Hello! Bit of "admin" to talk about today. It doesn't affect any of you, but you might be interested to know regardless, as it determines what I'm working on and when, and thus if you're following the various things I'm doing… oh look, you just might want to know, all right?

As most of you reading probably know, I've been running Rice Digital since January of last year, Retrounite since the middle of last year, and alongside that I've also been helping out the Evercade team with writing manuals, digital content and suchlike. The range of things I've been doing is because the various companies who do these things are all part of the same group, which also includes a video game publisher and localiser many of you are doubtless familiar with, plus an online retailer that, again, many of you are probably familiar with given our mutual interests!

Despite all these companies technically being part of the same group, they all maintain their own independence and autonomy; it simply means they answer to the same CEO ultimately. Said CEO doesn't interfere with things that much; he simply steers the overall "business" in various directions, but the various actual companies under his umbrella all operate pretty much as entirely their own thing.

Take Rice Digital, for example; although we're under the same umbrella as a publisher who puts out stuff that will be of direct interest to Rice's audience, Rice is still an independent entity and thus we can cover pretty much whatever we want, within reason. Doubtless you've seen plenty of examples of that over the course of the last year!

The original intention behind Retrounite was for it to operate in a similar manner to Rice: to be an independent editorial entity that nonetheless maintained loose connections to the other companies under the same umbrella, perhaps nudging people in the direction of some interesting products and services that they might enjoy. Rice has been doing great in that regard; it's absolutely not an "advertorial" site — I'm making sure of that! — but it's also helping out other parts of the business simply by raising awareness of things.

The retro market is a bit different from the "current" market, however — largely because it's so dependent on second-hand stuff and private sales, plus the fact it's such an incredibly broad field. As such, Retrounite has been quite slow to grow; it has been growing, make no mistake, but not at such a rate that makes it something the company as a whole can necessarily afford to have me spending too much time on during my working day. Not when there are other things I could be turning my attention to that would be of more direct and immediate benefit to the business, anyway.

With that in mind, Retrounite is not closing. No! Instead, what has essentially happened is that I've been handed the keys to it to do with as I please for the foreseeable future — then if it does happen to generate a significant audience in the long term, we can look at it again and see if there is a way that it can benefit the broader business. But short-term, I'm free to make use of it as a hobby project however I see fit — and indeed if I see fit.

Note that this isn't an attempt from my employer to get me to do "unpaid" work. I'm under no obligation to keep updating Retrounite, and indeed I was told outright that I'm free to just let it go if I want to. But, the thing is, I enjoy it — and so I'm going to be keeping it going on a casual basis for the immediate future. And, given the fact that I'm free of pretty much all restrictions — not that I was particularly restricted when it was an official part of my job description — I can do all manner of things with it from hereon.

In the short term, expect my videos to be posted on there more regularly, along with their publication on YouTube. The various features I have going will also continue, because I'm finding it useful and educational to continue researching them. But with this now being a "hobby" site rather than a commercial interest, that frees me up for potentially doing collaborations with anyone who might be interested.

Obviously with it not being a commercial interest any more, it's not something I can pay people to do anything with — if I'm not getting paid for it, you sure ain't! — but if, say, you're someone who is a retro enthusiast and you want a place to write but can't be arsed to set up your own blog, I'll happily accept some guest posts, promote your work in the retro sphere and all manner of other things. There's a great deal of potential for building a nice little community around that site, and that's something I'd like to explore.

So, given that Retrounite will be becoming a "free time" thing, I can't, at this time, say how often I'll be updating it — but it will be as regularly as possible without burning myself out!

You may well also be wondering what I'll be doing with my time if Retrounite will no longer be part of my paid working day. Well, the answer to that is basically "more of what I'm already doing". Rice is ticking along very nicely and has been showing some very pleasing growth over the last year, so nothing really needs to change there, but the Evercade folks have been figuring out the best way to organise themselves for quite some time, and they want me to be part of it all.

So with that in mind, we haven't banged out the details yet, but the long-term plan is for the Evercade site to start hosting relevant articles that relate to both retro gaming and the Evercade in particular. It'll essentially cover similar sorts of things to what I've been doing on Retrounite, but specifically and explicitly focusing on Evercade-related matters.

It'll help add a ton of value to the Evercade website not just as a commercial site that is advertising products, but for those who want to take their appreciation of the platform a little deeper. What I'm envisioning right now is for articles on the Evercade site to provide insights and historical information about the various games available for the platform — and which are coming soon — in a level of depth that isn't possible in the printed manual or digital on-console text formats I've been working with up until now.

In that way, a particularly dedicated Evercade fan will be able to buy a new cartridge, play all the games on it and then enhance their immersion in the whole retro thing by actually learning some stuff about those games on the Evercade site itself.

I think that has the potential to be really cool — and be something that really distinguishes Evercade from other retro gaming offerings out there, which typically go "here's the games, here's PDFs of the original manuals (if you're lucky), off you go". I'm really looking forward to it — and we'll be taking a look at exactly what we want to do for the first time from next week.

So anyway! That's the long and the short of what we decided today. Like I say, very little is really going to "change" from your perspective — but as mentioned above, if you do want to be part of Retrounite in some way, it's now practical and possible for me to make that happen, so let me know if you want a place to post some retro ramblings, or if you just want me to pimp out your YouTube or whatever.

Oh, and as for MoeGamer, I know that's been at a standstill for a while. A lot of what I would have previously done daily on MoeGamer is now what I do on Rice, and honestly I don't see a ton of point in doubling up on my workload if I don't have to. As such, if you enjoyed what I've done on MoeGamer to date, I encourage you to stop by Rice every day — we post loads of great stuff that will definitely appeal to you!

I do, however, want to keep MoeGamer up and running as what is hopefully a valuable and interesting resource for people to read and find out more about a wide variety of games — and that's why despite it being relatively "dormant" right now, I still very much consider it a part of this Patreon. Your contributions help keep the hosting and WordPress Premium features online; without them… well, I'm not 100% sure what would happen, but I'm certainly well over capacity for image hosting on WordPress' free tier.

I also am intending to get back to the Atelier MegaFeature, because I am determined to get that done — I just need to be in a position to devote some time to it properly, and that means having less "on the go" elsewhere. Right now I'm still covering Full Metal Daemon Muramasa over at Rice Digital, for example, and that's a meaty ol' visual novel that is demanding a lot of my attention — as is Final Fantasy XIV, if I'm being perfectly honest. But I am at least writing about that, too!

What I'm thinking I might do is take on Atelier Sophie 2 for Rice Digital (and make copious notes along the way so I can also write about it on MoeGamer) and provide that with some suitable, detailed coverage — and then that will (hopefully) get me right back in the mood for more Atelier, so I can then crack back on with Atelier Lydie & Suelle, which I was enjoying before I managed to disrupt my own schedule so significantly!

So the short version is: it will be back, I'm just not 100% sure when as yet. And there's likely to be at least one article on Atelier Sophie 2 over on Rice before it starts back up again!

Right, I've rambled on long enough. Hope that's all clear. If you have any questions, feel free to ask — otherwise please keep enjoying what I do!

In the interests of sharing the love a bit, I thought I'd tell you a bit about a YouTube channel that I've come to like very much indeed, and which I would encourage you to go and subscribe to — and perhaps consider supporting on Patreon, too. I think I'm going to sign up for his Patreon after I'm done writing this, as I've been really enjoying his work just recently.

I speak of RoseTintedSpectrum, a channel that's been around for a couple of years at this point, and which has been improving pretty much constantly ever since that first Dizzy video he did.

As the name suggests, RTS' channel primarily focuses on the classic home computer, Sinclair's ZX Spectrum. But the nice thing is that he doesn't let this restrict him from talking about other things if he feels like it. Sometimes he talks about things that aren't even related to retro gaming at all — he did a particularly good video a while back about anxiety, depression and his relationship with alcohol that is very much worth a watch. But he always does so with plenty of style, good humour and wit.

His videos aren't necessarily what I'd call "reviews" as such, nor are they "documentaries" in the traditional sense — but they're not gameplay videos either. Instead, they're something that is very distinctive to RTS, featuring a combination of good, representative gameplay footage, amusing use of stock photographs and footage (Internet Historian-style) and excellent use of visual aids and graphics when necessary. By the time you've finished watching a vid on a particular game, you've got a good idea about how it works, whether RTS liked it — and if you might like it, too, even if he didn't. This is really nice.

The thing I think I like the most about RTS is that although his vids have plenty of silly jokes and humour in them, he resists going down the "OMG YOUTUBER!!" route that so many people seem to take these days. You won't find crash zooms, fisheye lenses, pitch shifting and bits of text just saying what the people speaking are saying in RTS' videos; they're well-crafted, thoroughly watchable and genuinely amusing. So you should go and watch them too.

Anyway, enough of that. I said I'm going to support him on Patreon, so I'm off to go put my money where my mouth is. I hope you enjoy his stuff as much as I do! Subscribe here.

Hello S-Rank patrons! As promised, here's the inaugural Patrons Only! S video — in the absence of any concrete suggestions thus far, I thought I'd show you all something that is very important to me, which has come up numerous times in my videos, and which a number of people have previously expressed curiosity about.

I've also amended the description for this tier to say at least one of these per month, because there will doubtless be times when I feel like doing more! I am absolutely committing to at least one of 'em per month, though, and I hope you enjoy them.

As previously noted, please do feel free to drop "requests" in the comments here, on YouTube or via Patreon message, and I'll quite happily cater these videos to what you want to see. For now, hope you enjoy this one!

Good day of recording today. Got the first new "Patrons Only S" video recorded, too, and that's currently rendering — should hopefully be with S-Rank patrons tomorrow assuming all goes well. You'll have to wait and see what that's all about!

Other stuff you can look forward to this week includes English Software's Xenon Raid on Atari 8-bit, a public domain version of Q*Bert for Atari ST, Jill Goes Underground (aka Jill of the Jungle episode 2) for MS-DOS PC and Super Asteroids and Super Missile Command for Atari Lynx via Evercade. Quite a nice mix of stuff, I'm sure you'll agree — and you'll be pleased to hear the Jill Goes Underground vid is a full playthrough again.

The weekend's been a strange mix of quiet and chaotic, largely due to the fact it's been fairly calm and peaceful for me, but I'm also quite aware of some of the shit my friends in the localisation biz have been having to deal with recently. It's all been rather coming to a head recently — hence an article I wrote on Rice this week — and I think a lot of people have had their eyes opened to the behaviour of… shall we say, the more toxic end of the community.

Thankfully I've remained free from any harassment or having to deal with any shit, so it's mostly just been kind of baffling, amusing and horrifying by turns to witness. I mean, we're talking about one dude who literally equated the author of a Japanese VN deciding that he doesn't want to do 18+ works any more… to the Holocaust. All because he decided to coincide his decision to go all-ages with the work's localisation to English.

The Internet was a force for good. But I don't think that whole "everyone has a voice" thing is working out quite as well as people intended.

(Sorry.)

It's video recording day tomorrow, and one of the games I'll be putting out next week (spoiler, I guess) will be the second part of Jill of the Jungle: Jill Goes Underground. The reason for this is that I enjoyed playing through the first Jill of the Jungle so much that I want to play the rest! There was just something about that game that really "clicked" with me… and I was left wanting more. And there is more, so I'm going to play more.

In fact, I've actually been so eager to play more I've had to stop myself from just booting it up today to fiddle around with, because I want my playthrough on video to be "blind". I mean, I doubt you care, but I thought it would be more fun to discover things for the first time alongside you lot.

Anyway, I'm really hoping for some more magnificently stupid sound effects, as heard in the first game, and an overall feeling of "expansion" from the first one. That was ever the shareware way; subsequent episodes after the free shareware one would inevitably be recognisable, but have immediately noticeable differences — new music, new graphics, new sounds and, of course, new levels.

Because Jill's presentation is relatively simple, I find myself wondering exactly what will be added in the new game. But I'm certainly looking forward to finding out. It's weird when something relatively unremarkable catches your attention, isn't it? I mean, Jill of the Jungle is a fondly regarded game with good reason — plus an important part of Epic's history — but it's far from the best platformer you'll ever play. And yet I can't stop thinking about it.

Ah well. That thirst will be slaked tomorrow!

After we did a proper tidy and deep clean on my study the other weekend, I've been spending a few evenings actually playing some stuff on real hardware. Most notably, I've been finding myself thoroughly drawn in by a game I used to really love when I was younger: Starflight from EA and Binary Systems.

Every time I revisit one of these older "space games" like Starflight, Star Control or Space Rogue, I find myself a little sad that we don't really get games like this any more. I mean, yes, we have stuff like the X series, but that's a little different; Starflight, if you're unfamiliar, is more a sim of "being a starship captain" rather than being a "starship simulator", if you see the difference. In other words, the interface is supposed to imply you giving orders to your crew and receiving the information from them rather than involving you literally doing everything by hand.

I had high hopes for Mass Effect being a (then) next-gen take on this kind of space sim back when we were first hearing rumblings about it — the stuff with the Mako in particular reminded me very much of the Terrain Vehicle sequences in Starflight and the similar lander sequences in Star Control II — but that ended up not being the case. And that's a shame; I feel like we could do a really good "space game" these days, with a vast universe to explore coupled with an approach to controlling things that is less about "flying a starship" and more about "sitting in the captain's chair".

I'm not sure I'm explaining that clearly. But I do know that Starflight for Atari ST is still a great game that I'm having a lot of fun playing right now — so I will be continuing to enjoy that in the absence of anything more modern that scratches quite the same itch!

Hello everyone! Bit of "business" for you today!

I'm going to change up the rewards for S-Rank (£5+) Patrons to better fit with what I'm doing these days, and I wanted to let you know what I was planning — as well as give you the opportunity to talk about what you might want to see! I know pretty much none of you are here just for the rewards — both tiers have always been "token" rewards as thanks for your support rather than anything particularly desirable or exclusive — but I do want to make sure I offer something reasonably meaningful for those of you who are generous enough to support at the higher tier.

With that in mind, I'll be replacing the previous wallpaper rewards (which, frankly, I was starting to run out of ideas for) with an exclusive, patrons-only monthly video. Said video won't have a set format and I am 100% open to requests from the S-Rank patrons as to what each month's video will include!

That means if you'd like to see some gameplay of a particular game, tell me. If you want a tour of my game shelves, tell me. If you want to see some real hardware in action, tell me. If you want me to try and play something on the piano for you, tell me! Nothing is off the table except, obviously, anything that will make YouTube-kun upset (or, y'know, getting my knob out and stuff) — so if there's something you want to see me try my hand at, just say so.

I experimented with doing some patrons-only videos a while back which were open to all patrons — you can find an archive of them here if you're curious — and enjoyed doing those a lot. I think it'll be fun to do some more freeform stuff like that — plus it's an opportunity for you kind people to let me know what you want to see, as well as something properly "exclusive" I can offer to S-Rank patrons.

Anyway, with that in mind, I'm going to make the first of these videos this coming weekend, so feel free to put requests/suggestions in the comments below. If I don't get any requests or suggestions I'm just going to do whatever I feel like — you'll get a video regardless. That sounds a bit like a threat, doesn't it? It's not. Promise. Probably.

That's about everything there is to say about that, but if you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Alongside this, I also think I'm probably going to shut down the Discord server. It doesn't get used very much and, to be honest, worrying about it (for no real reason, I just have anxiety) is something I can probably do without. If you're absolutely desperate to keep it, do let me know — but with it being pretty quiet on there for the longest time I think it's time to give it the boot. You can easily reach me privately on Discord via MoeGamerPete#2465, and I know that I share some more active servers with at least some of you reading this — so feel free to say hi via other means!

I won't shut down the Discord right away, but if I haven't heard any convincing arguments in its favour by… let's say next Friday (Feb 18), I'll be getting rid of it then.

Thank you for your time and attention! I'm off to play video games.

I haven't fully caught up on the Nintendo Direct as yet because I was playing Muramasa and got so wrapped up in it that I really didn't notice the time. I also got the bad ending, so now I need to figure out how to make that not happen, but that's a job for another day — I definitely played enough to write about it tomorrow!

I have, however, skimmed some of the headlines, and man, it sounds like that was a complete banger of a Direct. Chrono Cross! Front Mission! Live a Live! 48 new Mario Kart tracks! Xenoblade Chronicles 3! Fire Emblem Warriors! Doubtless plenty more things I haven't seen yet!

After the last Direct I paid attention to (I think it was the Metroid Dread one?) was a fairly moribund affair, they've absolutely come out swinging this time around. While both Sony and Microsoft continue to be really, really, really boring — woo, they each bought one of the companies behind some of the most uninteresting games on the market today — Nintendo continues to set an amazing example by proving that yes, for them, it is indeed all about the games and nothing else.

Even the most hardened of anti-Nintendo fanboys would be hard-pressed to claim that tonight's Direct wasn't full of genuinely amazing stuff — including things that people have been asking for for ages, and things that people have been certain were probably going to happen, but unsure when. And a significant number of them are Switch exclusives, too — all without needing to buy anyone.

I think one of the most interesting things is the number of remakes of PS1-era classics that were showed off in this Direct. That demonstrates pretty clearly that Nintendo has a very good awareness of the people who make up a significant proportion of its audience — and while they're still of course keen to court the family-friendly image they've always had, providing a solid string of rereleased or remade classics for Switch is going to very much endear them to gamers of my age or thereabouts.

Anyway, I'll likely do some more analysis over on Rice tomorrow once I've had a chance to watch the presentation properly, but for now… a hearty, enthusiastic thumbs up. Just the thing to cheer me up after the bleakness of tonight's Muramasa session!

The one thing I dislike quite a bit about the whole "working from home" thing is how video calls have become the go-to means for people to, in their eyes, solve a problem quickly.

"Can we call?" No we cannot, because I have crippling anxiety in one-on-one social situations at the best of times, magnified a thousandfold if it's an audio or video chat.

I don't really get why people think it's a quicker, more efficient means of communicating, though I suspect that may just be years of my own habits talking. I am, after all, someone who has always felt more comfortable communicating via the written word, be it in a real-time chat or via email, and thus my perspective may be skewed. But in all seriousness, I do struggle to think of a time when a video call has been more efficient than a quick text message.

I guess it's down to different ways of communicating. Some people prefer to literally speak their minds, while others (like me) prefer to take their time over a written response. Ideally everyone would be able to find some sort of sensible middle ground, but with two such "extremes" in play it feels like it can be tricky to do so sometimes.

So yeah. You want my attention? Send me a message. I'm not jumping on a video or voice call unless I absolutely positively have to!

I have noted a few times in these very pages that I love reading old magazines, even when they're no longer "relevant". Which is why when, a while back, my Dad decided it was time I took over the collection of Page 6/New Atari User magazines he'd been holding onto for years, I was thrilled. This was an opportunity to revisit a variety of memories — some of which were still clear as day, others of which had mostly vanished into the mists of "the past" until I was prompted by something I'd read.

Today I happened to be reading one of my Dad's old "Making Music with Your Atari" columns. In it, he described the process he and my old clarinet teacher (also My Brother's Girlfriend's Father, as referenced a few times in Atari ST A to Z videos) were taking in using Emagic's "Notator" software to produce professional-quality printed musical scores.

The pair of them had taken on a project to produce proper scores for a piece of music that an acquaintance of MBGF had written. If I remember correctly, she was getting on a bit in years, and the piece of music in question had never been properly published, unlike many of her other pieces; my Dad and MBGF decided that they wanted to do this nice thing for her — and learn a great deal about using Notator in the process.

I hadn't thought about this whole project for years. I don't know that I'd say I'd forgotten it, because I ended up inheriting a lot of the said composer's pieces of music after she passed away (for some reason — I never met her, so I can only assume they came via MBGF) and thus I get an occasional reminder that she existed. But what I hadn't thought about for a very long time was what a major part of our life at home this whole Notator project was.

My Dad worked insanely hard on it, and after reading the article I remembered it being something that was part of our lives for a surprisingly long time. I had forgotten that my Dad and MBGF had the intention of setting up a small music publishing company named after the piece of music they had worked so hard on, and that they weren't expecting to make a profit, but hoped at least they broke even. (I have no idea if they did in the end or not, but I suspect my Dad and MBGF at least found it a valuable learning experience if nothing else.)

It's fascinating to have so many of these almost-forgotten memories written down on paper to stumble across every now and then. As a general rule, I have the kind of mind that has absurdly good long-term memory for the most mundane and stupid things — little social interactions that have been forgotten by everyone else who was involved in, usually — but as this experience attests, there are things that get pushed into the back of even a long-term memory like mine.

(I should probably also add at this point that my short-term memory is atrocious; my wife can tell me she's going out later and I will have forgotten by later in the day.)

Anyway. That's my story for today. Read old magazines. You never know what you might end up remembering!