Been playing with an early Christmas gift for the last couple of evenings — well, it was something bought with money from the parents on both sides, so I guess it's something I bought for myself. It's a Logitech G29 steering wheel and pedals set, plus a stand to use them with.

I've kind of hungered for a steering wheel for quite some time, but never quite taken the plunge. At least part of this is down to the fact that there's no single solution that works for absolutely every platform out there, but at least the G29 works with PS3, PS4 and PC, so that's a fair few bases covered. (There's a Wikipedia page that suggests it might even work with some PS2 games, but I have my doubts on that front — might have to give it a test.)

Mostly so far I've played Euro Truck Simulator 2 with it, and it's a delight. Aside from the fact that sitting in a driving position for the longer journeys in that game can be a bit hard on the back, it's a completely different experience controlling the truck in a more realistic manner — and the fact that the on-screen steering wheel precisely matches the movements of the G29 is something I feel far more impressed by than I probably should be.

The improvements the G29 brings are mostly noticeable when doing more low-speed manoeuvres. The fact it has a 900-degree range of motion — comparable to a real wheel — means that making 90-degree turns at junctions or reversing into a parking space is uncannily realistic — and, in the latter case, a hell of a lot easier than using a joypad.

I'm also impressed with the force-feedback functionality. I've only previously experienced this with arcade machines, so it's great to get a feel for how it works with home games. In Euro Truck Simulator 2 you can tweak the performance somewhat so it responds to the things you want it to respond to — I've got it set so the engine giving it some power causes some slight shaking, and you can somewhat feel the road surface through the wheel too — including the resistance of the tyres against the road when turning the wheel. Very impressive.

I anticipate I'm probably going to use this mostly for more sim-like experiences — I might even pick up something like Project Cars 2 in the Steam sale — but I'm also intrigued to try it with some more arcade-style games, too. I believe it works with Ridge Racer 7, so that will be an interesting one to try — particularly given how beautifully that game handles with a standard pad.

Anyway, after driving from the south of France to somewhere in the depths of Russia, I need to stand up for a bit now, so I'll leave that there. Short version: if you've been considering a steering wheel to have some fun with, the G29 seems to be a very good choice!

I thought I'd escaped it, but I feel distinctly beaten down by the vaccine booster shot from the other day today. Had to go and have a bit of a sleep after work, though I was revived from my slumber for a thoroughly pleasant pizza. I think after I've typed this up, though, I'm heading back to bed to play some Evercade/Intellivision — I'm pretty hooked on Night Stalker at the moment.

Wrote 5,000 words on Blue Reflection earlier today without even really trying — you can read that here. I need to knuckle down and do a second playthrough of that to get the "true" ending, but I'm hesitating for the stupidest reason — I like all those characters so much that I know I'll feel guilty skipping story scenes, dates and suchlike. (Also the dates are actually important to character progression, so you can't really just not do them.) I'll get to it, though — I'm too curious to see the true ending.

Aside from that, not a whole lot to report, really. Oh, I did get a new chair — one specifically aimed at the larger individual — and that seems to have been a good choice so far. I have already let out several monstrous farts in it, so it has most certainly been welcomed to the family. Patti has not yet clawed it, which is a bonus, but I suspect that situation won't last long.

I'm excited for my steering wheel setup. I believe the stand for it is arriving tomorrow, and the wheel itself on Wednesday, which is mildly frustrating, but it is what it is. I have a number of games that I'm looking forward to trying with it — and am mildly concerned by warnings in BeamNG.drive's documentation that on its default setting the force feedback for crashes can be alarmingly "authentic" — to such a degree that it recommends treating the wheel as you would one in a real car if you were actually having a crash.

Naturally I won't be crashing at all once I have the wheel, of course, because it will immediately make me a much better driver. Hah. No, I'm looking forward to giving it a go with BeamNG.drive probably most of all, but I bet Snowrunner and Euro Truck Simulator will also be a fun time. I've always loved driving games, but I've never owned a steering wheel controller for any platform, so this is pretty exciting. Full reports will, of course, follow.

Anyway, in my vaccine-blasted state as I am, I'm going to go sit in bed for a bit and play some old video games, perhaps while watching the new Nijisanji boys' debuts. Sounds like a plan, dunnit?

Well, that's the last episode of Atari A to Z Flashback recorded and edited! It's exporting now, and will be available to watch on Christmas Day. I genuinely didn't plan that, but it turned out rather nicely in the end.

This is an exciting and emotional moment, because it's a huge creative project finally coming to fruition, as I've mentioned a few times previously. Sitting and playing through 150 old Atari games might not sound super-"creative", but there's a lot of stuff that goes into making these videos — research, familiarisation with other stuff going on around the same time, getting to grips with the games and figuring out how to (hopefully) be vaguely entertaining while showing them all off to you.

I'm glad I've done this project, though, because it's meant that I've now been through absolutely everything in that whole collection, and I feel like I have a really solid understanding of what "Atari" really meant throughout the late '70s and early '80s. It's not the complete picture of what was going on in gaming, of course — for that, you also need to look at companies like Activision and Imagic, as well as the lesser known or less fondly regarded outfits — but it's a good foundation for familiarising yourself with what was going on in these early days of the medium.

The whole process has also, I feel, developed my own "tolerance" (for want of a better word) for really retro retro stuff. I mean, I already had a pretty good tolerance for stuff that looked old and crusty, but going through this lot has given me a real appreciation of how, sometimes, it's all about how you use the 2K or 4K you have available to you, rather than spreading yourself out over several gigabytes.

As I mentioned previously, after the videos going out this week I'll be taking a week's break from YouTube for Christmas and new year, then new videos will start up again in January. I don't know if I'm going to think of an immediate replacement for Atari A to Z Flashback, but as I discussed the other day, I'm open to ideas if anyone wants to see something specific. Otherwise I'll just take a little while to ponder further!

Anyway, I think I've earned a comfy sit in bed with some Intellivision games on the Evercade VS now. Hope your weekend has been suitably relaxing!

Apparently I'm good at online definitely-not-Pictionary. It's a fixture in work-related online "social" events, and on the vast majority of occasions we've played it, I have won by a considerable margin. Tonight was no exception.

This pleases me, even if my success is more down to my ability to type quickly than necessarily being especially "smart". It's fun to be good at something — though of course I don't mind on the occasions when I do get beaten.

I feel a tad less awkward on online meetings than I used to. This is probably partly down to how normalised they've become over the last couple of years, but it's also a product of the fact that I like both my job and the people I work with. That really does make such a huge difference.

When I think back to my previous job, where I would frequently just go to bed and nap while attending conference calls on my phone, it seems a world away. It's not that I necessarily disliked my previous job or the people I worked with there — I just didn't care, and I had no reason to care. I didn't feel particularly important or valued, and  I was becoming increasingly frustrated by certain colleagues' tendency to introduce complete wastes of time into our "procedures".

Generally speaking, in my experience if your job involves following "procedures" there are almost certainly a zillion ways you can do it more efficiently. But for so many positions, "procedure" seeks to form a sort of backbone for the authority structure that's in place. And I guess it might have some value in an organisation that works in that way, with people who work well that way.

I'm pretty convinced at this point that I do not, in fact, work well that way. The people I work with on a daily basis now treat one another as equals, and everyone knows how to contribute to keep things ticking along. I like this. It works well, it keeps stress minimal, and it makes interpersonal relationships feel less stilted and awkward. We can be human, not drones.

Anyway, you'd think this meandering had some sort of point to it, but not really. I've just had a bottle of VK and felt like pondering some things. Now I'm going to play some Evercade in bed and get a good night's sleep. Hope your Thursday has been fine!

Yet another NFT controversy erupted today, this time with the announcement that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, a game that has been hotly anticipated by its incredibly loyal (until today) fanbase, will be inexplicably making use of NFTs to allow "lucky" people to be "in the game" as "MetaHumans". In other words, paying exorbitant amounts of space money on an unnecessary blockchain to get themselves in the game as an NPC.

You know, the sort of thing Kickstarters offer as a reward. (Although Kickstarter perhaps isn't the best example, what with them wanting to move to the blockchain, too.)

I don't understand this. After Ubisoft's announcement of NFTs got such a negative reception — even with YouTube's Dislike count being removed — that they had to Private their announcement video; after the Twitter account for the late Stan Lee was bombarded with negative comments after the current operators started shilling NFTs; after Peter Molyneux's new game was mocked for the stupid idea it is… why are people still pushing for this "play to earn" crap?

Well, at least part of it is, of course, down to money. Peter Molyneux's new game may well be a fucking stupid idea, but it's sold $40 million of NFTs so far. This does not, however, mean that the game will be a success; it means that cryptobros have jumped on the game believing it to be the next big "opportunity" and have "invested" in it in the hope of offloading their badly rendered low-poly take on London will net them a profit when some gullible fuckwit buys it off them.

As for Ubisoft and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s use of NFTs, it's just baffling, since they offer no real case for how the use of the tech is in any way beneficial or desirable. The cosmetics that Ubisoft are distributing as NFTs are the same sort of thing you've been able to get for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress on Steam for years — and those games have never needed to fuck around with cryptocurrency. (In fact, Valve won't allow games with crypto/NFT components on the platform — a rare instance of them actually being clear about something in their guidelines.)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s astroturfing "metaverse" account even claims that they agree that NFTs shoehorned into games are dumb, and that the sole reason they're doing this is to build a firm foundation for modders to work on. This is, of course, bollocks, since modding games dates back to the metaphorical Dark Ages and has never required any sort of "decentralisation" or other such buzzwords in order to work. All you need is some modding tools — either provided by the developer themselves or developed by the community — and you're away. How do NFTs fit into all that? S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s PR people don't seem to be able to explain.

This is a fad, make no mistake, and I'm sure it will eventually die, just like shit like "Online Pass" did — remember that? Unfortunately, while we're in the middle of all this nonsense it's rather discouraging — but take heart from the fact that the only people who seem to think this is a good idea are the people who were already making stupid decisions at the upper levels of triple-A publishing corporations.

We'll get through this. And if gaming does decide to become one big crypto blockchain party… well, there's plenty of retro platforms still waiting for you to explore their libraries!

Blue Reflection: Second Light is done! Excellent stuff. Sayonara still holds the "final boss music" trophy, but aside from that, the whole finale was excellent. And that's the last I'm going to say about that for the sake of those who haven't seen that far yet.

This does mean that I'm free to get back to the Atelier MegaFeature as soon as I want, so I've made the executive decision to hold fire on it until the new year. That gives me a bit of time to just chill, do some stuff for Rice, perhaps get ahead of schedule on actually playing Atelier and the opportunity to just… y'know, exist for a bit.

Likewise, Atari A to Z Flashback's last episode will be next week (as in not this coming Saturday, but the one after), and rather than immediately replacing it with something new (that I haven't decided yet — I have a few options waiting in the wings) I'm going to just let that end and start the new thing in the new year. Clean break and all that.

In fact, you might be able to offer some thoughts on the replacement for Atari A to Z Flashback. Again, I'm keen to ensure I don't take on too much at once, so I'm limiting it to just one of these — but there's always the possibility of doing things in "seasons": several weeks of one thing, switch to another thing, switch to another thing and so on. Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z will continue for now because I don't think I'll ever run out of stuff for those!

Anyway, these are the things I've been kicking around as possibilities:

• Atari A to Z Anthology (all the 2600 games in the Activision Anthology collection for PS2)

• Intellivision Lives (or some sort of witty name) — the games in the Intellivision Lives compilation for PS2

• Atari Jaguar A to Z (a project with a definite, finite and reachable end)

• Evercade A to Z (definitely something I want to return to)

Feasibly I could incorporate all of the first three into Retro Select, since that covers multiple platforms, but I sort of wanted to make each of those into their own distinct series as I think they sort of "deserve" it. I guess the plus side is that all of them except Evercade A to Z are smaller in scale than Atari A to Z Flashback, so there's no reason I couldn't do each of them in turn.

If you have any particular preferences for what you'd like to see, let me know — otherwise I'll just inevitably make some sort of hasty decision in the New Year and ponder if I made the right choice for a few months 🙂

Blue Reflection: Second Light is almost done, I think. It's certainly all sounding very "finale-ish", many of the major plotlines have been resolved and there have been multiple scenes that are all "oh, this might be the last time we see each other, let's say all the super-sweet things we've been storing up in our hearts to each other before going to kick the snot out of the final boss".

I refrained from actually following through into the finale this evening because it's already half midnight, and tradition dictates that if I start an RPG finale at an already late hour, it will be three or four o' clock in the morning before it actually concludes. And while I'm not necessarily averse to that, I do have to work tomorrow and would like to be awake at a vaguely sociable hour.

So I think I'll save it for tomorrow. Am definitely hyped up for the finale, though. I can't help but wonder if the final boss theme is going to match up to Sayonara from the original Blue Reflection, though… man, that tearjerker takes some beating. We shall see, I guess.

Anyway. Bed for me!

Recorded all next week's videos (except for any Final Fantasy vids I can squeeze in for Rice) today. Highlight of the day was Blast Works for Wii, an adaptation of one of Kenta Cho's freeware shoot 'em ups — specifically, Tumiki Fighters.

Blast Works' main attraction is that in exchange for 127 blocks of your Wii's storage space (which is quite a bit, as it turns out) you can basically build your own game. You can construct your own ships, enemies, bullet patterns, levels, scenery objects and pretty much everything aside from sounds and music from scratch, then play your own custom game. Back when Wii online functionality was a thing, you could even upload and share them online.

Naturally, I did the only sensible thing when presented with such a comprehensive suite of editing tools.

That's right, I took one of the sample projects and replaced the player ship with a big, spunking cock. Because what better way to test the functionality of a game editor than with something needlessly offensive? Exactly.

I have some ideas for trolling my friends with this game, but it's a lot of effort for a bit of childish japery. I think it might be worth it though.

It's been thoroughly pleasant to have a nice quiet day today. Got up after a lie-in (though not too late as to obliterate the entire morning for once), played some Blue Reflection and just generally chilled out for the whole day.

Consequently, I don't have much to talk about other than the fact that I think I'm approaching the finale of Blue Reflection: Second Light and it's great. I don't want to say too much because spoilers, but I really like some of the angles they've gone with here — it keeps things tonally and thematically consistent with the first game (and the anime) but presents an interesting new twist on the context.

I still haven't got around to watching the whole anime — and I was bummed to discover it won't be getting a Blu-Ray release — but I do very much appreciate how Second Light incorporates some of the characters from the anime but does completely unexpected things with them. Likewise, the involvement of Hinako (protag of the first Blue Reflection) is no secret, but her role in the overall story is a very interesting one rather than just a bit of fanservice.

Tomorrow is recording day, so that will likely take up most of the day. I think Andie is planning on putting up Christmas decorations, too, so we should have a pleasingly festive house by the end of the day. For now, though, time to sit in bed and read some sort of Japanese popular fiction, I reckon. But what to pick? Gal Gohan? Komi Can't Communicate? Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki? I have a bunch to choose from right now, and they're all exciting me at the moment, so that's good.

Anyway. Hope your weekend is going well. Have a nice Sunday!

I'm back! Sorry for no post yesterday, but the hotel we were staying in for the Christmas party had absolutely terrible Wi-Fi and phone reception, and I didn't fancy wandering around the whole building trying to find the single square metre that actually had some sort of wireless reception. Also I was quite drunk and full of food.

It was a good party though. It was nice to meet people I've only met either through Teams video calls or, in some cases, just email messages. The food was good, the open bar was exceedingly dangerous (though I managed to restrain myself sufficiently to escape with neither a hangover this morning nor any vomiting last night) and the company was good. Also no-one minded when I snuck off about 10pm to go and rest in my room for a bit and ended up falling asleep. At least I wasn't the first person to flake out; someone didn't even make it to the meal's main course.

Discovery of the evening was the Espresso Martini, which this place had on tap. I didn't know you could have any sort of Martini on tap, but they had both Espresso Martini and Passion Fruit Martini on tap. I didn't try the latter, but I had several of the former, and they were very nice indeed. I'm not sure what was in them besides the coffee and the vodka — perhaps some sugar syrup, since I saw them squirting something or other into the glass before pouring the actual drink — but they were eminently drinkable, having neither the bitterness of pure espresso nor the acrid unpleasantness of vodka.

I'm no closer to any sort of answer as to why the company Christmas party was in Doncaster when the two main offices are in Bristol and Letchworth (for those unfamiliar with UK geography, Doncaster is pretty much the opposite end of England to those two places) — but it seems like it was something of a tradition, and I wasn't going to complain when travel, accommodation, food and booze were all laid on for us. Very nice.

Anyway, I'm back home now and very much in need of a nice quiet day to myself, so that's exactly what I'm going to do tomorrow. Andie is going to put the Christmas decorations up, but I generally find it's best to just stay out the way when she's doing that. The end result is always worth it!

Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!