Every so often, I like to remind myself how much I've managed to achieve over the course of the last six-and-a-bit years since my unceremonious departure from the professional games press. The easiest way to do this is with numbers.

For example, I can look at MoeGamer and see that I've posted 1,851 things on the site. Not all of these are full articles — 593 are video showcases — but I'm pleased with that number, particularly bearing in mind that I started taking the site more seriously in 2016. Those 1,200-ish posts cover over 500 different games in varying degrees of detail. I'm definitely pleased with that.

The numbers that occasionally cause me to step back and feel quite satisfied with myself are on YouTube, though. While I still have a small number of subscribers and a small view count per video, there are now over 900 videos on my channel. Not all of those have been published — there's some stuff I started and never got around to making into something properly — but if you'd told me a couple of years back when I was idly thinking "I should do something with my YouTube channel" that by the end of 2020 I'd have made nearly a thousand videos, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

I love what I do, and it's valuable to me. Doing creative things every day nourishes my soul and helps prevent me from falling into the bleak feelings that this accursed year is doing its best to inflict on everyone. And I'm enormously grateful that so many of you are along for the ride. Thank you!

As this wretched year draws to a close, I'm feeling absolutely drained, for a variety of reasons — and I'm sure most of you reading this are, too. I'd like to thank you all once again for your support of what I do here; it's very much appreciated, especially during times like this. And especially during times when, say, my capture card decides to go kaputt, like it did yesterday.

I thought WordPress had gone kaputt today, too, when the backend wp-admin interface seemed to be forcing me into using their dreadful "Calypso" interface, but thankfully it seems this was an unintentional bug that has since been fixed. Being denied access to the excellent behind-the-scenes tools in wp-admin would probably push me over the edge into moving to self-hosted WordPress instead of the convenience of WordPress.com. They may live for now, however.

It's probably time to start thinking about getting Christmas presents for people soon. I have no idea what to get anyone this year. Not that I generally have much in the way of inspiration any year — I'm often one of those people who takes the "oh, they like [x], I'll get them something tangentially related to [x]" approach to gift-giving — but this year it seems particularly tricky to think of what anyone might actually want. A normal life, probably, but unfortunately there's not a great deal I can do about that!

Ah well. Only a month until 2020 is out of the door, and then, of course, the arrival of 2021 will mark an immediate return to complete normality and a generally wonderful existence for everyone, won't it? That'll be nice. Something to look forward to!

I know, I know. At least we get presents in the meantime.

My Elgato Game Capture HD died today. It was working fine yesterday, but the mini-USB port seems to have given up the ghost. It's still picking up enough power for the HDMI passthrough to work, meaning I can still use my consoles, but it's not talking to my computer at all. Lucky I just finished recording a month's worth of new videos, then, huh? Though this does mean I won't be able to take screenshots for a few days.

I do have another device on the way. The fact that my Game Capture HD used a mini-USB port should tell you that it was a fairly dated piece of tech that was already end-of-line when I bought it (for relatively cheap) so I think it's had a good run, particularly given the heavy use it gets. I've bought a new HD 60 S+ model from Amazon, since they're currently doing a "pay it off in bits with no interest" plan, meaning I can get it by Thursday for £35 (for the next 5 months) instead of nearly £200. So that's all good — though as with any unexpected expense of this kind, it's something I could have done without, particularly at this time of year.

Still, it'll be an upgrade. The HD 60 S+ model does 4K passthrough, so if and when I ever upgrade to something that actually supports 4K, I'll be able to enjoy it at full resolution. It also captures at 1080p and 60 frames per second rather than the 1080p and 30 frames per second the dearly departed one did, so that will mean better video quality for console stuff as well as anything I capture on my PC. That will be nice.

Ah well. These things happen. I guess you know where your kind contributions are going this month, then! 🙂

I've got a few things I want to get on with this evening, so I thought I'd give you all an early look at the new Q&A video that will be going live tomorrow as today's post! Thank you to all the S-Rank patrons who submitted questions, and I'll be putting up a new post inviting you to send me some more questions once we're actually into December.

It's been a fun month — not necessarily out there in the big wide world, but certainly in terms of getting stuff done. I enjoyed making this video, so I hope you'll join me in helping to make some more in the coming months!

Thank you as always for all your support. <3

Recorded the first Q&A video today — thanks to everyone who sent in questions. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to talk enough to make a substantial video but I ended up being able to go on for 20 minutes or so — you all made me think, which is nice! I'd like to keep trying this for the next few months at least, so in early December I'll put up another "submit your questions" post for S-rank patrons to join in on, and it'd be lovely to see a few more of you jump in with some ideas if you have a moment or two to spare.

The Q&A video itself will be out on Monday, and it will be public. I'm hoping it'll be something that people find fun and enjoyable on the channel to go along with the game-specific videos — and it might bring a few more people in the direction of this Patreon too, you never know! We shall see, I guess.

Most of today (well, the afternoon; we got up very late) has been spent recording stuff. I already have two weeks' worth of stuff in the can ready to edit, but since Chris and I have planned to get a podcast done next weekend, I figured I'll get some more episodes ready to go so I can take a bit of pressure off myself. I say "pressure"; I love it really, you know that.

I'll be recording some more stuff tomorrow because several of the things I did today ended up being rather substantial videos in their own right. Tomorrow should be a bit "lighter" though; there's two Atari Flashback Classics to record, plus two Lynx classics on Evercade, then I'm well ahead of schedule on videos!

Thanks as always for all your support; answering the Q&As reminded me what awesome people I have following me and supporting my work, so I just want you all to know how much I really do appreciate your faith in me.

Much as I hate it, I've discovered the one advantage of using Microsoft Teams for interminable work meetings: when your annoying boss says something irritating and infuriating, you can yell at them all you want with your mic muted to get at least some of that stress out.

For real, though, I'm getting really sick of it. My boss is of the "control freak" variety, and absolutely loves to find things to pick us up on that we're doing wrong. She repeatedly changes our "processes" in what feels like a deliberate attempt to confuse us, and on more than one occasion (today being one of them) has told us specifically to do one thing, then complained at us for doing it exactly as she told us to do it.

Unfortunately, no-one is willing to stand up and say "can you not" for one reason or another. Last time I attempted to "push back" (as obnoxious corporate parlance has it) on an unreasonable request — very politely, I might add — I ended up getting pulled aside and saying it was unacceptable. My sin? Saying that we had a heavy workload at that time and thus it wasn't the best timing to introduce one of her many new processes to confuse matters.

She gets in the way of so much stuff. The aggressively garbage pieces of software that we have to use on a daily basis are entirely her fault. The unnecessary degree of micromanagement we have to put into what should be a very simple job is her fault. And the frustration my whole team feels on a pretty regular basis is her fault. It's a real pain, and there's nothing that can be done about it aside from gritting one's teeth and just getting on with it.

That's the reality of "adult life", I suppose. But that doesn't mean it doesn't suck balls!

Hello! Get your questions in before tomorrow if you want me to answer something in a Q&A video, because I'll be recording it tomorrow.

Leave your questions in a comment either here or (preferably) on this post and I'll look forward to answering them!

The Evercade Lynx cartridges are here! It's not an exaggeration to say that I've been really looking forward to these. The Evercade already has a ton of stuff that is unique to its library, but these really are a scoop — to my knowledge, these have never been rereleased on modern platforms, so it's the first time gems like Blue Lightning and Gates of Zendocon have been officially seen for many years.

The first cartridge has some interesting stuff on it, too. The cartridge as a whole is the work of Songbird Productions, who not only picked up the rights to a number of Lynx games from back in the day, they also developed a number of their own games a little after the console's main lifespan, some of which are included as part of the first Lynx cartridge for Evercade. I haven't delved deep into many of them yet, but there are some exciting and ambitious titles to explore among them.

I'm really glad I jumped on board with the Evercade right as it began. The library is now 14 cartridges strong, with a significant number of absolute gems scattered across them. There aren't any of the cartridges where there's nothing I like on them — I even like at least one thing on both the Interplay carts, which are by far everyone's least favourite — and there's something for every mood at the minute… though some people have noted it would be nice to see a few more long-form games like RPGs on the system at some point.

I'm happy with the way it's going right now though; the current lineup provides pick-up-and-play fun times in a variety of styles (plus there are a few RPGs on the Piko Interactive collection!) and, with the addition of the two Lynx carts, a truly unique experience that you can't get anywhere else (outside of emulation, obviously, but that doesn't count).

If you have a gamer in your life and you're struggling to think of a great gift for them for the holidays, consider an Evercade. It'd be great to see this awesome handheld continue to go from strength to strength.

My microphone stand broke today. It had been looking like it was going to go for a while, but when I went to record some stuff earlier, it broke completely. I've ordered a new one that will be here tomorrow, but that's still a bummer — it had been a loyal friend for the last couple of years, but it had also seen some fairly heavy use and wasn't very expensive, so I'm not surprised it decided to give up the ghost eventually.

With this in mind, a few upcoming videos will have slightly different-quality audio due to me using the tie clip mic I normally use for my intro videos for the gameplay. This shouldn't be a huge issue, but I just thought I'd let you know! The mic that went in the stand itself is fine (aside from its USB port being loose, meaning I have to mount it upside down for the cable to stay in) so as soon as I get the new stand I'll be back to normal, but a couple of upcoming Evercade A to Z and Atari A to Z Flashback episodes will have the different audio. (I don't want to say "worse" because I've always been pleasantly surprised at the audio quality of that little tie clip mic!)

Anyway, situations like this are why I'm especially grateful for your kind donations. If you were curious, the ad experiment has been reasonably successful, too; while I certainly wouldn't describe what I've made in the last couple of weeks as a "fortune" by any means, in the long term if traffic stays the way it is, ad income could potentially pay for things like hosting or other subscriptions needed to keep things ticking along. So that's good; hopefully the ads haven't been too intrusive for any of you, and as I said when I put them in, please let me know if you happen to see anything inappropriate or that gets in the way.

Thursday tomorrow, and I'm crossing my fingers that's the day the two Lynx cartridges for the Evercade arrive! They're on the way, so hopefully tomorrow will be the day — I'm just in the mood to revisit some of those classics.

Have a pleasant evening!

I haven't quite finished it yet, so not sure when a writeup will be coming, but since I'm feeling quite tired and a little lacking in inspiration, I thought I'd share a few more screenshots of Quantum Theory, the third-person shooter for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 developed by the creator of Project Zero/Fatal Frame.

This game has really impressed me with its sense of style throughout. The majority of the game is set in the "organic Gothic" tower I mentioned the last time I wrote about this, but there have been a couple of sequences set in the "real" world that provide a nice contrast between the (ruined) world of humanity and the otherworldly weirdness inside the tower.

I've always been kind of fascinated by these sorts of "organic" designs, but I also find them rather unsettling. I suspect this feeling is entirely deliberate on the part of the designers; and with Makoto Shibata's background? Well, unsettling horror was always going to be a part of this somewhere, wasn't it?

Were you to believe the Internet at large (including some "professional" reviews), this "looks like a PS2 game". 1) that would be nothing to be ashamed of, given some of the beautiful games on that platform, and 2) no.

The sense of style and the intriguing story has kept me playing far longer than Gears of War ever did. It helps that, as noted last time, the actual game structure is rather different to Gears of War, even if the primary mechanics that you interact with the game through are very similar.

Anyway, I think I'm approaching the end of this so should have it polished off in the next day or two. That means a writeup coming soon — and I've already recorded a short;Play video on the subject for the near future, too. Haven't edited that yet, though, so it won't be this week.

Play more games that everyone hates! They're full of surprises.