Today has been rather enjoyable. I made four videos — the four I hoped to make today — and spent a bit of time with Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis. My cat Patti is presently having a fight with a spider and almost winning, though the spider is doing a surprisingly good job of surviving some fairly solid beatdowns from Patti's paws. As I type this, it seems to have escaped into a box, and Patti doesn't quite know how to deal with this. I think she's just waiting for it to come out.

I'd mention the VG247 situation, but you don't really need me to tell you again how fundamentally broken modern games journalism is, do you? Particularly with a site like VG247, which has become the lowest of the low, tabloid-style clickbait bullshit over the course of the last few years. And to think I used to refer to that site as a reliable source of information when I did my daily "rounds" of gaming media.

Anyway. Tomorrow's plan is to record one Final Fantasy Marathon episode — two if I'm feeling energetic — and from there to put in some more Mana Khemia time. I'm well over halfway through the game now, I believe, which means I'm well ahead of schedule in terms of things to write about it; this is a good situation to be in, so I'm going to take full advantage of my time off this week to keep this "head start" going. And don't forget if you want to follow my playthrough, I've been uploading commentary-free recordings of my play sessions over on YouTube; scroll down to the front page of my channel to find the playlist if you're interested. Or, y'know, just click here.

I'm really enjoying Mana Khemia. It looked like it might be very similar to Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm when I started playing it, but over time it's really distinguished itself with plenty of unique mechanics and structural features. I continue to be pleasantly surprised and delighted by how continually creative and interesting the Atelier series is, even in its relatively early days. And I look forward to the day when I can say yes, I have the most comprehensive coverage of the series on the Internet. Hell, I probably have that now — for the PS2 era, at least!

Anyway. Time to hit the sack. Another fine day awaits tomorrow, and the drudgery of the day job seems far away right now, which is exactly what I was hoping for from this time off!

I'm enjoying putting together the new short;Play series, as it's opened up the opportunity for me to talk about… well, pretty much any game I feel like, to be perfectly honest, and without any commitment to do a full playthrough on camera or anything like that. I enjoyed Warriors Wednesday and I am still enjoying the Final Fantasy Marathon, don't get me wrong, but Atari A to Z has taught me that having a variety of things week on week is enjoyable — both for me and for the audience.

Coming up in the next few weeks on short;Play, I'll be bringing you a video on A Valley Without Wind, which I've been loving my recent revisit of, and also an all-time favourite of the "golden age of shareware" — Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Neither of these would have really fit into previous series formats, but the flexibility of short;Play means that they're both ideal for inclusion — interesting games, largely underappreciated, and which I feel passionately about. A natural extension of the written work I do on MoeGamer — and in many cases, I'll end up writing about the things I cover on short;Play over on MoeGamer too, since there are things I can say in writing that I can't "in the moment" while demonstrating a game on video… and things that will occur to me while recording a video that won't necessarily spring immediately to mind while I'm writing.

Anyway, continue to expect short;Play episodes on Wednesdays for the foreseeable future. I've been fairly productive on the first day of my week off, with two Atari A to Z episodes and two short;Play episodes recorded; tomorrow I'm going to take care of two Atari ST A to Z and two Atari A to Z Flashback episodes, then that leaves plenty of time later in the week to continue my slog through Final Fantasy II's challenging postgame scenario!

It's a shame the Evercade didn't turn up this week — it sounds like units will be shipping for us here in the UK starting next week, or perhaps the very tail end of this week at the earliest — but I'll definitely find a way to cover it and its launch lineup in depth even if I'm back on the clock at the day job, don't you worry!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new videos when they drop; they're rendering right now, so I'll probably share them as "early access" for you lovely Patrons in the next couple of days or so if you'd like to see them a bit early! For now, I'm off to play a bit of Phantasy Star in bed.

Took a quick look at the stats earlier today, and rather pleasingly it looks like if things continue at the current rate, MoeGamer will have had continual growth ever since its launch in 2014.

To put it another way, we're less than halfway through the year and 2020 has already exceeded half of last year's numbers. This is awesome, and I'm really happy that people are continuing to stop by to see what I'm up to and what I'm writing about.

Of course, there are reliable traffic magnets in there — my articles on the pornographic games Honey Select Unlimited and Hilzartov Fairy have been drawing people in daily ever since I posted them, probably largely because I'm one of the few sites out there to have actually covered them — but there are people stopping by every day for one reason or another. And that's really nice to see.

I often mention that I don't do this for the numbers or anything like that and, since MoeGamer isn't ad-supported in any way, the actual numbers don't really matter beyond raising awareness of what I'm actually doing. But, as a writer, it's definitely satisfying to see more and more people coming by year-on-year to read my thoughts on various games — and it makes me feel like I'm doing something right.

I've never made a particular effort to search engine-optimise MoeGamer because I strongly believe that does horrible things to the readability of writing — and besides, the way Google ranks things nowadays isn't that simple anyway. I promote my stuff on Twitter and Facebook, but I don't do any huge marketing pushes or anything. I believe this is what people in the business call "organic" somethingorother. And, honestly, it's the type of people I'd rather have hanging around — people who came by because they were interested or intrigued by something, and found some articles, videos and/or podcasts to lose themselves in for a while.

I've never been about clickbait — even though the few occasions I've written response pieces to hot-button issues of the hour have brought in goodly amounts of people — and I absolutely 100% refuse to participate in the odious practice of hatebaiting. While it may bring people to your door in droves, they're all angry. And that's not fun at all.

I'd much rather have a few cool people stopping by to say hi, talk about some unusual games and have some fun. And that's what I have right now! And it's good.

Those of you who have listened to the most recent episode of The MoeGamer Podcast will know that chez MoeGamer has been undergoing some renovations recently. My wife Andie, dissatisfied with the (admittedly horrible) carpet in our hallway and the (not actually that bad) wallpaper she put up in the same hallway decided to completely obliterate… well, almost everything. She bought an angle grinder and everything. I don't really know what that is aside from the fact it looks and sounds terrifying.

Anyway, it started off like this:

She wanted to see if there was a banister underneath the dividing wall in our hallway. There wasn't. But then there was a big hole in the wall, so of course she had to remove it entirely. (Emphasis on "she" — I've been staying well out of the way, as I am a total liability with anything vaguely DIY-related.)

Patti did not know what to make of all this nonsense going on. She seems to like having the "hole" to look through, though.

Then the carpet came up and the sanding started. Sanding is noisy. Very noisy. I had the door shut and it still gave me a headache. Patti hid under the bed while this was going on. Meg didn't give a shit.

And finally, today it was all finished! Well, the stairs, anyway. We're going to run a "runner" carpet down the middle to cover up that different-coloured bit (it looks like that's what used to be there, anyway) and Andie's going to paint the walls to replace the wallpaper (that she chose) that she's decided she hated.

It'll look really nice when it's done, so thumbs up for all her hard work — I know I certainly couldn't do all that without going absolutely insane. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Hello folks! Just realised I forgot yesterday — apologies. I think the relief of finally getting some annoying projects from the day job done just in time for me week off got to me; I kind of flopped down with some video games and just sort of zoned out for the evening. Nothing wrong with that!

Today I wanted to share with you a piece that I wrote a while back, and which has finally been published over on the lovely Normal Happenings blog. Matthew, who runs the blog, has taken a bit of a step back from active blogging to focus on his other creative passions, but is making a point of publishing every single post from the ambitious "The Characters That Define Us" collaborative project that he helped put together.

There have been some great posts up until now — go check out https://normalhappenings.com and browse through the front page to see what's been going on. And then check out my own post at  https://normalhappenings.com/2020/05/23/nepgear-the-character-that-defines-pete-from-moegamer/ to round off your visit!

The piece is themed around Nepgear, but it's actually a fairly comprehensive history of how I got to where I am now, for better or worse. Nepgear is a super-important character to me specifically, but it's important to acknowledge the massive impact that the things I'm into now have had on me — on my personal wellbeing, my mental health and my creativity.

While there are many days where I get frustrated with all sorts of things, one thing I can rely on is that my hobbies, my interests and my passions will always be there for me — and that's an enormous comfort. I'm grateful for everyone who has come along for the ride with me over the years — and yep, I'm talking about you, dear reader.

I hope you enjoy the piece. It's a long, personal commentary, but it felt good to write — and I hope it helps you get to know me a bit better!

Nearly time for a week off! Unfortunately, it looks like with shipping the way it is right now, my Evercade probably isn't going to arrive in time for me to do some uninterrupted coverage next week — but rest assured, there'll be plenty of that when it finally does arrive! I've already caught "evercade" being one of my key search terms on MoeGamer, so hopefully I'll be able to provide some comprehensive information for those who are looking for this.

In the meantime, I'm planning what to do with my time off. Mana Khemia will, of course, feature heavily — I actually haven't played it for a couple of days as I was thoroughly engrossed in A Hat in Time — and, of course, all the usual videos. For an upcoming short;Play I'm going to look at a game I recently booted up for the first time in probably about eight or nine years: A Valley Without Wind.

If you've never come across this game, it's a fascinating experimental piece that combines action RPG, procedurally generated open-structure 2D platforming and strategic citybuilding. In many ways, it's a glorious mess; it's also incredibly compelling and very addictive, and I've been really enjoying refreshing my memory on how to play it. (It also has a sequel, which is also very good and maintains the first game's experimental weirdness with something of a different mechanical focus, so count on that showing up in a few weeks, too.)

As I mentioned on Twitter a few days back for those who follow me there, I've decided that as part of the Atelier MegaFeature I'm going to revisit the Arland games and give them the same treatment — the Arland feature I did last year spent just one article on each game, and with the context I have now having played the Atelier Iris games and, by the time I get back to Arland, the Mana Khemia games, I have a lot more to talk about in terms of how the series has evolved.

That's going to be a while off yet — and obviously it's going to make the overall MegaFeature a bit longer — but it's going to be worth it in the long term. I already have something in the region of 35,000 words about Atelier on my site, making my coverage probably some of the most comprehensive online. If you have any Atelier fan friends, feel free to send them my direction!

Anyway. One more day of work to get through, then a nice weekend followed by a lovely week off. I can do this!

Probably the strangest sight I saw today was a guy getting really angry about the fact the Atari Lynx had an option to flip its screen over and play "left-handed" — a feature that the Evercade team have been experimenting with implementing in their upcoming Lynx collections.

I'm not entirely sure why the guy got so furious as English was not his first language and thus his explanation was not the clearest. But from what I made out, he was, for some reason, upset that Atari had included this entirely optional feature when every other console ever had had the D-pad on the left and the buttons on the right. Left-handed people had always played like that, he reasoned, so why should the Lynx be different?

Well, the Lynx isn't different, it just has the option to flip it around, so I remain baffled as to why this chap got into such a rage with everyone on the Evercade Discord, who were all politely trying to explain why this feature was present, and how it being completely optional meant that there was absolutely no need to get angry about it.

I guess this is another side of things you see elsewhere that defy reason — people who object to the presence of Easy modes in video games, for example. Sometimes these options can be a huge benefit from an accessibility perspective, and the presence of said options doesn't mean you have to use them. That is, after all, what the word "option" implies.

Oh well. Every day people find strange and unusual ways to confuse and disappoint me!

My wife Andie and I are, it's fair to say, Crazy Cat People. We have no intention of having any kids, and our two cats mean absolutely everything to us. We talk to them, we believe they are communicating with us in considerably more depth than they probably are, and they are an incredibly important part of our lives.

At times like this, pets are a good thing to have, regardless of how much of a Crazy [x] Person you are. Pets are good company. And I've always seemed to manage to draw out the best in cats I've spent any degree of time with; both of our cats Meg and Patti are very attached to me and frequently follow me from room to room while I'm doing things. When I'm not well or having a rest in bed, one of them (usually Meg) will come and lie on the bed with me as if she's "looking after" me. And Patti taps me in the face every bloody morning at about 6am.

It's been funny and heartwarming to see both of their personalities develop over time. Meg has become very much like Penny, the cat I grew up with; she's very expressive and communicative, enjoys having some time to herself but is also very loving and caring at exactly the right moment. Patti, meanwhile, is enthusiastic about everything and loves to talk. She's also prone to hiding if there's any sort of situation she's not sure about — usually loud noises.

We suspect Patti never really "learned" how to be a cat properly. All the shelter we got her from knew was that she was abandoned — they didn't even know what her original name was. From the way she behaves, it seems like she didn't get all the early "socialisation" a young cat needs in order to know exactly how to do certain things; she's not incapable of anything, it's just more that she's sort of found her own way of living her life, and as a result she doesn't always seem quite "right", particularly when she's stretched out to three times her normal length on the landing, curving her spine backwards and looking at you upside-down with a face that just says "what?"

We love them both dearly, and we still love our dear departed Ruby, too; she has a photo in pride of place atop the television unit so we never forget her — not that I think we could anyway.

Cats are great. Next time there's a global pandemic keeping us all in the house, get a cat.

I'm unironically looking forward to Clubhouse Games, 51 Worldwide Games or whatever you want to call it. I'm genuinely not exaggerating when I say it is actually one of my most anticipated games for a long time.

The reason for this is that I spent a lot of time on the Nintendo DS version, which was also known as Clubhouse Games in the States, and 42 All-Time Classics in Europe. I wrote about it here, in fact.

42 All-Time Classics was that perfect breed of handheld game: something that you could pick up and play for a few minutes at a time, or spend several hours thoroughly absorbed in. The substantial single-player offering took you through all of the different games on offer in various ways, giving you the opportunity to learn how to play through the substantial included rulebooks, and practice your skills against computer opponents of varying difficulty.

A big highlight of the experience was the fact that it supported DS Download Play, meaning only one person needed a cartridge in order to host up to 8 other players… so long as they had their own DS or 3DS, of course. The nice thing about the new Switch game is that it will support local play on the TV, meaning that many of these games can be enjoyed with a friend from the comfort of the sofa.

Of course, some games obviously won't work like this — most notably anything that requires you to "hide" things such as a hand of cards from your opponent, but in these cases the game supports multiple Switches and even offers a free downloadable app for players who don't own their own copy of the full game to join in the fun — much like Namco did with Pac-Man Vs. in the Switch Namco Museum bundle, and very much a spiritual successor to the DS Download Play option from the older game.

I'm also very interested in some of the games included in the collection. There are some intriguing and unusual picks in there, including some traditional games that you don't see adapted to video games very often — stuff like Nine Men's Morris and Hare and Hounds. Plus I think I've decided I would like to learn how to actually play Backgammon. I think I can actually remember the rules now; just need to understand how to effectively play now!

If anyone else reading is picking up a copy of this when it launches in early June, I'd be more than happy to host some regular "game nights" where we can get together and enjoy some virtual tabletop fun. I know dear Chris, as noted on the podcast, is very much looking forward to getting hammered and playing Connect Four, and I'm sure there are plenty more games we can all enjoy too. So say the word if you fancy it!

New podcast coming… well, actually, it should already be up by the time you read this. It's on the subject of our favourite RPG battle systems from over the years — a subject we've explored before, but one we're always happy to return to.

The MoeGamer Podcast is one of the most enjoyable things I do with Stuff Online. Chris and I have a good dynamic, I feel, and our areas of expertise complement one another nicely. I'm glad to see that of all the stuff I post on YouTube, the podcast always tends to do the best. Good job, too, 'cause it takes the most time to edit!

I know I could just do an audio podcast and people would probably be happy with that, but I like to go the extra mile — plus I feel our discussions are complemented well by visual aids. Gaming is a visual medium, after all!

Anyway, I'm really pleased with the current episode, so I hope you all enjoy it. And if you haven't listened and/or watched before, why not make this one your first episode?