#oneaday Day 358: Retrofest 2025

Today I went out! All by myself and everything. Specifically, I went to Retrofest 2025, a new event held in sunny Swindon that promised a room full of sweaty old men and their peculiar computers, and delivered on that promise in spades. While the event was short on things to actually buy and come home with, it was thoroughly interesting to see some of the things people (and a few organisations) had chosen to exhibit from their personal collections.

I took a few photos from throughout the day. This isn't a comprehensive rundown of everything by any means, but I'll attempt to remember what everything was and tell you a bit about it. In no particular order:

Those who know me well will know that I have a major soft spot for Philips G7000 "Videopac Computer", a games console with a membrane keyboard. This is the "PS5 Pro" equivalent of that system: the G7400, which only came out in France to my knowledge. It runs all the G7000 games, including enhanced visuals for some of them, as well as more advanced titles specifically designed for it. That big grey lump on the back of it is a module that attempts to turn it into more of an actual computer, featuring additional RAM and Microsoft BASIC for programming.

Sadly, this wasn't up and running to play with, but it was a pleasure to actually see one.

Here's an Atari XE Games System, colloquially known as the XEGS. I've never actually seen one of these in the flesh. This was an attempt by Atari post-ST to revitalise the flagging 8-bit range by rejigging the 65XE computer into a games console with a detachable keyboard. Unlike the 5200 from several years earlier, the internals of the XEGS were identical to the Atari 8-bit home computers, so you could use pretty much any software and peripherals with it.

If this all sounds a bit like Atari didn't really know what they were doing at the time… you would be absolutely right. This thing is still cool, though. I like how the function keys look like those flying saucer sherbet sweeties.

I was really interested to see this, a device known as both the CreatiVision and the Dick Smith Wizzard. Those who follow my videos may recall I saw this device advertised in an early issue of Page 6 magazine and had never heard of it. I asked the owner, Quang from Asobi Tech, about it. Apparently it's an Italian system from a roughly similar era to the ColecoVision (as one might expect from the design). Its capabilities are also roughly similar — which in turn means that it has similar capabilities to the MSX standard — but it's not cross-compatible with either the ColecoVision or the MSX itself.

Its notable feature is the full keyboard that spans the two controllers. These can either be used as an individual set of buttons for two players (presumably with overlays available) or "docked" into the system for a full-width keyboard of sorts.

The system wasn't a success, but it somehow made it to Australia, which is where the Dick Smith branding came from. Dick Smith was basically Australia's Alan Sugar, and he loved putting his mug on everything he sold, and the "Wizzard" was no exception.

Here's a fully working Asteroids Deluxe cabinet, the middle-sized one that lacks the "floating" backdrop of its larger counterpart. I spent quite a lot of time playing this today, and it turns out I don't dislike Asteroids as much as I thought I did.

Part of it was down to playing with those lovely leaf-switched arcade buttons and hearing the sound booming out from the internal speakers. But I just found myself enjoying the game in general a lot more than I have in the past.

The owner of the Asteroids Deluxe cabinet, streamer Rage Against The Retro, also brought a selection of other systems, all playing Asteroids. On the left there is a Vectrex, and situated next to it is an Apple Macintosh Plus. There's an Amiga A600 just to the right, also.

It occurred to me when playing both the Asteroids Deluxe cabinet and the Vectrex that I'd never actually played games on an authentic vector monitor before. The effect (which absolutely does not come through on either photos or video) is stunning, particularly the piercing brightness of your shots. This is one thing that emulation absolutely cannot do complete justice to.

Here's two very tiny TVs, both hooked up to games systems. The bigger one was hooked up to the A600 from the previous image, while the teeny one was attached to a Spectrum. Both were playing variants of Asteroids; the Amiga had follow-up Blasteroids, while the Speccy was playing a decent recreation of the arcade original.

More Asteroids! This time we've got an Atari 7800 playing a recent(ish) port, plus there's the Spectrum running one of the tiny TVs. Note the custom arcade controls Rage had set up to mimic the arcade version's control panel.

Here's some interesting rarities. On the left, we have two variations of the COMX-35 computer, which was designed to be low-cost, but which seemingly failed to leave any impression on the industry whatsoever. At least part of that may be down to the fact that it used the distinctly non-standard RCA 1802 processor while most other home computers of the era were using either the Zilog Z80 or the MOS 6502. It also had a peculiar 35K of memory. But it did have a built-in joystick, making it a nice little games machine.

On the right, we have Bandai's RX-78 "Gundam" home computer. And yes, it was named after the giant robots in an attempt to make it more appealing. This completely failed, however, as the system disappeared quickly with only about 20 pieces of software available in total. It looks neat though!

Here's a closer look at the COMX-35, with its chiclet keys and its fun quasi-industrial design. The more I look at this thing, the more I like its overall aesthetic.

And the RX-78 up close, too. Note the BASIC cartridge plugged into the back, ready for 10 PRINT "FARTS" 20 GOTO 10 shenanigans, and the matching joystick to the right.

This beauty is a Commodore RX-64, a "luggable" version of the Commodore 64 with integrated keyboard, floppy disk drive and monitor. Unsurprisingly, this beast of a thing completely failed on the market due to the fact it weighs ten and a half kilos and cost over a thousand dollars in the mid '80s, when the C64 itself was less than half that price.

It is a lovely thing though, and Commodore enthusiasts seem to enjoy it a lot. I can see why — it's fun to have everything integrated, and despite a few differences in the OS ROMs, it's mostly fully compatible with disk-based Commodore 64 software. It can't load tapes, though, as it has no tape controller at all.

This may look out of place, but the show was at Swindon's "STEAM" railway museum, and this little display was part of a display on train sets run by digital controllers from the 1970s. I didn't look into this too closely, but as someone who occasionally had the opportunity to play with Hornby trains when I was little (my family had a nice collection stuffed up in the loft that occasionally came down for an outing), it was nice to see this.

Here's some prototype Acorn machines. Without these, you might not have a smartphone! Yes, that's right, the "A" in "ARM" was originally for "Acorn", though now it is for "Advanced". ARM processors first appeared in Acorn Archimedes machines, which were a generation beyond these initial prototypes; these things would have ultimately become the BBC Micro and the Electron.

This is a teletype machine! This was an incredible amount of tactile fun to type stuff on, and unlike a regular typewriter it would type things back at you! You could also run a program on it that would punch out a message on the roll of paper tape to the side. I don't really know what this was "for", as such, but it was very cool!

Here's a pre-production prototype of the Dragon 32, the computer that Americans know as the TRS-80. Well, there are a few differences, but they're pretty similar internally. I don't know much about this machine but it certainly has its fans on both sides of the pond.

This is a Commodore MAX. I don't really know what this is! Apparently this was a cousin to the Commodore 64 that was mostly sold in Japan. It has similar capabilities to the C64, but a lot less RAM and a really horrible membrane keyboard. It also lacks much of an internal OS on ROM at all, making it more of a games machine that can do a few computery things than a full-on home computer.

This is a Spectravideo device that allows you to program in BASIC on the Atari 2600. At least, it does if you can figure out how on Earth to actually type things on it, because it uses a weird keyword-based system where pressing a single key inputs a full command, similar to Sinclair's BASIC. This is another thing that I'd seen in a magazine in a video I'd made, but had no idea even existed until quite recently. A thoroughly interesting little thing, though!

Finally, here's probably the rarest thing at the show: a Mattel Aquarius II home computer. The Aquarius range was such a flop for Mattel that it was cancelled mere months after its release, and as such very few Aquarius II units made it out into the wild. We're talking like maybe 25 out there — and this is supposedly the only one known to be in full working order. It's owned by a chap who has been developing games for the system for a while — at this point, he has now made more games for the Aquarius range than were released for it in its original lifespan.

And that's that! It was a really fun day out, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was good to see some YouTuber friends, set a few high scores, have a play with some intriguing rarities and see what the retro enthusiast community in general was up to. Particular shout-out to this guy, who is doing near-arcade perfect ports to the BBC Micro, of all things. His Missile Command and Frogger were particularly stunning.

Anyway, now I am very tired so I am going to go and lie down. If you're in the Swindon area tomorrow, first of all, I'm sorry, and second of all, maybe try and pop in to Retrofest — I'm pretty sure there's still a few tickets available. You can find out more here.

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.

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#oneaday Day 357: Shakespeare & Hathaway

So, dear reader, you may be wondering: after my frankly unnecessary agonising over whether or not I "should" start watching it, given all the other stuff on my media plate right now, I did, in fact, start watching Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators. And I'm enjoying it a lot!

For the unfamiliar, Shakespeare & Hathaway (as I shall refer to it hereafter) is a fairly light-hearted crime drama about the unlikely Stratford-upon-Avon-based duo of private detective Frank Hathaway and his partner in crime-solving, Lu Shakespeare. The pair are brought together during the first episode when there is a murder case at Lou's wedding, and they just sort of… stick together after that.

Shakespeare & Hathaway is not a show that concerns itself with small details, such as whether or not Lu would be allowed to work with Frank as an investigator with no experience or qualifications — a quick Google reveals that private investigator licenses are not actually required here in the UK, but they are strongly advised — but rather in simply providing a series of interesting crimes for the duo to solve. And in that, it succeeds pretty admirably.

As with most crime dramas, each episode focuses on a single case. And they're a varied bunch, to be sure. In one episode, the duo are investigating on behalf of an undertaker who has been given 24 hours to live by a pair of sinister hitmen. In another, they look into the case of a boy who has curious blackouts and is convinced that he is going to commit a murder. In another still, a gift shop owner turns up dead after an apparently botched break-in, but something just doesn't quite seem right.

One of the things I really like about the show is how it isn't afraid to be kind of "cartoony", particularly where its villains are concerned. This is a show where the villains don't exactly twirl their moustaches and do full-on evil laughs, but they honestly come pretty damn close on quite a few occasions.

Perhaps it's more accurate (and fitting) to say that the show is rather theatrical, given its setting and title — and the fact that Shakespeare and Hathaway's long-suffering assistant Sebastian is a RADA-trained (but out-of-work, natch) actor. And, yes, he is often convinced to perform (pun intended) undercover assignments that involve him dressing up in elaborate costumes and often playing "characters" that are very different from his rather mild-mannered but camp and sarcastic real persona. The highlight so far was a scene where he attended a cross-dressing bar and made such a convincing woman that he turned everyone's heads — and I suspect more than a few viewers might not have immediately clocked it was him until he opened his mouth, either.

Also, as you might expect given the Stratford setting, the show is riddled with Shakespearean references, both subtle and slap-you-in-the-face obvious. But Bard nerds will be happy.

The show's not going to win any grand awards or be remembered for years to come, I'm sure. But it is an eminently likeable piece of television, featuring a central cast who have good chemistry with one another. This isn't a show about said central cast going through high drama or amazing revelations — at least, it hasn't been yet — but I'm honestly fine with that. Frank is a pleasingly likeable, flawed everyman type — and I appreciate that he's a larger gentleman, played excellently by Mark Benton — while Lu is someone keen to prove her usefulness, yet endearingly ditzy. There's more than a touch of Daisy from Spaced about her in terms of personality and mannerisms.

I'm coming up on the end of the first series, and I've very much enjoyed it so far. If you're a fan of crime drama that doesn't get too grim, and which takes joy in theatrics and comedy, I would comfortably recommend it to anyone. It's not a demanding watch, but it is oddly compelling. And I'm looking forward to watching more!

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#oneaday Day 356: Bellyachin'

Well, I didn't finish Kathy Rain 2. I think I'm on the last "day" of it, though, so I should have it all wrapped up by the end of tomorrow evening, I reckon. I could have probably pushed through it tonight, but I hadn't written this, and I hadn't done stupid social media things that I do every day (the "#365games" tag on Bluesky) and I have had a stomachache all day, so I thought I should probably call it a night.

Of all the aches and pains it is possible for one to experience, few are worse than a lingering stomachache, because while something like an achey back or joints can be at least temporarily relieved by moving around a bit, a stomachache stubbornly sits there and demands your full attention, even when you have a lot of things to do. And I had a lot of things to do today, let me tell you.

It was the Evercade 5th Anniversary Showcase today, during which we revealed two more NEOGEO cartridges, two cartridges from Taito (surely a pleasant surprise for everyone who thought Taito stuff was forever confined to built-in games on specific pieces of hardware), and a single-game cartridge featuring the truly excellent Roguecraft DX, an enhanced and expanded version of a very good (and award-winning!) Amiga game that came out last year.

It was a good show all round, and I think most people were happy. There were the usual moaners and complainers, but I'm pretty much just tuning them out at this point, because 95% of them are moaning and complaining about things we haven't said, just working on doomsaying and assumptions. And when someone's being like that, it's frankly not worth getting involved.

I'm really excited about the stuff we've got coming up this year. It's a relief to have been able to let the cat out of the bag for some of it today, but there's even more coming later in the year that I think people are going to be even more excited and surprised by. Evercade has been going from strength to strength in terms of the quality licenses we've been able to agree each year, and this year in particular is a string of big names. I obviously can't tell you what the unrevealed ones are as yet, but if you're into your retro gaming, you'll be pleased to see them, I can tell you that.

I should probably stop typing before I say anything I shouldn't, and go and lie in bed groaning until this stomachache goes away. It is small consolation that Andie has also been suffering today, suggesting to me that something we both ate yesterday probably wasn't good, likely the burgers we had for dinner. That also, hopefully, means we'll both be feeling better tomorrow. But for now, I anticipate an uncomfortable night ahead, perhaps with a side of thunderous farting. Yes, I could definitely go for a thunderous fart or two right now.

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#oneaday Day 355: Soothsayer

I've spent the evening playing Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer. I played Kathy Rain: Director's Cut a few years back and apparently didn't write about it, but suffice to say I enjoyed it. As such, I was excited to see the sequel show up a few days back — one of several interesting-looking adventure games that have released recently.

I've played about 4 hours of it this evening and I'm not sure how far through I am — most estimates seem to place it around 7 hours in total — so I'm not going to give any conclusive thoughts just yet. I'll save those for MoeGamer and/or YouTube another time. I can give some first impressions, though, and those first impressions are very good indeed.

Like its predecessor, Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer is a point-and-click adventure presented in deliberately low resolution pixel art, albeit making use of modern widescreen resolutions and colour depth to provide a level of detail that wouldn't quite have been possible back in the classic VGA age. It is, I believe, an Adventure Game Studio affair, which accounts for its interface being rather similar to The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, another excellent modern adventure I played a little while back. That's no bad thing, though; Adventure Game Studio is a well-respected engine, used by a lot of modern adventure developers with good reason.

As with most modern adventure games, interactions in Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer are kept nicely simple. Click on things to either look at them or do something with them, click on inventory items to examine them, drag inventory items onto items in the scene or other inventory items to use them on things. Conversations unfold using a Gabriel Knight-style keyword system, where Kathy accumulates (and erases) keywords over the course of her investigation and can ask interactive characters about them, along with also being able to ask them about things in the scene or her inventory. It's a simple but effective conversation system that works well, and there are occasional traditional dialogue options that appear when Kathy has multiple things to ask about a situation.

Kathy's case this time around is that of a serial killer known as the Soothsayer. This individual has committed five murders over the course of the last few months, with the most recent being a local celebrity writer. As a rather down-on-her-luck private investigator, Kathy sees the $200,000 reward money and decides she'd like a bit of that action, so she proceeds to go about her investigation in her own mildly anarchic style. I say "mildly" because while she flouts a few rules and laws over the course of her investigation, she does draw the line at doing anything likely to get her thrown in prison — or, indeed, lose the confidence of her contact in the police force, who, as you might expect, is a helpful resource to draw upon, particularly as he very much wants to get into Kathy's pants.

Thus far in the 4 hours of play, I haven't felt like I've got "stuck" at all, which is good — and the game has kept up a decent pace as a result. The puzzles, while not super-easy, won't take long to solve for experienced adventure game veterans, but they are nonetheless satisfying. There's no moon logic on display here; everything makes logical sense, and those who really struggle can check out Kathy's notebook to get some hints on the objectives she needs to accomplish. The presence of the notebook and a list of objectives in the first place is a helpful addition not normally present in this type of game; it helps keep you focused without spoiling the sense of player agency or working things out for yourself.

I remember the original Kathy Rain getting a bit weird towards the end — and I didn't have a problem with that, I hasten to add — and I have a suspicion something similar is probably going to happen in this one, too. The "weird bit" of the first Kathy Rain led to some eye-opening revelations about the character, so I will be very surprised if something similar doesn't occur this time around, too. But we'll have to see, I guess.

Thus far, then, I've been thoroughly absorbed by this new investigation. The game looks great, has a wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack and decent voice acting, and it plays very well, too. Plus at what looks like it will be 7-10 hours in total, it's a decent length for this type of game, too — particularly when you consider most of the "golden age" adventures from Sierra and LucasArts could be beaten within an hour or two (or even less, in some cases) if you knew what you were doing.

I'm looking forward to seeing how things end up. At this rate, it's looking like I might beat it tomorrow. I will definitely pen some more substantial thoughts for MoeGamer and/or my YouTube channel when I've finished the whole thing. For now, though, it's an easy recommend for adventure game enthusiasts.

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#oneaday Day 354: Where the hell did the evening go?

It's half past ten at night and I feel like I haven't really "done anything" this evening. Sure, I went and had a bath, and I enjoyed watching Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators while doing so (then I finished watching it after said bath) but other than that… I have no idea where my evening has gone.

I certainly haven't been sitting staring morosely into space, so that's something, at least. But I'm just a bit confused; I didn't finish work particularly late, and the only other thing I've done this evening is play the piano (long overdue, I need to do that more often) so, I say again, whuh?

Oh well. I guess that just means I better make the most of the remaining time I have this evening, without collapsing into bed at too ungodly an hour, because, after all, I still have to work tomorrow. I am probably going to spend a bit of time playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which I fired up on a whim last night and found myself enjoying quite a bit. Or I might just watch another episode of Shakespeare & Hathaway.

Oh, I did also watch an episode of What We Do In The Shadows earlier, because the fifth season of that is now on BBC iPlayer, so that's another half hour or so accounted for. But I still feel like there's several hours' worth of time missing.

Well, these things happen, I guess, and sitting trying to work out how and why my evening has vanished into the ether isn't going to bring any of that time back. So I might as well stop poncing around here and go and do something enjoyable. Not that this isn't enjoyable in and of itself, of course — I love and respect you, dear reader — but, well, y'know, sometimes you feel like you need to have had some time that was just for you, no-one else. No commitments, no "making content", no monetising one's hobbies. Just enjoyment.

So that's what I'm off to go and do for an hour or two. Toodle-pip.

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#oneaday Day 353: Too much media?

The world can be an overwhelming place for all manner of reasons, and one of the things most likely to overstimulate all of us at one point or another is the sheer amount of media that there is. There is more stuff in the world than one person can reasonably experience in a single lifetime, and most of us likely feel at various times like we're being pulled in multiple directions, the constant threat of Maybe Not Enjoying The Thing You Picked As Much As The Thing You Didn't Pick a common source of analysis paralysis.

Case in point: this evening, I happened to see over Andie's shoulder that she's watching a TV show called Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators. I can tell from the bits I've watched over her shoulder that I would almost certainly enjoy this show, but is it something that I "should" add to my plate, given I have games on my shelves I haven't played, DVDs and Blu-Rays on other shelves that I haven't watched, and an entire Internet full of possibilities just a click away?

The answer, of course, is "stop overthinking it, and if you think you might enjoy it, watch it". And I think I just might. It's not as if I have to commit to watching it to the exclusion of all else, and it's not as if I have to watch it every day without fail otherwise I'll forget what's going on. As a TV show, it's designed to be inherently "disposable", as horrible as that sounds to say about a creative work; perhaps "transient" is a better descriptor. It's something designed for you to enjoy in the moment, then not think particularly hard about. There are plenty of other TV shows that I've watched in the past that fall into this category — I quite often look back over past entries of this blog and see entries about shows I apparently watched but have absolutely no recollection of whatsoever — and I don't feel too bad about that. I enjoyed them in the moment, which was their purpose.

Not everything needs to have meaning, to be life-changing, or to have a particularly strong and powerful message to deliver. Sometimes entertainment is simply for entertainment's sake, and there's nothing wrong with that.

So y'know what? I think I might just start watching Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators. It looks like a fun show that I think I will enjoy, and my instincts are usually pretty good on these things. I may not remember it a year or two down the line, but does that really matter? Not at all; if it's enjoyable now, and it helps distract from the shitshow that is life in 2025, bring it on, I say. The planet might have burned down in a couple of years, and when that time comes it's not going to matter one jot what my media consumption habits were.

This isn't even a new problem. For as long as television has existed, people have doubtless agonised over which channel they should watch, or if they should do something other than watching television. That particular problem is compounded for those who had satellite or cable TV, of course, as they had even more choice. And in times before electronic media, were people agonising over which book they should read, which painting they should admire or which sonata they should play on the piano? Entirely possible.

Life is short; much too short to agonise over decisions as ultimately trivial as what you're going to do to entertain yourself of an evening. So if you feel like you might fancy something, just take the plunge and enjoy it. There are no wrong choices. (Well, there are, but that's not the sort of decision we're talking about here.) Taking care of yourself is of paramount importance, and allowing yourself to get trapped into a mental spiral of trying to prioritise things of equal unimportance is a sure-fire way to make yourself miserable.

So, y'know, don't do that. I am going to try and take my own advice here.

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#oneaday Day 352: Having a garden is Pretty All Right

A garden is something that it's easy to take for granted. No, more accurately, a garden is something it's easy to forget about, allow to get into a terrible situation and then not be bothered with wanting to fix it up. I vividly recall the garden at my third-year student house being along these lines, with what can only be described as a "small, wild meadow" on the front lawn by the time we vacated the premises.

But I also have fond memories of gardens. As a kid, I used to like spending time in the garden at our house. I particularly enjoyed any time I was allowed to get out "the wigwam" (yes, I know it was almost certainly a tepee), plop an old cushion in it and pretend to be camping out in the back garden. I used to read out there. Hell, I used to study out there; I have oddly vivid memories of sitting out there in said little tent reading the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music's Rudiments and Theory of Music in preparation for my Grade 5 theory exam.

I also have extremely fond memories of going to visit my "Aunty" Sue and "Uncle" Peter's house, and them having outdoor garden parties. (The "Aunty" and "Uncle" are in inverted commas due to them not actually being relatives; they were the "friends of my parents" kind of "Aunty" and "Uncle".) They were rather well off, and had a huge house with a massive garden. It was probably more accurate to say that they had "grounds". As a kid, it was nice to have a safe, outdoor space that I felt like it was possible to actually explore, rather than be able to see the entire area from wherever you sit or stood in it.

Then there were my parents' other friends Pat and Keith (oddly, they were never an "Aunty" and "Uncle" scenario) who had a cool multi-level back garden with a rockery that I always enjoyed futzing around in. I remember one time we went to the Robin Hood Centre in Nottingham (they lived relatively close to Nottingham) and I came back with a kid's bow and arrow set, and I spent a good few hours just shooting the bow around the garden. My parents and their friends joked that I was going "cat hunting", because their cats Merry and Suki liked to hang out in the back garden, too, but I would never do a thing to harm them; they were very good cats indeed.

Just recently… well, for quite a while, actually, Andie has been working hard to make our back garden nice. It's been just sort of… there for quite a while, and it's been a gradual process of her sorting it out. The main thing she wanted to do was replace our horrible old shed with a brand new summer house-style one, which she did, but in doing so she was clearly bitten by the landscaping bug, because over time she's been doing up the rest of the space, sorting out the flower beds around the side and making a nice little "nook" down at the bottom of the garden with some comfy furniture to just be able to go and sit.

I went out there for a sit this afternoon. Not to go and sit and do anything, just to go and have a nice sit outside. I don't think I've done that for a very long time, and it was very pleasant to just sit outdoors, enjoy the nice breeze and the sunshine, and not have to think or worry about anything.

If I was in somewhat better physical condition, I might even be tempted to try and do some stuff in the garden myself, though I have absolutely no idea where one might start with such things, and Andie has kind of already taken care of most of the major things that need doing. I still might try and get involved a bit more, though. Just doing so will probably be a decent bit of gentle exercise, and that's something I could really do with on a slightly more regular basis.

Regardless of circumstances and purpose, I think I will probably be spending a bit more time out in the garden this summer; it's nice to get out of the house now and then, even if it's literally just into your own back yard.

Is this what it means to be in your mid-40s? I guess so. It's not so bad.

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#oneaday Day 351: Mission accomplished

I did what I set out to do today, which was to record the voiceover for my MotorStorm video (I'd already taken the footage) and edit it together, plus record a Let's Play for The Sword of Hope. I actually ended up liking The Sword of Hope enough to record three episodes, and I'm going to play it through to completion, so some more recording of that is on the agenda for tomorrow.

This is good. This was fun. Sometimes what you need to do is just do something a bit different from the norm to get you reinvigorated and reinspired to work on things that are important to you. The fact I've just made a video on a PS3 game and a Game Boy game doesn't mean I'm abandoning the home computer stuff on my channel — it just means that I felt like doing something else for a bit, so I'm doing that. It is, after all, my channel, and while I'm creeping close to 4,000 subscribers now, none of my audience is so entitled that they've ever complained when I felt like taking a hard turn into something completely different for a while.

I've also decided to attend the RetroFest 2025 event in Swindon next weekend. My blog post a little while back about The Cave got me thinking that it's been a long time since I actually got out of the house to see some of the equally nerdy old men who also make YouTube videos about old computers from various different perspectives, and it would be nice to actually be sociable for once. Yes, I may have a cripplingly low sense of self-esteem due to my physical appearance repulsing me, but these folks are all nice people, and I had a nice time the last time I spent the day with them, so all good.

I also grabbed Roadcraft on PC yesterday, which seems to be a pleasantly relaxing sim about driving big Tonka trucks through the mud, laying roads and establishing infrastructure. I liked the developer's previous game Snowrunner, and this is a similar sort of affair, only with a bit of a different focus. The controls are simpler than Snowrunner, too, which has made some particularly hardcore simheads a bit sniffy about the new games, but honestly it's a change for the better. I still don't really know what "differential lock" does, but at least I can remember what button turns it on and off now.

Anyway. My MotorStorm and The Sword of Hope videos are all rendered now, so I'll be posting those over the course of the next little while. And I'll be recording some more The Sword of Hope — and maybe some other bits and pieces, too — tomorrow. So I should probably go get some sleep now, because, as ever, I have left this to the last minute. One day I will get into the habit of writing this at a time well before my brain starts entering its shutdown mode, but today is not that day. So, dear reader, I will bid you farewell before IT'S NOW SAFE TO TURN OFF YOUR PETE

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#oneaday Day 350: What I'm doing this weekend

I think I pinned down what I want to do for some videos. As I've noted a couple of times recently, I've been feeling a bit short on inspiration and motivation of late, and I've been wondering how I might shake things up a bit for myself.

The answer is to do something a bit different to usual! So I'm going to do just that. Specifically, I've set myself the goal of doing two main things this weekend: one, a pre-scripted video on the subject of PS3 racer MotorStorm, which I've only just played for the first time and really like, and secondly, an "Exploring Together" Let's Play-type video on one of the Game Boy games that has just been added to Nintendo Switch Online: a Kemco title called The Sword of Hope.

I'm really interested in the latter. I've never heard of it before — although I must confess that's not hard with me and Game Boy games, since I only had a limited library when I was younger — but I saw someone describe it earlier as a cross between a conventional RPG and the Icom Simulations adventure games. You know, Deja Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate.

I really like those games! And I really like the NES and Game Boy ports of them, even if they lack a fair old chunk of the text found in the computer originals. So the idea of playing something that appears to be inspired by them, but which adds some additional mechanics over the top rather than just killing you every five seconds, sounds very appealing to me indeed.

I'm going in as blind as possible because I want to include my immediate reactions to the game in the video. And I think, long-term, I'd like to cover some more Game Boy stuff — not just the stuff on Nintendo Switch Online, but in general, too. The Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance each have vast libraries, and there are some thoroughly interesting titles among them. Presumably because development for these platforms was so cheap — and because they didn't have nearly as much critical scrutiny on them as the TV-connected consoles — developers were, seemingly, quite keen to be very creative with their work on the system. So there's some wonderfully experimental Game Boy (Color/Advance) games out there, and I think there's plenty of scope to explore those through both Nintendo Switch Online and the MiSTer Multisystem 2.

So that's my plan for this weekend. Some of it, anyway. It's a long weekend here in the UK, so I can take my time and enjoy it, then it's back to the ol' grindstone from Tuesday. We've been enduring a particularly busy and stressful period at work for quite some time now, so it's nice to have an extra day off to decompress a bit. It'll all be worth it in the end, though.

Before that, though, bed. Sleep! Sleep is good.

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#oneaday Day 349: PlayStation Library

As I'm eagerly anticipating the MiSTer Multisystem 2 in a few months, I find myself pondering how to handle the "loading games onto it" situation. The temptation with devices like this is always to just load it up with absolutely everything and then you have a magic retro gaming box that can play anything you want at any time. And, to be fair, doing so is pretty easy these days, with how many systems have complete ROMsets archived online. The legality is, of course, questionable, but the reality is that these sets exist.

With disc-based systems, though, it pays to be a bit more selective. I mean, I've got a 1.5TB SD card to load stuff onto, so I could just load the full PS1, Saturn, Mega CD and PC Engine CD libraries on there. But is it a good idea to? I'm increasingly thinking not. After all, the disc-based consoles are where we really started to see a lot of shovelware starting to appear, since discs were a lot cheaper to produce than cartridges, and thus there are big old chunks of the PS1 library in particular that I think no-one would miss.

I also have the consideration that the CRT screen I intend on using with the MiSTer Multisystem prefers 50Hz PAL games. It'll run NTSC stuff, but sometimes not entirely right, meaning I will probably want to load the European versions of games onto the system by default. And, unsurprisingly, with the US-centric nature of much of the Internet, it's a lot harder to find a full PAL set of PlayStation games than it is to download the entire NTSC-U/NTSC-J library.

So I feel like I might be selective. I may well change my mind on this depending on if I manage to find a suitable archive of PAL games, but at the moment I'm thinking I might just load things on there that I know I want to play or that I had in the day, and then if anything else happens to come up, I can always find it later.

There are games I've played before and I'd like to revisit, like The Adventures of Alundra and the original release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But there are also games that I never played back in the day but want to, like Azure Dreams, Tecmo's Deception and Legend of Kartia. I still have a modest PS1 collection here in the house, so I will recreate that digitally as a starting point, then fill out with the games I remember owning and playing back in the day. It's a shame I didn't have a blog back then, because before I got bitten by the "collector" bug I did a lot of trading and exchanging games to afford new ones, as I'm sure a lot of us did. (I also did a fair bit of buying games at least twice if I decided that I really liked them, which I'm sure at least a few of us did, too.)

When it comes to Saturn, Mega CD and PC Engine CD, though, I'm in the dark. But those libraries are also quite a bit smaller than the PS1 lineup, so I can probably just bung the whole lot on the card and explore a bit at a time.

Regardless of what the contents of that SD card end up looking like, I'm still really looking forward to the MiSTer Multisystem 2. Count on there being much more anticipation in the coming weeks and months, and hopefully gushing praise for the thing when it's finally in my filthy hands. Oh, I should probably add; if you have no idea what I'm talking about, check here.

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