Sure, why not. Let's do it together!

Is your character a YouTuber? Yes, I guess I count.

Is your character a girl? Nope, despite the fact I habitually play girls in games with custom characters.

Is your character known for Minecraft gaming? Nope. I want to like Minecraft, but I think I just… don't. Fun to watch other people struggle, though.

Is your character American? No.

Is your character British? Yessir.

Is your character in the Sidemen Crew? I don't know what that is. No.

Does your character live with their parents? No.

Does your character have any children? No.

Is your character from Creeped Out? No.

Is your character some sort of gatekeeper? To my knowledge, I've never excluded anyone from my passions, so probably not.

Does your character have a gaming channel? Yes!

Does your character protect children? Absolutely not.

Is your character from The Girl on the Train? No.

Does your character play Fortnite? Absolutely not.

Does your character play FIFA? Definitively not.

Does your character represent the darkness of another? Not to my knowledge.

Does your character use swear words? Fuck yes.

Does your character have over 1,000,000 YouTube subscribers? No. Closing in on 1,000 though!

Does your character write or compose songs? I have on occasion, so I guess yes here.

Does your character fly in his underwear? I have been known to, so yes.

Is your character obsessed with skin? What the fuck, man. No.

Has your character played in a TV show that takes place on a beach? No.

Does your character play Minecraft? We've been over this. No.

Is your character a singer, or does he work with a singer as a songwriter, producer, musician…? No.

Does your character drink Red Bull frequently? Yes. Although not as much as I used to while I'm dieting.

Is your character Aarava? Aarava is an F1 video game YouTuber, from the look of things. No.

Does your character play on a PlayStation 4? Yes.

Is your character linked with cars? No.

Is your character neutral about everything? No.

Is your character from Dishonored? No.

Has your character ever broken your heart? Have I broken my own heart? Almost certainly. Yes.

Does your character personally know you? Intimately.

Do you and your character share the same DNA? Yes.

Is your character your alter-ego? I guess that's probably as close as we're going to get. I suspect the "YouTuber" question eliminated the possibility of most fictional characters.

Let's try again!

Does your character personally know you? Yes.

Do you and your character live in the same house? Yes.

Is your character older than 17? Yes.

Does your character have the same birthday as you? Yes.

Does your character have more than two eyes? No.

Does your character live in Bingham? No.

Does your character send messages? Yes.

Does your character drink Red Bull frequently? See above.

Is your character your alter-ego? Goddammit, Akinator. I'm going to bed.

I had good intentions this evening — I was going to spend some time recording an Atari A to Z for tomorrow, but for some reason I was overcome with a pretty major panic attack and wasn't really able to muster up the courage and/or strength to do anything else tonight. I should have time to get something done tomorrow, but can't guarantee Atari A to Z will be "on time", as it were.

I hate having panic attacks. They're one of the least useful things your brain can do, since they make you unproductive for a significant amount of time, they make you irrational, and, as the name suggests, they make you feel absolutely terrified at absolutely nothing whatsoever. I had no reason whatsoever to be panicking this evening, and yet here we are. I did manage to haul myself out of the bed I'd been "hiding" (and napping) in to write this and get a few things done before going to bed "properly", but I'm still feeling exceedingly jittery right now, and it's not pleasant.

Think I'm going to treat myself to a nice soothing hot chocolate, settle down with a retro game or two on the new handheld and just try to chill before sleeping properly. Hope your evening/day has been better than mine!

Just to mention to those of you who haven't seen the Community post on YouTube: this weekend has been a tad hectic with some minor renovations and deep cleaning ahead of some overseas visitors next weekend, so I haven't had time to record any Atari A to Z or Retro Select this week. I'm gonna try to get some stuff done in the week but can't promise anything!

On the other hand, I can share my newly tidied and sparkling clean living room/game room/recording studio/office 🙂

Best thing about doing this is that we've freed up a bunch of space, so pretty much every system's library has a bit of room to expand. Much needed for the Switch in particular, which was starting to get a bit crowded!

Anyway, that took like our whole day to get sorted out, so I haven't had the time or energy to record anything other than stuff for work tomorrow — apologies! As I say, I'll try and record some bits and bobs in the week but I didn't want to half-arse things while I was knackered this evening.

Next weekend may also be disrupted due to the aforementioned visitors but hopefully things will be back to normal from thereon! Thank you for your understanding!

I got my Anbernic RG351V today, and after just a few minutes of play with it I'm very much on board. It took a bit of fiddling to get it up and running — primarily because it demands SD cards be in FAT32 format and Windows doesn't like formatting large cards in FAT32 by default, so you have to use a third-party format utility — but now that it's working it's going to be a wonderful little retro device to have on hand… at all times, basically.

I haven't done a lot with it as yet, but I already like some of the features it has enabled by default. Of particular note is its simulated Game Boy screen — I'm not normally a fan of fake scanlines at all because I tend to think they look tacky and, well, fake… but the "dot matrix" effect this thing applies to Game Boy titles by default looks incredibly authentic. Except for the fact you can actually see the thing in low light, of course.

It claims to support N64 games but I tried one earlier and it really doesn't… I mean, it loads them up and all, but performance is dogshit. I'm not too bothered, though — what this device does offer is the ability to play a whole load of excellent retro titles from over the years (up to about PS1 and PSP comfortably) with minimal fuss, with a nice screen, good controls, all in a pleasingly nostalgic Game Boy-style form factor.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not abandoning the Evercade or anything — hell, most of the Evercade devs and testers have something along the lines of one of these things — but having a huge library of retro stuff (much of which is in licensing hell, and thus unlikely to ever hit Evercade) is going to be an immensely valuable, wonderful thing, particularly if and when we all start going out and about a bit more.

I'll be doing a more substantial writeup on the device for Retrounite in the week, but suffice to say for now if you've been considering one of these things, it's definitely worth it — so long as you don't mind a little bit of faffing around when you're first getting it set up. But let's be honest; most of us here are retro gamers, and faffing around comes with the territory, whether you're working with original hardware or emulators!

Right, I'm off to play Alleyway in bed.

Remember what I talked about yesterday, where things just disappear from your memory and you're occasionally reminded of what a seemingly "major" (relatively speaking) part of your overall life experience they were at the time? Well, today I had what kind of feels like the "opposite" experience to that, for want of a better word.

For years now, I've had this sort of ideal "first level music" for a shoot 'em up in my head. I knew it was from something I played relatively briefly back in the day, but I could not for the life of me remember what it was from. For the longest time, I was absolutely convinced it was the music from Thunder Force IV's watery level, but while that is also a cool piece of music, it wasn't that.

I was convinced it was a Mega Drive piece, though. Was it Arrow Flash? Nope. Was it Burning Force? Nope, 'cause I never played that one back in the day — though I've discovered an undying love for it (and its first level music) ever since. Was it Thunder Force III? Nope.

Turns out it was Gynoug. And the reason I discovered this? Completely accidentally. I got a review code for the new Switch port of Gynoug this week and fired it up for the first time. As soon as the first level's music started my brain went "hang on a minute", and once the main theme kicked in… yep, that was it. That was absolutely the piece of music that's been stuck in my head for 20+ years, with absolutely no clue prior to today as to what it might have been.

I don't even really remember playing Gynoug that much as a kid. I didn't have my own Mega Drive — the only time I got to play one was either when I was visiting my friend Ed or when my brother came home from his games magazine jobs with a Mega Drive and/or Super NES in his backpack. So I would have only had the chance to play this game for a bit over the course of a single weekend at most. And yet that single piece of music stuck with me for all this time.

Well, I mean, the music stuck with me, even if the game didn't. Funny how the brain works, isn't it?

I find that when you're "in the moment", you tend to assume that you're going to remember pretty much everything, no matter how inconsequential it might seem. I mean, hell, I vividly remember all sorts of stupid and completely pointless shit that dates right back to fairly early childhood, so it is true to a certain extent.

But occasionally it's a pleasant surprise to rediscover something that you had forgotten about the existence of. In this case, it's something from not all that long ago — 2009, to be exact — but I had completely erased it from my memory. Perhaps with good reason.

I'm talking about Microsoft Songsmith, an experimental piece of tech from Microsoft's Research department that allowed you, in the words of its legendary promotional video, to "sing into the microphone while the drummer plays along" and then get the software to analyse the tune you'd sung and come up with a cheesy MIDI backing for your melody with what was, theoretically, some appropriate chords to use for the accompaniment.

Having just stumbled across a mention of it by chance while perusing back through ancient entries of my old blog, everything came flooding back. I'm pretty sure I was still working at the Apple Store when the monstrosity that is Songsmith was first unleashed on the world, and we all found it absolutely hilarious — even more so when it became apparent that people were using it as God intended: to take a cappella versions of classic songs and run them through Songsmith in order to create some of the most horrendous "remixes" imaginable.

I remember laughter and good times with friends. It was just 12 years ago — not a long time in the grand scheme of things — but it kind of feels a lifetime away right now. Fond memories, for sure, but also a tad bittersweet given the world we live in today.

Cancelled my Steam Deck reservation today — I actually cancelled it before the delay was announced, but said announcement just made it feel even more like the right thing to do for the moment.

I've been looking around a bit, and for the main purpose I want it for — on-the-go visual novels — there are much cheaper Windows tablet options. Sure, I won't be able to play Euro Truck Simulator in bed, but how much was I really going to do that anyway?

Instead, I've retrieved some of the money I'd set aside to pay for the Steam Deck and ordered one of those Anbernic emulation handhelds — specifically the one that looks like a wooden Game Boy. I've primarily done this so I can write about it over on Retrounite — one of the things we've talked about doing is more about hardware — but I'm also intrigued to give it a go, since I know a few people who have them and love them.

It's not going to replace the Evercade or Switch as a retro gaming solution by any means, but as an easily portable system it's going to be a nice thing to have loaded up with a bunch of cool stuff — particularly stuff for which licensing on Evercade or Switch rereleases will never, ever happen for one reason or another.

Not sure when it's going to arrive as when I ordered it today Amazon said it would arrive tomorrow, but I just had a dispatch notification that said it would actually be here on Sunday. I'm in no rush, but I am quite eager to have a play with it. There will, of course, be full reports to follow both here and on Retrounite!

Anyway. Bed now. Much as I would love to spend the night playing more Blue Reflection, I do still have to get up in the morning.

Adding to my Arcade Archives collection on Switch, I picked up a copy of Moon Cresta earlier. This is a game I was broadly familiar with but I don't think I'd ever actually played it — rather, I had a game on Atari 8-bit called Space Eggs which, in retrospect, is a complete ripoff of Moon Cresta, right down to the "stacking" ships.

Anyway, one of the things I've discovered I absolutely love about Moon Cresta is that it has some of the absolute best retro game noises I think I've ever heard. I can also say with confidence that I've found the source that Jeff Minter has pinched most of his sound effects from — the ones which aren't from Defender, that is.

Moon Cresta is interesting in that it occupies a space that is clearly at the tail end of the "fixed shooter" and trying, trying so desperately to push on into being a vertical scroller and just not quite getting there. It's good fun, though — it reminds me of some other early shooters like SNK's Ozma Wars, but with slightly more fair-feeling balance.

I'm interested to try Terra Cresta, too — and I'll have a good familiarity with them both by the time that new Platinum shmup comes out, whenever that shows up. (checks) Oh, apparently December 9. Good timing, I guess?

Anyway. Play retro games. And Blue Reflection: Second Light. That is all. Good night!

This weekend passed by all too quickly for my liking, but in retrospect it was because I was enjoying myself, so that's good!

Looking forward to writing about Blue Reflection this week. There's lots to say, for sure, and I'm making good progress through the story. I definitely will not have beaten it by the time embargo lifts, but that just means more opportunity to write stuff! At the very least I'll have something up on release day, and then something more when I've beaten it.

Got some fun videos coming up too. Been enjoying exploring the Arcade Archives games, so there's definitely going to be more of those — particularly some of the lesser known ones. This week we're looking at a little known and very early racer from Irem that I've come to like a whole lot. Please look forward to that on Friday!

Anyway, after a productive weekend it's time to get a good night's sleep and be ready for another week of work. Hope you've all had a good weekend, and I hope you enjoy what I have in store for you this week!

Played Blue Reflection: Second Light for approximately seven hours in total today. I'm in love. More on that… on Tuesday, probably. I doubt I will have finished it by then, but I'm going to have something up in time for the game's release, then likely follow that up with something more substantial once I've actually beaten it.

It's one of those games where you have a wonderful sense of companionship and camaraderie with the characters; it's a really close-knit group of characters, and you really feel them supporting one another as the game goes on — both in battle and during their periods of downtime hanging around the school. But again, I probably shouldn't be saying too much about that just yet.

I will say, however, that I've been looking forward to this game for most of the year and so far it is very much delivering — no, definitely exceeding my expectations. I'd go so far as to say those who passed by the first one for whatever reason should consider checking this one out — it has such satisfying mechanics (particularly for combat) that it's just an absolute joy to play.

Anyway. Much as I would happily continue playing this for several more hours this evening, I do have some videos I want to record tomorrow, so I suspect sleep is probably a wiser option.

S-Rank Patrons, I'll have a new wallpaper coming for you in the next couple of days. Everyone, regardless of tier: thank you for your continued support! It is, as always, very much appreciated — and helps keep all my creative projects up and running, even if the day job means I don't have quite as much time for some of them as I used to! At least that's a good problem to have, though; since my day job is covering the same ground as my creative projects, I don't really feel like I'm "losing out" on much — and hopefully you're all following what I'm up to as well!

Anyway. Naps. Good night!