Calories: 2025/2040

Now it's Friday. Today wasn't too bad, actually. Had to endure the usual Friday morning conference call — which included us trying to convince our superior across the Channel that the thing she was asking us to do was impractical bullshit and a complete waste of time, which is always fun, since she's 1) stubborn and 2) French (which are essentially the same thing in my experience). After that, there were a few lightweight projects to finish off and then I was pretty much done by early afternoon.

Which left me plenty of time to write today's piece on MoeGamer. I was sort of dreading writing about Atelier Totori's plot, since its kind of freeform, event-based nature makes it a bit trickier to analyse than some other narrative games, but I ended up bashing out 4,000 words on the subject, so evidently I found my groove somewhere along the way. It took several hours — meaning by the time I'd finished there wasn't a lot of time to just settle down and relax for some games, unless I stay up unnecessarily late… which is always an option — but I was satisfied with the end result.

This weekend, since I have the coming week off, I actually am going to take it reasonably easy, since I have a whole week ahead of me to get some videos done. I'm probably going to fill most of my time with Atelier Lulua, but I've had the good fortune to get a beta version of the upcoming Evercade firmware update, so I'll spend some time fiddling around with that, too.

I can confirm that the nitro no longer gets stuck on Top Racer, if nothing else — that and Mega Drive games no longer get cut off behind the screen bezel. Those two updates alone are wonderful. Not sure when the new update will be live, but it sounds like it will be pretty soon, so if you're an Evercade person, keep an eye out for it.

Anyway. Time to sit in bed and… well, maybe play some Top Racer, actually, since I've kind of had a bit of an itch for it lately. And definitely looking forward to Top Racer 2 on the new Piko cart… even if that's a fair way off yet.

Have a pleasant Friday evening!

Calories: Takeaway. 'Nuff said

I've spent a significant proportion of today thinking it was Friday… or perhaps just hoping it was Friday. It is not, however, Friday, which means I have Friday to endure before the weekend comes… but then I do have a full week off from the day job, which I am looking forward to very much.

I think I've been feeling like it's Friday because I finished a project at work today and was very glad to see the back of it. Without going into too much detail, it was one of those annoying "cross-corporate" things where our company (the smaller one) had to bend over backwards and do everything the big company we were collaborating with demanded, lest they slam down their Corporate Fist of Bullshit on us. I hate that shit. I hate corporate life in general, but I especially hate this sort of shit.

Anyway, it's all taken care of now, so hopefully nothing more to worry about in that regard. If there is, well, for the next week it ain't my problem so I don't care.

Loose plans for the week off are to get a bunch of videos done and put together a "pilot" site for the Intellivision-related project I was talking about the other day. Still undecided on whether it's something that it will be practical to pursue, but nothing wrong with putting together something preliminary and seeing what happens! I'll share it with you fine folks when there's something to look at.

Have a pleasant Fr-… err, Thursday evening.

Calories: 1978/2040
Ring Fit? No
Water consumption: OK

I've played a few hours of Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland over the last couple of evenings and I'm very impressed so far. You can tell it's a game from nearly a decade after its previous installments, but it also feels nicely true to the previous Arland games in a lot of ways… although Keina's new voice actress is taking a bit of getting used to.

I'm actually feeling a surprising amount of Atelier Iris vibes in this one. I mean, hell, there's even a character called Mana who is obviously a lot more than she seems, and there's a lot more "mysticism" going on. Plus I get the impression there's going to be a greater sense of going on a "journey" than some of the others — though both Totori and Meruru have this to a certain extent.

Lulua herself is a charming character. Judging purely by the artwork of her I'd seen, I was expecting someone rather meek and shy, but she's actually charmingly tomboyish at times, overexcitable, reckless and obsessed with curry. A perfect Atelier protagonist in that she combines all these personality traits with being one of the most beautiful fictional women on the planet. They did well with this one.

I haven't delved far enough into things to really get to grips with the mechanics as yet, but the alchemy system appears to have an interesting "elemental balance" system going on rather than the "effect" bars from the previous three games, and the battle system brings back stun and knockback mechanics from the Atelier Iris games, which I'm delighted about. There's also a super-fun "Interrupt" mechanic which isn't quite the same as the support attack system from previous games, but instead allows alchemist characters to jump in and fling bombs around outside of their normal turn order. It's a lot of fun, and I sense the battles will get quite hectic as the game progresses.

So far I'm well and truly charmed, then. It's a bit of a shame this game got overshadowed by Ryza, but I also understand; people would have found it much easier to latch on to a new subseries than the fourth installment in a decade-old trilogy. If you're curious, though, don't sleep on Atelier Lulua; it doesn't really require knowledge of the previous Arland games, but there is plenty of series fanservice to enjoy if you have played them. I'm finding it particularly pleasing going straight from the old Arland games into this one — the reappearance of somewhat more minor characters such as Piana from Atelier Totori and them having a much more important role is a delight.

Haven't met Rorona, Meruru or Totori as yet, but I'm looking forward to it. And I still don't know who Lulua's dad is. If indeed she has one and is not some sort of magical creation. I'm ruling nothing out at this point.

Calories: 2032/2040
Ring Fit? No
Water intake: Below average

Finished off my replay of Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland this evening, which means I'm back into unexplored territory for the Atelier series next. I'm taking on Atelier Lulua next, despite it not technically being the "next" in the overall series; I thought it would make more sense to do the Arland games as a coherent unit, even if one of them was added much later. (I was quite interested and impressed to see that they patched a very brief Atelier Lulua teaser into the end of Atelier Meruru though — that's commitment to continuity.)

I know absolutely nothing about Atelier Lulua, so I'm looking forward to giving it a try. Somehow I have managed to remain unspoiled on a lot of things about it — including who Lulua's father is, if Rorona is her mother. I suspect the answer won't be the obvious one, but I guess we'll have to wait and see!

I was satisfied with the ending I got in Atelier Meruru — for those in the know, I got the "Finally, As Planned" ending. I was pretty close to getting "Witch's Tea Party," which builds off that one, but I just ran out of time to fulfil the final conditions. I did remember to sell everything in Meruru's inventory before the final day this time, though, so next time I play (and I probably will — the nice thing about the Arland games is that they're short enough to make replays practical) I'll have nearly half a million Cole to start with.

Anyway. That's how I spent my evening. That and fighting the WordPress Block Editor, but that's a tale for another day. For now, I think I need to sleep!

Calories: 2124 – 136 (exercise) = 1988/2040
Ring Fit? Yep
Water consumption: Not great, but working on it

The wife has been watching a fair few "commentary channels" on YouTube of late. I enjoyed one of them, Joinen, for a while, but over time it's become increasingly clear that the vast majority of these channels are just churning out the same thing over and over again. And, in the process, they're actually ending up doing pretty much something they spend the majority of their time criticising: creating mindless "content" rather than anything particularly original.

If you're unfamiliar with the "commentary channel" concept, it's pretty simple. The YouTuber in question watches a YouTube video, stopping every so often to describe their thoughts on it. It's like trying to watch a movie with that one insufferable friend who is always asking questions while you're trying to enjoy yourself, but instead of a movie with a worthwhile story, spectacular cinematography and a stirring musical score, it's a YouTube video full of jumpcuts, screeching voiceovers and time-lapse shots of hands doing things that aren't particularly interesting.

Beloved of the commentary channel host are YouTube channels such as "5 Minute Crafts" and "Troom Troom", all of which are transparently clickbaiting content farms pushing out a bunch of pointless crap multiple times a day purely to harvest advertising revenue rather than provide anything of actual value to society. These channels often have millions of subscribers and obscene numbers of daily views — and the sad thing is, I can't help but think a significant proportion of them probably come from commentary channel hosts and their audiences.

Joinen is by no means the only offender in this regard, but he's the one I'm most familiar with, so he's the one I can talk about. When I first started watching his videos, I thought he did some interesting stuff from around the Internet as a whole — he looked at trends on social media, on Reddit, in memes and all that sort of thing. But since he has very obviously switched over to being a "Twitch-first" sort of entertainer, he appears to be beholden to the whims of his audience — and what his audience apparently wants to see is three things on constant, never-ending rotation. Those things are 1) Troom Troom is shit, 2) Girls' games online are weird and gross, and 3) This thing is weirdly sexist.

I don't really get it. One video highlighting the absurdity of these content farm channels was enough to give me the idea of what they're up to and how shit they are. But Joinen and others like him seem to just constantly do the same thing — watch a Troom Troom/5 Minute Crafts/whatever video and complain about it every few seconds. It just gets old very quickly. I don't know, perhaps there's a sort of "comfortable familiarity" thing going on, but as soon as I noticed this pattern in Joinen's work, I drifted away from watching him and haven't really been back since.

For me, I think this highlights the main reason why I refuse to classify the things that I do online as "content". As soon as you starting considering anything you create to be "content" rather than a series of individual creative works with worth on their own merits, you devalue them and relegate them to be yet more things you do that no-one looks at. People need to value what they do more and take more pride in it, rather than churning out endless "content" just because they feel like they have to — even if they're not making a living from what they do, or even monetised at all!

A blogger friend of mine makes solid videos on anime series, but every time he puts something out he feels the need to apologise for not making enough "content". I tell him off for it every time and he understands what I'm saying, but he still does it.

Ah well. I'm sure someone out there could complain that I'm "just doing gaming videos and articles" or whatever, and that is, of course, true; ultimately nothing any of us does really matters in the grand scheme of things. But at least I'm having a good time and constantly learning new things rather than feeling obliged to bitch about the same YouTube channel week after week after week after week…

Or perhaps I'm just a grumpy old man. That's probably the more likely explanation.

Yeah, remember how I said I was going to take it easy a bit this weekend and maybe only make a week's worth of videos? That didn't happen, I recorded two weeks' worth, because why not. That then means I can use my week off to get super ahead of schedule, which will be nice. Plus I was having fun!

I haven't done editing yet, but that's something I can crack on with when things are quiet with the day job in the daytime… which they often are. I need to try and get out of the habit of napping in the daytime when things are boring/quiet/there's nothing to do, because it's not productive and probably not a helpful habit to train myself into. Bed is so nice though… particularly when I'm rudely ejected from it early in the morning to talk to people I really don't feel like talking to every bloody day.

Anyway! Positivity. Lost track of calories today so wrote it off for now; back on the straight and narrow again tomorrow, though. I've stocked up on diet-friendly snacks, which will help matters, and I'm getting into quite a good habit of drinking plenty of water, which I'm sure will be beneficial in the long term — if not necessarily for weight loss specifically then just for general health purposes, anyway.

Just a week to survive through and then I can enjoy that blissful week off… and fill it with projects and work I actually want to be doing. I might start experimenting with some ideas for that Intellivision project I mentioned yesterday — again, no guarantee that it will be going anywhere, but there's no better time than a week off to fiddle around with stuff like that and see if it might be practical.

On that note, I should bid you a good night. Up early to talk to the aforementioned people I can't be arsed to talk to every bloody morning tomorrow… and then the drab tedium of the daily grind. But, as always, there are video games to enjoy at the end of it all — and I've got plenty of articles and videos lined up to hopefully entertain you all in the coming week, too.

Hope you've had a good weekend — good night!

No stats today, as I gave myself a "day off". I haven't gone crazy or anything, but I've had a good week and I just fancied treating myself.

Anyway.

I was pondering things earlier, prompted somewhat by a conversation between my good friend and podcasting partner Chris Caskie where we were both bemoaning "next-gen bullshit" like the grumpy old (gamer) men we are. And, through a convoluted mental process I can't quite explain, after Chris wandered off into the woods to clear his head, I found myself browsing the information about the upcoming Intellivision Amico system.

For the unfamiliar, the Intellivision Amico is a new console from the current rights holders of the Intellivision brand, which includes famous video game composer Tommy Tallarico. I haven't looked into the full details as yet, but I understand the previous rights holders (who released the Intellivision Lives! compilation as well as preserving a number of historical documents and other information) have subsequently been rebranded as Blue Sky Rangers, but they are collaborating with Tallarico and co, who are now known as Intellivision Entertainment.

The Amico is a system designed around some admirable principles. Its games are intended to cost between $2.99 and $9.99 for downloadable versions (and $30 for a physical release with some sort of "special features" that haven't been announced yet) and must be ad-free, microtransaction-free and family-friendly. They must contain a single-player component and are preferably designed for people in the same room to play together. And they must make use of the system's unique features.

The standout feature of the console is its controller. This is a chunky iPod-style device with a touchscreen and a clickwheel at the bottom; it looks very much like a modernised version of the classic Intellivision controller. Pleasingly, we've already had confirmation that players will also be able to download an app to their phone and use that as an additional controller. The controller features buttons, the aforementioned clickwheel (which appears to be both turnable and pressable), a touchscreen, built-in coloured LED lights and motion sensors, allowing for a variety of different control options. They charge wirelessly by simply resting them in the "bed" on top of the console, or can also be plugged in via USB-C.

The system will cost $250 at launch, and come with six games; five of these have been confirmed as Skiing, Shark! Shark!, Astrosmash, Cornhole and Farkle, several of which are updated remakes of games from the original Intellivision platform with new presentation but similar gameplay. A bunch of games have already been confirmed to be in development, too, with Tallarico estimating that the library will be balanced as roughly 20% updates of classic Intellivision games, 20% completely original games, 20% sports and recreation, 20% tabletop/card games and 20% educational titles.

What's interesting about the Amico is that it's not designed to be super-amazing technology that wows everyone with its stunning visuals or anything like that, but the hardware does appear to be built like a brick shithouse, and from what Tallarico and co are saying, they want this system to last. In other words, they really do want it to be more like a classic console from the '80s than a modern setup — the only difference is that the games will primarily be distributed digitally and downloaded either to the system's internal memory or a microSD card.

Now, it's easy to pooh-pooh this system and write it off as another Ouya, but I think there's definite potential for something interesting here. For starters, this isn't an Android box running crappy free-to-play bullshit on your television; it's its own thing. Secondly, it's been designed as a premium product rather than a piece of plastic crap. And thirdly, even with how successful the Switch has been, no-one, not even Nintendo, has really tackled the "family-friendly, people playing in the same room" market since the original Wii; everyone is too afraid of mobile.

So I'm wondering a few things. Firstly, if the system is worth investing in and exploring, since I think there is potential for a variety of unique experiences in its library — including new takes on old classics. And secondly, if there would be a market for a website that provides information on the system, its games, and news surrounding it.

What I've idly thought of this evening is a site that, in the run-up to Amico's launch, offers a couple of things: news announced by the company, and nostalgic looks back at the original Intellivision's library. Once the system launches, the site would then transition into a source of information on the games available for the platform including a variety of different types of information, corresponding to the various audiences that this thing is supposedly for. I'm thinking:

• Basic concept of the game

• The content (i.e. exactly how "family-friendly" it is) — similar to the info my brother's old site "What They Play" (RIP) offered

• The basics of how to play it

• Its connections to classic games (where applicable)

• A more detailed writeup on how the game plays, the interesting things it's doing etc.

• No review scores, just information and a personal perspective, perhaps gameplay videos etc

This is something I'm vaguely interested in pursuing myself, because as far as I can make out, there are no "Amico websites" out there at the minute. I mean, with the thing launching in April of next year, that's not altogether surprising, but this could potentially be an opportunity to get in early on something that could be really interesting and rewarding to be part of.

I have a number of hesitations, however.

• Does the broader Internet audience actually want this?

• Is Amico going to succeed — i.e. is this something worth pursuing in the first place?

• How can I establish myself quickly as a reliable source of information on the platform — and someone that the Intellivision Entertainment team might want to work with directly?

• Do I have the time to do this alongside my other projects and my day job?

• What do I do about funding?

The latter one is a bit of a key question, because while I could just set up another WordPress site and get started that way without spending anything, immediately having a domain name and a (preferably ad-free) site ready to launch whenever I'm good and ready would be much more preferable for a variety of reasons — most notably from a credibility perspective, so far as your average, less "gaming-savvy" Internet denizen might be concerned; your average non-gamer, I feel, is probably more likely to trust something.com than something.wordpress.com.

Since I would rather the site be ad-free, crowdfunding would appear to be the logical way to go — but what approach? Donations? (Can't rely on those.) Patreon? (Need to provide meaningful rewards, something I worry a lot about already with what I do here!) Kickstarter? (I tend to perceive that as being for projects bigger than "make a website", though I could be wrong)

One possible option is to set up the site on a free WordPress setup and just not hit the "launch" button to make it available to the public initially. Then, when I have a bunch of stuff prepped and ready to go, I can launch a preview of the site to use as something to go "hey, this is what I want to do" to prospective crowdfunders/donors/whatever.

I dunno. These are nothing more than idle musings at the moment, but it does strike me as an interesting possibility for the future — and with plenty of time until Amico's launch, it would seem to make sense to get something prepped and ready ahead of time. I hasten to add that even if I do decide to pursue this, I have absolutely no intention of abandoning either MoeGamer or my retro-centric projects on YouTube, because I know one (or both) of those are the reason why you're here reading this in the first place!

Just thought I'd share with you all. Don't any of you go stealing my ideas now — not that I think any of you would. 🙂

Calories: 2143 – 80 from exercise = 2063/2040
Ring Fit? No
Water intake: OK

Slightly over on the calorie goal today but I was really hungry. I'm not going to guilt-trip myself about it, but I am going to be honest about it — and if I know I'm going to go over, I'm taking care to pick something that won't take me a lot over. 100 calories of sweet chilli rice crackers is better than 400 calories of Pop-Tarts, after all.

Anyway, it's Friday, traditionally the day when everyone flops down in a chair in their living room and makes that noise your Grandad used to make all the time. It hasn't been a super-exhausting or stressful week workwise, but with both Andie and I shaking off some form of non-specific "not feeling well", it's not been a super-pleasant one, either. Thankfully Andie seems to be over it now and I seem to be following her pattern a couple of days at most behind her, so I'm hoping I'll feel a bit more fresh over the weekend.

With another "lockdown" looking imminent, Andie is paying her mother a visit this weekend, leaving me free to make some videos. Good job, too, since after tomorrow's Atari A to Z Flashback I'm out of stockpiled episodes. I might take it relatively easy and just make episodes for a single week rather than the two at a time I normally do; next weekend marks the beginning of a full week off for me, and I'm going to spend a good chunk of it recording and getting ahead of schedule on videos.

It remains painfully slow progress on videos, but I am pleased with what I'm achieving, and I seem to be getting a lot more new viewers and commenters recently than I have done in the past. I've done some minor rebranding on my channel to make it a bit clearer what I do, mostly consisting of the new trailer you may have already seen (watch it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNpsaRjXcHg if you haven't) and the new channel art you can see in all its glory here:

This new art, I think, sums up what I'm all about, since it incorporates all the things that are important to both me and my channel. We've got the various games I've covered in the regular series in the background, we've got The MoeGamer Podcast there, and we've got mascot Midori reppin' as usual. If you're wondering about the layout, the text is positioned so that it appears nicely in the "banner" form of the channel art on PC, mobile and tablet, and the broader image will be seen if anyone visits my channel on a Smart TV, if indeed anyone ever does that rather than going via another Internet-connected device. (I know I've certainly never used the "apps" on my TV, but then I do have my PC hooked up to it, so there's no point.)

Anyway. Hope you've had a good week and you have a pleasant weekend ahead of you. I'm going to chill out with some Fuel on PS3, I think; I'm enjoying that game a lot, and with its ridiculous scale I can see it becoming a go-to chill-out game for me at some point. Doubtless a short;Play video on the subject will follow soon, so watch out for that!

Net calories: 2129 – 127 from exercise = 2002/2040
Ring Fit: Yep (127 cal)
Water intake: Not bad, could be better

I'm really impressed with Star Ixiom, the sequel to Star Luster, as you can probably tell from my writeup today. I've been playing through the Command mode this evening because the Conquest mode is just a little too daunting right now, and it's really interesting how the missions in Command provide practical examples of how various strategic options will work.

The mission I've spent most of the evening on and took lots of attempts turned out to be a lesson in "acceptable losses". You're given a relatively small area to play with, two bases and two planets, and a whole mess of Galaga on the way to mess shit up. You lose if your ship is destroyed, if both the bases are destroyed or if both the planets are damaged. You do not, however, lose if one of each of the bases and the planets are destroyed, so depending on your own strategery and efficiency at picking off Galaga from a distance, you can get away with sacrificing some of the things you're supposed to be protecting in the name of the greater good.

War is, as they say, hell.

The more I play, the more I notice cool little things about it, too. It was already apparent that the Galaga behaved differently from the Battura, but it becomes very apparent in this mission that the Galaga are especially prone to flying right at your ship and causing damage by smashing into it. Given the way the original Galaga game worked, this is, of course, entirely appropriate.

I'm definitely going to do a short;Play video on this in the very near future. It's too good not to celebrate a bit more! Watch out for it in the coming weeks.

Calorie goal: 2000/2040 (-40)
Ring Fit?: Nope
Water consumption: Yuri Nation

So, I know it's only been three days since I started focusing on counting calories for (hopefully) some weight loss, but I'm feeling positive so far. I haven't found it too difficult to stick to the calorie goal — though I do tend to find myself getting a bit peckish by this time in the evening, so I should probably save some calories for an evening snack — and I don't feel like I've been having to "miss out" on anything, so long as I look carefully at what I'm about to eat.

That, essentially, is all any diet is, really: looking at the things you're about to stick in your mouth and determining whether or not it's actually a good idea to stick it in your mouth or not. That's what she said, I know, I know. But I'm keen to see whether what I've been doing for the last few days will have a noticeable result, because I know it really works for some people — YouTuber Larry Bundy Jr. is an incredibly inspirational example — and I'm curious to know if I need to make any further "adjustments" beyond simply spreading out those calories across the day.

It's when things get more complex, annoying and inconvenient that I find myself struggling with diets. When a diet requires you to make overly convoluted recipes just to avoid the things you're not "allowed" — or, worse, requires you to eat some sort of revolting astronaut food — then that's when I tend to find myself losing motivation, feeling frustrated and getting depressed by the whole thing.

Conversely, right now I've been enjoying pretty much what I want, just in a bit more moderation than I would do under "normal" circumstances. I've also been making a point of drinking a lot more water (both lightly flavoured and "plain") and I've found that drinking bottles of mineral water is a good way for me to manage that. Mineral water is also much better than the grotty, hard shit that comes out of our taps, too — and it's not even especially expensive. Plus it seems mineral water bottles are fully recyclable these days, too, so any objections one might have about it being a waste of plastic can be overcome with this information.

I dunno. It's early days yet, as I say, but at the moment I'm feeling reasonably positive. I haven't yet incorporated Ring Fit Adventure into my daily routine because both Andie and I are coming off the back of some illness (not COVID, we don't think) that knocked us both around a bit, so I haven't felt up to pushing myself while I've been spending significant parts of my morning feeling exhausted and dizzy. Once I put that in there, I'll have a few extra calories to enjoy, even — or just a bigger deficit.

Anyway. I'll report more on progress when I have a better idea as to whether or not there has been any progress. For now, I'm off to bed!