#oneaday Day 399: Tiresome

It is the weekend, and I am tired. It has been a very busy period at work for various reasons. It would probably be unprofessional of me to explain further, but suffice it to say for now that the struggles we've been dealing with have been external in nature, and the people who've been pestering us about certain things for years had better bloody well appreciate what we've been getting up to!

It's tiring, but it's also worthwhile. I spent a goodly portion of this afternoon just Getting Things Organised, and it was a lot more satisfying than I thought it would be. I had been putting off this particular specific task of Getting Things Organised for a while, but I had said I would get it done by the end of the week, and that's exactly what I've successfully done. My Things That Are Now Organised will hopefully help me out in the day-to-day running of my job, and, with any luck, make my life a bit easier. We shall see.

There's lots of exciting things coming up for Evercade. The new Super Pocket devices are out now, bringing with them a built-in selection of NEOGEO and Data East games. I've also got an early copy of our first NEOGEO cartridge, so I will be looking forward to sitting down and actually taking some time to enjoy these games, rather than writing documentation for them or testing them. I'll also be spending a bunch of time playing Roguecraft DX when that comes in, but we haven't had the advance copies for that just yet.

Then there's all the stuff we haven't announced yet! There are some great things coming later in the year and early next year. I've been working on some of the first cartridges that we have planned for 2026 recently, and it's going to be another fantastic year. Evercade really has gone from strength to strength since it launched against all odds in 2020, and I'm proud to be part of the whole thing. If you'd told child me that one day I'd be working on producing official rereleases of some of my all-time favourite games, I'm sure he'd be delighted. He might wish that this role had come about a little sooner in my life, but, well, we can't have everything, and at least I can enjoy it now. I am right in the target audience for the products I'm working on.

I'm looking forward to a nice break, though. I think I mentioned the other day that Andie and I are going to Center Parcs again later this year, in September. It's going to be lovely to have some time away, particularly as we're staying for a little longer than we have done on previous visits. It will hopefully be time to thoroughly unwind and relax before having to jump back into our respective job roles, both of which have been a tad stressful for a while!

Still, rather what I've been doing than… well, pretty much anything else I've done in what can laughably be called my "career" to date. I'm doing something I (mostly) enjoy in a field I care deeply about, my contributions are appreciated, and I'm paid well for the privilege. Not a lot to complain about, aside from people being rude on social media. Things could be (and have been, at various points in my past) a lot worse!

Anyway. I'm off to go start enjoying my weekend, perhaps with a few of those NEOGEO games. I never have finished Metal Slug before… perhaps it's time I gave it a proper shot?

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.

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#oneaday Day 398: I just want to buy the game

Yesterday, I happened to watch the Giant Bomb folks playing through the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, and thought it looked like fun, so I thought I might actually buy it.

So I looked on Amazon to track down physical copies, and every single version available was marked with a bit "INTERNET REQUIRED. CONTENT DOWNLOAD NEEDED". The Nintendo Switch 2 version didn't even have a game cartridge — yes, they eschewed even the odious Game-Key Card system in favour of the even more pointless Code in a Box format.

This is frustrating, because we're seeing this happening more and more, and it concerns me greatly. While I've bought a fair amount of digital stuff on PC largely because it's the only option to buy pretty much anything now, I'm still very wary of consoles going digital-only or at least digital-centric, because it, of course, raises the question of how long those games are actually going to last.

I'm not talking about online servers remaining up so people can play multiplayer or check their rankings on leaderboards. I'm talking about the game just being straight-up playable. Like, if I were to buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 on PS5 or Switch 2 digitally, sure, I could keep it on my storage device theoretically indefinitely, but at some point with the size of today's games, I'd likely need to uninstall it to make room for something else. If, then, I decide maybe 10 or 20 years down the line that I'd actually quite like to play it again… will I still be able to download it and reinstall it?

You may think that sounds silly, but considering that there are 40+ year old games that I still play on a regular basis, I don't think that's especially ridiculous.

Thus far, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have kept digital downloads available for "dead" platforms, even when they've closed the actual storefronts. You can still download things you bought on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, Wii U, 3DS and Xbox 360 — you just can't buy things any more. (Though there is a kind of sort of loophole with PS3 and Vita — if you add credit via the Web, you can actually still buy things; you just can't pay on your console any more.)

This is vaguely encouraging, but how long will it really last? At some point, presumably, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are going to want to turn off the servers that maybe double- or triple-digit numbers of people are using each year, and that'll be that; those games will just be gone. At that point, one would hope, the pirates will have likely "preserved" them in an unofficial capacity, but when it comes to that, you start getting into a territory where games aren't exactly "plug and play" any more. I can still pop in anything from the Atari 2600 to PlayStation 2 era and, assuming the media itself is still in working order, play the game contained therein. For the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era onwards, things start to get a little more dicey; from the PS4/Xbox One era they get a lot dicey.

I guess there comes a point where one has to consider whether they are buying games to enjoy now — in which case whether or not they're still playable in 10, 20 or more years doesn't really matter all that much — or if they're building a library that can continue to be enjoyed for many years to come. I have, up until now, very much fallen into the latter category, and old habits die hard. But from the moment I preordered the Switch 2 I found myself wondering if I'm going to be forced into changing the way I think about things.

I don't know if I'm going to buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 as yet. If I do, it'll be a digital version, because there's absolutely no point purchasing a physical version which doesn't actually contain the game. I guess the only question I need to reconcile in my head is if I care enough about this to take a principled stand and "vote with my wallet", as it were, or just to suck it up and enjoy the game while I can.

Oh well, Donkey Kong Bananza is out in a week, and that is on a proper physical cart, so that's something, at least.

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#oneaday Day 396: The purity of early gaming

I consider myself quite fortunate in that I'm able to enjoy a full spectrum of video gaming, ranging from the very earliest titles up to the most modern releases. The only part of gaming that really leaves me cold is multiplayer-centric titles — I just find they don't hold my interest in the long term.

I feel particularly blessed to be able to enjoy stuff from the early '80s, because I know the primitive presentation of stuff from this era can be a turnoff to some. But I absolutely love it; settle me down in front of a bunch of Atari 2600 or Intellivision games — or, indeed, home computer games from the era — and I can quite happily fill an evening just as well as I could playing a modern, complex title.

As I've grown older and spent a significant portion of my life writing about and making videos about games, particularly those from this early era, I feel like I have a solid appreciation for simple but solid design, and games that are inherently designed to be highly replayable. Sure, you can't "finish" a lot of these games in the same way as modern titles, and to some that's inherently less satisfying, but you have to look at them a bit differently.

Take one of my favourite games of all time, River Raid, for example. River Raid is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up that, in theory, goes on forever. You can't "beat" River Raid. But you can develop a sense of satisfaction from attaining a high score, or reaching a particular level when starting from the beginning, or overcoming a specific challenge that has given you grief for a while.

But it's not even about making progress sometimes. Sometimes it's just about engaging with an inherently pleasing experience. The best early '80s games feel good to play. They achieve this through good handling, effective presentation, a feeling of fairness, and plenty of other elements besides. I enjoy playing Night Stalker on Intellivision not in pursuit of high scores, but simply because it feels nice to play it.

So with that in mind, for this trip down to the office and the accompanying overnight stay — this time at my parents' house because my usual hotel was fully booked — I've brought nothing but early '80s fun to occupy myself. And before I head off to sleep, I think I'll enjoy a round or two of some all-time favourites. Maybe some Cloudy Mountain to start off…?

#oneaday Day 394: Motivation located

I finally got together the motivation and energy to make some videos, which you'll be seeing over the course of the next little while over on YouTube. I made four in total, which I'm pleased with, as that means I don't need to be in a rush to make any more for a little while. Not that I ever "need" to be in a rush, but I've felt in a bit of a rut with the channel recently, and have really struggled with motivation.

Not so today, though! I think it helped that it's rained a fair bit over the last few days, and that's cooled things down a bit, meaning it's not quite so unbearable to just exist. It's amazing quite how much energy a bit of heat can sap from you; I'm sure I could have probably mustered up some energy to do something vaguely productive if I really cared that much, but I think the "break" also did me a bit of good and revitalised my enthusiasm for some of the things I want to cover.

Today's videos see me returning to the Atari 8-bit for the first time in a while. Every time I come back to the humble 8-bit after spending a bit of time away, I'm reminded how much I love that system. Seeing its fonts is like coming home; it's a comforting, warm blanket that makes me feel thoroughly pleasant. I'm sure part of this is nostalgia talking, but I do genuinely mean it when I say I find it a comfort. I got to know the Atari 8-bit and its capabilities so well when I was a child fiddling around with Atari BASIC that just the sight of half-height, double-width Graphics 1 characters is enough to make me smile today. Throw in the games I grew up playing, and, well, that's a happy place I feel like I should probably spend some more time in, judging by how much I enjoyed today's recording session.

The games I covered today are Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Mountain King and Stealth. There was no particular reason for picking these, aside from knowing that Donkey Kong Bananza is on the way for Nintendo Switch, so I thought it would be fun to look at the "Nintendo on Atari" games; Mountain King I chose because I happened to rewatch Classic Game Room's review of the 2600 version the other day, and Stealth… I can't quite remember what brought that to mind recently, but it's a game I've always loved. Or, perhaps more accurately, I always loved its prototype version, Landscape, which we had on one of our Big Box of Pirated Disks that everyone had back in the 8-bit era.

I haven't published any of the videos yet, but make sure you're subscribed over on YouTube if you want to see them when they go up. I'll likely put one up tomorrow, and the rest over the course of the next little while. I have my monthly trip to the office on Tuesday night to Wednesday this coming week, so that will be… fun, probably? I don't relish the long drive every time I have to do this visit, but it is always nice to see everyone. Unfortunately I don't get to stay in a hotel this time because the usual place I book was full up this time around, and the local Travelodge wanted £120. I'm not paying over a hundred quid to stay in a fucking Travelodge, particularly with how they've repeatedly fucked up bookings I've tried to make with them in recent months. So anyway. I will be staying with my parents and delivering my Dad his belated Father's Day gift, which I inadvertently delivered to myself instead. Whoops.

Anyway, videos are uploaded, eyelids are drooping and it's a school night so I guess I better get to bed. Enjoy the vids once they're up!

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#oneaday Day 391: Step out of my Game Room

Every now and then, I like to hit the "Random Post" button on this site and see what I was writing about at some point in the past, be it a few weeks ago or, in some cases, years ago.

Today, the Random Post button threw up this post from early in my first run around the #oneaday track. For those too lazy to click (I know you are, everyone is these days), it was a post about the then-imminent arrival of Game Room on the Xbox 360, and some feelings of positivity towards the whole thing.

For the unfamiliar, Game Room was a piece of software for the Xbox 360 that allowed you to kit out a virtual arcade and populate it with not only virtual tat, but also real games. The software was free, but in order to get any real use out of it, you had to buy either individual games or bundles of games. These games could then be placed into your arcade as "machines" that you could go and play, and, in an attempt to get people to care about Xbox Avatars, you could sometimes see virtual representations of people from your friends list wandering around and playing the games.

What was rather interesting about Game Room for me at the time was the fact that it included not only arcade games — which we already had a few of in downloadable form via Xbox Live Arcade — but also Atari 2600 and Intellivision console games. I had a passing familiarity with some 2600 hits at the time, but Intellivision was completely alien to me, so I was fascinated by the prospect of discovering some new favourites from the dawn of gaming.

There were a lot of objections to Game Room prior to its release, though. Indeed, that post was partially in response to a post on the official Xbox forums (RIP), where an Xbox player called "A Patch of Blue" described the upcoming programme as "a shameless attempt to siphon off Microsoft Points by dumping regurgitated content into our laps with a pretty bow on it". Their primary objections were that the games cost an equivalent of $3 each (a bit tight, I feel) and also that "guests" in your arcade could only play a game once before having to pay-per-play to the tune of 40 Microsoft Points (approximately 50 cents) unless they went away and bought it themselves.

Here's part of my response:

The biggest concern people have with digital distribution is that one day, your content will be switched off and, despite having paid for it, you’ll no longer be able to use it. This is a fair concern, as no-one likes splashing the cash on things that they won’t be able to use at some point in the future – but when you think about it, in the world of tech, this is nothing unusual. Products come and go, specifications increase, chipsets change – and at some point it’s necessary to leave the old behind. Did people complain that the Amiga wasn’t backwards-compatible with the Commodore 64? Do music enthusiasts complain that it’s getting harder and harder to find a cassette deck to play those old albums that you only bought on cassette because they were cheaper?

Well, yes, they probably do, but that’s beside the point. What I guess I’m trying to say is this: isn’t the “built-in obsolescence” of digital distribution the same thing? I have a stack of PC games in a box here, some of which it isn’t possible to run any more. Okay, maybe with some tweaking and playing with software like DOSBox it’s possible to get it going – but to a (for want of a better word) “casual” user, they’re defunct and obsolete. The only difference with potentially expiring digitally distributed products is that there’s no workaround like DOSBox. Once the content’s gone, it’s gone. And yes, that’s not a great thing, but it’s not something to be surprised about.

Oh, dear 2010 Pete. How silly you were. How foolish. How you should have probably listened to A Patch of Blue. Because you can't play anything you bought for Game Room any more, can you? No, you can't, because they switched the servers off, and that means, for some reason, you can't play any of the stuff you paid for.

Actually, I do maintain that Game Room was a lot of fun while it lasted. In particular, I adored the real-time leaderboards, because it was a genuine game-changer in stuff like River Raid for 2600 to see yourself climbing the rankings as you played. No-one has done anything quite like it since; even Hamster's otherwise excellent Arcade Archives releases on modern platforms only update the leaderboards after you've completed a run and specifically told it to update your score.

That sort of stuff, being server-driven, obviously couldn't last forever. But completely switching off the entire application, meaning you could no longer play anything, even single-player stuff with no leaderboard functionality, was kind of shitty, and I'm still a tad bitter about it.

Game Room was a great idea for numerous reasons. As I point out in that post from 2010, Game Room was the first real attempt to put out a fully legal, officially licensed, console-based multiplatform "emulator for the common man" system out there. There was no faffing around with configuration, no diving into dodgy ROM sites looking for the games you wanted. You just fired it up, bought the stuff you wanted, played, and enjoyed the features it offered. It's unfortunate that it's no longer accessible, as there was no "end of life" plan beyond "just turn it off".

These days, we have other options for officially licensed ways to play classic games, including my place of work, the aforementioned Arcade Archives series, compilations for modern platforms and numerous other products. Most of these have been designed in such a way that they will continue to function indefinitely — assuming you have them downloaded, in the case of digital products like the Arcade Archives games — which is an improvement over Game Room's completely closed, proprietary and online-dependent ecosystem.

I still miss Game Room, though. I'd love to see someone take its really good ideas — chief among them that real-time leaderboard thing — and run with them in a way that's a bit more considerate to players over the long term, and compliant with things like the Stop Killing Games initiative.

Hell, this sort of thing is the exact situation Stop Killing Games is seeking to prevent happening again: it's not saying that Microsoft would have needed to run things like the leaderboard servers indefinitely, because obviously that's not practical or cost-effective. But in an ideal world, I'd still be able to open up Game Room today and still play all the games I bought to use with it. As it stands, the money I spent on it — and I seem to remember I spent a fair bit on it — now has absolutely nothing to show for it.

So yeah, 2010 Pete. I admire your optimism, but I'm sorry to say that it was misplaced. Still, I know you enjoyed it while it lasted, so it's not a complete loss. But I hope you learned your lesson.

I did.

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#oneaday Day 390: Over Nine Thousand

Microsoft apparently laid off somewhere in the region of nine thousand people today. This is simultaneously horrifying and difficult to conceptualise. I think I've only ever worked at one company where it would even be possible to lay off nine thousand people at once and still have a company left afterwards, so it's borderline unthinkable to imagine how many people's lives and careers have been destroyed today. To put it in context, laying off nine thousand people would be akin to completely obliterating the company I currently work for approximately 450 times.

And the gall. The gall of the memo that delivered this news, telling everyone that the company has "more players, games and gaming hours than ever before" before giving some mealy-mouthed nonsense about "prioritising opportunities" that doesn't really say anything, and doesn't even have the courage to say, outright, that people are going to lose their jobs.

But then, it's always like this, in my experience, whatever size company you work at. When the layoffs come, they're always sudden, without warning, and without any support for those affected. I have been through the process more times than I would have liked to, and it's been hellish every time.

The first time I experienced it was when I was still working as a teacher. It was my first "proper job" out of university, and while I didn't love it, it was a stable income and a job that I could take a certain amount of pride in. Unfortunately, as my year at that school progressed, it became clear that the school was struggling quite a bit, and that redundancies were looming. Naturally, as one of the last in, I was also one of the first out, and I was given an utterly humiliating and pointless opportunity to "plead my case" to the headteacher and the board of governors before they confirmed the decision that they had absolutely no intention of changing.

The second time I experienced it was when I was working on GamePro. One morning just before Christmas, I awoke to find a flurry of activity on social media and in my email inbox. Several of my colleagues had announced that they were leaving, seemingly out of the blue, and then the email came. This time there was no opportunity for discussion, no support. Just a firm boot out of the door because the company didn't want us or our work any more. Truly horrible.

The third time I experienced it was when I was on USgamer. On the morning of my birthday, I received an email out of the blue from the head of what was then Gamer Network, who informed me that my services would no longer be required. On this occasion, I was given about a month's notice, but I was given no support, no severance, no assistance in finding a new position, not even a little bit of empathy or sympathy.

In every instance, these ultimately boiled down to poor leadership. And yet it's never the leadership that takes the fall; it's always the workers at the bottom of the pile; the ones who need those jobs just to survive. And the leaders get their golden handshakes for successfully "prioritising opportunities" and "streamlining the business", adding to vast fortunes that are already far more than any one person could ever possibly need to have in their personal assets, while real people suffer.

My heart sincerely goes out to everyone who has been affected by a situation that is clearly out of their control. Not just at Microsoft, but everywhere that is slashing workforces right now. Whether it's out of an attempt to save money or ill-advised going "all-in" on generative-fucking-AI, it always sucks, and I wish we, as a society, could find a way to move past this. Where does it end?

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#oneaday Day 382: Time for another stream of consciousness

I have, as is my habit, left this far too late as usual, and I have been unable to come up with a decent topic to write about, so as normal for situations like this, I am just going to start typing and see where things go from there.

I say that; I've written and deleted some paragraphs several times prior to typing this one. The reason is that this evening I've been engaging with a creative work that a number of people I know have been hyping up for a while and… I'm just sort of not feeling it. I could go into depth about why, but honestly I just don't think I want to; I don't want to upset anyone, and I know how I feel when people make negative remarks about something that is important to me. So I think this might just be something that I shake my head, decide it wasn't for me, and set aside quietly without making a big deal about.

As I say this, I'm conscious of someone I saw on Bluesky earlier saying that people shouldn't be afraid to say negative things, because we "need critics". This person's justification for saying such things was that he was one of the few people who gave Death Stranding 2: On the Beach a negative review, whereas it has been garnering near-universal praise otherwise.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Criticism can be helpful, yes, but it can — and often is — hurtful, particularly in games media, where a lot of writers simply don't have a background in an academic approach to criticism and analysis. We've all had a good giggle at a terrible game getting an absolute panning from a reviewer, I'm sure, but as the years have gone by, I've started to find this less and less amusing. All too often I've seen a game that has worthwhile things to talk about boiled down to "hurr bad game funny", and all that does is drive the people who did enjoy that game into their own little bunkers, unable to have a meaningful discussion about it with others because "Metacritic says it's bad".

Hell, I've encountered this numerous times with people I know personally. On multiple occasions I have made a personal recommendation of something that I have enjoyed, bearing in mind the tastes of the person in question, only to be hit back with "well, but this review on [website] said it's not very good". At that point, the conversation was over. Joe Random writing a review on the Internet carried greater weight for this person than a recommendation from someone with whom they had an actual, personal connection.

Honestly, this kind of blows, and it's a big part of why if I find myself not liking something, I just don't really want to talk about it much. The most recent game for which this happened to me was Blue Prince; a critical darling by all accounts, and one which I did manage to successfully recommend to some "real" friends, but also a game that the more I tried to engage with, the more I became frustrated with. I penned one piece on the subject over on MoeGamer when I was still trying to make my mind up 100%, and left it at that. I'm glad others enjoyed Blue Prince, though, and I wasn't about to shit all over their enjoyment of it by charging in and saying how much I didn't like it.

So yeah. The thing I've been engaging with this evening I'm not going to name, and I'm not going to say any more about for the moment. I'm going to give it a bit more of a chance and then come to my own private conclusions. If those conclusions skew negative, I'll probably never speak of it again, but there's always the chance I'll learn to love it. Stranger things have happened.

Now, I'm off to bed. I was going to try and get an early night this evening after accidentally staying up until 1.30am playing Xenoblade Chronicles X last night, but I think I've missed the boat on "early". I can still settle for "timely" if I act now, though, so I bid you all good night!

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#oneaday Day 377: Course correction

A report came out today that suggested the third-party titles which launched alongside the Nintendo Switch 2 have been somewhat underperforming, and physical retailers in particular have noted, to no-one's surprise, that no-one wants to buy those dumbass Game Key Cards. If someone wants to buy a physical game, they want the actual game.

Now, there are likely multiple explanations for this situation, just one of which is the Game Key Card thing. The other is the fact that many of the third-party titles for the Switch 2 launch are games that are already at least several years old — things like Cyberpunk 2077, Bravely Default and Yakuza Zero being the main examples. Granted, each of those things have new features for their Switch 2 incarnations, but they're still games that are 5+ years old, and which have been widely available on other platforms since their launch. There's only really Bravely Default that isn't super-easy to get hold of any more, and even that's no more than £20 or so for a second-hand 3DS copy.

The optimist in me would like to think that both Nintendo and the third-party publishers who have been trying to push Game Key Cards will see the under-performance of these launch titles as a wake-up call, realise they fucked up and make an effort to reverse course. In an ideal world, I would love to see all the launch titles reissued on full, proper cartridges, no downloads required.

I also know that we do not live in an ideal world. In fact, some might say we live in one of the worst timelines imaginable, and as such I do not think it particularly unreasonable to think that one of two things will actually happen: 1) Nintendo and the third parties plug their ears, go "la la la" and hope that people will just suck up Game Key Cards given no other option, or 2) Nintendo and the third parties go "welp, that didn't work" and pull out of physical releases altogether.

Of the two, I think 1) is the most likely outcome, because Nintendo themselves appear mostly committed to doing actual proper cartridges for their own games. Mario Kart World comes on one, for example, and the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza does, too, as do the "Nintendo Switch 2 Version" rereleases of stuff like Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and suchlike. We've also seen no indication that titles like Metroid Prime 4 will be coming on Game Key Cards.

The issue, I'm told, is that there are actually only two options for publishers to release games physically on Switch: 64GB "full" cartridges, and 1GB Game Key Cards. And the trouble with the 64GB ones is that they're expensive, so even if a game could easily fit on one of them — like Bravely Default — a lot of publishers are baulking at both the extra cost to them, and the consequent business need to pass that cost onto consumers via higher prices. We're already seeing some resistance to things like Mario Kart World costing £75 — quite right, too — and so it's understandable that publishers would hesitate to go down a path that would require them to charge a high price in order to make their money back. To the Game Key Cards' credit, any games released in this way are a bit cheaper — but you're still talking at least £30-35 for most.

No-one has really said exactly why the 64GB cards for Switch 2 are so expensive, but it's presumably to do with them being based on the high-speed access that SD Card Express offers. A 256GB SD Card Express is a lot more expensive than a regular old SD Card of the same capacity, and if the Switch 2 carts are based on the same tech — which one would assume they are, otherwise why would the system require SD Card Express for digital downloads? — then that means that faster flash memory is pricier in general.

There's also the capacity question: 64GB is probably not enough for some modern games, since file sizes for triple-A titles have been ballooning over the 100GB mark for quite some time now. That said, if Cyberpunk 2077 can fit on a 64GB card, I feel like most other things probably can, too. And if not, well, game developers should rediscover the incredible art of compression. The games industry in general used to be really good at that — look at the amazing stuff you could fit on a single floppy disk in the 16-bit era! — but it feels like it just hasn't been a priority for developers in more recent years. After all, if the capacity is there, might as well use it, right…? Maybe it's time to get out of that mindset.

There's not really an easy solution then, though I suspect people would be at least a bit more open to paying a little more for their games if they knew they were absolutely, definitely getting the full game, complete on cartridge. Of course, these days there are things like patches, content updates and DLC to consider also, with many physical releases from the previous generation already being of questionable archival value as a result, one might say this is something of a losing battle.

Not all hope is completely lost, however; several of the limited-print companies such as Strictly Limited Games and Lost In Cult have committed to releasing their stuff on full Switch 2 cartridges, and I have little doubt that others will follow. Given that a significant portion of my Switch 1 library consists of titles from publishers like this, that makes me feel a little better. It is, however, disappointing to see companies like NIS America announcing things like new entries in the Trails series as being on Game Key Cards. Given that there's a strong crossover between those who enjoy niche-interest stuff like Japanese role-playing games and those who buy a lot of physical games — as my own shelves will attest — this feels like an intensely foolish thing to do.

It's early days, so I'm not ready to write physical gaming's obituary just yet. But I hope the data we've seen today actually causes some people to sit up, take notice and ponder if they might not be just a little better off doing things slightly differently.

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#oneaday Day 376: The death of ambition

Earlier today, Dave Gilbert, renowned modern adventure game developer and publisher, happened to point out that Adventure Gamers, a website with a near 25-year history, had, at some point, sold out and become an online casino shilling site, leeching off the prior content — which, after 25 years, you can bet had some decent SEO juice, even with the myriad changes to such algorithms over the years — in order to hook people into shady gambling sites.

My immediate reaction to this was "ew, gross", shortly followed by "I bet I could make a really good adventure game site". Unfortunately, this thought was then almost immediately followed by "…but why should I bother?"

This isn't the first time I've thought something along these lines. The modern Web is killing, stifling any sense of ambition I might have once had. It's not one, single thing like generative AI causing me to feel this way — though you better believe the amount of AI slop out there is a big part of it — but rather a continual piling-up of little micro-enshittifications. Over the course of the last 10 years in particular, these micro-enshittifications have all accumulated into the garbage fire that is the Web of 2025: a place where it's hard to find reliable information, where it's even harder to verify whether what you're looking at is reliable information, and where the people with the power to make a difference don't seem to give a shit.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself, in case you've not been here on the previous occasions I've done so.

When I was a kid, I grew up surrounded by computers: specifically, the Atari 8-bit and ST, with MS-DOS and Windows PCs following along around the early '90s. For pretty much my entire childhood, my Dad and my brother were both regular contributors to an Atari magazine initially called Page 6 and later New Atari User, after it took over the name from a publication that was bowing out of the Atari 8-bit scene.

I loved getting a new issue of Page 6 every couple of months; I loved reading through all the features, even if I didn't understand all of them, and it gave me great pride to see my Dad and my brother's name in print pretty much every issue after a certain point. My Dad would cover flight simulators, productivity software and the use of music technology, while my brother would cover Atari ST games. We got a lot of free software out of this arrangement — much of which is now in my possession — and it's fair to say that this played an instrumental role in defining my interests and hobbies growing up.

When my brother left home, he had decided to forego university in favour of a staff writer position on a magazine called Games-X. This was a risky and ultimately unsuccessful venture on the part of publisher Hugh Gollner, but it was a nice idea: a weekly games magazine that covered new releases for the home computers and consoles that were around at the time — the tail end of the 8-bit era, the heyday of the ST and Amiga, and the days when the Mega Drive and SNES were just starting to get some attention.

I was immensely proud to have a family member in the games press, published every week in an actual magazine you could walk into a newsagent and buy. (Page 6 had a stint on newsstands, too, but it eventually went back to its roots as a subscription-only magazine, clinging on to dear life until 1998, impressively.) And my pride only continued after Games-X folded and my brother followed Gollner to the then-fledgling Maverick Magazines, where he initially worked as a staff writer on Mega Drive Advanced Gaming, while his girlfriend at the time held the same position on its Super NES counterpart Control.

It continued further still as he worked his way up the ranks, through several publications and publishing companies, until eventually he found himself in the United States working on the Official PlayStation Magazine and Electronic Gaming Monthly, and helping to launch the pioneering video game social networking site 1up.com — dearly missed.

Every step of the way, I followed his career with interest, conscious of the fact that I was 10 years younger than him, thinking "one day I'll get my chance; I really want to follow in his footsteps, and one day I'll have that opportunity if I just keep trying."

I did keep trying. I did some articles for Page 6, just as my brother had. I did some freelance contributions to PC Zone and the Official Nintendo Magazine, back in the days when one article would get you the money that two months' worth of news posts nets you today. I worked on some little sites, most of which have now disappeared, sadly, and I eventually had the opportunity to work on both GamePro and USgamer, two decent-sized but, admittedly, American sites.

For some reason I had found the UK games press perpetually impossible to crack after a certain point, and after attending a few PR events on behalf of both GamePro I understood why: there was very much a heavily cliquey, old boys' club thing going on, and as a socially awkward (and what I now know to be) autistic loser, that was not something I felt in any way able to crack my way into.

But still I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that GamePro was the start of something big, until we were told via email one morning just before Christmas that none of us had jobs any more. I wanted to believe that USgamer was another opportunity for something big, until I found myself screwed over and, once again, informed via email, this time on my actual birthday, that I no longer had a job.

After that, I didn't seek any further positions in the games press. I'd taken too many beatings. But I didn't want to give up. That's when I started MoeGamer, which initially began as a means of continuing some of the work I'd done at USgamer covering Japanese games that other publications didn't give the time of day. This was work that people in both the industry and from the "public" side of things told me that they found valuable and helpful, because I wasn't just going "ew, anime art" and writing things off as "pandering" or whatever.

Long-term, I wanted to build MoeGamer into something that really stood by itself: a site where you could look up information on a wide variety of games and find some thoughtful, well-considered writing about it. And I think I have achieved that, even if I don't have the time or energy to update it as often as I'd like; the one positive about my previous job, which was beyond tedious, was that it gave me ample time and energy to write new articles and make new videos.

I still never really "made it", though. Few people online know who I am; even fewer go "oh, wow, a Pete Davison article, gotta read that" — although I do have a pleasingly enthusiastic following in the Evercade community, at least, thanks to my work on the official site — and I just find myself wondering… was all this for nothing? Is there even any point trying any more?

The Adventure Gamers thing stings, because were it 10-15 years ago, I'm pretty sure I could have put together a banger of an adventure game-centric website, developed a decent following and kept it up and running for 25+ years without selling out to online casino shills. But now, from every corner of the Web I read horror stories about sites struggling for discoverability, struggling to earn the money to keep the lights on and struggling to get anyone to give a shit about the written word. There are rare outliers, and the rise of worker-owned, reader-supported initiatives such as Aftermath and Giant Bomb is encouraging — but both of those (and others like them) already had ready-made, built-in audiences thanks to the people involved and their prior positions; how long would a brand-new website with a specialist focus even last these days, if it wasn't "the next project from [insert big name site] alumnus, [name]"?

I feel utterly demoralised. I feel like what was once my dream career just doesn't really exist any more. I recognise that I'm extraordinarily fortunate to have fallen into the position I'm in now, where I get to work on games that I care about, crafting written material to help people understand and appreciate quite why I love them so much — and hopefully help said readers learn to love them, too — but there are days of increasing frequency when I wonder if anyone really gives a toss. The days when I have people screeching obscenities at me on social media because they can't buy a cartridge that is out of print. The days when I have to deal with endless, mind-numbing, Queen's Duck-level "feedback" from people who absolutely don't care about the games I'm working on as much as I do. The days when I'm genuinely fearful for the history and legacy of the hobby I love so much, and where I weep for the traditional, written-word games press, a side of the industry which almost doesn't exist at all any more.

I was born 10 years too late. And believe me, it really sucks to have spent a significant portion of your life thinking "I really want to do that", only to find out, much too late, that "that" just isn't really a thing any more.

The obvious answer to all this is something I've thought of and felt before — that even if there doesn't seem to be a "place" for something, you should do it anyway, because someone, somewhere, will appreciate it. But with every site sold to private equity companies and gutted to turn into an AI slop factory, the motivation and ambition to do something significant and meaningful diminishes, bit by bit. What was once a roaring flame of determination is now little more than a flicker. And I hate that.

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#oneaday Day 373: Getting to grips with Cyberpunk

Played a bit more Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 today, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm starting to get to grips with how to play a bit more stealthily, and it's considerably more gratifying to play this way than going in all guns blazing. The fact you can go in all guns blazing is also gratifying, but after one of the "fixers" telling me I had done sloppy work because in the process of attempting to steal a bit of data, I had murdered everyone in the building, I figured I should learn how to do things a bit more appropriately. I've put all those points into Intelligence and Technical Ability, after all, so I might as well use them!

What's fun about playing stealthily is that it makes each mission feel a bit more varied. Rather than showing up, aggroing the first guard you see and then effectively playing a cover shooter for a bit, you generally have to explore the environment a bit more thoroughly to find suitable means of entry and exit. Canny use of Quickhacks can also allow you to "tag" important objectives, mechanisms and guard positions, so you can keep track of them even when they're not in direct line of sight. And if you take control of security cameras — something you can do with your starter Cyberdeck — you can use their perspective to hack things that aren't within protagonist V's direct line of sight.

I'm anticipating that long-term, you'll probably be able to get into a position where you can complete an entire mission without setting foot inside the building once. I'm not at that point yet, largely because I think I'm lacking some useful Quickhacks for achieving that, but I have reached a point where I can convincingly perform reconnaissance on the target area before attempting to breach it. What then follows is a bit of wandering around outside, usually to find a means of getting on top of the building, and then planning a means of attack that either allows me to avoid everyone, or perhaps perform some silent takedowns.

The silent non-lethal takedowns are immensely satisfying to perform. By sneaking up behind an unaware enemy, you can grab them and drag them into another room before either killing them or knocking them out; the latter option is usually encouraged. Once you have a body, you can then pick it up and move it somewhere, including stuffing it into dumpsters (fatal), the boot of a car (not fatal) or just an out-of-the-way location.

This sort of thing is what I was talking about when I said I hoped Cyberpunk 2077 was going to feel like an old-school PC game. I'm talking sort of Deus Ex and Thief: The Dark Project era. I can't remember the last time I picked up an unconscious body and stashed it somewhere out of sight in a video game. Perhaps that says something about the games I typically play, but it feels like something we don't do a whole lot of in games any more. And that's a shame, because well-implemented stealth sections are a lot of fun.

And there's the rub, I think: I reckon a lot of people, having experienced many bad stealth sections in games, have forgotten what well-implemented stealth is like, and at worst have conditioned themselves to think that stealth is automatically bad. But one thing Cyberpunk 2077 shows is that if you do stealth sections correctly — and by that I mean providing the player with plenty of tools to monitor the situation and strategically plan things out — they can be as fun as all-out gunplay.

Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't do anything especially out of the ordinary. You have a little minimap in the corner of the screen that acts a bit like the radar in Metal Gear games. Enemies can be unaware, cautious or alerted, and it takes a moment for them to "switch" between those states; if you can get out of sight before they fully reach the new state, you can escape their notice. Cameras and security devices can be hacked, manipulated and even turned against enemies. And various things you do — ranging from stumbling over discarded noisy debris to attempting to hack their mainframe — have the potential of giving you away.

Since I'm not very far in the game's main story, I haven't seen a lot of additional options to customise V's cyberware to hack in various different ways, but already I'm starting to see how all this works. My "Netrunner" skill stat is getting a nice workout, and it's satisfying to see that rise with use.

And thus far I've mostly been doing random-ish odd jobs rather than progressing the main story. None of these have felt throwaway, either; they all have narrative context, and feel just as important to the overall setting as the main missions. That's good; it's helping the setting to feel nicely immersive, and making the game a whole lot more enjoyable.

So yeah! I'm glad I picked it up. It looks and runs great on Switch 2 — and with no frame of reference for the PC or PlayStation versions I don't feel like I'm "missing out" on any graphical flourishes — and it's a lot of fun to play. So it may be five years old, but to me it's new, fresh, and exciting — and I'm looking forward to playing more.

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