Tired. Not really sure why, other than the fact it's half past midnight here. Today has just sort of… happened without any real fanfare, and before I knew it, it was the end of the evening and my cat is harassing me to go to bed.

I guess days like this are important to have now and again, because Things Happening all the time is exhausting. Sometimes it's nice to just have a day where you do your work, do the food shopping, then settle down for a porn visual novel that you can finish in an evening (with the intention of writing about it tomorrow… so I guess technically I was still "working").

Evercade posted a look at the Evercade VS' user interface today if you haven't seen that yet — you can find the video over at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyC-wHs6VP4. People seem impressed with it all, and well they should be — it's nice and slick, and full of cool features without bloat. This is a games machine, pure and simple, just like the old days — only with cartridges that have lots more games on them than back in the day!

I believe there's a new cartridge being announced soon. I know what it is, but I'm not telling just yet. And there's plenty more in the works for next year, too; I don't know what those are, so don't ask — though I do know a few of the things the folks over there have been "looking at".

Now we're getting a little closer to the launch, I don't mind telling you all that I have been the proud owner of a pre-release Evercade VS for a little while now so that I could help out with testing, manuals and the like — and I absolutely love the thing. This little beast is going to be an absolutely wonderful addition to any retro gaming enthusiast's lineup of consoles, so I hope anyone with interests in such directions considers picking one up if they haven't already.

Unfortunately they're going to be a little late due to the worldwide shipping nonsense, but all being well, people who ordered from Funstock (which includes those who went for the nice "Founders Edition") should still get theirs before Christmas. That goes for the upcoming arcade cartridges, too — there's some great games on those, so be sure to check them out when they finally arrive.

Anyway. That really is all I have to talk about today. Think it's probably time to grab a hot chocolate and get some sleep. Hope your respective Mondays have been similarly uneventful!

Remember a while back when I was contemplating investigating the Intellivision Amico, the modern-day reboot of the Intellivision brand with its fancypants touchscreen controllers and its aim to bring back couch-based multiplayer as a default?

Yeah, forget all that; I've defended Tommy Tallarico in the past because I thought people were being unnecessarily harsh on him and his plans for the system — but the email I received today gave me an extremely sour taste in my mouth.

You see, for a while they've been teasing the fact that there will be physical releases for the all-digital system that doesn't have a cartridge slot or disc drive — and today they revealed exactly what form those physical releases are going to take. They're going to be boxed copies, limited in number, that contain a lenticular card, a collector's coin… and an RFID card with a code to download the game once it's available. Oh, and the games themselves will be NFTs.

So basically, these "physical releases" are nothing of the sort. Not only that, they're contributing to what is commonly agreed to be one of the most harmful and/or stupid things in the digital sphere right now. Tommy and co are touting these boxed copies as being "fully transferable" due to them being NFTs — as if that was something revolutionary. Except it's not, is it; we've been able to loan or give games to other people since the very dawn of the industry.

I guess the fact that it's a digital copy which can be given to someone else is noteworthy — at present there's no means of transferring ownership of an individual title on any other digital gaming platform — but the fact that this is implemented using the controversial NFT technology is likely to put a lot of people off. NFTs have a dedicated and alarmingly zealous online community behind them — but a considerably larger proportion of the population staunchly against them, since they're 1) stupid and 2) massive energy hogs.

I think the most galling thing for me, though, is that these are advertised as "physical releases" when they're nothing of the sort. They're boxes of tat, with a code to download a game from a digital platform. And once that platform's gone, the game is gone, too. It's not like all the boxed copies I have on my shelves behind me as I type this; each and every one of them can be put into its respective console and enjoyed until their physical components decay. Yes, some of the more modern releases require patches to be "optimal", but for the most part I can just put in a game and play it.

That's simply not the case with these ridiculous physical releases for Amico, and this absolute stupidity has been enough to discourage me from wanting anything to do with the platform. I still like the idea of what the Amico stands for and what they were hoping to achieve with it — but this silly bandwagoneering does nothing to endear a system that is already something of a laughingstock in certain quarters of the gaming community to the people they should be courting. No gaming collector worth their salt is going to be fooled by this crap.

At least I hope not.

Do yourself a favour and grab an Evercade VS; those folks know how physical releases work.

Yesterday was a bit negative, I know, so I thought I'd share some happier news today: our first week following the Weight Watchers plan has been a successful one, as I weighed myself this morning and am a whopping eleven lb down from where I was last weekend. That's… a good start, to say the least.

I'm aware from my previous experience with Slimming World that an enormous loss in the first week is pretty normal — it's something to do with water retention — and that things tend to settle down to the tune of about a lb a week or so from thereon. But still, that first week loss is good motivation — particularly when I consider that I don't feel like I've been having to deprive myself of too many things.

The Weight Watchers "SmartPoints" system encourages you to track what you eat and stay within a daily limit, with a balance of weekly points available for when you want or need to go a little over. So far I haven't tapped into any of those weekly points, meaning Andie and I can treat ourselves to something nice this weekend without any guilt whatsoever. I think we're going to have a Nando's or a Wagamama.

Best thing, though, is that there's a bunch of "ZeroPoint" foods you can have, and they're not just boring flavourless vegetables. Nope, you can have chicken, fish, eggs and a few other tasty things as much as you want (within reason) — and honestly, that sort of thing is enough to keep me sane alongside "diet food".

That and we've found a variety of excellent snacks that are low in SmartPoints value (Hula Hoops Puft are both delicious and only 2 points per bag, for example) — this means that my tendency to boredom/stress/depression eat can be catered to with things that won't make the problem worse. Being able to have a bag of crisps or popcorn or something means that I can feel like I'm having a "treat" when in fact I'm not doing anything particularly bad for my overall goals — so long as I'm staying within those overall limits.

So on the whole, feeling pretty positive right now. Hopefully we'll be able to keep this up. We'd better keep this up, since we made a commitment to doing this for 9 months so we'd get three of them for free!

I've got a very long way to go before I'm anywhere even approaching where I want to be. But if I can stick with this, I hope it will help me feel a lot better about myself, both physically and mentally. So wish me luck!

I've had a few days… possibly weeks, even months… where I've been feeling frustrated at all manner of things about the world in general. It's not one specific thing, it's just a general sense of annoyance at life in general in 2021. And I'm sure it's something that everyone goes through, particularly when they reach the point in life that I'm at — but I've just been feeling it in a particularly pronounced manner of late.

I'm frustrated with the way people communicate online. While once I remember online being a wonderful place where people really felt like they could be themselves and let their true personalities shine — even if they were shy and awkward in real life, like I am — these days it doesn't feel like that's the case any more. Everyone is "performing"; everyone is trying to make sure they say the right things, look the most beautiful, get the most viral posts. Very little feels like actual, honest, genuine conversation any more.

I saw someone — I can't find the original tweet, unfortunately — describe Twitter as a place where there are no real friendships, only combatants. I'm not sure I'd quite go that far — though I have seen plenty of situations where people who were supposedly friends with one another end up at each other's throats over the most stupid things. Hell, I've experienced it myself in more than one instance — quite recently even. I won't bother you with details, but needless to say I was extremely disappointed that someone I'd previously had a lot of respect for (supported on Patreon, even) had apparently drunk too deeply of minor social media victories and become an insufferable git in the process.

There's definitely endless attempts for one-upmanship going on. Everyone is streaming, so everyone has a schedule and no-one is actually watching one another. Everyone has a humorous take on the latest news, except it's actually the same joke several thousand other people have made in the last five minutes. Everyone has a library of predictable gifs and reaction images to post in lieu of actual conversation. Disagreements are marked by nothing more than the word "ratio" rather than actual discussion. And the worst thing is, the world seems to be latching on to its own increasing insufferability and catering directly to the most annoying elements of itself.

I read a post earlier about how Netflix makes its thumbnails, and the whole thing frustrated me. Not because it was a boring post — it was actually quite interesting — but because the whole algorithmic bullshit that is actually going on in pretty much everything you do online these days feels like it's insulting my intelligence. Except apparently it's not insulting anyone's intelligence, because supposedly people really do make a decision on whether or not to, say, watch a TV show or movie in the space of about 3.8 seconds or whatever it was — and thus a specific, tailor-made, robotically produced, algorithm-friendly thumbnail is needed. One that is colourful, one that has an individual person (preferably a villain) on it looking at the camera with a distinctive facial expression. Because that's what we're conditioned to respond to.

Like I say, I can't really pin down why all this stuff bothers me when it's just the reality of life in 2021. I guess the way I'd sum it up is by saying that it feels increasingly like we're living in a real-life cyberpunk dystopia despite the myriad warnings we've had against such things from fiction over the course of the last half-century or more… and when you can sort of see things for what they are, you can't help but wonder why more people can't… or won't.

I guess the thing to do is just grit your teeth and try to remove as many sources of frustration as possible. But it seems like every time you do that, something else becomes massively irritating or gets "redesigned" into something infinitely worse, too. Such is the endless cycle of things, I guess.

Anyway. I'm off to go and play Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire, eat a sandwich and cry myself to sleep or something. Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!

So, uh, about that Premium module I was playing for Neverwinter Nights… it's not finished. It was never finished, and it seems there is no hope of it ever being finished. And yet it was sold as an official mini-expansion for Neverwinter Nights.

Seriously. The plot just starts getting going — you finally join the titular ShadowGuard and set off on a sea voyage to track down the evil Crimson Prophet, who has murdered your father and stolen a deadly artifact of unimaginable power… and then it just stops. Roll credits.

I mean, I knew going in that it was only going to be a two or three hour adventure in total but I was sort of expecting it to, you know, actually conclude. In a way I guess it does reach a conclusion of sorts; the "ending", such as it is, is the sort of event that would move you on to the next main chapter and a new hub location in the main game. But it's still hard to believe that this was sold as a "Premium Module" for the game.

Non-ending aside, the module itself was pretty good for the most part. It had some interesting and intriguing characters, some dramatic moments and some cool puzzles, as well as a few situations where there were multiple possible solutions to a given problem.

Less good were the numerous textual errors, outright errors in game logic (a character accuses you of giving him up to the guards even when you let him go free earlier in the story) and quite a few instances where possible "sequence breaking" wasn't trapped properly. Given that Neverwinter Nights-era BioWare were involved with this, I would have expected more rigorous QA — but it is what it is, I suppose. With the versions of Neverwinter Nights that are readily available today, at least you don't have to pay for it.

I hear tell that some of the other Premium modules for Neverwinter Nights are also unfinished in some way, despite doing a good job of setting things up for future development. This is really unfortunate to see, since several of them start really strong; it's a pity to go into some of them knowing that they end with a wet fart and no real closure. The worst kind of wet fart, I'm sure you'll agree.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom; the "big" Neverwinter Nights expansions are still good — I've still never actually played Hordes of the Underdark through, so I might have to do that at some point — and there are plenty of interesting community modules out there, some of which are "featured" in the Enhanced Edition version of the game's interface. I'm particularly intrigued by an apparent remake of Westwood classic Eye of the Beholder in Neverwinter Nights' engine — though having never actually played Eye of the Beholder through in its original incarnation, I kind of feel I should probably get a little experience with that first.

Anyway, I stand by my recommendation of Neverwinter Nights, particularly when it's on sale — just don't go into those Premium modules expecting something of the same quality as the "official" campaigns, I guess is what we can all learn from this!

I recorded a video on Neverwinter Nights for Retro Select this week. I just fancied revisiting it — or more accurately, giving the Enhanced Edition from a couple of years back a go. And I've been enjoying it a lot — particularly exploring some of the including Premium modules.

I'm currently working my way through one called ShadowGuard, which seems to be an interesting tale of treachery and ancient mysteries, and the nice thing is that it's all nicely self-contained, promising to wrap up in just a few hours.

This is an oft-forgotten thing about Neverwinter Nights; the very nature of it means that it's possible to play and enjoy a full adventure in a matter of hours rather than having to commit every waking moment to it over the long term. This makes it that rare thing: the RPG that is eminently suitable for the busy person. I bet even the most boring of my child-rearing friends could probably be convinced to play through a module or two if it's only a couple of hours' commitment.

Anyway. Neverwinter Nights provides, among other things, a fond reminder of when BioWare were actually good. It's also nice to play a classic D&D game once again — it's been a while, other than my recent Dungeon Hack video. And whatever you might think about D&D as a ruleset, it sure played host to some absolutely cracking video games over the years, for sure.

So yeah. Neverwinter Nights. It's a good. If you don't already own it, you just missed out on a nice sale price over on GOG.com — but even at "full" price it's only fifteen quid, which is an absolute bargain for how much game you get. Give it a shot if you've never tried it for yourself — if nothing else, it plays host to probably Jeremy Soule's finest work of all time.

Been playing some Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (or just "Castlevania", as it was known in Europe) in the Castlevania Advance Collection, and I'm having a great time. I owned a copy of this for GBA back in the day — I actually might still have it somewhere — but for one reason or another never got that far with it.

Now I can play it on the big screen, however, I'm really enjoying it. The GBA may have been low resolution, but man, it could push sprites around the screen and scroll incredibly smoothly, so the whole thing looks absolutely great blown up.

The few little additions M2 have made to the game are excellent, too; much like they added "Gadgets" to the Aleste collection, so too have they added additional info here — most notably a little popup that shows whether the enemy you just hit is one that drops a card for the game's magic system, and whether or not you've got that card already.

There's also a helpful in-game encyclopaedia that includes info on all the enemies, the card combinations and the items. You don't have to use any of this info if you don't want to, but its inclusion definitely saves a trip or ten to GameFAQs!

Like most games from this era that I'm returning to now, I'm really appreciating the excellent design of the game in a way I probably wouldn't have noticed back then. I'm particularly appreciating the boss battles — these are well-designed encounters that are challenging but always based on clear patterns; you just need to spot 'em.

I also started watching the Castlevania series on Netflix, but I feel that's probably a discussion for another day when I've watched a few more episodes!

Supposedly Facebook is down for as-yet undetermined reasons. It's something to do with their DNS, or something to do with their servers… but something interesting appears to be going on.

Apparently employees can't get into the building to sort stuff out either, suggesting some sort of coordinated attack might be going on — but at the same time, things like this have happened before and turned out to not be anything worthwhile. And the Internet is, of course, rife with speculation, "my uncle works at Facebook" stories, clickbait and, of course, outright lies, so the only people who can really say what is actually happening right now are the people who are actively involved.

What's interesting is how many people are seemingly happy to say what a negative influence Facebook has been on society at large. While there are undoubtedly good things about Facebook as a means of communication, the way it has grown and expanded well beyond its original remit has, I agree, not been a great thing. And the other social media sites under its umbrella are no better; Instagram in particular is a gross haven of "influencers" who think fame and fortune will come to them if they pout at the camera enough and shill whatever makeup brand they have in their inbox this week.

I must confess, I don't doubt that the actual obliteration of Facebook, however, unlikely, would be very interesting to watch happen. It would cause a certain amount of chaos, I'm sure — but I think it would also open a lot of people's eyes as to the risks of being too free and easy with your information online. At this point I have to wonder that if Facebook did go up in flames… would something come in to take its place, or would people have had enough? I suspect the former; today's society is literally addicted to social media, and you never can really predict what the "next big thing" will be.

More realistically, though, I suspect this will be all over by tomorrow morning, we'll get absolutely no explanation whatsoever as to what happened, and xXLiLShInYGal69Xx will go back to shooting selfies of herself on Instagram in the hope of securing a brand deal so lucrative, she'll never have to find an actual job.

We'll see, I guess. Interesting times!

Andie and I both joined Weight Watchers today. We both already needed to lose some weight before the pandemic hit, and we've both not taken great care of ourselves, so we needed to do something a bit more "drastic". Previous attempts were proving hard to stick to or not particularly effective, so we wanted to go with something that was a bit more likely to work.

Neither of us have done Weight Watchers before, but we both had success with Slimming World, so we figured we'd likely have similar success here over the long term. We've both made a 9-month commitment to the program, so we're in it for the long haul — and we figured that with Weight Watchers, we're probably more likely to be able to stick with it, even if we feel like being lazy about it.

Weight Watchers, you see, is a lot more widely supported than Slimming World is. You can get Weight Watchers ready meals, desserts and all manner of other stuff in regular supermarkets, whereas Slimming World ready meals, sauces and the like were Iceland exclusives. Likewise, you're seemingly a lot more likely to be able to find out how many Weight Watchers SmartPoints something is worth than figure out its Syn value on Slimming World, so tracking everything should hopefully be a bit easier.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that Slimming World is the Linux of weight loss programs — it works very well, but you have to put in a bit more effort and it's not nearly as widely supported. Weight Watchers, meanwhile, is Windows; it's widely supported, does the job and is relied upon by a lot of people. Hopefully it's not as prone to whatever the dietary equivalent of crashing and performance issues are.

Anyway, that's the plan. We're starting in earnest from tomorrow, and I'll be interested to see how things go. The first time I did Slimming World, I had an amazing amount of success and I'm keen to repeat that. It'll take time to get there, and that part of things is frustrating — but, well, none of us are exactly pressed for time these days, are we?

I've been watching a Channel 4 show recently that I'd meant to check out for a while, but never gotten around to: Man Down, by Greg Davies.

The basic premise is that Davies plays a drama teacher who hates his job and life, and things systematically start falling apart for him when his longstanding girlfriend leaves him. With his friends Jo and Brian (played by Roisin Conaty and Mike Wozniak respectively), he gets involved in all manner of ridiculous scrapes, and never quite manages to completely recover from that initial instance of being knocked down.

In the early series, there's a lot of thoroughly silly, exaggerated comedy, much of which will be familiar to anyone who has seen Davies' stand-up shows. But as we move into the later series, we start getting into some serious pathos, and it's hard not to feel bad for the poor bugger as he increasingly feels like life has completely left him behind.

In many ways, it's a similar sort of idea to Bojack Horseman, which was similarly comedic and pathetic by turns, only here there's a distinctly low-key British bent to it all. There's no overdramatic drug overdoses or anything here; just an overweight middle-aged man breaking down and crying in a bank when he discovers his mother and aunt have used his inheritance to set up a trust fund for his as-yet unborn son, born out of a night of passion with the woman he truly loves, but who knows exactly what a hopeless case he is.

That might not sound very funny — I've been through a lot of very similar feelings to what Davies' character expresses in the third and fourth series in particular, especially about 10 years ago when my first wife departed. But there are times when you can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all — and how much of a bastard other people can be at times, especially to someone who is already down on their luck.

There's an incredible cast in it; Rik Mayall played the father of Davies' character in the first series before he was tragically taken from us, Mike Wozniak is absolutely incredible as the strait-laced Brian, Tony Robinson does an amazing stint as a horrible old man "romancing" Davies' character's mother, and even Mark Hamill has a wonderful guest appearance in one episode.

It's doubtless not a show everyone will enjoy because a lot of the comedy is very much on the "cringe" side of things — Andie can't watch it, as she really can't deal with that kind of humour — but if you're up for that sort of thing I can highly recommend giving it a watch.

Curious to see how it ends, and if there's a conclusive finale at all. It ran for four series before being cancelled, but shows like this have a habit of just sort of fizzling out when that happens. We'll have to wait and see, I guess — I'm only a few episodes away from the end now!