It's my birthday tomorrow! As such, I've been receiving a trickle of presents over the last few days, one of which was an A500 Mini from my brother, which I'm very happy about indeed. The Amiga in general has always been a sort of "far off, unreachable" thing for as long as I can remember — which I know is silly, because you've been able to emulate it for years — and thus this lovely new gizmo is as good an excuse as any for me to start exploring it.

Back in the day, the Amiga was "the great enemy" to Atari ST owners, because the two machines were rivals. Everyone knew deep down that the two machines had their specialisms and things that they were good at, but a bit of rivalry was fun.

More often than not, Amiga versions of games were significantly better in some way — particularly if they were 2D games — but the Atari ST came out on top in 3D games quite often, from what I understand. The Amiga also had impressive digital stereo audio hardware, which sounded amazing back at the time of original release, but has a distinctly "'90s techno" sound to it today; the ST's PSG chip, meanwhile, while technologically primitive in comparison, has aged quite gracefully, particularly when in the hands of someone who knew how to make it sing. Also the ST had built-in MIDI, which it is a contractual obligation for every ST owner to work into conversation as often as possible.

I had a couple of friends who had Amigas, so I wasn't particularly militant about my representation of the Atari ST crowd. I always enjoyed playing games on their systems, as well as making use of their unique applications such as Deluxe Paint and whatnot. But, for one reason or another, up until now, I've not really explored the Amiga platform in any great detail. That is about to change!

The A500 Mini comes with 25 games preloaded and preconfigured, but also has support for the "WHDLoad" system, which effectively allows games to be neatly packaged up into a single file and run a bit like a ROM in a console emulator. Consequently, over the course of the last couple of evenings, I've been loading up a USB stick with about 3,000 pieces of Amiga software in preparation to explore a bunch of them.

I was initially confronted with a strange challenge, which was that some of the WHDLoad games seemed to run much too fast, but I've found a way around that. (Let me know if you need details — they're a bit beyond the scope of what I'm writing here, but I'm happy to share.) So now I have an A500 Mini loaded up with what I can only assume is pretty much every Amiga game ever, and it's just waiting for me to dive in and fiddle around with it.

You doubtless know what's coming here: I think this is ripe for exploring in some videos, don't you? And there are two distinct perspectives that I think would be fun to consider: firstly, comparing the Amiga and Atari ST versions of games — and secondly, simply exploring some beloved "Amiga showcase" games, particularly those which were exclusive to the platform.

I haven't yet determined how I'll fit this in with my new schedule as yet, but I'm excited to start digging in. This Friday will be a Retro Select video because I've already recorded and edited that, then the following will be an Evercade one… beyond that, I'll figure out where and how to squeeze in some Amiga funtimes, because I sense I'm about to have a whole lot of fun exploring this system's library.

Good evening everyone! It's been a while since I last wrote — actually quite a bit longer than I realised, in fact, so apologies for that. But that's something I wanted to talk about today, as part of my ongoing efforts to continue enjoying my own private creative projects while simultaneously taking a bit of unnecessary pressure off myself.

More recent arrivals on this page may be wondering what the whole #oneaday thing was about on previous blog posts, so I thought I'd explain — because I'm ditching it from today.

#oneaday originally started back in 2010 as a community blogging project initiated by a few UK games journalists. I was never really part of the UK games journalism clique at any point, despite being a professional games journalist — the fact I typically worked for American websites probably didn't help there — but I was keen to participate in this project, because it sounded interesting.

Essentially, the idea was to post one thing on your own personal blog a day, every day, for a whole year. Each individual post didn't need to be good, it just needed to be something that you'd written. It was a means of keeping in practice, as it were, making it especially valuable for freelancers who might not have been constantly working on writing things.

Interestingly, the people who "founded" #oneaday all dropped out within the first month of starting, but I found the concept intriguing and enjoyable enough to continue going for two thousand, five hundred and forty-one days. You can read every one of those posts at my old, defunct personal blog here.

I enjoyed #oneaday, so when I started this Patreon page and was focusing more on MoeGamer than anything else, I decided that it might be fun to take up the challenge again. The daily posts would make a good opportunity for people to get to know me, and it would keep me writing stuff, even when I was working jobs that didn't exactly provide a lot of opportunity for creativity.

It didn't quite feel the same, though. Patreon lacks the sense of community that WordPress has — largely because it's a gated community with an admission fee, of course — and, moreover, the blog editor here just kind of sucks, particularly on mobile.

On top of that, there's no easy way to export stuff from Patreon somewhere else — or at least there wasn't when I started; there seems to be a WordPress plugin that does that now, though you need the ability to install plugins on your site to take advantage of it — meaning that if I wrote anything here that I was particularly pleased with, it was pretty much trapped here outside of manually, painstakingly copy-and-pasting into something else.

And on top of that, now that I'm writing every day over on Rice Digital… well, the original intention of #oneaday is a bit surplus to requirements. So rather than fretting over "missing days" and just churning out something quickly at the end of the day if I forgot or couldn't think of anything better to write, I'm instead ditching the #oneaday commitment and instead simply committing to writing to you all on a "fairly regular" basis — at least once a week, but more if I have something particularly interesting to share.

The result of this should be that my posts here should be a bit more interesting and substantial, and I take a bit more of that unwanted pressure off myself. I won't lie: on a number of occasions over the past few years I've considered shutting down Patreon entirely out of some weirdly misplaced sense of "guilt" for one reason or another — this particularly hits me when a patron leaves, though I emphasise that it's absolutely, definitely not their responsibility! — but I also really, really appreciate your support. Plus said support actually helps me out in my professional life by allowing me to acquire hardware, software and other goodies that I can use or write about in my actual job.

So basically, I want this to be less of a stress for me, but still provide you lovely people with something of worth in exchange for your valued contributions and generosity. So that's the plan. No more #oneaday, no more numbered posts, just some hopefully insightful and interesting things for you to enjoy on a semi-regular basis — plus the monthly Patrons Only! S videos for the S-rank patrons, which will be resuming this week now that I've shaken off COVID.

I suspect I've been overthinking all this considerably more than I needed to, but I wanted to give all of you a full and candid update on what's been going through my mind. My enforced "break" through COVID gave me plenty of opportunity to reflect on things, and I think this is going to work better going forward.

Thank you for your time, attention and understanding, and please look forward to some new posts soon!

I've been feeling really bad today. I don't feel too bad now, but for most of today it's been very unpleasant just being alive. Hopefully I'm over the worst — my wife, who is "one day ahead" of me in terms of COVID funtimes, has been a bit better today, so with any luck I should rally a bit tomorrow — but I certainly won't be sorry to see the back of this stupid disease.

Still being forced to take it easy for the weekend meant that I could just settle down and, when I wasn't coughing, spluttering, sneezing, having horrible headachey dizzy spells or wanting to sleep for three months, just play some games. I even finished two games — Tapeworm Disco Puzzle, which is the new Game of the Month on Evercade VS, and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, which concluded pretty much exactly how I hoped it would.

The latter was especially enjoyable, and yet another nail in the coffin for my appreciation of modern "Internet culture". The whole narrative was very cleverly handled in the context of the original Final Fantasy I, and actually rather sensibly made the effort to clear up at least some of the myriad plotholes in that game's back-of-a-napkin lore. It works excellently as a prequel to Final Fantasy I, and as a Final Fantasy fanservice game in general.

But what does the Internet want to talk about? Repeating the phrase "I'm going to kill Chaos", because saying something over and over again without any sort of context or commentary is funny, apparently. Main character Jack doesn't even actually say it that much in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, so it's just infuriating to see the lowest common denominator "everyone's a comedian" fuckwits latch on to the latest "meme" and parrot it without any thought whatsoever, rather than actually seeing what it's all about.

Oh well. That does leave space for some actually intelligent commentary on the subject at some point then. I guess that's one article for next week prepped and ready to go at least…

Tested positive this morning, not that I expected to escape unscathed when Andie's already got it. But yeah. That more than likely means I'll be spending most of my weekend in bed not even thinking about doing anything vaguely "productive", be that making videos for my own personal projects or fiddling around with anything for the day job.

Just wanted to let you know! Right after I got back from a break, too. Blech. Anyway, I don't feel too bad while I'm up and about at the moment so I'm going to make the most of it while I can before it gets too bad.

Stay safe! Wash your hands and all that shit.

Sorry haven't been around much for the last few days — we've both been a bit ill. Andie tested positive for COVID this morning; I'm still negative, but I'm feeling a lot of the same symptoms so I suspect I will also test positive within the next day or two. I'm all right for the moment, save for an annoying cough and a general sense of "bleh" about me, but we'll have to see how things go, I guess. If I'm too ill I guess I won't be recording a new video this weekend!

It's frustrating that catching COVID seems to be more of an inevitability than anything else right now. I know that getting COVID now isn't anywhere near as serious as it was back when the pandemic first started, but I can't help but feel that the whole switch in attitude from "do everything possible to contain this potentially deadly disease" to "eh, you're probably going to get it anyway" is a tad lackadaisical, to be polite about it.

To put things in a certain amount of admittedly biased perspective, I don't personally know anyone who had COVID at the height of the restrictions. None of my friends got it, none of my work colleagues got it, none of my family members got it. I think I might have had it right back at the start of the whole thing before anyone really knew it was a worldwide pandemic — the cough I had back then is very much like the cough I have right now — but aside from that, my world, including the "extended" aspect of it, was COVID free.

Now, in just the last few weeks, my Dad's had it, two of my local friends have had it, my wife's got it, several of my work colleagues have had it and I might have it. To me that suggests going back to being a bit more careful might not be a terrible idea… but apparently we're past that. The pandemic's over, don't you know. Everything's fine. Just don't look at the numbers.

Anyway, that's that. I'll keep you posted on my status but if I go quiet for a bit it's because I'm suffering in bed. If I go quiet for a long time, I'm probably dead, but hopefully it won't come to that.

Stay safe, wash your hands and stock up on the good cough medicine!

Greetings! As I noted the other day, my new, somewhat more relaxed schedule means that I can now provide you with legitimate Early Access to the upcoming videos, which will be published to the public on Fridays — so most of the time you'll get nearly a week of advance watch time!

This week it's time for Atari A to Z, and we're covering all-time classic platformer Chuckie Egg — a game I'm honestly surprised I haven't gotten around to before this!

This couple of weeks off has done me good — though traditionally, as with any period of "time off" from something, be it your job or your own personal projects, I have fallen ill towards the end of it. Nothing bad — pretty sure it's just a cold, though I will take a COVID test tomorrow just to make sure — but it's just left me a bit zonked out for the past couple of days.

Anyway, that's not the point. My actual point is that after reflecting on things for these last couple of weeks, I think I've decided on what I want to do, and that is to cut back quite considerably on what I've been doing each week, but still attempt to keep the main series I've had on the go running. I feel like between Atari A to Z, Atari ST A to Z, Retro Select and Evercade A to Z, there's plenty of variety to be getting on with, and that variety will help prevent burnout, particularly if I cut back on the pace a bit.

So with that in mind, I'm going to commit to just one video a week — with the caveat that if I have a quiet week and/or a surplus of energy, I might do the odd extra episode here and there. What I'll likely do is put that weekly video out on Friday, because that gives me all week to get it prepped and ready, plus a chance to release it to you folks as an "early access" sort of benefit for continuing to support me here, since I will likely record and edit over the weekend as I've previously been doing.

What this means is that each month I'll cycle around the four series a week at a time: Atari A to Z one week, then Atari ST A to Z the next, then Retro Select, then Evercade A to Z. That'll give each episode time to percolate without overwhelming everyone — I know I have a tendency to run long when I'm enjoying myself! — and also provide some variation from week to week.

Previously I would have described Atari A to Z as my main traffic magnet, but in more recent months it's been a bit more stable and consistent between all the different series, so I don't feel the need to place a particular emphasis on that right now. Taking this approach will let me continue to do all the things I love doing without exhausting myself completely, and I think things will be better as a result as I won't feel a need to rush through everything on "recording day", as sometimes happens.

I'll put out a video announcing this early next week, and from next week we'll kick off with the new schedule, starting with a new Atari A to Z on Friday and continuing on from there. I hope you enjoy the new episodes — and thanks, as always, for your continued support.