#oneaday Day 33: The Latest Horrifying News from the World of AI

Yesterday, the tech blog 404 Media reported on a horrifying development in the story of the World Wide Web’s gradual decline into AI-encrusted unusability: the apparent resurrection of the once-beloved TUAW (aka The Unofficial Apple Weblog), a site that hasn’t been active for 10+ years, into an AI-powered slop machine.

To make matters worse, the new owners of the twitching corpse of TUAW have apparently seen fit to “borrow” the identities of the site’s former regular contributors, replacing their original headshots with AI-generated portraits or stock images of completely unrelated people and replacing their original archived work with AI-powered “summaries”.

Naturally, the former TUAW writers are not all that happy about this. One of the affected individuals, Christina Warren, pointed out that the reason this has been done in the first place is likely “an SEO scam that won’t even work in 2024 because Google changed its [algorithm]”. She then concluded that those responsible were “Assholes!”, which I thoroughly concur with.

This is just the latest in a long line of absolute bullshit brought about by the infestation of “AI” into everything online. There is absolutely no excuse, no justification for what has gone here. Not only is it defacing the legacy of a publication that was once loved — and trusted — by a significant number of readers, it’s also destroying the portfolios of the writers in question, who are now saddled with AI-generated slop that has their name attached to it.

“I don’t want people to come across the contents coming out of that site and think that I actually wrote like that [very poorly],” Warren told 404. And I can’t help but agree — because we have a very real problem online in that sites shuttering often means vast swathes of work by talented writers just goes in the dustbin without warning. And while sites such as the incredible, wonderful archive.org do their best to keep a record of everything that once was, the sad reality is that a lot of stuff is just plain lost.

I know, because I’ve been on the receiving end of it multiple times.

My stuff might be in here… somewhere… maybe?

One of the first sites I ever wrote for professionally, Kombo.com, no longer exists, and its URL now redirects to a site called “GameZone”. Surprisingly, GameZone does seem to have some of Kombo’s old articles archived, though none of them are under their original byline, instead all attributed to “kombo” (lower-case). There are 28,435 articles attributed to “kombo”, all with the wrong dates on them — they claim to date back to 2012, but there are some with the headline “E3 2010”, suggesting that they were simply republished on the “newer” site in 2012 — and no means of identifying who wrote what. As such, it’s useless for me to use as part of a portfolio.

The two “big” sites I wrote for, GamePro and USgamer, also went belly-up at various points. In both cases, again, some of my work ended up archived on other sites. In the case of GamePro, some of my stuff found its way to the American tech site PC World, but a search for my name now throws up a list of useless garbage that quotes my name but doesn’t actually link to anything I wrote without manually scrolling through several pages of junk. And, of course, there’s no link to my byline for me to easily find everything by me, despite my byline being right there on the articles in question when I can find them!

This is the one and only GamePro article by me I could find after a few minutes of searching. It appears on page 2,689 of a defunct archives page. None of the images or links in the article remained intact.

USgamer, which folded a little more recently, fares a little better in that I actually have an author page on VG247, where the articles ended up — although said author page has no picture, no bio and a link to a Twitter account that no longer exists. There’s 8 pages of material from me, which I suspect isn’t all of my work from USgamer, but it’s a decent amount, at least. I just wish it wasn’t on VG247, which is a site I am… not a fan of.

Better than nothing — or being “AI summarised”, at least. Just wish it was under a different masthead.

In this respect, I guess I’m actually kind of lucky that my identity hasn’t been co-opted by a content farm and all my past work fed into ChatGPT to regurgitate at considerably lower quality than I originally wrote. But I have to confess that reading stories such as this one about TUAW fills me with genuine dread. I’m not overly concerned about AI “taking my job” because it’s rapidly becoming very clear that AI writing is both easy to spot and demonstrably inferior to a human being doing the same thing.

But I am concerned about the potential for AI slop with my name attached to it dragging my reputation through the mud. As a writer, I find it grossly insulting to my profession. And simply as a human being, I find what has been done here to be absolutely, totally unconscionable.

There has to be a breaking point somewhere. Soon. Please. I am rapidly running out of what little faith in humanity I have left. And there wasn’t a lot left in the first place.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 32: Lies, Damned Lies

A lot has been made about the supposed proliferation of “fake news” and, regrettably, because discussion about it started around the time of Trump’s last ascendancy (and to quite a significant degree from the Trump camp), not everyone takes the concept entirely seriously. But it’s definitely something that happens, and it’s making the Web less and less useful.

Earlier today, a member of a Discord I’m in posted a link to the following tweet:

The screenshots are of Windows Defender supposedly finding a plain text file containing nothing but the text “This content is no longer available.” to be a piece of malware — specifically a Trojan called Casdet!rfn. Obviously a plain text file is not malware, so this is ridiculous, and thus Microsoft must have made a silly mistake and we can all laugh at them, ho ho ho.

I tried it.

Windows Defender did not find it to be malware.

I Googled it and found several outlets reporting on this “story”, including some that really should know better (looking at you, Tom’s Hardware) — and not one of them had seemingly put in the minimal amount of effort required to verify that this was actually a thing. In other words, none of them had done what I did above: recreate the situation by composing a blank text file, putting the words “This content is no longer available.” in it and then scanning it with Windows Defender. A two-minute job, tops.

No, instead the most rigour anyone put in was to look at the replies to the Twitter post, which are fairly slim in number, making me wonder exactly how this misinformation had spread in the first place. The tweet in question has nearly 700,000 views, though only 800 of whatever the Muskrat is calling “Retweets” this week, suggesting the majority of its minor virality has come about through situations exactly like the one I describe above: people sharing it via means other than Twitter.

Now, I don’t blame the chap on Discord. He was just sharing something he thought was funny. I don’t even blame the original Tweeter, because it’s entirely possible that this was true once and it was quietly fixed in a Windows update. But I do blame all these people, and Google.

Not only for reporting on this without doing the absolute bare minimum of fact-checking, but for not correcting these stories if indeed it was once true and now is no longer correct.

Either way, the result is the same: a lot of misinformation gets spread very easily, often by people who have no ill intent. It’s not the fault of the people who share this stuff — although I personally would check any sort of claim like this before resharing it myself — but it absolutely is the fault of outlets authoritatively sharing this as “news” without doing any sort of research beyond looking at a few Twitter posts.

Sadly, this is what “news” is these days. Get a good hook for a story that might be the slightest bit clickable and/or shareable, then write it up (with at least 600 words for SEO purposes, of course) and just make some shit up in the middle if you need to. Doesn’t matter if the story is true or not; by the time people have clicked or shared, the article has done its job, and it doesn’t matter if anyone twigs that it’s bollocks or not.

In some respects, I’m sad that I’m no longer working the games journalism beat. But in others, I know that if I was still a newshound, I’d likely be gently encouraged into this sort of odious practice in order to get the numbers up.

I had more integrity and rigour when I was covering stuff for GamePro and USgamer. I’d find stories, research them myself and report on them only when I was good and sure that there actually was a story there. And I didn’t have to make a big deal out of doing that at the time, because that was the expectation for someone working a News Editor position.

Now? Engagement above all. Who cares if something is true? Numbers go big, suits stay happy. Fuck the actual audience who might want the publications they read to be reliable and trustworthy; they are, after all, the least important part of the whole equation these days.

If you’re looking for the Web as it once was, then I’m sorry to inform you that This content is no longer available.

#oneaday Day 31: Hypnospace

Decided I wanted a break from Dawntrail this evening, so I decided to give Hypnospace Outlaw a go, since I’d always been curious and it was cheap in the GOG summer sale.

For the unfamiliar, Hypnospace Outlaw is an adventure game of sorts, but rather than controlling a character you’re manipulating a computer from a fictional 1999 as it navigates around the “Web” of sorts. Technically “Hypnospace” is a Web-equivalent that people browse in their sleep through a special headband, but so far that doesn’t seem to have mattered all that much.

The fact it’s set in 1999 does matter, however, because most of your interaction involves using a delightful parody of the early(ish) Web — a land of personal Geocities pages, primarily. Hypnospace is a managed service rather than a completely open free-for-all, and divides user pages into specific “Zones” according to their subject matter. As you progress through the game, you’re given access to more Zones and thus more pages to browse.

Honestly, just browsing through the wealth of information that has been composed for these fake Web pages is a lot of fun in itself. The world of Hypnospace Outlaw has clearly been thought about in great detail, and even though it is, by necessity, considerably smaller than the “real” Internet — even as it existed in 1999 — there’s a sense that you really are exploring a community, but through your computer screen, rather than on foot.

The actual “gameplay” part of Hypnospace Outlaw places you in the role of a volunteer “Enforcer” for Hypnospace’s manufacturer MerchantSoft. This affords you special privileges — among them the ability to wield a literal banhammer — but also effectively stops you from “existing” online for the duration of your contract. Your job as an Enforcer is to seek out violations of MerchantSoft’s “laws”, which include copyright infringement, harassment, illegal (disturbing or offensive) content, distribution of malicious software and commercial activities carried out via non-approved channels.

This starts pretty simple with you wielding your banhammer on some obviously copyright-infringing pages, though the game makes sure you’re aware of the consequences of your actions through the way the page’s owners update their sites as the game progresses. In subsequent cases you’ll have to track down cases of cyberbullying via “hidden” pages, only accessible via certain means, and infiltrate rebellious groups by effectively using social engineering techniques to glean sensitive security information.

So far — I estimate I’m about halfway through the game — no real “judgement” has been placed on the player character for the things they do, though only the most hard-hearted won’t respond to the anguished frustration expressed by those who feel they had the rules applied to them unfairly. It’s satisfying to find your way into what the creators of a page clearly thought was a safe, hidden inner sanctum and then effectively wreck it by blasting its most important components for rule violations — but it’s also hard not to feel a little uncomfortable about it. That, I suspect, is kind of the point.

I’m intrigued to see where the story ends up going, as it’s definitely been intriguing so far — even though it’s mostly been little threads you can tug at as much or as little as you want up until the point I’m at. I suspect some sort of “big plot” will reveal itself before the end, though, and I’m looking forward to investigating it further. I’ll post some more in-depth thoughts about it over on MoeGamer once I’ve finished it.

For now, then, a thumbs up, particularly if you lived through this era of the Web. While it’s very much a parody rather than a completely loving recreation, a lot of it is bang on for how things really were back then — and it blends this nicely with a thoroughly modern tale about controlling the flow of information, censorship and self-expression. Good stuff.

#oneaday Day 30: A Milestone?

Is 30 days a milestone? I guess you can look at it that way, depending on if you consider nice round numbers a milestone. You can also look at 30 days as “about a month”, too, so I guess it’s significant from that respect. It’s a long way off the 2,541 daily posts from last time around, of course, but that all started with baby steps, too. And then it just kept going.

Now and again I like to hit the “Random Post” button on this site to jump to one of the myriad posts in the archives. I often find myself surprised how often it throws up the same things, given how many of them there are, but computerised randomisation is, as we hopefully all know by now, imperfect.

That gives me an idea for today’s post. I’ll hit Random a few times and see what I think of what shows up. Are you ready? Then let’s begin.

First up, Day 693 from first time around, and a post named Endings. In it, I contemplated the fact that I had just finished L.A. Noire, a game that I enjoyed a lot at the time but which I have forgotten almost everything about since. I pontificated on particularly effective endings that had stuck with me over the years — particularly downer endings. And Conker’s Bad Fur Day was one that stuck with me, due to it coming after all the foul-mouthed ridiculousness that had come before.

I still agree with this. Conker’s Bad Fur Day ends absolutely perfectly. It’s a huge bummer in a lot of ways, of course, what with our hero losing his true love, but it also provides something of a sense of “reality catching up with him”. The strange journey that Conker goes on over the course of Conker’s Bad Fur Day starts silly and cartoonish, but gets darker and darker as you progress through things. By the last few sequences in the game, things are still silly, but there’s a definite sobering undercurrent. The World War II-inspired sequence may have you fighting against teddy bears, but it’s still World War II, and a lot of people get hurt and die.

The ending of Conker’s Bad Fur Day is as much a signal to the player as it is to Conker. “Wake up,” it says. “The time for play is over. Now it’s time to get back to the grim reality of life.” Sobering, to be sure.

Next up, post 850 from first time around, entitled Diablolical [sic]. In it, I lay out how I’d been having a good time with the then-newly released Diablo III, and that I didn’t have as much of a problem with it being “always online” as the rest of the Internet seemed to. And that’s because I recognised that Diablo III, far more than its predecessors, was actually an MMO. A well-disguised one, yes, but still an MMO.

I actually stand by this assessment, though my opinion on Diablo III itself has soured somewhat for a variety of reasons. Firstly, after playing it a bunch, I realised that its setting and unrelenting grimness was just plain boring to me. The world of Diablo is a world in which there is no hope; one in which you defeat the Big Bad of the hour and there’s inevitably an even bigger bad lurking just around the corner. And once you’ve beaten all the Big Bads, they all come back, because that’s what Big Bads do in Diablo-land.

Secondly, it’s hard to get the various revelations about working conditions at Blizzard Entertainment out of my head. I’m not about to go on a big crusade about it or anything, but given that the Diablo series is already one I’d been feeling a bit “ehhh” about since the very beginning, knowing that some of the staff at the developer are shitheads makes it a lot easier to just go “fuck it” and never play anything from them again… particularly as all of their last few releases have some combination of loot boxes, battle passes or predatory “free-to-play” monetisation. So yeah, fuck Blizzard and fuck Diablo. Diablo III is still an MMO, though.

Next up, an earlier post: number 303, from 2010, in which I ponder the nature of Panic Stations. Specifically, through some exceedingly heavy-handed masking, I outline the things that cause me a sense of irrational anxiety, even when I know they’re not anything really worth getting het up about. 2010 was before I’d really sought any sort of help for mental health, and well before I’d been diagnosed with either anxiety or Asperger’s, but I still recognised anxious feelings in myself — and my brain’s tendency to blow things out of proportion.

This post is one I should probably return to now and again to remind myself not to get so wound up about stupid things.

Finally for today, an even earlier post from 2010: number 57, Look into the Eyes, in which I talk about the Derren Brown show my ex-wife (who was, at that point, just my wife) and I had been to see at the Mayflower theatre in Southampton. I really enjoyed that show, and both of us had a lot of time for Derren Brown. I feel like we don’t see much of him these days; I wonder what happened to him? Looking on Wikipedia, it seems he’s still active, but I guess the changing nature of how we look at media these days makes him less visible — I don’t watch “TV” any more, for example, and that tended to be where I saw him the most.

All right, that’s enough looking back for one day. My cat has just been sick and the other cat is eating it. I think that’s as good a cue as any to just go to bed.

#oneaday Day 29: Dream Education

I had one of those dreams that it’s difficult to wake up from this morning. It was a variation on a dream I quite commonly have, which involves being back in some form of education, knowing that I’m not doing something I should be doing, and not being able to make myself sort that situation out.

The most common form this dream takes sees me back at secondary school, knowing that the school’s music groups (typically the orchestra and concert band) are rehearsing and that I should be there, but I am not going. My old music teacher Mr. Murrall is standing outside the music block looking disapprovingly at me standing some distance away, often with my friends from the time, but I can’t bring myself to admit that I’ve made a mistake, and that I should go along and resolve the situation.

Last night was a little bit different, as it revolved around university. I had just moved into a new flat — not any of the flats I actually lived in during my time at university, but something my mind dreamed up — and was settling in, but I realised I had no idea when term started or if I should have been going to any lectures. Any time I thought “I should look up when term starts”, I was distracted from doing so, and I became more and more convinced over time that I was missing significant parts of my course. But, again, I couldn’t correct the situation.

Education-related dreams are, unsurprisingly, usually interpreted as being something to do with learning, and variations on the theme such as those which I describe above are usually tied to various forms of anxiety — often imposter syndrome.

If I’m being honest, I can tell where some of those thoughts are probably coming from. The recurring dream about not showing up to orchestra rehearsals is likely due to how I’m aware I don’t make nearly enough time to practice music these days, and should probably do something about that. I think I want a new piano, though; our current one is fine apart from a few seriously dodgy notes in the octave below middle C, and unfortunately those notes appear to be some of the most frequently occurring in almost everything I want to play! New pianos are expensive, though, so you can probably see where some of that anxiety comes from.

As for the imposter syndrome side of things, I’ve definitely felt that before. I’m not sure I’m feeling it a lot right now, because in my current position I feel like I’m valued and that I contribute something meaningful — although thinking about it, there are still aspects of the daily work life that do cause me anxiety, such as having to deal with the social media side of things. But I’ve definitely felt it in the past; feelings that I “don’t deserve” to be where I am, or that I’m worried someone will “find out” something about me that I don’t want to be found out — exactly what, I’m never sure, because I don’t have anything particularly shameful to hide.

I suspect, as someone with a natural undercurrent of anxiety flowing through me at most times, I will never be completely free of these dreams. I actually don’t mind them all that much, as they sometimes have an interesting, nostalgic element to them. I do wish my dream self could break free of whatever is holding him down and resolve the problems at the core of those situations, though… that way I could just enjoy being back at school or university!

#oneaday Day 28: A Developer Has Responded

In theory, the opportunity for developers to respond to user reviews on storefronts such as Steam, Google Play and the like should be a good thing. It should provide the opportunity for the developer in question to open a dialogue with a customer — be they satisfied or dissatisfied — and help move things in a positive direction in one way or another.

How it actually works, meanwhile, is quite different. Because most developers, it seems, can’t be bothered to do anything other than a stock response to everyone, even when it’s woefully inappropriate to do so.

I’d like to share with you a review I wrote recently, in which I found a “teleprompter” app for Android (this one, if you’re curious, which was recommended by one of the bajillion SEO-baiting “best teleprompter apps for mobile” articles festering on the modern Web) but was dismayed to discover it was asking for an extortionate subscription fee rather than a flat price. I am pretty vehemently against subscription fees for simple, single-purpose apps, particularly when they don’t have an online component, and I made this clear in my review.

A screenshot of a review on Google Play. The review is by Pete Davison and was posted on June 27, 2024. It gives the application one star. The text reads "This seems ideal for my needs, but it's a subscription-based app. I want to just purchase the software, not pay £4.99 every month. I would have paid £4.99 to buy a premium version of this app without hesitation, but asking for that every month is ridiculous."

Not unreasonable, I don’t think. Now let’s look at the developer’s response:

A screenshot of a developer's response on a Google Play app store review. It is attributed to "Norton Five Ltd" and dated June 28, 2024. The text reads "Thanks for your feedback Pete. The subscription model allows us to invest in continuing to improve the app and introduce new features. There is an annual subscription option, which does offer better value for money than the monthly one if budget is tight. You can also cancel at any time. Hope you'll reconsider and give the subscription a go." The text concludes with a smiley face emoticon and is signed "Phil".

Now this is an excellent developer response. “You think the monthly subscription is too expensive, so why not use the more expensive annual one” is a ballsy move, to be sure. “You don’t like monthly subscriptions, but it’s okay because you can cancel any time and lose access to the app you paid for” is also high up my list of “stupid things to say”.

More than that, it’s just plain bollocks. This comment is symptomatic of a widespread issue with all manner of software today, whether they be single-purpose mobile apps or more elaborate services. And that issue is that everyone seems to see a perpetual need to “introduce new features”.

I’ll remind you that when I came across this app I was looking for something that did one thing and one thing only: provide a “teleprompter” facility that I can use on my phone. To elaborate, that means provide the ability to display some text on the phone’s screen while the camera is recording, allowing me to make “eye contact” with the camera while reading from a script.

This app does that already. It does not need any new features. It is already fit for purpose, aside from the subscription fee. Therefore it does not need additional development or new features to be introduced. (Especially not a “Rewrite your script with AI!” feature, which it proudly boasts.) Perhaps a compatibility update every now and then to ensure it works with whatever current version of Android has been loaded onto my phone without telling me this week. But that does not warrant a fee of five quid a month or even twenty quid a year.

As I said, I would have quite happily paid a fiver up front for the app, and that’s being extraordinarily generous in the mobile space, given that most people don’t like paying more than 79p for anything.

The stock response from “Phil” about “introducing new features” and “continuing to improve the app” didn’t convince me in any way that the subscription fee was worth paying, and I suspect he knew that as he copy-pasted the words into the response box. So why did he bother posting it at all? Just so the fact he “responds to feedback”, even if it is with utterly stupid suggestions, is visible to anyone browsing the page and not looking too closely?

A few minutes later, I found another teleprompter app that does just charge once and then doesn’t bother you again. So I bought it without a moment’s hesitation. Don’t stand for exploitative, predatory subscription models, particularly on mobile where it’s extremely easy to forget about them. And support those folks who are actually providing a good, useful piece of software without trying to fleece you.

And Phil? Eat a thousand cocks.

#oneaday Day 27: Time for Change?

As I type this, the results for the General Election in this country are being announced. It looks likely that Labour are going to win a landslide victory, giving the Conservatives a seriously bloody nose in the process, but it also looks like the Reform party are going to make a few gains along the way, too.

I’m not going to pretend to know enough about politics to provide any more in-depth commentary than that, but I am relieved that we are at least looking likely to have a change of government. The last 14 years have been pretty rough for the UK, and some change is what we need. The question is, of course, whether the incoming new government are willing to do anything noteworthy or, as is probably more likely, they will continue to let things just tick along and gradually slide further and further into enshittification.

The rise of Reform is a little worrying, though I suspect their gains will be less noteworthy than the somewhat exaggerated hyperbole suggests. We’ve already heard some Reform representatives on the BBC’s coverage of the election complaining about “woke nonsense” without actually saying what they believe “woke nonsense” to be, and very carefully taking care to not say that they hate immigrants and transgender people.

The BBC has been pulling its punches a bit, though. It looked like the Reform candidate was going to be questioned on the “woke nonsense” line, but the presenters pulled back after she pretty much ignored the question. There was also some confrontation of “vile” comments made by some Reform candidates, but those weren’t pursued either. It’s a little frustrating to see coverage that is just on the cusp of doing some interesting journalism, but then pulling back in the name of… what? Impartiality? Perhaps.

Looking into it, it appears that the BBC did actually do some journalism into this back when it happened. And yeah, there is some pretty bad stuff in there. Naturally, Reform leader Nigel Farage claimed that the comments were being “taken out of context”, but there’s really only so many contexts in which you can take someone complaining about “the cultural feminisation of the west”, as Bexhill and Battle candidate Ian Gribbin did, and none of them are particularly complimentary. Same for Ynys Mon candidate Emmett Jenner’s obviously transphobic comments from 2018, though he claims his now-deleted Twitter account was a “parody”. (Of what, he didn’t say.)

There was an interesting point made on the BBC’s coverage, though, which is that there are quite possibly some voters out there who genuinely have no idea that Reform candidates have said some truly horrible things in the past, and simply voted for Reform as a “protest vote”. These days, I’m inclined to say that there’s not a lot of excuse for not knowing the true colours of various public figures, even if you’re not on social media, but I guess it is possible, particularly among the older generation.

But anyway. I’m not going to stay up and watch too much more of the coverage, but I do find it quite interesting for a little while. It’s going to be going on for about 10 hours, though, so we won’t have an absolutely final answer on what’s happening to the country until tomorrow morning. The exit polls would seem pretty damning for the Conservative government, though, and I am 100% fine with that. We’ll just have to wait and see what that really means.

#omeaday Day 26: Hotel Life

I’m writing from a hotel tonight, on my phone, so forgive any typos and the fact I can’t see a word count.

Sadly I am not on holiday. I am staying overnight in glamorous Letchworth as I’m going in to the office tomorrow. I try and do this once a month or so in order to have a connection with my colleagues that is more than just bugging them on Teams, and it usually coincides with us all going out to lunch or something.

Tomorrow we’re hosting a small-scale press day of sorts, where a few writers and YouTubers are going to have the opportunity to see how and where we work, plus get a preview of some of our upcoming stuff. These include new Evercade cartridges that haven’t been released yet, and the Evercade Alpha bartop arcade units that are being released in November. Should be a fun day for all.

I’m particularly looking forward to having a fiddle with the Alphas myself, as up until this point I’ve only seen unfinished prototypes and photographs. There’s still work to be done before the November launch, but the samples we have in now should be fairly close to the final product. I’ll be doing my best to get a photo of Treasure Island Dizzy running on one, just to make Neil from The Cave and This Week in Retro happy.

I did not have a fun drive here, though. Insane traffic on the motorway brought things to a standstill for quite some time, though thankfully I’d had the foresight to queue up some episodes of the This Week in Retro podcast to keep me entertained, so I wasn’t flung into a complete apoplectic fury by the sight of endless brake lights ahead of me. I do, however, remain glad that most of the time, I can work from home and do not have to commute.

I’m a bit hungry, but at 11pm in a town as thoroughly unremarkable as Letchworth I feel my options are probably limited. May have to pop out and see if I can score some supper from somewhere, though…

#oneaday Day 25: Atari In Your Pocket

We announced some new products at work today: two new models of the HyperMegaTech! Super Pocket, a low-cost handheld that comes with a bunch of built-in games, plus full compatibility with the Evercade ecosystem, allowing you to expand the device’s capabilities with 500+ games across more than 50 cartridges. And yes, that is the official PR line! I should state up front, though, that this is my personal blog, and thus nothing I say here should be considered official Blaze shenanigans; I just wanted to enthuse about this stuff.

One of the two new Super Pockets joining the existing Taito and Capcom devices is focused around Technos Japan, which is a brand for whom the license expired for their Evercade cartridge, meaning second-hand copies of it now go for absurd prices. The Technos Super Pocket brings most of those games (and a couple of newcomers) back at an affordable price point, which is nice.

The one I’m really excited about, though, is the Atari model, which comes with a whopping 50 games. And we worked with Atari to deliberately select a lineup of games that isn’t the same as those seen on other Atari-branded devices. Sure, we’ve got some familiar favourites in there from the 2600 and arcade back catalogues, but we’re backing those up with plenty of 5200, 7800 and Lynx titles, including a blend of both games that were on the existing Evercade Atari cartridges, and some brand new ones.

Perhaps best of all, we’re doing a limited edition (2600 units, natch) which is designed in classic ’70s-style woodgrain. You can preorder that one right now from Funstock; the standard non-limited versions of both Atari and Technos will be up for preorder at the end of the month for an October release.

With Atari having been such an important and defining part of my life growing up, I’m naturally delighted to play a part in bringing a bunch of these games back. So I thought I’d pick out some of my personal favourites, because why not.

Solaris

This is a great game for the Atari 2600. Despite not being called Star Raiders, it is an official sequel to the original Star Raiders (and different to the game actually called Star Raiders II on Atari 8-bit). It’s made by the same programmer (Doug Neubauer) and features the same conflict between humanity and the legally distinct Zylon Empire. Like Star Raiders, it features a blend of action and strategy, tipping a little further in the direction of “action”, and is probably one of the most technically impressive, ambitious 2600 games to come out of first-party Atari.

In Solaris, you fly a ship around the galaxy in search of the titular planet. You travel long distances on a grid-based sector map, and by warping to occupied sectors you can battle enemy fleets, destroy enemy bases and rescue allied forces from the Zylons. While it might initially seem complex, it’s easy to pick up and very compelling, plus relatively short play sessions make it ideal for handheld play. Definitely a highlight if you’ve never played it, though it is available on the existing Evercade Atari cartridges.

Miner 2049’er/Bounty Bob Strikes Back!

I’m grouping these together because they’re both very similar — the latter is the sequel to the former. They’re single-screen platform games in which you control Bounty Bob, a Canadian mountie, who is chasing down a dastardly trapper named Yukon Yohan. Yohan has, it seems, taken up residence in an abandoned radioactive mine filled with mutant nasties, so it’s up to Bob to clear the way.

The narrative setup doesn’t matter at all; this is a game from the early ’80s. What does matter is the gameplay. Your main task in each stage of both Miner 2049’er and Bounty Bob Strikes Back! is to walk across every bit of platform in the level. This starts out simple (in Miner 2049’er, anyway; Bounty Bob Strikes Back! is much tougher, working on the assumption you’re already familiar with the prior game) but quickly introduces you to a variety of gimmicks, giving each level a somewhat different feel from the last. Both games demand concentration, dexterity and for you to puzzle out the best route to victory, and their arcade-style structure makes them, again, great handheld titles.

Final Legacy

An all-time favourite of mine, this one. It’s best known as an Atari 8-bit game but it was also ported to the 5200, which is near-identical internally.

Final Legacy is an action-strategy game. Some call it “Battlezone with ships” but it’s a bit more complex than that. There are four distinct components to the game: a navigation map, in which you move around the game world, pick your targets and attempt (usually unsuccessfully) to avoid detection by enemy ships; a “Sea-to-Land” section where you destroy ground targets with a laser; a “Sea-to-Air” section where you shoot down incoming missiles (inevitably launched while you were pratting about in Sea-to-Land mode); and a Torpedo mode in which you destroy enemy ships.

Final Legacy isn’t one of Atari’s most well-known games, but as far as I’m concerned it’s Star Raiders-tier good. I hope the Atari Super Pocket encourages people to give it a proper go.

Ninja Golf

It’s Ninja Golf. The title surely tells you everything you need to know if you weren’t already familiar with arguably the Atari 7800’s best game.

Turbo Sub

A fantastic Atari Lynx game, Turbo Sub is a real showcase of the platform’s spectacular sprite scaling ability. It’s a first-person shoot ’em up in which you pilot the titular sub both above and below the waves, blasting enemies to kingdom come and, when beneath the surface, collecting crystals which can be spent to upgrade your weapons for the next stage.

Turbo Sub is pure arcade-style fun. It looks great and it plays super-smoothly. It was one of my favourite Lynx games back when I had one, and having it just ready to go on a pocket-sized device is going to be a delight.

Warbirds

Another great Lynx game, Warbirds is a World War I-themed combat flight sim. While its scenarios are limited to dogfighting against one, two or three other planes, the wealth of difficulty options mean that you can customise the experience a great deal, and it’s a lot of fun seeing how many missions in a row you can survive with everything turned up to the hardest level.

Like Turbo Sub, Warbirds is a showcase title for the Lynx’s sprite scaling capabilities, with both cloud cover and enemy planes depicted as smoothly animated sprites. These are combined with simple polygonal elements for ground detail — a few hills and the hangar that marks your airstrip. It’s relatively simple at its core, but it’ll keep you coming back for more.

Berzerk/Frenzy

I’m grouping these two together because, again, the latter is the sequel to the former. These are two early ’80s arcade games from Stern, casting you in the role of a little green man (literally) and tasking you with fighting your way through increasingly ferocious waves of killer robots. Take too long clearing a screen and the demonic Evil Otto (the world’s most terrifying smiley face) will come after you.

Berzerk is the original game, and became famous for a couple of reasons: firstly, its speech synthesis, which would often yell “QUARTER DETECTED IN POCKET” to unsuspecting passers-by; and secondly, the fact that, according to urban legend, it “killed” two people. (The truth of that one is that two people just happened to suffer a heart attack after playing a game of Berzerk; there’s no real evidence that the game itself or the stress of playing it caused the problems, but you know how these things go.)

Frenzy, meanwhile, adds a few elements to Berzerk’s basic mechanics such as reflecting shots and destroyable walls. The only home port it got back in the day was to Colecovision, and no-one had a Colecovision (which is a shame, because the Colecovision is very good!) so this Super Pocket release is noteworthy for being one of the few official home releases it has had since its heyday.

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I think that’ll probably do for now. I suspect I’ll be spending a lot of time with the Atari Super Pocket when I get one (because of course I’m getting one; I’d be getting one even if I didn’t work for Blaze) and I’m super-happy to be involved in making it a thing that exists.

You can find out more about the Super Pockets on the official website, and Evercade likewise. This was not a paid ad. I just like what I do.

#oneaday Day 24: I Love My Cats

As probably already very apparent from numerous previous posts, I love my cats. Having cats is one of the greatest pleasures of my adult life. Yes, even when they do this. Of course, it is always heartbreaking when you have to say goodbye, particularly when that parting comes far too soon, but that heartbreak is a sign of all the wonderful times you shared together.

So today I am going to share my cats, because why the hell not.

This is Patti:

And this is Oliver:

Both of them have very strong personalities. We’ve not known Oliver for that long in the grand scheme of things, since we got him a little while after Meg left us, but he’s already settled in very well and is extremely comfortable here.

Patti, meanwhile, has always been a very nervous cat and I suspect she always will be, but she’s very happy when she can spend time with just us. She doesn’t like strangers and she doesn’t like changes to the routine; she likes life to be normal, straightforward and free of surprises. I can relate.

Patti, we suspect, didn’t have the best start to life. All we knew when we got her from a local rescue was that she had been “abandoned” by her previous owner, but we didn’t know the circumstances surrounding that. Surprisingly, she took very well to us almost immediately, but it was also very apparent that she hadn’t really had anyone to teach her how to “cat” properly. There were certain things she’d do that were just a little bit “off” from how most cats do things — she didn’t struggle with anything, as such, but she just behaved like she’d never really been able to quite finish her initial socialisation process.

And given her background, that was understandable. When we got her, she was a tiny little thing. We suspect she was younger than the shelter thought she was, because she’s grown a lot since those days. And while she occasionally plays up a bit due to lingering stress (or possibly even trauma) she is the most lovely thing, and a delight to have around.

Oliver, meanwhile, came to us in a somewhat different way. After Meg passed, we gave it a little while to see how Patti coped, but it felt like she wanted some company, and we both missed the company of having two cats around the house. Unfortunately, post-COVID it had become very difficult to add an additional cat to an existing household in our circumstances; whereas pre-2020 you could go in to the shelter, meet the various cats who were there and talk with the people who ran the place, post-COVID you had to submit a written application and you couldn’t just show up and negotiate or explain your personal circumstances.

As such, my wife Andie decided to look for private sales. We saw a few possibilities, but got slightly bad vibes from one, so we politely excused ourselves from that situation. Then a suitable-looking candidate came up, but by the time Andie enquired, he had already been sold to someone. We were becoming a little frustrated by the situation, but we kept looking.

Two weeks later, Andie saw a familiar-looking cat listed. He had a different name, but he definitely looked familiar. We enquired about him, and indeed it seemed like the present owner had only bought him two weeks previously; unfortunately, she had discovered in that time that she was allergic to cats, so regretfully had to let him go. This time around, we were able to secure him and bring him home.

For the first couple of weeks, he was a pain. Constantly yowling from the other room, being a little aggressively dominant towards Patti, and worst of all, pissing on everything. We knew he hadn’t been neutered before picking him up, but we didn’t realise quite what a problem that could be, particularly with another cat in the house. As a priority, we made arrangements for him to have the snip and just stuck things out until then. We also made sure Patti got plenty of love and attention during this time.

Thankfully, after he was “done”, Oliver became a thoroughly lovely cat. He’s very friendly — though he hasn’t quite graduated to Patti’s level of “bed cuddles” yet — and extremely curious. He’s also a cheeky little bugger; on more than one occasion we’ve caught him fishing food packets out of the bin, and he stole and ripped open a bag of treats on one occasion, too. He likes to eat.

Patti very much wasn’t sure about him at first. She’d keep her distance, hiss and growl at him. But over time, her reaction to him softened somewhat. She’d allow him to approach a little more before hissing, and the growling stopped. Eventually, the hissing stopped, too (unless he does something to really piss her off) and now the two seem to be actual friends, which is wonderfully heartwarming to see.

Patti and Meg got along, but Meg was always a grumpy cat — she even had a note on her vet’s file that she was uncooperative and angry — and as such, despite clearly liking Patti (she’d come looking for her if she didn’t know where she was) she’d keep her a bit at arm’s length. Patti and Oliver are, I think, becoming quite close; there’s still a bit of mistrust on Patti’s part for entirely understandable reasons, but Oliver has always wanted to be her friend, and that hasn’t changed even with his horny bits being removed.

I love them both very much, just as I still love Meg, Ruby and my childhood cats Kitty and Penny. The cats I have known will forever be a precious part of my family, and those who are no longer with us will always have a place in my heart.