#oneaday Day 487: Deeanddee

One of my biggest regrets — all right, probably not biggest, but one I find myself thinking about occasionally — is not getting more into Dungeons & Dragons when I was younger.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I was interested — at various points I have owned Player's Handbooks, Monster Manuals and Dungeon Master's Guides for at least three generations of the game — but outside of a few isolated opportunities, I never really had much of a chance to play it. And I understand that these days, at least partly due to Fifth Edition and/or Wizards of the Coast's possible mismanagement of the franchise, interest in the system is, on the whole, waning.

That's not to say there are no people playing tabletop role-playing games out there, of course. And I'm sure someone, even now, is preparing to type an epic comment telling me how much better their roleplaying system of choice is. I'm sure it is. But I will always have a particular soft spot for Dungeons & Dragons.

Why? The video games, of course. I must confess, I haven't played many of them, and even less of them to completion — I think Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and its first expansion Shadows of Undrentide are the only ones I've actually beaten — but I like the ruleset(s), I understand the ruleset(s) and I often find myself wondering what it would have been like to get involved in a lengthy campaign.

I played a little bit at university as part of the Games Society. I had a thief character named Singol Nithryan, and he was constantly robbing my friend Tim, whose arrogant arse of a fighter was constantly asking for it with his behaviour. I don't remember a ton about the adventures we went on, but I do recall it being a lot of fun sitting there in the Student Union coffee bar while the Society took it over for a few hours, losing ourselves in our imaginations and the rolls of a bagful of dice.

"It's never too late," of course, and there are probably online groups and solutions also. But as an autistic adult with fairly severe social anxiety, self-esteem and body image issues, the prospect of finding a suitable group is a fairly daunting one. I don't even know where to begin, to be perfectly honest.

I'll tell you what I miss, and that is Neverwinter Connections, a website designed for aspiring roleplayers to get together with fellow enthusiasts of Neverwinter Nights and make use of that game's astoundingly good (and never since recreated) multiplayer mode, in which one player could take on the role of the Dungeon Master, controlling NPCs and monsters rather than leaving it all up to the game's AI. I have exceedingly fond memories of playing the sorcerer Jay Wrekin (and his pixie familiar Sianie, whom I was delighted to discover it was possible to "possess" and speak as during multiplayer) with several thoroughly lovely people that I miss quite a bit.

Ah well. One day I might get the chance to roll a THAC0 again. Yes, I know they don't do THAC0 any more (I don't think?), but Second Edition will always be special.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 486: Investing in retro the right way

I've talked about this once or twice before, but it doesn't hurt to say it again. I firmly believe that we've reached a point in time where collecting retro games is impractical, undesirable and inconvenient.

Don't get me wrong; there will always be an appeal to having original hardware and original media, and I don't begrudge anyone their choice to build up a substantial retro collection. I also think it's a bit sad that we've reached the stage we're at now. But with the absurd, exploitative prices that are being charged for both systems and media today — coupled with the fact that there's no real guarantee either of those things will actually work when you get them — I am very much a convert to the school of thought that says you're better off spending the money you would have spent on one copy of Rule of Rose for the PlayStation 2 on ways to get a "modern retro" setup up and running.

There are many ways you can do this. The absolute simplest way is to buy retro rereleases, either on modern platforms that you happen to own, or with specialist devices such as mini consoles or, of course, the Evercade. There are many benefits to these modern rereleases, such as bugfixes of games that shipped in a dodgy state back in the day, modern convenience features such as save states, rewind functions and in-game reference material, plus the fact they're generally a whole lot cheaper than buying the original releases and still fun to collect. If you were to buy all the games on the recently released NEOGEO Arcade 1 cartridge for Evercade in their original format, you'd be talking four figures. The cart is twenty quid. Do, as Atari once said, the math.

The only downside to officially licensed rereleases is that those licenses are sometimes hard to come by — or even completely impossible. Don't expect to see too many rereleases of racing games with licensed cars or licensed soundtracks, for example. Don't expect to see movie licenses making a return, either. But you might be surprised what licensors are still willing to play ball with, as the Evercade library to date shows.

Another relatively straightforward way is to devote a PC or similar device (like a Raspberry Pi, Steam Deck or Chinese gaming handheld) to it and install a suitable suite of emulators and organisation tools.

For Windows PCs that you also want to do other things, I would recommend Launchbox (even if they took to using odious AI images in their promotional emails of late), as this is not only a good means of organising all the games you might want to play, it also automatically retrieves additional information like box art, descriptions and even PDF copies of manuals where possible. The paid version also has a "Big Box" mode where the interface is designed to be used with a controller on a TV.

For other devices that are going to be dedicated to retro gaming, I highly recommend Batocera, which is a Linux distribution, but don't run away scared. It's all preconfigured to work in a similar fashion to something like Launchbox, and is pretty straightforward to get games up and running in. It's also highly customisable, so you can make the whole thing look and feel how you want it to.

The relative "luxury option", particularly if you still have a CRT knocking around that you want to use for the authentic look and feel, is MiSTer. As I've alluded to in a few posts recently, the absolute easiest way to get started with this is with a prebuilt device like the Multisystem 2 (my device of choice) or the upcoming SuperStation One. Alternatively, you can built your own — that's nowhere near as scary as it sounds, and it allows you a tad more customisability, though with the pricing of the Multisystem 2 and SuperStation One it's actually cheaper to buy one of those prebuilt options in a lot of cases — though note you will still need to provide accessories and storage.

If you're lucky enough to still have working classic hardware around, the first thing I recommend you do is investing in a modern power supply for them. My Mega Drive was prone to rolling noise on the screen with its original power supply, but replacing it gave a completely stable, flicker-free picture.

Once you've done that, invest in an EverDrive. Cheaper flashcart options exist, but EverDrives are premium products that support pretty much everything you might want to play on a piece of classic hardware. Not only that, in the case of systems that had add-ons, they can simulate the presence of the add-on, too — for example, the Mega EverDrive Pro can run Mega CD games.

For classic home computers, flashcarts are also available, or there are also plenty of media emulators you can use to "trick" the computer into believing it's using a real floppy drive or tape deck. For the Atari 8-bit, for example, I enjoyed using the SDrive-MAX device, which allows you to load executable files, disk images and tape images from an SD card. Similar devices are available for most classic computer platforms.

I won't lie; it's easy to spend a few hundred quid on this stuff — possibly even over a thousand. But once you're done, you have a great setup for what is, after all, the important bit of being interested in retro games: actually playing the games. And the kit you have will play pretty much anything without you having to pay some rando on eBay a three-figure sum just to play one game.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 485: Forgetful

Missed yesterday. I have no excuse, I just forgot. You can blame Final Fantasy Tactics or God. I did make some videos and write about Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, though. You can read that here.

Speaking of Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm really impressed with the new The Ivalice Chronicles version. I wasn't initially sold on the new look of the "remastered" mode, but seeing it in action makes it make a lot more sense than still screenshots might suggest. There's a nice almost "fabric"-like texture to everything, which makes the game sort of look like it's unfolding on a tapestry, which is entirely appropriate for the nature of the narrative it's telling.

The biggest upgrade by far is the full voice acting. I remember back in the PlayStation 1 era thinking that it was a bit sad, if understandable, that big games like RPGs didn't have full voice acting. The reality is that the voice data for a game as big as Final Fantasy Tactics probably wouldn't fit on a CD! We have no such constraints today, however, so a fully voiced Final Fantasy Tactics is a thing of wonder, and there's an incredible voice cast doing their thing with the excellent War of the Lions script from the PSP version — definitely an upgrade from the borderline nonsensical PS1 original.

The game is still just as hard as it ever was, though. It will absolutely kick your ass if you don't take a bit of time to buff up your characters — and you still need to use a solid strategy during the missions themselves, even if you've levelled up a bit and got good equipment. The computer-controlled "Guest" characters are still as dimwitted as ever, unfortunately, which can lead to some annoying situations, but you can just look at it as these characters being true to their personalities. I can't say I was sorry any time Argath got knocked out.

One of the little things I like the most is the fact that all your "cannon fodder" party members — i.e. the ones who aren't directly relevant to the story — have their own voices, too. And rather than having just one male voice and one female voice, there are actually several, so your individual, "unimportant" characters each have their own personality, which helps you become attached to them. And, given that Final Fantasy Tactics has permadeath (albeit a somewhat forgiving take on it, where you have a few turns to resurrect them before they're gone forever) that's an important part of the experience.

I'm not far into the game as yet, but I'm enjoying it a lot, and I suspect I will get a lot more out of it now than when I played it back in the day. It's a truly great game, and I'm thrilled that it's got a new release — and a release in Europe, which it never had back in the day!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 479: The PS1 retro revival

I saw a fun trailer last night for a game called, rather amusingly, Parasite Mutant. Those of you of a certain age are probably already thinking "I wonder if that's anything like Parasite Eve", to which the answer is yes, yes it is, very much so.

The great thing is that this isn't even the only Parasite Eve-like that is on the way — the folks who made the excellent visual novel VA-11 HALL-A have also been working on one for quite some time. And it looks awesome — though when it comes out is anyone's guess at this point.

Yes, indeed, we are well and truly in an age where the original PlayStation is retro enough to have modern homages to it. In fact, we've been there for a while, with the indie horror scene latching on to the system's distinctive 3D aesthetic a few years back, and more and more developers deliberately adopting low-res, low-poly, unfiltered 3D as their game's distinctive look and feel.

So with all of the above in mind, here's a few PS1 games from back in the day that I think would be simply smashing to see some modern imitators of. In fact, some of these already have modern imitators on the way — I will do my best to link to those where I am aware of them. (If you are aware of any I missed, please do let me know.)

Ridge Racer

C'mon. Obviously. The 16-bit-style arcade racer has been present and correct in the modern scene for a while thanks to titles like Horizon Chase Turbo and Slipstream, and we've even seen a couple of homages to Virtua Racing, but we haven't seen that many Ridge Racer-likes. I'm not sure we've seen any, in fact — though I am aware of one that is currently early in development.

Yes, we're getting a new Screamer, but it's trying to be all modern and do the twin-stick drifting thing that Inertial Drift did. That's not a bad thing in itself, but it's not "PS1". Just make a new Ridge Racer or equivalent. Namco even released the original Ridge Racer on modern consoles, so there's a market for it!

Parasite Eve

On the off-chance some of you don't know what Parasite Eve is, the elevator pitch is that it's a cross between Resident Evil-style survival horror (fixed camera angles, limited resources) and an RPG. Combat unfolds using a variation on Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle mechanics, with a time bar that gradually fills up and allows you to act when it's full, but the twist of being able to move freely while it's charging. This adds an interesting blend of real-time and turn-based mechanics, whereby you can avoid enemy attacks, but you still have to wait your turn.

Parasite Eve was noteworthy for what was beautiful presentation at the time: pre-rendered backdrops with detailed (for the late '90s) polygonal characters atop them, punctuated by completely pre-rendered FMV sequences depicting major plot moments. It had two sequels, neither of which I've played (yet) but is currently in rights hell, making an official rerelease exceedingly unlikely — leaving the stage wide open for imitators (complimentary).

Brave Fencer Musashi

From the same era and publisher as Parasite Eve came something completely different. Brave Fencer Musashi was also a blend of things we'd seen before — in this case, the early 3D platformer (a la Crash Bandicoot) with the action RPG. It was a fully polygonal action game with a fair amount of platforming in it, and a delightfully silly script. I don't know how true the English script was to the Japanese original and kind of don't care, because the introductory "Princess! Sir Little Turd!" sequence is the stuff of legends.

Brave Fencer Musashi has a little in common with Konami's Mystical Ninja series, particularly its first N64 incarnation Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon. And we've had a Mystical Ninja-like in recent years in the form of Bakeru, so surely a Brave Fencer Musashi-like isn't too much to ask for, no?

Any form of puzzle game

The PS1 was a golden age for puzzle games. And not just the competitive "versus" kind that still have a certain following today — the PS1 also played host to a wide variety of puzzlers, most of which could be enjoyed by a solo player for hours at a time.

The rise of the free-to-play mobile game all but killed the standalone puzzle game genre, but releases like Tetris Effect and Puyo Puyo Tetris have showed that there's still something of a market there for them. It'd be lovely to see some developers have a crack at mechanics similar to those seen in lesser-known puzzlers like Starsweep and Landmaker as well as the predictable bubble shooters, match-three and line-clearing games we occasionally get today.

Vagrant Story

If someone wants to get really ambitious, they can pay homage to Vagrant Story, a thoroughly interesting Square Enix title that forms part of the loose "Ivalice" series that includes Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. (Although apparently its connections may just be fanservice.)

Vagrant Story was interesting for its ambitious storytelling and its unusual combat system, which, a bit like Parasite Eve, blended real-time and turn-based elements together, this time placing an emphasis on "risk". You could attack as often as you liked, but doing so would build up Risk, which reduces your hit rate but increases your critical chance. It's a tad more complex than that, with things like damage to individual limbs being tracked, but I think it's high time we revisited some of its ideas.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 477: The things all modern games do

I saw a fun comment a little while back — I forget who it was and even where it was posted, so apologies to the person who originally made it — that put forward a theory: you could release a game from ten years ago today, such as Metal Gear Solid V, and no-one would be any the wiser, outside of maybe some improvements in performance and/or resolution.

This made me laugh, because there's a certain amount of truth to it. It feels like modern mid-to-big budget games that have chosen "quasi-photorealistic" as their aesthetic of choice are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from one another. This type of visual style has long since stopped impressing me, and it's actually kind of starting to bug me how much all the top-end developers appear to be shamelessly cribbing from one another.

So here's a list of things that I would really rather see less of. Very few of these things are "bad" as such, it would just be nice to see some games that didn't do them.

Gears of War cam

You know the one. Third-person, camera shifted a little back from the character enough to see most of their upper torso but not their legs (because if you can see their legs you can see that we still can't quite animate people going up and down steps properly) and to the right, positioning the character just to the left of centre on your screen.

Bonus points if the camera wobbles around when the character is sprinting, in simulation of a cameraman running behind the character while attempting to hold an unwieldy camera steady.

The slow pan down to interactivity

The "seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay" thing stopped being impressive a long time ago. Final Fantasy VII pulled it off (kind of) in 1997. Just once, just once, it would be nice for a cutscene to end without a slow pan to Gears of War-cam while the background audio and music fades to calmness and the protagonist slowly, but perfectly in time with the camera pan, takes a stance ready for action.

Painfully obvious objective markers

"Go through the door". No, really? This door that I just spent half an hour solving puzzles to open? Really? You want me to go through it?

A health bar that grossly misrepresents how much damage you can take

To be fair, this has been a problem since Namco's Rolling Thunder gave you a segmented health bar that suggested you would be able to take up to eight hits before keeling over, then immediately killed you if you got hit by a single bullet. But this has become so common it's a bit of a problem ever since everyone decided that everything needs, to one degree or another, to be a Souls-like.

If you're giving me a health bar of a reasonable length, I don't want 75% of it to fall off the moment I take one hit from an enemy. Not every game has to have "brutal, hard-as-nails" combat, as marketing people like to put it. Sometimes it's okay — even desirable — to have flashy, button-mashy combat where the protagonist can take as much punishment as the enemies do.

Opening a single drawer from a chest and finding nothing

I don't know which game first did the "protagonist searches a chest of drawers by opening one completely empty drawer and 90% of the time doesn't find anything" thing, but it's an absolute plague these days. Granted, at the other end of the spectrum we have Shenmue, a game which can be looked upon at least in part as the world's most detailed cupboard-opening simulator, but I feel like there's probably a happy medium somewhere.

See also: lootable objects in non-RPGs with nothing in them. Why do you do this?

Progression mechanics in games that aren't RPGs

Stop it. I don't need to level up and I don't need to grind in every single game. Just give me what I need to beat the game from the outset. You may — may — under certain circumstances unlock new moves and weapons as the game progresses, but these should not be tied to any sort of "experience" system.

Photo mode and New Game+ added as post-launch updates

You know you're going to do them. Just put them in from the start.

And just for good measure, one thing I wish we saw more of:

Post-game unlocks that significantly alter the game

My benchmark for this is Silent Hill 3, which, under the correct circumstances, allows you to dress the protagonist Heather up in a retro-futuristic outfit and unleash her devastating "Heather Beam" on enemies. Optionally, you could also add an on-screen health bar to the game, which is not normally present because it's a survival horror game. These two elements completely changed the feel of Silent Hill 3, and offered an incentive to replay that wasn't just "play through the entire thing again with some minor changes to get a different ending".

These days, sadly, costumes are primarily DLC and additional modes that significantly alter the way the game plays just don't really feel like a thing any more. Part of this is down to modern games being considerably expanded in length over stuff from, say, the PS2 era (which is when Silent Hill 3 originally came out), but also some developers just don't seem all that willing to have a bit of silly fun with their creations. And that's a bit sad!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 476: A few first impressions from Silent Hill f

I'm excited to be playing a brand new Silent Hill game in 2025. I wasn't sure how I felt about Silent Hill f transplanting the series from late '90s/early '00s America to 1960s Japan, but thus far it appears to be a change that works. If you've played any entries in the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series, you'll know that small-town Japan has plenty of scope for eerie activities, and such is the case with Silent Hill f.

I'm just shy of four hours in so far and thus far I've been having a good time. Protagonist Hinako, in true Silent Hill tradition, clearly has some Issues to work through, though the exact specifics of these haven't been revealed as yet, aside from the fact that her father is an abusive alcoholic and she resents her sister for moving away to get married. She also may or may not be dead; my internal jury's out on that one thus far.

As with prior Silent Hill games, Silent Hill f sees Hinako wandering through a sort-of open environment, stumbling across interesting happenings and finding horrific trouble at fairly regular intervals. This time around, rather than being completely alone, Hinako regularly runs into her school friends, who are seemingly seeing the same things she is seeing — there's always been some ambiguity in the series as to whether things are "really" happening — but for the most part she ends up having to act by herself in order to catch up with her peers in various ways.

Part of the narrative is clearly going to involve how Hinako is ostracised from certain parts of her supposed "friendship" group for refusing to conform to behavioural gender norms. Her best friend is an icky boy named Shu, and even as teens, they are still obsessed with their imaginary "Space War" games that they've been playing together since childhood. I'm interested to see quite how far the game ends up leaning into matters of gender identity, because it would very much be in keeping with the series' past of exploring psychosexual matters, among other things.

Much of Silent Hill f sees Hinako stumbling around in the fog as is series tradition, but likewise there are times when she finds herself in "other" places. In one sequence, she finds herself lost in a seemingly endless field of scarecrows and must solve a puzzle to find a way out; on several other occasions — seemingly when she's unconscious in the "fog" world — she goes somewhere completely different, shrouded in darkness, filled with mysterious temples and shrines, and guided by a man in a fox mask who almost certainly is not entirely trustworthy.

As you might expect, the game dives deep into traditional Japanese spiritualism and superstitions, with the main angle exploring the fox god Inari. There have been a couple of mentions of an "ancient god" that may or may not be Inari at various junctures too, though, so it remains to be seen where all that ends up — and whether Inari is a force one should feel comfortable putting one's faith behind.

Mechanically, it's pretty much as you would expect for a modern survival horror game. Combat takes a few cues from heavy-hitting stamina management action RPGs because of course it does, everything seemingly has to these days, but since the Souls games, trope codifiers for this type of experience, are effectively survival horror RPGs in many respects, it does make a certain amount of sense. It also helps to highlight that Hinako, as a teenage girl, is not a fighter. She can't take much punishment and she isn't particularly agile at swinging anything around with the intention of doing damage. As such, combat has a rather deliberate pace, though mistakes are punished quite severely, even on the default "Story" difficulty.

Initially I wasn't all that enamoured with this, but once you get a feel for its distinctive rhythm and learn to spot enemy tells — including some particularly explicit ones that allow you to counterattack — it's probably a good fit for Silent Hill, if indeed the series really "needs" combat at all. (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was an attempt to do a Silent Hill game without combat, and it was mostly successful, though the "chase" sequences it had in lieu of actual fights were, at times, a little frustrating.)

The puzzles have been interesting so far, though despite the default puzzle difficulty being "Hard" none have been too taxing as yet. The trickiest one thus far took place in the aforementioned scarecrow field and required reading of body language and facial expressions to match a particular statement; I'm not entirely sure I solved this one "correctly", but it made internal sense to me while doing so and thus I'm counting it as a success.

I'm intrigued, then. I want to know more about Hinako's situation and what is really going on with her. There are quite a few different ways I can potentially see things proceeding from where I am thus far, and in keeping with series tradition, not many of them promise a happy ending for our heroine. And we longstanding Silent Hill fans wouldn't have it any other way.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 472: Goodbye and thank you to Billy Chaser

I've made a YouTube video about this (above), but I thought I may as well type something up also. I will likely repeat myself.

Today I learned that a few days ago, Billy Hudson, better known as Billy Chaser and one half of The Game Chasers on YouTube, lost his battle with a brain tumour and passed away. I was deeply saddened by this news, because Billy was a wonderful part of the retro gaming community, and someone who had entertained and inspired me ever since I first stumbled across his channel about ten years ago.

At that time, I was working a boring, dead-end office job. I wasn't having a terrible time or anything, but I was bored and creatively unfulfilled. I was fortunate enough to have a desk with its back to the wall and in a corner, so I could watch YouTube videos without anyone noticing.

As it happened, prior to that job I had never really taken the time to explore YouTube at all, so I didn't really know where to start. I forget exactly how I found my way to The Game Chasers, but it was via a deep and branching rabbit hole that included channels such as Classic Gaming Quarterly, Classic Game Room, LGR, ProJared, Game Grumps, Game Sack and all manner of other folks, many of whom are still making great videos to this day.

The Game Chasers was really striking, though. This was a YouTube channel that had the production values of a TV show. Each The Game Chasers video could have easily been a broadcast TV show. Billy, one half of the core pair of Billy and "Shady" Jay, was a trained filmmaker, and it showed in his fantastic editing for each and every episode of the show.

The Game Chasers' concept was simple. It was like those reality shows where people rummage through storage lockers in search of treasure, but with a focus on video games. Billy and Jay would visit flea markets, antique stores, storage lockers and all manner of other places in search of retro classics — and often find some real wonders. This was in the years before "graded" collecting pushed the price of retro games up into ridiculously unattainable territory for most of us, so their stories were inspiring; indeed, watching The Game Chasers was pretty much the direct cause for me expanding my own collection so massively.

Billy was a wonderful character. He was funny and silly, but smart and knowledgeable. Part of the beauty of The Game Chasers is it made the viewer feel included. It made the viewer feel like they were part of the excitement of taking these trips, and part of the joy of discovering hidden treasures in dusty old lofts. It made the viewer feel like a valued friend.

And that was important to me! I have tried, and I have tried, and I have tried to get across to the people I know "in real life" how important retro gaming and computing is to me, but with each passing year, I grew more and more lonely as it became very clear that people not only don't care, they are, at times, actively hostile.

This was heartbreaking, because a hobby is so much more fun if you can share it with people. And as time went on, it was starting to feel I just… didn't really have anyone like that. As unhealthy as parasocial relationships are, watching shows like The Game Chasers made me feel less alone. It made me feel like there were other people out there as passionate about this as me. It made me feel like I wasn't the only one who still enjoyed all this stuff that I grew up with — and for more than just nostalgia. I enjoy collecting, playing and exploring retro games in the here and now — including both revisiting titles from my past, and discovering brand new favourites. That's entirely what my YouTube channel is about.

And that's why it's so sad that the retro gaming community has lost as wonderful a friend as Billy was. Most of us didn't know him personally, but I suspect if we found ourselves at a convention, he would have made the time to shake each of us by the hand and make us feel as welcome as we do watching his videos. And those out there who were fortunate enough to know Billy in real life had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. He would play up the joker aspect for the camera, but in private he would be an incredibly supportive friend.

The world is a worse place without Billy in it. And I hope wherever he is now, he finds eternal happiness amid endless aisles of every video game one might ever want — and endless friends to enjoy them with.

Rest in peace, you magnificent chode. You will be missed, not just by your close friends, but by the entire retro gaming community.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 471: A more in-depth look at the MiSTer Multisystem 2

I realise I've talked in passing a great deal about the MiSTer Multisystem 2 that I recently acquired from Heber and the Retro Collective, but not written anything substantial about the system itself. So I figured I'd use today's post to talk a bit about the system in general, and perhaps answer some questions anyone stumbling across this post might have.

What is it?

The Multisystem 2 is an all-in-one console built around the open-source MiSTer standard, designed for hardware emulation of classic home computer, console and arcade machines using a technology known as FPGA. With it, you can use software designed for these platforms either on a modern display or, with the "Analogue" model, on a CRT television or monitor.

What is FPGA?

I'll be 100% honest with you: I don't have a clue what FPGA is, other than it's something to do with a special chip emulating the original circuitry, chips and other internal shenanigans of this old hardware. It is often — though not always — more accurate than emulation done entirely in software, and thus, in theory, provides an experience much closer to using original hardware than software emulation can provide.

Is it plug-and-play?

Unfortunately not. Like most MiSTer setups prior to the Multisystem 2, there is a degree of sorting things out required before you are able to use it. You will need an SD card and a means of writing to it on your computer. You will need to download a piece of software called "Mr. Fusion" (which can be found here) and image it to your SD card using a suitable piece of software such as Balena Etcher (which is free, and can be found here). You will need to boot the Multisystem 2 with the imaged SD card inserted while connected to an HDMI display. Then you will, ideally, need to connect the Multisystem 2 to the Internet either via Ethernet or a USB Wi-Fi dongle (not included) and run the built-in update script or an alternative such as the more comprehensive update_all. Then you will need to fill your SD card (or USB external storage) with the games and software you would like to actually run on the system.

Then you're ready to go. It might sound complicated, but it's fairly straightforward. A few tips I found from my own setup process that you might find useful:

If connecting via Wi-Fi, connect to an access point with strong signal, otherwise the update scripts will take a very long time. (Like, more than 24 hours.) Ideally, connect via Ethernet.
Use update_all rather than the built-in update script. It has a lot more flexibility.
Once you've run update_all, run it again to make sure it got everything. If the initial run of update_all fails to finish downloading some things, it will retry a couple of times but eventually give up. Having half-finished downloads can cause problems, so running update_all again helps ensure everything is completely downloaded to the right place.
This is entirely optional, but since update_all can, with the appropriate options, download a bunch of arcade games, it's worth having an SD card big enough to fit them all on. Many MiSTer users recommend using external storage for computer and console game files, but keeping the arcade ROMs and cores on the SD card means that subsequent runs of update_all won't redownload everything unnecessarily.

One important difference with the Multisystem 2 compared to a traditional MiSTer setup is that you don't need to buy multiple pieces of hardware or boards to get up and running. Everything you need hardware-wise is built-in (except for storage) — though I would recommend adding a powered USB hub, particularly if you want to use external storage without its own power supply — so all the setup you need to do is software-based.

How does it work once it's set up?

Once you turn on the MiSTer, it will take a moment to start up, showing a simulated "snow" display similar to that seen on an old analogue TV that isn't tuned in to anything. After a moment, the main MiSTer menu will appear. If you have set things up as above, you'll see options for Arcade, Computer and Console, along with a few other things. Using a controller or a keyboard, navigate the menu and choose the system you would like to emulate.

Note: using a controller uses the "Nintendo" layout by default, though this can be redefined in the MiSTer menu to your liking. Controllers that use non-standard layouts (such as those which recreate the N64 or Mega Drive/Saturn layouts) are worth configuring before you get too into anything so you know for sure which button does what.

Once you've chosen a system, the "core" for that system will take a moment to boot. On systems with a built-in operating system (such as home computers, PlayStation and Saturn) you will, after a moment, see a familiar boot screen. On other systems, the screen will remain blank. Hitting the Menu button on a controller or F12 on a keyboard allows you to access various options, including the all-important options to mount or boot magnetic disk, optical disc and cassette tape images or cartridge ROM files. Simply pick something and play!

How does it work on HDMI displays?

There's a lot of customisation you can do. You can adjust the way the system scales its visuals, including doing "integer scaling", for a clean multiple of the original system's resolution. This helps reduce "pixel shimmering" during scrolling, among other things, but can lead to borders around the display depending on the resolution of your HDMI display.

There are also a lot of visual filters you can apply, most of which are in the name of recreating a semi-authentic CRT-style experience on a modern display. There's a lot more than just simple scanline filters, so be sure to explore the presets or tinker with creating your own — you can actually create some very pleasing effects. Sharp pixels are always an option if you prefer that, though.

How does it work on CRT displays?

The Multisystem 2 can connect to a CRT in one of two ways. The first option is through an RGB SCART cable with a mini-DIN plug on the end — the same found on Mega Drive 2 consoles, though take care, as certain cables, notably this one, will not work. I found some cheap ones from Amazon work perfectly fine and produce a beautiful quality picture — no need to break the bank on posh cables.

The other alternative is to use the VGA output, though note that this doesn't necessarily mean you need to connect to a VGA monitor. You can, and for some classic computer systems with peculiar resolutions or refresh rates it might be a good idea to, but VGA to SCART cables also exist and produce a very good quality image.

The advantage of the Mega Drive 2-style mini-DIN cable is that it carries audio and sound on one cable, so if your CRT TV has decent speakers, you won't need to connect sound separately.

Speaking of which…

How do I get stereo sound?

If, like me, your CRT only has a piffling mono speaker, the Multisystem 2 has both a 3.5mm headphone-style jack that can be connected to headphones or speakers, plus an optical output. Take your pick.

Is it easy to use?

Once it's all set up — and that might be a big "if" for some people — the MiSTer software is dead simple to use. The only thing that might be an adjustment for some is the necessity to manually "finalise" save files for console games before turning the system off — this just means popping into the menu and choosing the appropriate option, otherwise you'll lose anything saved to a virtual cartridge or memory card when you switch the system off. There are ways to set this up to happen automatically, but for maximum peace of mind, it's worth just taking a moment to do it manually.

Consoles are, as you might expect, completely straightforward. Home computers benefit from attaching at least a keyboard and, in some cases, a mouse. Since many home computers had their own non-standard keys (the Atari 8-bit had Help, Start, Select and Reset keys, for example, while the Commodore 64 had Run/Stop, Commodore and more) you will have to take a bit of time to learn what key on a modern keyboard maps to the "classic" keystroke, but this is just a matter of practice and muscle memory.

Is it good?

A hearty yes. While some of the cores aren't quite perfect to the original hardware specification, all of the popular ones are updated with new features and tweaks quite regularly, so any issues you encounter will probably be resolved with a bit of time and passion from the enthusiast community responsible for maintaining the MiSTer project as a whole.

For those with a suitable CRT television setup to take full advantage of the "Analogue" model of the Multisystem 2 (there's also a slightly cheaper "Digital" model which only has the HDMI output) I unreservedly recommend it. It's one of the most affordable ways to get an incredibly authentic-feeling retro setup, without any of the expense and hassle of purchasing and maintaining vintage hardware and media.

For those gaming purely on HDMI devices, be prepared that you may want to do a bit of tinkering with the visual filters to get things looking exactly as you want them, but the MiSTer project as a whole was originally designed with modern displays in mind. An HDMI display is also a lot more flexible than a CRT television when it comes to resolutions and refresh rates different from broadcast standards, so it opens up the possibilities of running things like MS-DOS PC and X68000 games without having to fiddle with settings to get them working. (That said, it is apparently possible to get both of these working on a TV with enough determination. I haven't had any success myself as yet.)

Pair the system with some good controllers, a keyboard and a mouse (I use several 8bitdo controllers depending on what system I'm emulating, plus the 8bitdo C64-style keyboard and the optical Amiga mouse from Retro Games Ltd's TheA500 Mini) and you have a fantastic "retro room" setup that you can just plug in and enjoy whenever you like — no fussing with power adapters and SCART cables, no wondering if ageing cartridge, magnetic or other physical media is still going to work — plus the whole thing is nicely portable if you want to take it over to a friend's house to enjoy some classic games.

Something something piracy

Yes, as with anything emulation-related, it's worth noting that the vast majority of software you might want to use with the Multisystem 2 will be unlicensed, unofficial copies sourced via questionable means. There are developers out there making new games for classic systems who will happily sell you a ROM of their new game, but for classic games that haven't had a modern reprint, you're on your own for sourcing software.

Granted, in the age of the Internet this isn't all that difficult, but some may have understandable qualms about this, particularly while some publishers and developers are making an effort to do official rereleases of their classic titles. Heck, I work for Blaze on the Evercade, and our entire business is official rereleases of classic games.

But also look at it this way: there are some games that are never, ever, ever going to get rereleased for all manner of reasons. And for those that do, you have options to buy them to assuage your guilt — or perhaps you still have your own copies from back in the day. Better to actually enjoy these games as they were intended than pay eBay scalpers' prices, anyway, I say!

How do I find out more?

Check out the official website!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 469: Where have all the 5.25" drives gone?

Earlier today, I had an idle thought that has occurred to me numerous times over the last little while, but today I thought I'd look into actually doing something about it.

A while back, I bought a Greaseweazle, which is a USB device you can connect to a modern PC at one end and a floppy disk drive at the other, then "rip" floppies using a particularly accurate method of imaging known as flux imaging. These images can then be converted into various formats, such as those commonly used with emulators (or MiSTer), and can then be safely archived.

I've got two boxes of 5.25" Atari 8-bit disks in my cupboard upstairs that I'd quite like to get all the stuff off — assuming the discs themselves have survived. I know some of them have (and, equally, some appear to have not) and so I thought it would be a nice, interesting and fun thing to do to archive my unique collection of disks, which in some respects are a snapshot of family life in the mid 1980s.

Besides the obvious disks full of pirated games, my brother and I both had our own disks that we'd save BASIC programs to — both those that we'd typed in from magazines, and those which we'd written ourselves. Then there's a bunch of disks that my Mum and Dad did stuff with — my Dad did all manner of things, including writing, music and various productivity things (that and Flight Simulator II, which "isn't a game") while my Mum, on several occasions, spent some time writing. My brother made pictures with AtariArtist. And I'm sure there are plenty of other hidden treasures among them, too.

Now, here's the problem. I bought the Greaseweazle with a mind to making some floppy disks that could be used with the Atari ST, which uses 3.5" 360K or 720K disks. (Actually, Atari format can push the 800K+ mark, but they're broadly MS-DOS compatible, so 720K is a sensible limit for everyday use.) The device worked great for that, though I ultimately got an UltraSatan for the ST (which is an SD card-based storage solution that effectively emulates a hard drive) and have now moved on to the MiSTer for most of my retro computing needs and wants.

I'd been putting off getting a 5.25" drive to archive these big boxes of Atari stuff, though. I knew the process of getting a 5.25" drive hooked up was a little more involved, for one thing, since a 3.5" floppy drive can power itself from the Greaseweazle, while a 5.25" drive generally needs an external power source. But something in me today said "right, go on, get this sorted". So I headed for eBay in search of what I thought would be an easy thing to find: an old, discarded but working 5.25" floppy disk drive that someone had grabbed out of an obsolete PC and decided to sell online.

Reader, it turns out that 5.25" drives are not, in fact, easy to find. In fact, there seem to be very few floating around out there, and the ones that are are surprisingly expensive. While you can score yourself a 3.5" drive very easily — and it probably be in decent working order, too — 5.25" drives are, apparently, like gold dust.

I did find one promising looking unit earlier, which was actually a self-contained enclosure with a power supply and two 5.25" floppy drives, but after bidding on it a few times, the price went a little higher than I was comfortable paying, so I dropped out. (Also, I was having dinner at the time the auction ended, so I kind of sort of forgot to check in.) The final price was over £80, though, which would have probably given me a certain degree of buyer's remorse. Or maybe not. I guess now we'll never know.

I'll keep keeping an eye out for reasonably priced drives, though. I really would like to get those disks archived and share them with my family — it's something I probably should have done a long time ago (before 5.25" drives went completely extinct, apparently) but I guess it's going to be a bit of effort to get up and running!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 467: The joy of CRT gaming

I am really enjoying the MiSTer Multisystem 2. Having one single device connected to my CRT that can play games and software from myriad different wonderful machines is an absolute delight — and I have been confirming for myself with every play session something that I have suspected for quite some time. While playing emulated versions of these games on modern televisions with big, spiky pixels is definitely an enjoyable and valid way to play classic games, there is still something absolutely magical about playing them on a CRT.

Most CRT snobs would, at this point, go on about smeary pixels and something about Dracula's eye in Symphony of the Night only having a single pixel of red actually being a deliberate effect that took CRTs into account to make it look like the eyes were glowing. (To that I say no, pixel artists designed stuff on graph paper or computer monitors and thus were very much not baking smeary pixels into their designs; effects like Dracula's eye just happened to be a nice side effect of the technology of the time. Look at that scene on a good CRT with a nice RGB cable and you can see that it is, indeed, one pixel.)

I'm also not into the thing where people press their camera right up against a CRT and show pixel art being mangled by scanlines. I vividly remember visiting my brother and playing some PS1 games on his big CRT TV, and actually finding that the games looked better when you sat back from a bit, the scanlines were so prominent and ugly when you sat up close. Part of this was probably down to me being used to PAL, which doesn't have as prominent scanlines as NTSC does (and a slightly higher resolution image as a result) but still, I don't get this obsession. We didn't play games with our noses pressed up against the TV glass in the '80s and '90s.

One thing I will absolutely go to bat for in terms of CRT snobbery, though, is smoothness of movement and animation. I am yet to see a modern-day display that can truly do justice to two very specific things: smooth, flawless scrolling, and that "fake transparency" effect a bunch of 16-bit console and arcade games did where they just flicker something opaque on and off roughly 60 times a second and it kind of sort of looks like you can "see through" it.

Of these two things, scrolling is probably the most obvious. Emulation running on modern displays, more often than not, introduces a slight judder to smooth scrolling, particularly horizontally. This is, in most cases, down to a mismatch between the refresh rates of today's TVs and the signals these older systems were pushing out. I don't know the technicalities of it, but CRTs seem better able to handle some "variance" without introducing judder, while modern TVs show it in a more or less pronounced manner depending on the degree of mismatch between the signal and the screen.

The fake transparency thing is less noticeable unless you're specifically looking for it, and I bet there are a bunch of people out there who have never been bothered by it. (If my telling you about it in this post has somehow introduced you to this and you are now bothered by it, I can only apologise.) But next time you're playing an emulated version of, say, a Capcom game (they loved doing this with window backgrounds) or any fighting game that uses this technique to display "transparent" shadows, take a closer look. You'll notice that the flickering isn't even; sometimes you'll see the opaque image more prominently, sometimes it will disappear altogether. This doesn't happen on a CRT; the effect appears as it was intended.

Now, it may well be that because I've just been slumming it with 60Hz modern displays rather than fancy-pants 120Hz or variable refresh rate screens, I've noticed this. I don't actually know if either of those techs improve what I'm describing here. But I will say this: there is a definite, clear difference when you play these games on a CRT. So if you have the opportunity to hook up classic systems to classic TVs — or, indeed, like I am doing, hook up a MiSTer to an analogue display — then I strongly suggest you do it. You won't want to go back!

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.