent format — not one that does particularly well, anyway.

The idea of "game show that isn't really a game show, rather an excuse to lark about" is a British institution at this point. You can trace it back to radio shows like I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue and suchlike, but it really came into its own on TV with shows like Shooting Stars and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Taskmaster feels like a step beyond even that by ditching the "quiz" premise altogether in favour of simply tasking its contestants with making a tit of themselves in various ways, but it really works — and has done so for 12 series at this point.

It's definitely a show that consistently brings me joy, so if you're yet to explore it for yourself, I highly recommend it!

So apparently there's a new COVID variant or something, and they've gone and called it something like Omicron to make it sound extra-threatening. I guess the upside of calling it that is that it now sounds a lot more like an RPG final boss, so that hopefully opens up the possibility of someone with a big sword gathering a party of plucky heroes to take it down once and for all.

I joke, because the alternative is in acknowledging the fact that this situation feels like it's never, ever going to be over. And it just kind of baffles me why people the world over have felt the need to be so goddamn resistant to attempts to keep everyone safe. There have even people that I know and respect acting like bonkers conspiracy theorists online over all this.

The reality is that the whole pandemic situation could have almost certainly been brought under control a lot sooner were it not for the fact that apparently a significant proportion of the world's population are complete nutters who think they know more than the concept of Science. These are the people who were still out and about in lockdowns, the people who have been anything but responsible about gatherings, and the ones who have been shouting the loudest about perfectly reasonable requests in a scenario like this.

Now we're faced with the situation worsening once again, and the possibility that the "light at the end of the tunnel" — the vaccine — is ineffective against the new variant. But you just know that if they try and instigate another lockdown or something, the same idiots are going to be out in the streets whingeing about personal freedom and whatever, making the whole situation worse for everyone.

I'm pretty fed up of it all. Not because I'm in a particular hurry to go out or anything, but because I'm so tired of what appears to be the apocalypse happening around us in more ways than one, and that a not-insignificant number of people appear to be perfectly happy to selfishly hasten it along rather than actually attempting to think of the wellbeing of others.

It doesn't really surprise me any more, though. If the last ten or so years in particular have shown us anything, it's that a lot of people are really self-obsessed, and if something doesn't affect them personally, it doesn't matter to them. Hell, I know I've been guilty of that at various points in the past too — only difference is that on the occasions when I've been guilty of it, I wasn't putting other people at risk in the middle of a global pandemic which, despite what everyone inexplicably decided partway through the year, is absolutely not over.

Oh well. Nowt that can be done about it right now at 11pm on a Saturday. Time for bed, I think.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it! We actually celebrated it here for once, since we had an American friend visiting and she offered to cook a bunch of traditional Thanksgiving fare for us to enjoy. Andie and I have always wanted to try whatever you call sweet potatoes cooked with loads of sugar and marshmallows and stuff, and now we have, and it was good. We also tried pumpkin pie for the first time, and that was also good.

We had a goodly amount of food, but it didn't feel any more excessive than Christmas dinner. Instead of a turkey, Andie made a "Starlight Dodo" from the Final Fantasy XIV recipe book (actually a glazed roast duck) and that was really good, especially when combined with mashed potatoes that had a shitload of butter and cream cheese in them, the aforementioned sweet potato thing, stuffing and what was apparently vegan chicken gravy, however the hell that works.

It was a really good meal and we had some fun in the afternoon playing some multiplayer games — primarily on the Wii, it has to be said. We spent a good while playing Boom Blox in particular, which is a really excellent game. As good as the Switch is, the Wii still has it beat for party games in a lot of instances — though the highly competitive game of Mario Party on Switch was good fun. (I won, so it was super fun.)

Anyway, tomorrow is going to be a complete day of rest, then on Sunday it's recording time and then we're heading down to see my parents and brother — the latter is over from the States for the first time in a while, so it will be good to see him, and also have a couple of days off from the daily grind. The trouble with doing a job you enjoy is you end up not taking any time off for the whole year. Oops. Oh well, at least I'm taking some now, and I'll probably nab a few days off over Christmas or something.

With everything taken care of for the week, I think it's time to kick back and relax with a poo, some video games and a bath, not necessarily in that order and certainly not all at the same time. I hope you all have a pleasant weekend ahead of you!

You may have noticed me trying something a bit new over on Rice Digital for the last few days, and this experiment is going to continue for at least a little while. It's called Attack the Backlog, and it's something of a different approach to writing about games that I think might turn out quite interesting.

The current model of writing about games is that you play a game, you write something, then that thing that has been written becomes your "definitive word" about it. You might revisit the game at some point — perhaps for a Game of the Year retrospective or something — but more often than not, once a game is written about, that's it.

What I'm experimenting with through the Attack the Backlog feature is something that has been discussed a few times in games journalism circles over the course of… probably the last 20 years or so, and that is a more "experiential" approach to writing about games. Rather than approaching the prospect of writing about a game as a singular assignment, it's an attempt to immerse oneself a little more thoroughly in it and perhaps chart changes in opinion and outlook as your time with the game continues.

After all, some games take a while to truly "click", while others reveal hidden depths over time. And so by continually revisiting them over a period of time, it becomes possible to find out more and more about them. This is a real strength of video — particularly Let's Plays — because on video you can see and hear how people's reactions change over time, but it's not something that is really experimented with all that much in writing. There's no reason why it shouldn't work though, hence why I'm giving it a shot.

Plus from a purely personal perspective, it gives me reason to get a whole bunch of unplayed games down from my shelf, actually play them and be able to call it work.

So far I've started digging into Idea Factory, Gust and Nippon Ichi's Trinity Universe, which I'm enjoying a lot so far, but rather than focus exclusively on that I'm going to continue revisiting that over time and punctuate it with some other stuff — perhaps some shorter fare. This evening I recorded an hour of footage of Double Dragon Neon with the intention of writing about it on Friday (I'm off tomorrow for Thanksgiving) and I'll do at least a couple of features on that, then there's a bunch of Inti Creates stuff for which this approach will probably work well, too.

The beauty of it is that I can set aside maybe an hour or so a day to play the game I'm featuring and not feeling that I'm having to turn my back on the "main" things I'm playing. In the process, I get a wider range of experiences, the audience hopefully gets some interesting things to read and some gameplay videos to watch, and I always have something to write about.

We'll see how practical it is in the long term, but I'm enjoying trying this approach out for now.

Okay. One more time. I'm determined to make this work. As a reminder, what you need to do is answer all of Akinator's questions honestly, but if he asks you whether or not you're fictional, say that you are.

It's that last bit we've been struggling with a bit. But let's see how things go today.

Does your character have a gaming channel? Yes.

Is your character a female? Feeeee-males. No.

Is your character hated by Patty Bladell? Who? No. I don't think?

Does your character perform surgery? No, he is terrified of the very concept.

Does your character play on the Dream SMP? I don't know what that is. No.

Is your character part of a militia group? This is going to some strange places. No.

Does your character play Roblox? Nope.

Does your character watch you sleep? No. My cat does, though.

Is your character American? Certainly not.

Is your character British? Absolutely!

Is your character known for Minecraft gaming? No.

Does your character have paws? Are you calling me a furry? Because that's fine if so, but no.

Is your character in the Sidemen Crew? We've been here before, and I still don't know what that is.

Is your character from the Portal game series? Nope.

Does your character live with their parents? I feel we're having to be very negative with these answers, but no.

Does your character have ginger hair? Nope.

Does your character have any children? Not to my knowledge, eyyy… I mean, no.

Does your character play Fortnite? Absolutely definitely not.

Does your character play FIFA? See above.

Does your character play horror games? Yes, definitely!

Is your character part of a two-person team? I don't think my wife counts, so no.

Does your character plant bombs? It's never come to that, no.

Is your character known for reading a lot? I guess?

Is your character a member of a 4-person band? No.

Is your character a haniwa statue? Yes, that would have been my next question too. No!

Are you MessYourself? What a charming name that individual has. But no, I am not.

Is your character chubby? Exceedingly so.

Does your character have a daughter? No.

Does your character have over 1,000,000 YouTube subscribers? No, but we broke the big 1K the other day!

Does your character have over 1,000 subscribers? Yes!

Does your character have a mythical gun? No.

Does your character need glasses? Yes! One step forward, several hundred back.

Is your character bald? Quite the opposite.

Is your character linked with journalism? For my sins, yes.

Is your character bearded? Relevant questions? What is this? Yes!

Is your character part of a group? No.

Is your character linked with the horror genre? Probably not "linked" as such, but I do like it.

Does your character use a ouija board? No, but I'm curious to.

Is your character internationally famous? I mean… some people in other countries know who I am, but I wouldn't say "famous". Probably not.

Does your character have metal on their face? No. (checks) No.

Does your character collect toys? To a certain extent, I guess.

Is your character a web critic? I think I qualify for that.

Are you Jim Sterling? Oh Jesus Christ no.

I'm not sure if I want to continue after this… but let's keep going.

Is your character part of the Hype House? I have no idea what any of these things you keep asking are.

Does your character have curly hair? No.

Does your character have a Minecraft series? There's more to life (and YouTube) than Minecraft!

Is your character part of the Night's Watch? No.

Is your character the ruler of their own kingdom? No, between my wife and my cats they have rulership pretty sewn up.

Does your character wear a blue hat? I do not wear any hat.

Is your character almost bald? I shaved my head, but I don't think that counts.

Does your character live in England? Yes!

Does your character have a disease? Nice follow-up. Not to my knowledge.

Is your character into politics? Fuck no.

Did your character steal a red velvet cake? No, red velvet cake is one of the worst cakes.

Is your character associated with Gravitonium? To reiterate: I don't know what any of these references are.

Does your character work with a group? I was about to say this has been asked several times already, but actually "work with a group" is probably more accurate than "part of a group" (in the performance sense). So I'll say "yes".

Is your character from the Yogscast? I've heard of that one! No.

Does your character wear glasses? You already know the answer to this one.

Does your character have a younger brother? No, an older one.

Is your character a philosopher? No, my brief study of him at university made me want to punch Martin Heidegger right in the balls.

Is your character fat? Don't hold back, Akinator. Yes.

Does your character have more than 50,000 YouTube subscribers? No.

Does your character have brothers or sisters? Yes.

Does your character live with his girlfriend? Does "wife" still count as "girlfriend"? I'll say "yes" for the purposes of this.

Is your character's fame linked with football? Absolutely positively not.

Is your character associated with Stampy Cat? Whatty cat?

Does your character have a northern accent? Good Lord, no.

Is your character overweight? I GET IT

Are you Tbone? Who the hell is Tbo– you know what, never mind.

I guess I should stop telling Akinator that I have a gaming channel if I want this to work! Or maybe I'm just so thoroughly unremarkable that I'm not like anyone interesting whatsoever. Who knows?

As I noted on my piece on Retrounite today, my little Anbernic handheld is getting a lot of use, simply because it provides such easy access to so many games I love.

This evening I've been playing Enduro for Atari 2600, which is one of my favourite games on the platform. Since I didn't have a 2600 growing up, I discovered this game relatively late. I did play its successor The Great American Cross-Country Road Race, though, but I actually think I prefer Enduro.

For the unfamiliar, Enduro is a racer where your aim is to overtake a set number of cars over the course of a series of virtual days. If you meet your quota by sunrise the following day, you keep going and get a new quota; fail and your race is over. Your final score is how many "miles" you managed to cover during the race.

At heart, Enduro is very simple. Opponent cars only appear in one of three lanes on the road, so it's mostly about dodging them. Where things get interesting is how the environment changes as each "day" passes. You start in the daytime, then things get bizarrely, suddenly snowy, then the sun sets, then you drive through the night, then the morning fog, and finally the dawn.

It's a great example of Activision at its best, pushing the 2600 further than anyone out there and producing games that played great as well as being technically impressive. Now what are they known for? Uh, probably best not to get into that right now, huh…

Made it through the busy weekend, and I lasted until about 11pm before autistic brain decided "nope, that's enough, time to go hide and play video games", which is not a bad record for me. I also discovered that I am still able to strawpedo an alcopop better than anyone else I know, so that made me feel "young" again, if only for a moment.

As you have hopefully seen on the YouTube channel by now, there will be no Atari A to Z or Retro Select videos this week — I'm taking a week off just so I'm not trying to cram everything in and stress myself out. I've just learned my brother is over visiting from the US next weekend, too, but by taking this week off that gives me some time to casually make a few vids during the week (as opposed to next weekend) and actually publish them next week, so that all works out just fine.

I enjoyed making the scrolly text message for the announcement video, and am satisfied that it came out at over 16 minutes in total. It took up a bit over 2K of memory, which is not much in scrolltext terms — certainly a long way off the B.I.G. Demo's 41K — but it was enjoyable to write, and as I was typing it I could absolutely feel my inner demoscener wanting to make things as elaborately wordy as possible. Or perhaps that's just the way I write anyway. Apparently I missed my calling writing '80s and '90s scrolltexts.

There will be some mild chaos in the house this week due to us taking delivery of a brand new bed and Andie taking the opportunity to refloor the bedroom (we're putting laminate floor in, in keeping with most of the rest of the house) but other than that, nothing super out of the ordinary happening, I don't think — aside from the visitors from this weekend dropping by for Thanksgiving on Thursday. We don't generally do Thanksgiving here, but since one of the visitors is from the States, it seems like a good opportunity to pig out on turkey and good food, though I will still have to work when I'm not eating lunch!

Right then, that's that for now. I'm going to go and eat Doritos and play Lufia 2 before falling asleep. That sounds like a fine way to finish the weekend.

Just a reminder to those of you who care: I have a pretty busy weekend ahead with visitors from overseas (and, err, Portsmouth) so I'm not going to stress myself out by trying to squeeze in making some videos — I'm just going to take the next week off.

Atari A to Z Flashback will be tomorrow as usual, and I'll post an "announcement" video on Sunday or Monday explaining the situation. Then we'll be back to normal the following week!

I'll likely still find some time to do something for the Rice Digital channel at some point since we're specifically trying to grow that a bit, but as for my own personal projects, the most sensible thing to do for the moment is to take a break. The same goes for the Atelier MegaFeature — I'm sorry to leave it quiet for a few weeks, but since I've been prioritising Blue Reflection: Second Light (since I really want to post some sort of deep-dive article on that over on Rice before the year is out) I haven't had time to play Lydie & Suelle at all.

No rush though, after all; Lydie & Suelle will still be there when my time with Blue Reflection is over — not that I'm in any hurry for that to happen with how much I adore that game — and if I time things right, I'll be wrapping up the Atelier MegaFeature just in time for Atelier Sophie 2 to come out. Woohoo!

Anyway, that's the immediately impending situation. I'm sure you'll all cope without my mellifluous voice caressing your shell-likes for the next week, but for those of you who really can't live without me, I have about a bazillion videos in the back catalogue now. Have you watched them all?

Oh, if you can get me seven more subscribers while you're on, too, that'd be awesome. Anyway. Happy weekend! Good night!

Okay. One more time. One more time. Bring it on, Akinator. (See yesterday's post if you have no idea what's going on.)

Is your character from your family? Goddammit. Yes.

Does your character go to school? No.

Does your character wear woman's clothing? Only in video games. No.

Can your character be kept as a pet? No. I don't think.

Is your character known for being a bad programmer? I am a bad programmer, but I don't think I'm known for it. I'll go with "probably".

Is your character associated with Microsoft? No.

Has your character been in love with your mother? I'm going to give this question the benefit of the doubt and assume this is leading towards "your dad", but either way… no.

Has your character ever been married? Yes. Twice! Second still ongoing, I hasten to add.

Has your character been showcased on DanandPhilGames? I don't know what that is. No.

Does your character have a grandchild? No, and never will. (By choice, I should probably say.)

Is your character an aunt or uncle? Yes.

Have you ever fallen in love with your character? Definitely not.

Does your character speak like an adult? He tries to. Probably.

Does your character play with a frisbee? No. Used to when I was a kid.

Does your character have over 5 million YouTube subscribers? Always comes back to the bloody numbers, doesn't it? No.

Does your character have holes in their hands? Is your character Jesus? No.

Does your character use a portal to travel between two countries? This is taking a strange turn. No.

Is your character famous for being clumsy? No. I am though. I hide it well for the most part, except at home.

Has your character have a song with over 100 million views [sic]? No.

Was your character discovered by Dr. Dre? No. I feel we're getting further and further away from the answer here.

Does your character explore Scotland? I've been to Scotland, but I wouldn't say it's what I do, no.

Is your character married to a star? She's my shining star or something… but no.

Do you like your character as someone who is more than just a friend? Do you like yourself more than just a friend? I guess yes?

Did your character give birth to you? Not to my knowledge.

Did your character receive a text from A? What? No.

Are you your uncle? No. This really isn't working, is it?

Does your character have any children? No.

Does your character have the same birthday as you? Yes. Uh-oh.

Do you and your character share the same DNA? Sigh. Here we go. Yes.

Does your character have nipples? Oooh, out of leftfield. Good job. Yes.

Has your character been in a video with Joey Graceffa? Who? No.

Does your character have only one parent who is from your family? No.

Is your character older than 17? Yes.

Are you your alter-ego? FUCK

Apparently I am destined to never be a fictional character. Oh well. I guess that's how life goes.