#oneaday Day 723: The Atari 8-bit doesn't get its dues

Hello. I am Pete, and I love the Atari 8-bit range of computers. You probably knew that already, but I wanted to talk about it a bit today.

By Evan-Amos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18553927

I think I'm probably going to make a video along these lines sometime soon — although my prior video on the announcement of The400 Mini a while back covers a lot of the points I'd want to cover — but it's on my mind today, so that's what we're talking about today.

One of the reasons I want to talk about Atari 8-bit computers is because I don't feel they get nearly enough respect. No, they were by no means as popular as the Commodore 64 and Spectrum — the former of which is the subject of a cover feature in Retro Gamer magazine this month — but I also feel like they had a significantly stronger foothold in the market than other "failed" micros from the era. Not only that, but they are historically very significant for a number of reasons, some of which I'll try and outline today.

This is going to be a bit of a stream-of-consciousness sort of probably autistic infodump, because I'm just banging this out as I feel like it. If and when I do decide to make a video about all this, there will probably be a bit more structure, research, that sort of thing. Like I say, this was just rattling around in my head today, though, so I wanted to at least get some thoughts down on paper. So here it is.

For the unfamiliar, the Atari 8-bit range consists of several models:

The Atari 400, which released in 1978, and initially features 8 kilobytes of RAM, though later revisions bumped this up a bit. This was marketed in some areas as a games machine, as it was the cheaper of the two models to release in 1978, had four joystick ports and sported a flat, supposedly spill-proof membrane keyboard to make it suitable for "family" use.
The Atari 800, which released alongside the 400 in 1978, and was positioned as a more "serious" machine. It had a "normal" keyboard, user-upgradable RAM (up to a maximum of 48 kilobytes) and two cartridge slots instead of one (though there were very few releases that took advantage of this) — and it cost considerably more.
The Atari 1200XL was the first step in a refresh of the Atari 8-bit line in 1983, intended to replace the 800. It came with 64 kilobytes of RAM, a completely redesigned case, built-in self-test features and a rather nice keyboard. It was also much too expensive and had a number of issues, causing Atari to pull it from sale before long, and to not release it in PAL territories at all.
The Atari 800XL (pictured above) was a do-over of the 1200XL project. It also had 64 kilobytes of RAM, the newly designed case (now not quite so deep), built-in self-test features and lovely keyboard, but also added built-in BASIC to the mix along with revisions to the operating system. It was Atari's best-selling 8-bit home computer.
The Atari 600XL was a cost-reduced version of the 800XL, which had an even slimmer case and only 16 kilobytes of RAM. With the 800XL replacing the 800, this was effectively the replacement for the 400, but it did not sell very well compared to its big brother.
The Atari 130XE was launched in 1985, after Jack Tramiel took over Atari, and was designed to look like a "little brother" to the 16-bit Atari ST. It featured 128 kilobytes of RAM, new revisions of the operating system and BASIC and a new case design, but otherwise didn't bring anything significantly new to the table. It is a nice machine, though, and my Atari 8-bit of choice.
The Atari 65XE was essentially identical to the 130XE, only with 64 kilobytes of RAM instead of 128.
The Atari XEGS was a 65XE in a console-style case with a detachable keyboard. It was positioned primarily as a games console, even more explicitly than the 400 back in 1978, but was a fully functional computer that would work with all Atari 8-bit peripherals.

Broadly speaking, these models are all cross-compatible with one another, aside from obvious exceptions such as programs that need a particular amount of RAM to run properly. There are a few compatibility issues between very early pieces of software that were designed for the 400 and 800 and the later XL/XE models, but these can usually be got around by using a "translator" program to temporarily load in an older version of the operating system, and the Atari community at large has also been hard at work patching many games to work universally on all Atari 8-bit systems.

Like most other 8-bit computers, the Atari 8-bit had three means of loading software: ROM cartridge, cassette tape or 5.25" floppy disk. ROM cartridges are incredibly simple: plug them in, turn on the machine and the software is there, ready to go. These were primarily used for games, particularly in the early days of the platform, but there are some pieces of utility or productivity software that run from cartridge, too. Notably, using a cartridge effectively allows the ROM within to "extend" the Atari's capabilities; a good example of this is the SpartaDOS X package, which adds an MS-DOS style command line for manipulating files on floppy disks.

Cassette tapes were certainly used by Atari enthusiasts, but not to the same extent as on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. The reason for this is that the tape loading system in the Atari 8-bit was significantly slower than on its main rivals, resulting in load times of half an hour or more for games that would take just a few minutes on other platforms. That said, the Atari 8-bit could make innovative use of the tape medium by playing back audio during a program — a good example of this is the Conversational Language series of packages, which teach French, German, Italian and Spanish through interactive lessons, with recorded speech coming straight off the tape and being played back through the TV speakers at the appropriate moments.

By Bilby – CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48108881

Instead, disk drive use was very popular. There were two main disk drives in the prime of the Atari 8-bit's lifespan: the original Atari 810, which followed the design language of the 400 and 800, and the Atari 1050, which was designed to fit in alongside a 600XL or 800XL setup. There was an even later XF551 drive, but this didn't really catch on for various reasons, and these drives are a lot harder to find today.

You connected a tape deck or disk drive to the Atari via its proprietary Serial Input/Output (SIO) port, and this brings us to one of the most historically significant things about the range: SIO was designed as a universal connector for all manner of different peripherals, not just media storage devices. Sound familiar? That's right; it's very much a precursor to modern USB; Joe Decuir, who created this architecture, holds patents on USB.

SIO had a few differences to modern USB, most notably the fact that devices could be daisy-chained together. This means that even though the system only had one SIO port, you could connect multiple devices simply by linking them together. Obviously this was dependent on the device in question having a suitable port — and not every device did — but in theory you could keep on linking as required, making it easy to have, for example, setups that used multiple disk drives, and even cassette and disk simultaneously if you so desired.

Using a disk drive with the Atari 8-bits required one extra step: the use of a Disk Operating System, or DOS. Atari made its own DOS that underwent several revisions over the lifespan of the Atari 8-bit models, and although closed source and distributed under a proprietary license agreement, it could be redistributed. Good job, too, because in order to actually boot something from disk, DOS needed to be loaded first. If you wanted to be able to save BASIC programs to disk, you also needed to boot DOS from disk before starting to write your program.

The most commonly seen versions of Atari's DOS from back in the day used a menu-driven interface that allowed various disk functions such as copying and deleting files as well as locking/protecting them, loading executable files that were not set up to automatically boot when turning the computer on, formatting disks and creating new DOS disks.

Programming on the Atari used, like most of its contemporaries, a dialect of BASIC. Unlike many other BASICs at the time, it is not a version of the popular Microsoft BASIC (although this was available) and thus had a number of its own unique Atari-specific commands. Carrying out many functions, particularly relating to graphics, that would require POKEs on other platforms could be done with dedicated commands on the Atari, but conversely Atari BASIC lacked the ability to create arrays in string variables. It was, on the whole, a well-liked language, and the two main Atari magazines of the era, Page 6 and Atari User (which later merged to become New Atari User), typically printed type-in listings for all manner of programs in every issue. Not just games, either; both magazines were keen to position the Atari computers as capable, multi-function devices that were far more than just sources of entertainment.

Other programming languages were, of course, available. Those keen to get their hands dirty could write programs using 6502 assembler, while as the years went by, speedy languages such as Action! and Turbo BASIC XL came along and offered compelling alternatives to the built-in or cartridge-based BASIC that was, for many, the foundation of programming on the Atari range. These languages could be compiled into executable binaries, too, meaning that an end user would not need a copy of the language to run a program written in it.

The Atari's audio-visual capabilities were very solid. The dual ANTIC and GTIA graphics chips offered hardware scrolling, built-in "player-missile" sprites, and a wealth of different graphics modes allowing various balances between memory usage, resolution and colour depth. The POKEY chip offered four-channel audio with a good amount of customisation — although not quite as flexible as the SID chip found in the Commodore 64. It also handled a lot of the Atari 8-bit's input/output, meaning the system has the charming feature of making blippity bloop sounds when loading and saving from/to disk or tape rather than the horrific screeching heard on other platforms.

And then we come to the games. While some of the high-profile software houses — notably outfits like Ocean, Imagine, Ultimate and suchlike — refused to support the Atari 8-bit, others, like Electronic Arts and Activision, did, at least in the early days, and the budget companies like Mastertronic, Atlantis, Zeppelin and Alternative had a good presence on the platform, too. The end result of this from a 2026 perspective is that the Atari 8-bit library is largely unique, with many titles not being found on any other platforms — and in the case of multiplatform affairs, the Atari release often being a particularly good version. (There are exceptions, of course; the Atari 8-bit versions of Action Biker and The Last V8 are woeful compared to the C64 releases.)

There's also the fact that a lot of games which went on to worldwide success on a variety of platforms often originated on Atari 8-bit. All-time classics like Boulder Dash, M.U.L.E., Miner 2049'er and Spelunker debuted on Atari before spreading to other platforms, and esteemed creators like Archer Maclean were really able to make the system sing with games like Dropzone.

The only thing the library is lacking compared to its more successful 8-bit counterparts is a library of solid arcade conversions from the years following the initial early '80s "golden age"; those early '80s titles are well-covered, however, with excellent versions of Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Qix and plenty more — and a wealth of "unofficial" clones, too.

So why doesn't this system get anywhere near the love and attention that the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum do? I honestly don't really know, because although the platform undoubtedly sold considerably less than both of its main rivals, I don't think one can in any respect call it a "failure". Its longest-lasting magazine published its final issue in 1998, for heaven's sake — and said magazine was including material for the Atari 8-bit right up until that very final issue. Not only that, the modern "homebrew" scene is incredibly active and vibrant to this day, with some truly amazing new games being released for the platform on a regular basis, along with some excellent ports of C64 and Spectrum games that never made it to Atari back in the day.

I would love to see the Atari 8-bit get more acknowledgement. There are some YouTubers who do give it its dues — Kim Justice is a good example — but I do wish the field of "gaming history" would, more broadly, pay attention to the Atari 8-bit: a platform that still has a lot to offer, which is a hell of a lot of fun to have been involved with since its original inception, and which is dead easy to explore today with solutions like Altirra for software emulation, and the excellent Atari800 core for MiSTer if you're an FPGA person.

Still, that's a big reason my YouTube channel exists. So I will continue to champion the system how I can — and at least then I know that I have done my part in remembering this wonderful platform and the many amazing journeys it has taken me on over the years.

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 717: Putting down the Zilart

I have finally beaten both Final Fantasy XI's base story and its first expansion, Rise of the Zilart, which was released alongside the game when it first came west. This means that I have, at last, beaten the entirety of what most people seem to regard as "the original Final Fantasy XI story", since most folks seem to consider Rise of the Zilart the actual conclusion to the story that begins when you start playing the game.

It's been a lot of fun thus far. I'm about 80 hours deep into the game, and I haven't really felt particularly "roadblocked" at any point. There have been two separate occasions where I have had help from higher-level players — once to open the "Three Mage Gate" I mentioned a few posts back, and once to help me with the fight against Siren as part of the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel series of missions that run parallel to all the main stories — but for the most part, I have successfully beaten and bashed my way through the game as a solo player using the computer-controlled "Trust" party members.

I thought I had reached a roadblock towards the end of the Rise of the Zilart storyline where you are presented with a chain of five difficult boss battles, and I was having real difficulty with a couple of them. As I'm playing a Warrior, I have been working on the assumption that I should be the main "tank", you see, and thus trying my best to ensure all enemies fixate their attention on my while my Trusts repeatedly punch them in the buttocks. This is, after all, the way things are in Final Fantasy XIV, even though mechanically the two games are otherwise quite different.

However, what I discovered in these difficult fights (the "Ark Angels" fights, to any FFXI veterans) is that being the sole human player and the main tank is not always desirable. Y'see, some high-level enemies have the ability to Charm you, and when that happens all your Trusts get unsummoned and the fight effectively resets. It's an instant "kill", in other words, and I really thought this was going to roadblock me.

Then I thought about things a bit, and wondered what might happen if I let one of the Trusts handle the tanking instead. Wouldn't you know it, those fights suddenly went much more smoothly. I could keep dealing damage — which, besides tanking, is the other thing FFXI Warrior is good at — while Trust-y Valaineral the Paladin took the brunt of everything the boss threw at a single target, including that pesky Charm. And, because I also had Kupipi the White Mage and King Of Hearts the Red Mage in my party, they cleansed that status off him pretty quickly. I only really came close to failing in one of the fights, where everyone got Silenced and Valaineral got knocked down because no-one could heal him. Thankfully, this happened late enough in the fight that the remaining party members, including me, were able to finish the job.

By contrast, the actual final boss of Rise of the Zilart was very easy indeed. Granted, I was probably a few levels higher than "intended" for this encounter — Final Fantasy XI isn't particularly rigorous about locking stuff to particular level restrictions, particularly in the main story sequences — but it was still pretty straightforward. Fun, though; it was satisfying to finally bring down a "big bad" who had been taunting me for some time.

Now I'm on to the Chains of Promathia expansion, which a lot of longtime players seem to think is one of the best bits. It makes the curious decision to base the early hours of its story around the level 30 mark, rather than assuming you would be at the level you're probably at around the conclusion of Rise of the Zilart — 75+ — but I assume that things ramp up pretty quickly, as the official "content guide" on the Final Fantasy XI website recommends the expansion as an activity for level 75+ players.

I'm really glad I've done this! I'm going to write a big, detailed article about my experiences over on MoeGamer when I'm finally done with everything I want to do in the game, but for now, my feelings are that, in terms of gameplay, progression and a general sense of adventure, this is actually one of the very best Final Fantasy games. Yes, it is the very epitome of a "guide dang-it" game, in which you will almost certainly not get very far without looking some stuff up, but the moment-to-moment gameplay, the overall sense of progression and the fact that it feels like a Final Fantasy game, arguably a lot more so than XIV, has really left me with a big grin on my face. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the game has to offer.

I have played pretty much all day, though, so I should probably stop for now, though, right? Probably…

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#oneaday Day 708: Proper adventuring

One of the things I suspect is incredibly divisive about Final Fantasy XI is that everything takes a lot of effort.

I suspect these four know one another. Or, more likely, are one person multiboxing.

You get a quest, it will inevitably involve finding some object that is a relatively low-chance drop from a very specific monster that is deep in part of a dungeon that is exceedingly inconvenient to get to.

You reach the level cap, you have to complete one of these quests every five levels until you reach 99 — though thankfully you only have to do this once per character, not once per job.

You get your "subjob", to add abilities from a second job to your main one, you have to level that as well as your main job — though only half as much, since it caps at half the level of your main job.

There are times when all this feels a bit wearisome, particularly when compared to Final Fantasy XIV, which at times feels like it's keen to take as much "friction" out of the entire process as possible. But if you think about Final Fantasy XI in different terms — not as a "theme park"-style MMO, but simply as a more traditional RPG — it makes a lot more sense, particularly now you don't have to be dependent on other people for a lot of the "main scenario" side of things.

Dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV are spectacular affairs, but they are theme park rides — completely linear, the same every time. Dungeons in Final Fantasy XI are much more elaborate: maze-like structures filled with dead ends, hidden secrets and varied encounters with monsters. The complete lack of signposting for quest-critical items — usually this involves finding something marked "???" when you target it — means that you have to actually explore these places thoroughly… or look at a guide, of course. But the longer I play, the more interesting the prospect of just exploring becomes. And the more I feel like the game has been designed around this.

If you look at a lot of Final Fantasy XI guides online, you will inevitably see a focus on levelling as fast as possible, then steamrollering your way through all the content. But the way I've been playing, it feels a lot more natural and a lot more like it's the way it was intended to be played. I've had a couple of instances where I've had to sneak around monsters much tougher than me to find a useful item, but for the most part I've found that if I treat the game like a regular, offline RPG — that is to say, fighting my way through monsters as I proceed through a field area or dungeon rather than avoiding as many as possible — it means that progress comes naturally and without you feeling like you're having to make an inordinate amount of effort to achieve that progress. As a result, the game is fun rather than a chore.

There are still points where it feels like you are "roadblocked" in certain ways — right now I'm dealing with a particularly complicated main scenario mission that involves finding specific items in three specific dungeons, along with a level cap quest that is demanding much the same sort of thing — but only in terms of the ongoing narrative. In terms of actually playing the game and engaging with its mechanics, I feel like I'm constantly doing interesting stuff and seeing new places rather than just going through the motions.

I'm going to make it through this game! I'm excited to see where it goes! Now, if I can just find an Orcish Crest, a Quadav Crest and a Yagudo Crest, plus pieces of Magicite from their three respective bases, I should be good to go and beat up the Shadow Lord. So that's what I'm going to do today, I think.

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#oneaday Day 704: Vana'diel progress report

I am pleased to report that I have reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XI. This is not the level cap, but it is a significant milestone, as it was, I believe, the original level cap when the game first released. As time went on and various expansions released, players got the opportunity to increase their personal level cap in increments of 5 levels at a time, though each one of these milestones requires you to complete a tricky and/or time-consuming quest. I'm in the middle of one of those now, which will allow me to level up to 55 when I'm done.

I'm enjoying the game a lot, though my desire to attempt it without a guide was a foolhardy endeavour. Final Fantasy XI was always designed with "community" in mind, and built on the assumption that said community would share information with one another and help each other out, and as such there are a lot of things it just doesn't tell you. It's a lot better in this regard than it used to be, primarily thanks to the "Records of Eminence" feature, which gives you a series of objectives to accomplish that can guide your progression, but you'll still often be given a mission that tells you to go to a particular zone and find something in that zone, with absolutely no indication whatsoever of exactly whereabouts in that zone the thing is to be found. There is no minimap and no quest marker feature in Final Fantasy XI, so you're either off to find a needle in a haystack yourself, or consult the community (which now, of course, also includes comprehensive wikis) and be able to focus your efforts a bit more.

There are still one or two roadblocks that require actual interaction with a human being. One of the missions for Windurst requires that you get through a door called the "Sealed Portal", which is colloquially known by the community as "Three Mage Gate". The reason for this is that the originally intended method of opening this door was to gather a party containing a white mage, a black mage and a red mage and get them to stand on the appropriate marks on the floor, which would open the door. This was subsequently updated to only require someone with the "Portal Charm" key item — which, naturally, you get just after the mission in which you would first need it — to make things marginally easier and less dependent on wrangling an entire group.

These aspects aside, though, the game has been eminently soloable so far, thanks to the Trust system. You're given some decent Trusts right from the get-go, and more are unlockable quite easily. There are some borderline overpowered ones available without too much difficulty, too, but with the number you get to add to your arsenal very quickly, you can pretty much build a party however you like to play, and use the characters you find most appealing. My only slight beef with the system is a narrative one; many of the Trusts you get early on are characters that you probably won't have met yet, and this makes it tricky to feel a sense of attachment to them. Because, in the context of Final Fantasy XI's story, Trust magic is dependent on you having a strong bond with a particular person, this feels a bit dissonant, but you soon learn to deal with it — and after a while, you'll be able to get together a party that feels like it consists entirely of "story" characters anyway.

It's definitely a very different sort of game to Final Fantasy XIV. It's not actually turn-based, but with its pacing it might as well be. It's not a game where you attacking requires you to be constantly pressing buttons to unleash combos, unlike its follow-up; instead, it's more about equipping your character well, ensuring they have good training in the skills they need to succeed at the challenges ahead of them, and approaching combat encounters carefully and thoughtfully. Sure, you "do less" on a moment-to-moment basis, but it's a different kind of satisfying to successfully clearing difficult encounters in Final Fantasy XIV; it's less about skill with the buttons and more about traditional RPG-style number crunching. I'm not saying either way is "better" — both games are very good at what they do — but it is interesting to note quite how different they are from one another now I'm deeper into XI than I've ever been.

My next big milestones for Final Fantasy XI will be breaking a couple of level cap barriers, and then completing the base story from the original game, which culminates in a big fight against the dreaded Shadow Lord. There's still a lot to do after that, though, and most folks seem to agree that things start getting really good story-wise after you've got through the base game's material. I'm looking forward to it — and at the rate I'm going, I should be getting through it at a decent pace, too.

I'm glad I finally decided to do this. Final Fantasy XI has kind of been a "white whale" for me in terms of completion, so I knew I just had to make the time to play it and do it properly. Now that I'm doing that, I'm having a really good time. I doubt I'll get too hardcore into its "endgame" stuff — my main priority is to beat the story, and after that I will probably return to XIV — but there is plenty to do just on the journey from 1 to 99. And that's absolutely fine with me!

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#oneaday Day 702: Overcoming burnout and guilt

After I wrote all that yesterday, I then promptly went and recorded four videos. They're casual, breezy, fairly low-effort videos, but videos they are nonetheless. The first one went live today:

Yes, it's H.E.R.O. by Activision! I was super-excited to help bring the Activision Collection cartridges to Evercade, as these are some of my all-time favourite 2600 games, and H.E.R.O. is a real classic. With this kind-of-sort-of series, I'm just gonna play whatever I damn well feel like on Evercade and just chat freeform and see what happens. Evercade and Chill, you see.

This is definitely the kind of video I enjoy making the most, because in some ways it helps me to feel a bit less lonely. I know that I'm talking "to myself" while I'm playing, but I'm also talking to anyone who's watching, and I've always said that my intention for this style of video is to provide an experience roughly akin to sitting down with a friend and playing something together. Consequently, I do my best to try and include the viewer in the things that I'm saying — and also not to assume knowledge, for those who are new to this stuff. Which, as time goes on, there are more and more people who fall into that category.

I've been wanting to get back to doing Evercade videos for a while, but it didn't feel quite "right" to be doing them while I was also handling the company's social media and stuff. Now I've thankfully left that side of my job in the dust, I feel I can get back to doing this sort of thing — which in its own way will hopefully benefit the community and the product, too. I mean, I have a miniscule audience, yes, but if just a few of those folks see something I cover and the fact it's on Evercade, then that's pretty cool.

The four videos I recorded yesterday are all Activision-related, because that's what I felt like playing at the time. As I say, this "series" will have no particular set structure or format aside from "I'm going to play whatever the hell I feel like from the Evercade library as it exists at the time of recording". I will have to be a teensy bit careful not to accidentally reveal any new carts before they're announced — I already have the next two cartridges that are being announced on the 15th, for example — but given that there's 80-something cartridges altogether and nearly 800 games on Evercade at this point, I'm not going to be running out of material any time soon.

So I hope you enjoy this series! It will hopefully be a fun, casual, laid-back, relaxing sort of series, both for me as a creator, and for you as someone watching this stuff. (I recommend falling asleep to my videos. I do it quite frequently.)

On that note, the weekend is almost over, so I think it's probably time for bed.

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#oneaday Day 699: Final Fantasy XI and the art of patience

As… promised? threatened? recently, I've started playing Final Fantasy XI again. And I am reminded, once again, for the umpteenth time, that I really like this game, particularly in its current form. I'm sure there are plenty out there who will bemoan how "dumbed down" its 2026 incarnation is compared to what it was like 20 years ago, but man, c'mon. You can play most stuff solo now; some might say that misses the point of an MMO, but there's still a markedly different vibe existing in a world knowing there are other players around. You see other people going about their business; you participate in the economy; you contribute to asynchronous team activities.

I am also reminded that Final Fantasy XI is not a game for everyone. Specifically, it is not a game for the impatient, because there is a lot to do, and it takes quite a long time to do pretty much anything… except level up, now, which goes at a significantly more brisk pace than it did the first time I played it all those years ago.

But we're talking about a game where the ability to run slightly faster than normal is dependent on someone completing a long and difficult quest, it rolling a random chance of the "Swift Shoes" effect coming up, and then you healing to full and having a nice sit down for a couple of minutes to "charge" the slightly-faster-than-normal movement speed — which, of course, immediately fades away the moment you either attack something or get attacked.

We're also talking about a game whose original implementation of "fast travel" required you to fight your way to a huge "crag" two zones away from your starting city and collect a crystal from it, all for the privilege of being able to teleport an inconveniently long distance away from any of the game's towns.

We're talking about a game where, when you want to cross the sea, you have to physically stand and wait for a ship, and when you're on the ship, you have to wait for the voyage to complete. (Sometimes monsters attack. A lot of the time you just have to enjoy the ride.)

If those descriptions make you smile, even a little bit, you are probably someone who will enjoy Final Fantasy XI.

The fact the game demands so much patience makes it feel very rewarding, though. When you achieve something, you feel like you've bloody well earned it. This is not a game where you are a super-special Warrior of Light pretty much from the get-go; this is a game where you are a relatively normal person — albeit one with, arguably, extraordinary combat abilities compared to your "peers" among the NPCs — just trying to make their way in the world. Make a bit of cash, get a bit of training in, visit some new places.

It's this rather open-ended feel that I really like about Final Fantasy XI. In many ways, it feels like a very pure reflection of what I call the old "world RPG" formula exemplified by titles like the early Ultima games. There is a long-term goal to go and complete, but the vast majority of your playtime will be spent doing rather freeform activities to build up your character in a way that you see fit.

Some of the best things that have been added to Final Fantasy XI since its original release are designed to make it more than just grinding monsters for hours at a time. The "Records of Eminence" quests do a great job of giving you things to do and acting as a sort of guide to what it is possible to do in the game, without having to spend half your playtime looking at a wiki. The "Field Guide" and "Grounds Tome" books at the entrances to field and dungeon areas respectively provide you with focused sets of monster targets to down in exchange for generous experience bonuses. And of course there's plenty of quests, the main storyline missions and, once you get later into the game, lots and lots of side activities. I don't yet know how "important" some of these things are — or indeed what 90% of them are at this point — but I'm intrigued to find out.

Thus far I'm up to level 25 on the job I started with — Warrior this time around — and I'm levelling Monk as a subjob for now. I'm on the "rank 2" missions for my home nation, and making good progress. I've also kicked off the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline that was added much later than the other main stories, and acts as another kind of "guide" through what the game offers, with its own narrative to follow — and plenty of extremely helpful benefits as rewards along the way.

I'm enjoying myself a lot. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get through the various storylines, but levelling has been going at a brisk pace, and I'm feeling good about how things are going so far. I'm looking forward to finally doing things like taking down the Shadow Lord, which I've never done before, and particularly getting into the well-regarded Chains of Promathia expansion storyline, which longstanding FFXI players have been banging on about the quality of for years.

So yeah. It's a good time. You just need patience. And if there's one thing I have developed over the years, it is a very strong sense of patience.

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#oneaday Day 697: Another post!

How about another post? I've already fired off my Final Fantasy XI shot in the previous post, so what to write about now, I wonder?

Perhaps I can tell you a bit about the Evercade Game of the Month game which came out today. I made a video about it and everything, like, for my actual job:

The Game of the Month programme, if you're unfamiliar, is a thing we do every so often where we give folks the opportunity to download and play a game on a sort of "trial" basis for a month or so, then all the games we've featured in a particular year get bundled together onto an Indie Heroes cartridge the following year, along with some cartridge-exclusive games.

It's a fun way to give some attention and love to the "homebrew" scene, and it effectively means that we get one of the first cartridges of next year up and running well ahead of schedule, which helps take a bit of the pressure off. And with the ambitious projects we've been doing recently, any opportunity to take a bit of the pressure off is very welcome indeed!

Last month, we had a special "shareware" version of BioMenace Remastered, which I'm thrilled we're bringing to Evercade, as I used to love BioMenace when I was a kid. I only ever had the shareware version, as many of us did, so it will be very exciting to play through the full thing when we eventually have it. (I also bought a copy on PC to support the chap behind it, who is a thoroughly lovely person.)

This month, we have Inspector Waffles: Early Days, which is an adventure game built in GB Studio, the tool of choice for seemingly 95% of Game Boy homebrewers these days. It's a flexible little engine, clearly primarily designed for top-down role-playing game-type experiences, and Inspector Waffles: Early Days makes good use of it to create an adventure game featuring not only top-down exploration and examining things, but also first-person point-and-click sequences, dialogue puzzles and a bunch of secrets. You can probably blast through it pretty quickly if you know what you're doing, like most adventure games, but it's an enjoyable ride with the whole "everyone is cats" thing being a fun gimmick.

We're actually still assembling the list of Game of the Month titles for the coming months, so if you happen to be reading this and you have something that will work on Evercade — generally speaking, an game built on any of the platforms we've previously emulated games for is a solid bet — then be sure to drop developer@evercade.co.uk a line and we'll see what we can do.

An hour and a half left to go on the Final Fantasy XI patch. Maybe a bit of NEOGEO while I wait, then…

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#oneaday Day 696: The missing day

I apparently missed yesterday! Whoops. Oh well. It was a bank holiday. Let's just say I was having the day off. Better yet, let me point you in the direction of something I did write yesterday, which was a thorough write-up of Capcom's Pragmata.

And then indulge me while I write two things today, because I feel like I "should". I'm just like that. Also I have just reinstalled Final Fantasy XI and it has to go through its whole many-hours patching process, so I may as well do something to fill the time.

I've decided to give Final Fantasy XI another honest go because I've always enjoyed it when I've played it in the past, I have been wanting to play through its story for more than 20 years (and there's a lot more of it now than when I first wanted to play it!) and I'm sort of "between games" right now. This time around, I want to make a proper effort to get through the main scenario. I know there's a lot of other stuff in Final Fantasy XI, but we'll see if I feel the need to jump into any of that as I work my way through; my priority is just seeing what the main storylines are.

The reason I say this is because I've pretty much made a decision: I'm going to head back into Final Fantasy XIV at some point before the new expansion drops — likely when the new "Beastmaster" job is added in the next main "part" of the Dawntrail finale patch, which is looking like July. Before that happens, I'd like to have had a good crack at Final Fantasy XI, so I'm going to treat it as my "main" game for the immediate future. I think it's going to be interesting — particularly as, for several years now, the game has been in a state where much of it is eminently soloable thanks to the fact you can bring recruitable NPC "Trusts" along with you for pretty much everything in the game, not just instanced dungeons like in Final Fantasy XIV.

As I say, I don't know how much into the weeds I'm going to get, because my main priorities are 1) getting to the level cap of 99 and 2) getting through the main storylines of the base game and all the expansions. The two will likely intertwine somewhat, and gearing up, particularly once at level 99, will likely involve dipping into some of the activities outside of the main story, but we'll see. I'm going to try and minimise guide usage as much as possible, too, because I think that will be much more interesting. I'm also curious to see if it's even possible to play that way — and if it isn't, well, there are 20+ years worth of FAQs, wikis and all manner of other resources out there to follow along with.

I'm excited! I'm also aware that I've fallen off Final Fantasy XI multiple times in the past, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but because something else came along that occupied my attention. Hopefully that won't happen this time around — because I'm increasingly conscious that, because of the game's age, there is likely only so much more time I have to be able to actually do this quest.

So Vana'Diel awaits! In about two hours' time, according to the PlayOnline Viewer, anyway. So how should I occupy myself in the meantime… hmmm?

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#oneaday Day 695: Final Fantasy VIII was fine

I don't know what it is, but just recently there seems to have been a huge upswing in the number of people who feel the need to go off on a long, long diatribe about how much they hate Final Fantasy VIII. And those people tend to get weirdly aggressive about it. I've stopped posting on one forum completely because of one such discussion where people were getting very dickish about it, and it is, to be honest, getting a little tiresome. Particularly when it is impossible to have a reasonable discussion with someone about it if you, like me, happen to hold an opposing viewpoint.

I love Final Fantasy VIII! I played it at a particularly formative point in my life — my first year of university — and it left a significant impact on me. It's a game I played with someone who was very important to me, it's a game that I shared some good times with friends over, and it's a game that I legitimately enjoyed from start to finish.

The typical argument from the Final Fantasy VIII haters is that it's a "bad" game because "the best way to play it is not to engage with its systems". Bollocks. I beat the game, including its superbosses, precisely because I engaged with its systems. Junction up a bunch of Aura, Ultima and other high-level spells to your important stats, cast Aura on yourself to get your special attacks rolling as often as possible, and watch the damage fly. Immensely satisfying. And, as "game-breaking" as it felt to do that, it is 1) what the game is designed to allow you to do and 2) really no different to what you do in any number of other RPGs; one of the most fun things about them as a genre is that there is usually a way to "break" them beyond their usual limits and start dealing astronomical levels of damage. Certain games even design themselves around this philosophy; titles like Disgaea, Omega Quintet and Trillion: God of Destruction very much fall into this category.

But I've learned that it's not worth even attempting to have this discussion when someone has decided to start yelling about how much they hate this twenty-seven year old game. I don't know if it's a weird form of clout-chasing, algorithm baiting or what, but it just seems bizarre to me how often I've been seeing this come up, usually completely unprompted, just recently. Perhaps I'm just Baader-Meinhofing myself, but I don't think it's that; I mean, it's weird, right? That game came out twenty-seven years ago, and people have suddenly decided that they're mad about it? I really don't get it.

I especially don't get it because back when Final Fantasy VIII was current, everyone I knew loved it. We had a running joke among our friendship group that every time we went to visit the local independent computer shop, at least one of us would ask when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out. This was such a running joke that my friend Woody even incorporated it into his unfinished (barely started, really) Klik and Play project called Resident Evil EX, in which Agent Wesley Wilson infiltrated a zombie-infested mall, where one of the survivors was cheery ol' Richie, proprietor of First Compute, and, indeed, walking in there would prompt a conversation (voice acted by us) about exactly when Final Fantasy VIII would be coming out.

Final Fantasy in general seems to attract these sorts of passionate haters for some reason. People really hate the fact that the series has been constantly reinventing itself over the years — despite a stated, explicit philosophy of the creators being "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy". And this, in turn, leads to people just… making shit up about the various games that, for one reason or another, are perceived as unpopular. It seems that it is Final Fantasy VIII's turn right now, since Final Fantasy XIII hatred appears to have died down a lot just recently.

But I mean it! I don't remember seeing anything anywhere near this level of hatred for, just to remind you, this twenty-seven year old game, prior to this year. Perhaps it was out there. Perhaps I just didn't see it. But I find that a bit difficult to believe. It just seems to be nothing more than the fashionable thing to crack wise about right now — just another meaningless, pointless social media trend that takes away from the possibility of ever having a real, sincere, meaningful discussion with anyone online any more.

Anyway. I just felt like saying that today. This is not an invitation for you (yes, you) to come into my comments and start rabbiting on about how much you hate Final Fantasy VIII. I honestly absolutely do not care. Or, perhaps more accurately, I'm not interested. Put a bit of that energy into telling me about something you do like — perhaps something I've never heard of! That's much more fun. Believe me. I've been making that the basis of what I write about games online for quite some time now, and it's far more rewarding than just hate, hate hate.

But I guess it was forever thus. The "funny" bad reviews in games magazines were always the ones people remember the most. The bad reviews on today's websites are scientifically designed to maximise "engagement". And someone blurting out, completely unprompted, how much they hate a twenty-seven year old game that isn't even that bad? I don't know what that is, but I don't think I want to be part of it.

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#oneaday Day 694: The joy of hyperfixations

I've done a lot of work on my Secret Creative Project over the course of the last few days. I am feeling a strong amount of Autistic Hyperfixation Energy on it right now — even if I do often have to juggle this with the equally autistic tendencies to fiddle around with the bits I've already created over and over rather than continuing to make new bits.

Thus far the project is standing at 16,826 words. I anticipate that by the time I finish this — which will be a pretty long time from now — that number will be in the high six digits at the very least. There's a lot of work still to do, but I feel good about this; I feel like this is a worthwhile undertaking, and one that I'm enjoying doing.

It's not something I plan to make any money from; it's not something I plan to plaster ads all over; it's not something I'm doing to "be famous" or anything like that. It's just a project based on something I enjoy that I think will help others to enjoy said thing as much as I do. Plus it's an excuse for me to dive down some thoroughly interesting research rabbit-holes.

Doing this is reminding me that I love writing, particularly about the things I'm passionate about. (Go on then; I'll give you a little hint as to what the project is about: it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, about games.) I love the little journeys that bits of research take you on; I love trying to craft a narrative from those nuggets of information you find; I love trying to get my enthusiasm across in a way that is hopefully enjoyable for the reader to engage with.

I don't know if I'll ever finish this. I would certainly like to, and while I'm feeling the strong Autistic Hyperfixation Energy, I intend to keep taking advantage of it as much as possible. I reached what I consider to be the first major milestone in the project this evening… out of many milestones along the way, yes, but a significant one, nonetheless. It feels like finally cresting a particularly steep hill, so I am going to "reward" myself with some nice relaxing time tomorrow. I haven't played Pragmata for a few days and need to get back on that, but this has been taking priority while I've been feeling very much in the mood for it.

On that note, though, it's after midnight, and I think I should probably get some sleep now.

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