#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?

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 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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#oneaday Day 688: Cave dweller

Today was our trip to The Cave and Arcade Archive, part of the Retro Collective organisation. As I've explained a few times previously, and for the benefit of those who might have missed those posts, The Cave is an interactive, hands-on computer and video game museum, while the Arcade Archive is a similarly interactive, hands-on free play arcade museum. The Retro Collective as a whole encompasses these two museums, the company Heber Electronics, who make the MiSTer Multisystem 2 console, and the Retro Collective YouTube channel, fronted by retro tech enthusiast and historian Neil Thomas.

I will be peppering today's post with photos from today's trip.

Demoscene veteran, ace retro coder and composer Ian "h0ffman" Ford getting to grips with a Sinclair C5.

The event today centred around a talk by Ian "h0ffman" Ford, a veteran of the Amiga demoscene who returned to coding and composing on classic computer hardware back in 2010, and has been spending much of his time since COVID fiddling around with disassembling and porting classic games from one platform to another. To date, he has ported the MSX2 version of Metal Gear to Amiga, the MSX game Knightmare (no relation to the TV show) to Amiga also, plus Shinobi and Golden Axe from Sega's System 16 arcade board to NEOGEO, plus the modern Unity game Cecconoid to Amiga. His talk explored how most of these projects came about because of repeatedly falling down rabbit holes while satisfying his own curiosity.

True to form, it didn't take long before the C5 broke.

Outside of h0ffman's talk, which happened after lunch, all of us in attendance were free to explore The Cave, the Arcade Archive, and the organisation's newly renovated workshop space, known as the Pump House. (The entire operation is in an old mill, and the Pump House used to be part of the site's earlier purpose; it's not just a funny name they gave it.)

The Cave is up on the top floor of the mill, and is a large, open-plan room filled with old computers and consoles of various descriptions, including some fairly exotic machines from outside of the UK, Europe and North America, such as the beautiful Sharp X68000 from Japan. This is an absolutely gorgeous machine that, if money were no object, I would very much have in my collection. If you've never come across one, it's a 16-bit computer that has the audio-visual capabilities of its console contemporaries, meaning it plays host to a lot of excellent games, including some near-perfect arcade ports.

There's also lots of interesting console obscurities, too, such as NEC's ill-fated PC Engine spinoff, the Supergrafx, a console noteworthy for, outside of backwards compatibility with the aforementioned PC Engine, only having five titles in its library. And you thought the Wii U was a flop. Despite this, it's an exceedingly cool little system worth having a play with in an environment like The Cave!

I didn't contribute to the Duck Hunt high scores.

Another nice thing about The Cave is that it acknowledges well-known, popular hardware in unusual configurations, such as this kiosk multi-game version of the NES that you would have found in electronics stores back in the '80s. All the stuff at the Cave is hooked up to great quality screens, too, with many of them being professional video or broadcast monitors, Sony Trinitrons and the like.

Yes, that is a Casio Loopy lurking in the background there.

Here's another one: Sega's Mega-Tech arcade system, which was basically a Mega Drive you bought time on back in the day. Here, as with all the other arcade machines in The Cave and the Arcade Archive, it's set to free play, so you can enjoy a selection of 16-bit classics in the arcade form factor.

Well, that's one way of proving your ports are "arcade perfect"

Nintendo had done something similar with the PlayChoice-10 machine, which provides you with a selection of NES games to play using arcade controls. It's a very strange feeling to play the original Super Mario Bros. with a stick and arcade buttons, but it works pretty well! Not surprising, really, since so many games from that era were at least inspired by arcade games if they weren't direct ports.

Here's a selection of obscure Japanese computers, including one from Sega. I don't know much about these, but they all look lovely, and it would be fun to have a fiddle around with them one day.

Here's some more obscure Japanese computers, just because. That Sharp X1 is a lovely looking thing. I actually didn't give the keys a clack, but it looks like they would feel nice to type on.

A little closer to home, here's a selection of lesser-known home computers, including the Oric-1, Tatung Einstein, Dragon 64 and Sam Coupé. A lot of these are lovely looking machines; they just failed to make the same impact as the bigger hitters of the era like the Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Here's a thing that I really wanted as a kid, but never managed to get hold of (i.e. convince my parents to get for me). It's an LCD game adaptation of Sega's After Burner, but with an elaborate control panel that makes the game feel a lot cooler than it actually is. The joystick is satisfying to grapple with the throttle control makes a pleasing "clunk" when you move it between speed settings, and a cool thing I've not seen before is that the LCD screen has an LED behind it so when you destroy enemy planes, there's a red "flash" where they're exploding. It's a pretty neat toy, but, given that we had computers at home that could play much more interesting and complex games, I'm not surprised that my parents never bought me one of these — and I'm not mad about that, I hasten to add!

There are lots of things to play at The Cave. This lovely setup has a selection of consoles hooked up and ready to play multiplayer just like we used to back in the day. The Gamecube and N64 were most readily accessible today, and they looked great on the Sony monitor.

One of my favourite parts of The Cave is the fake "software shop", set up to look like an old WHSmith upstairs. For any non-Brits reading, WHSmith was a shop that was mostly known as a newsagents where you'd buy magazines and newspapers, but also tended to carry stuff like stationery, art and craft supplies and, in the 1980s, computer and video games. There were a lot of shops like this in the '80s that performed what I would argue was their "primary function" downstairs, then they'd do computery stuff upstairs — one of my favourite examples in this regard is Boots, which is a pharmacy. Why would a pharmacy sell ZX Spectrum games on cassette? Same reason they'd process your photographs or sell you picture frames, presumably — to make a bit of extra cash from jumping in on popular hobbies and pastimes.

It's tricky to get good shots of them by the very nature of the environment, but on the ground floor of the mill is the Arcade Archive, a noisy room full of classic arcade machines, many of which have been lovingly restored to fully working condition by the Retro Collective folks, and some of which make use of modern solutions such as the MiSTer. These cabs — from left to right, Bubble Bobble, Galaga '88, BurgerTime and Double Dragon, all in the sort of generic cabinets you'd see in a fish and chip shop in a town centre circa 1989 — are, as far as I'm aware, restored originals.

Conversely, there's a NEOGEO MVS cabinet that I forgot to take a photo of that is running off the new MiSTer Multisystem 2's JAMMA arcade cabinet incarnation, which allows you to use plastic NFC cards to switch games as if you're swapping out cartridges. You get the enjoyment of playing with "four bright buttons and two joysticks" on a CRT, along with the modern conveniences of the MiSTer such as the ability to easily swap games, or play the console versions of games on the arcade cabinet.

Here's a lovely thing, showing up much better thanks to its position near the door to the outside: Atari's Star Wars arcade game. This is still a supremely playable 3D shoot 'em up with beautiful vector graphics and a wonderfully immersive, involving analogue yoke control system. Great fun to play — just a pity there's no sit-down version in the Archive, though I don't think there'd be room for one at the moment anyway!

Here's a few more machines in the Archive, including OutRun on the right, then Silkworm, Robotron 2084, Ghosts 'n' Goblins and, back in the corner, the original Space Invaders. I realised I'd never actually played Robotron in its original twin-stick arcade incarnation, so I took the opportunity to rectify this. It's a lot of fun!

More interesting and unusual things with this Tetris arcade machine. I'm not sure of the origin of this, but it was a nice looking machine, and Tetris' gameplay is, of course, a great fit for the arcade.

And that's pretty much that for now. It was a thoroughly lovely day that I enjoyed a lot. h0ffman's talk was interesting — even if some of the more techie stuff went over my head a bit! — and it was nice to see some people I haven't seen for a while. I even met someone who actually watches my YouTube videos! I guess I better make some more then, huh.

Right, on that note, I'm knackered, so I'm going to go and collapse into a puddle of goo for the remainder of the evening. Visit The Cave if you get the chance — it's a truly lovely day out that I can highly recommend.

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#oneaday Day 685: Very tired

I've been absolutely exhausted all day. I feel like I got a decent night's sleep, particularly after the tiring day I had at work followed by the long drive home, but also feel like I could have done with approximately 12 hours more sleep. I actually managed to get a fair amount done today, but right now I just feel like I could shut my eyes and fall asleep right here on the sofa.

With that in mind, I'm probably going to have an early night tonight. I'd like to get back into Pragmata, which I'm enjoying a lot, but I'm also not sure my brain is up to playing anything too complex this evening. Perhaps this would be a good evening to do a bit of retro gaming, with an emphasis on something that isn't too challenging or complex to deal with.

I actually have the next two Evercade cartridges that haven't been released yet, which I'm kind of dying to talk about but can't because although I have them in my hands, we haven't even announced them yet. That will be happening soon, however, and when it does I will have plenty to enthuse about, believe me. They're not the biggest releases of the year, by any means, but they are some of my favourites.

No; I'm thinking this evening might be a good opportunity to settle down with something comfortably familiar, but which I perhaps haven't played for a while. I'm hoping in the process of typing this, something will come to mind that feels like it might be fun to spend my evening playing. Maybe Starwing? I haven't played that for a while. Last time I tried it, the MiSTer SNES core was having issues with the SuperFX chip, but I believe that's been resolved at this point, so that might be a good shout. I do love a bit of Starwing, and it is actually quite a long time since I've played it.

I'm going to get back into doing some videos soon, for those who have been wondering why it's been all quiet on that front for a while. I just haven't really felt an urge to do that for a little while, and forcing yourself to do something you're not really feeling is a sure-fire way to get yourself feeling burnt out. I won't have time to do any this coming weekend, as we're taking a trip to The Cave, but I have a few days off for my birthday at the start of next week, so I might take a day or two to record a few things over that period. Exactly what, I have no idea just yet; I have a few things in mind that I might like to explore, but haven't decided firmly on when or how to tackle them. This upcoming bit of free time might be the ideal opportunity to jump into them.

Anyway, I think I might have made a decision on what to do with my evening — although at the rate I'm going, I may well be asleep before I've got anywhere. If that's the way it goes, though, that's the way it goes!

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#oneaday Day 679: Hold on to the night, there will be no shame

I was randomly reminded of the existence of Robot Unicorn Attack this evening, and I am pleased to report that despite Flash being long-dead, you can actually still play the original (complete with Erasure soundtrack) over at CrazyGames. We are officially living in an age where Flash, as a platform, is old enough to have Web-based emulators. Not only that, this blog is old enough to have posts referring to the original incarnation of Robot Unicorn Attack, along with its excellent Facebook-based incarnation. Now there's something I don't say very often.

For the unfamiliar, Robot Unicorn Attack is a simple, "endless runner" game with just two buttons: one to jump (which can be used again in mid-air for a double-jump), and one for a rainbow attack dash move that can break through crystal stars. Your one and only goal in Robot Unicorn Attack is to survive as long as possible and score as many points as you can across three "wishes" (lives). As the game says when you start it, "you will fail". And indeed you will. But then you will try again, and again, and again.

It's a potent example at arcade-style game design at its absolute best: provide an experience that is extremely easy to understand, even for those who don't play a lot of games, and then balance it just well enough to make it inordinately compelling rather than frustrating, but still challenging. It is unironically one of the most well-crafted games of the 2010s, and I'm glad that people have found a means of preserving it — and in a fashion that is true to its original incarnation, no less. As a Flash game, originally published by Adult Swim, Robot Unicorn Attack's home is very much on the Web, and while I certainly wouldn't be averse to having an offline version I could play at any time I want, you can't get much more convenient than just going to a website and playing using nothing more than the Z and X keys on your keyboard.

Web games are in such a strange place right now. There's always been a certain amount of cloning and overly derivative stuff, but this seems to be particularly rife these days. There are about a billion variations on the "run down the path and go through gates with numbers on them" game. I don't know what the original and first one of those was; I just know there are now so many of them it is, at times, difficult to find anything else.

It doesn't help that a lot of today's Web games are adaptations of mobile games, with all the obnoxious predatory monetisation and infestation with adverts that entails. But, like I say, I'm pleased to see that some of the all-time classics are preserved through emulation — and best of all, no-one can bitch at you about not playing on "original hardware" if you play Robot Unicorn Attack on CrazyGames, or anywhere else it might be hosted, because it always was intended to just be played right there in your browser.

Now that I've rediscovered it, I think it might be time for a high score run or twenty before bed. Sing it with me, now… always, I want to be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmony, harmony, oh love…

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#oneaday Day 663: Ten of my favourite Evercade cartridges

I've got a relatively ambitious Evercade-related project in my mental "to-do" pile, but I haven't yet found the time to kick that off. So in the meantime I thought I would spend some time talking a bit more about the thing I spend my days working on.

There's a weird sort of culture a lot of people have about not talking about where they work. I understand it to an extent — if people know where you work, that can open you up to harassment as a result of something your workplace did or announced, plus people can (incorrectly) assume that anything you post on a personal account or site is you somehow acting as a "spokesperson" for that brand. In less enlightened workplaces, too, management can spy on the things you do in your free time and inevitably make the least charitable interpretation of the things you say possible so that they have ammunition to treat you like shit at work.

Thankfully I have not suffered the latter for a good few years now, and I am using this paragraph to make abundantly clear that although I work for Blaze on the Evercade project and related products, this post is my opinion only and does not, in any way, reflect the opinions, values and anything else about my employer. I am writing this post 'cause I love Evercade, and have done since I took a chance and splashed the cash on that "All-In" bundle back in 2020.

Anyway, what I want to do today is pick 10 Evercade cartridges I particularly like and share them with you. There may be some cartridges in this list that are no longer available due to the expiration of licensing agreements between Blaze and the license holders, or all manner of other circumstances, and I make no apologies for this; something good doesn't stop being good just because you can't buy it as easily any more.

With all that in mind then, let us begin:

Namco Museum Collection 1

Although both Namco Museum Collection cartridges for Evercade have not been available for a while due to Namco deciding to be extremely weird about releasing their stuff on physical media these days, they remain highlights of the Evercade's launch lineup — and since they formed the part of several launch bundles, there are a fair few copies out there to be found relatively easily.

I have a tough time picking a favourite out of the two, but on balance I think it has to be the first one, which features some all-time classics and favourites, plus some interesting curiosities. On the classics front, you have good versions of Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Xevious and Mappy, while on the lesser-known front you have the excellent (and surprisingly accessible) strategy game, Metal Marines, plus the awesome space sim Star Luster. And this is just my personal favourites from the cart; there's also Mappy Kids, Libble Rabble, Battle Cars and Quad Challenge, too, making it a well-rounded and fun collection.

Data East Collection 1

If there's one cartridge I feel like I plop in the Evercade more than any other, it has to be Data East Collection 1, for two main reasons: Burnin' Rubber and Midnight Resistance. Both are truly excellent games for very different reasons, but they do have one thing in common: great music.

That's not all that Data East Collection 1 offers, though. There's the beat 'em up action of Bad Dudes and its spiritual sequel Two Crude Dudes, a good version of BurgerTime, the excellent (if totally unrealistic) pool game Side Pocket, the manic puzzler Magical Drop 2, the colourful platformer Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics and the one-on-one fighters Karate Champ and Fighter's History. All of these games have something worthwhile to offer in 2026.

Jaleco Collection 1

Jaleco is one of those publishers I feel people often forget about, but when you look at their library of stuff you realise they've actually put out a lot of bangers over the years. Jaleco Collection 1 features some stars from their console lineup, including the beat 'em ups Brawl Brothers and Rival Turf!, the firefighting action-adventure The Ignition Factor, the sci-fi top-down run-and-gun Operation Logic Bomb and more.

I don't think I've ever loaded up Bases Loaded but I believe it's a relatively well-regarded baseball game from the 8-bit era, and likewise for soccer with Super Goal! 2. Super Earth Defense Force is a solid scrolling spaceship shooter, Astyanax and Totally Rad are decent 8-bit platformers, and City Connection is a really fun arcade-style game that only really suffers due to its excruciating music. There's not a bad game in this bunch, so I come back to this cart frequently.

Gaelco Arcade 1

The two Gaelco Arcade cartridges are some of my all-time favourites from the Evercade library, but I think the first one just about has the edge in terms of the number of games I keep coming back to. My personal standouts are the brilliant World Rally, which has possibly the best handling of any isometric racer of the era; the unusual gameplay of Glass; and the wonderfully silly run-and-gun action of Biomechanical Toy.

If you're unfamiliar with Gaelco — and I'd forgive you if you are, since I'd never heard of them prior to us putting this cart out — this is a great way to get to know them. Expect polished visuals, challenging gameplay and some truly excellent digitised guitar noodling.

Renovation Collection 1

This one won't come as a surprise to anyone, as it's an oft-cited favourite from many longstanding Evercade fans. Featuring an extremely cool range of 16-bit games, many of which have an awesome anime style about them, there's a ton of value on this cart. Highlights for most are Valis and Valis III, El Viento and Arcus Odyssey, but there's plenty more to enjoy here, too.

Gaiares and Sol-Deace are good (if very tough) shoot 'em ups. Granada and Final Zone are great multidirectional shooters. Dino Land is a fun and quirky take on pinball. Traysia is a solid RPG if you go into it with the appropriate expectations (it's channelling Ultima, hard). Beast Wrestler is the weak link for many, but I bet you can find some fun there if you try hard enough.

TheC64 Collection 1

In the absence of some good Atari 8-bit cartridges — we haven't yet got a commercially licensable Atari 8-bit emulator we're happy to work with just yet — I will have to satisfy myself with its great rival, the Commodore 64. Fortunately, the three C64 collections we've put out to date include some of my all-time favourite games, and while I will always prefer the Atari versions in most cases, the C64 versions are good, too.

My personal highlights in this collection are Lee (originally Bruce Lee but now not for hopefully obvious reasons), Jumpman and Gateway to Apshai. There's a really broad mix of games in here, including some real legends (Impossible Mission!) — plus the two "Games" games are great with friends. I know home computer games are a hard sell for some people who grew up with consoles, but honestly, the three C64 collections plus the Thalamus cartridge are a great in-road for the curious.

Duke Nukem Collection 1

It felt like we'd finally hit the big-time with this cartridge. Duke Nukem is a huge license to land, and the fact we got the excellent Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered as an exclusive was, for me, the moment we had really got a proper "killer app" for Evercade.

Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered is, of course, great, and probably the best way to play these shareware classics today. Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown has its detractors, particularly as there are more recent ports of Duke3D that run more smoothly and control a bit more elegantly with a controller, but it's one of those things where if you take it on its own merits and consider that it was running on a platform that, despite having a 3D focus, was still just a little underpowered, is actually perfectly competent and enjoyable. The exclusive levels are a hoot, too — if extremely tough!

Sunsoft Collection 2

Sunsoft is one of those developers that, again, I suspect few people would count among their absolute favourites, but they have a really solid back catalogue of titles to draw upon. This second collection of their games is my personal favourite, primarily due to the presence of the excellent Ufouria: The Saga, which is a truly great exploration platformer.

I'm also a big fan of Pri Pri Primitive Princess!, which is an interesting puzzle game that very much feels like it may have been a home computer game at some point in the past. By this I mean that it's clunky but creative, and if you come at it with the right mindset you'll be well and truly hooked.

Toaplan Arcade 3

I knew I wanted — no, needed — to include a Toaplan Arcade cartridge in this list, and after much deliberation I settled on this third one, primarily for Batsugun and its variant, Batsugun Special Version. Out Zone and FixEight are a hoot, too, Truxton II is just as punishing as its predecessor (but fun once you get into its groove), Ghox is a weird but cool take on Breakout, and Vimana is probably the company's most accessible shoot 'em up.

Toaplan's arcade games are among some of my favourites in the Evercade library, and this is an excellent cartridge full of some of their best titles.

The Turrican Collection

Despite being a home computer gamer in the '80s and early '90s, Turrican is a series that completely passed me by. I always saw gushing praise for it in magazines of the era, but never actually got around to playing it myself. I don't think I ever even played a demo for it. This is a shame, because with The Turrican Collection I've discovered that I like Turrican a lot.

I've also discovered that, unsurprisingly, those who criticise it for having sprawling, meandering levels in which it's easy to get lost were exaggerating somewhat; there's always a clear path forwards, and whether or not you go exploring for goodies is up to you. Plus as the series goes on, it settles into a more "Japanese-style" linear formula, culminating in the technically gorgeous Super Turrican 2. Absolutely banging soundtrack, too.

And there we are. Ten of my favourite carts. Ten of my favourite carts. They might not be yours. But they are mine. And, honestly, if you asked me on another day, I could probably pick out ten more favourites, and repeat the process many times over. In fact, I can find something to love on every single Evercade cartridge — and I'm not just saying that 'cause I work on them. I really am thrilled to do what I do — and I hope that comes across in my contributions to the products in question!

Now after all that, I think I'll go boot one of these up and have a nice retro evening…

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#oneaday Day 662: Nexus announcement day

I get to talk a bit about the day job today! I say "get to" like someone hasn't been allowing me to do so. What I mean is: we had a big announcement today, and I'd like to talk about it!

That announcement was for Evercade Nexus, a new Evercade handheld featuring a much bigger, brighter screen, significantly louder speakers, dual analogue sticks and a host of other cool features. You can see the trailer here:

Evercade has always been a platform that plays a wide variety of retro games — the library actually covers six different decades (from the 1970s up until today) — but Nexus has been designed with a bit of a '90s flavour, hence the somewhat different look and feel to the new trailer. The dual analogue sticks are designed to complement 3D games from the 32-bit era that we already have in the library (and have planned for the future), as well as our upcoming brand new native ports of 64-bit legends like Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, and these games all hail from the '90s, so it makes sense for the branding to reflect that.

You can still play classic Atari games on it as well, though, (plus, of course, all the other classic consoles the Evercade library covers!) and the bright colours found in your average old-school pixel art title will look lovely on that screen — plus with the all-new extra-loud speakers, you can subject everyone in the vicinity to the sound of Pitfall Harry and/or Lara Croft falling to their death for the umpteenth time.

I've said it before, but I'm super proud to work on Evercade. Ever since I first went for the "All-In" bundle of the original handheld back in 2020, which came with the first 10 cartridges released for the platform, I knew it was something special — and hoped that one day I would be able to be part of it. Well, now I am part of it — I have been for some time, and will hopefully continue to be for a long time yet — and it's a delight to be able to look at a product like the Nexus and think that I played a part in that, along with every cartridge release we do.

It's an interesting feeling to have lived long enough to remember these games from first time around vividly enough to still be excited about helping rerelease them on a new device. I never stopped loving games like (Bruce) Lee, MegaMania, Checkered Flag and myriad others — it's a genuine privilege to have been part of making official rereleases happen. Right now I'm working on the Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie double pack that is bundled in with Nexus, and it's hard work, but also immensely rewarding when I think about how good this release is going to be when it's finished.

And there are many more exciting games coming down the road — including a bunch more of my all-time favourites. I can't wait to share them with you all, and if you're new to Evercade, I hope you'll consider jumping on board with Nexus or one of our other devices! Preorders for Nexus open tomorrow — you can find out more here.

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#oneaday Day 659: Justice for RTS: achieved... again

I realised I never followed up on RoseTintedSpectrum's recent YouTube woes that I posted about a while back. Chances are if you're familiar with Rosie's work, you already know that there was, thankfully, a happy ending to the situation: he got his YouTube Partner Program status back, which means he can get paid again, with the only unfortunate news being that there would be a month or so's delay before he would be able to get what was owed to him during the demonetisation incident.

If you're not familiar with Rosie's work, however, I thought I'd take today to highlight some of the great things he's been doing, because he's a hardworking lad who makes consistently entertaining YouTube videos on a variety of subjects. He shot to (relative) stardom when he decided to cover the questionable classic UK TV show GamesMaster, and, having previously been a channel primarily about old games (and longstanding GamesMaster rival-though-not-actually-that-similar show Bad Influence!), he decided to lean into what had brought him some success, and cover old TV instead.

GamesMaster is still a recurring feature — his most recent video covers the legendary "Dave Perry Super Mario 64 Incident" — but he also looks at old kids' TV shows, too, and offers commentary that is both hilarious and insightful, and without dropping into either dry, boring quasi-academia or just straightforward summaries of the shows accompanied by occasional "oh my God, you guys, I can't believe they did that" reactions.

Anyway, here's some of my favourite videos from him. I recommend subscribing to his channel and giving them all a watch — many of them are on the long side by the very nature of covering entire series at once, but he punctuates these with short videos about fluff like Rainbow and Rosie and Jim if you want something a bit shorter.

Here's the aforementioned video about GamesMaster and The Dave Perry Incident. It's worth watching the prior videos in the run-up to this, as it's interesting to revisit the show and contemplate how it evolved (and not always for the better) from series to series, but this one, which many of the newer members of Rosie's audience have been eagerly awaiting for some time, represents some of his best work to date.

California Dreams is not a show I remember ever seeing back in the day, and having seen Rosie's retrospectives on it, I'm not sure whether or not I would have been into it. It's undoubtedly rubbish, particularly when viewed from a modern perspective, but it's also a really interesting show to explore, and Rosie's videos on the subject do a great job of explaining why. You won't come away from them desperate to watch the series as a whole, but even if you never saw it back in the day, you'll feel like you have a better understanding of its existence and its context.

Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House is another show I don't think I ever saw, and I'm not sure I would have watched it when I was a kid even when it was on. However, like his retrospective on California Dreams, Rosie manages to make a look back on the subject compelling, interesting and frequently hilarious — as well as pointing out the weirdly dark nature of a show about stop-motion animated toys, in which the title character is, by a significant margin, the least important character in everything that unfolds on screen.

And finally, from his earlier (pre-GamesMaster) channel, a video on Xenon 2, and how the reality of a game that was popular back in the day can differ quite significantly from the critical consensus on its original release — and how people who cling relentlessly to the latter can make it quite difficult to talk about something.

Rosie's a good lad who puts a ton of effort into his videos, and I'm happy to see he's enjoyed so much success over the last few years. His recent woes with YouTube — along with a similar, but worse situation back in 2024 — are an unfortunate reminder that this sort of success can be worryingly fragile through no fault of the creator. So go give him a view or two, and if you like what you see, consider becoming a YouTube member or a Patreon supporter. Good work — particularly when it's achieved without the usual manipulative "influencer" tactics — deserves to be compensated, or at the very least, appreciated.

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#oneaday Day 655: I would rather play Atari 2600 games than mobile games

I probably don't need to say anything more than the headline, but I will expand on it for the sake of having actually written something today. I mean what I say, though! I would genuinely rather play literally anything on the Atari 2600 than a modern mobile game. And with the 2600 being so easy to emulate these days — not to mention the fact I have worked on both devices and game cartridges featuring Atari 2600 games — you can even take the experience on the go with you.

I remember when mobile gaming first became a thing with the Java phones. Well, actually, technically it first became a thing with Snake and the other games no-one remembers on the Nokia 3210 and company. But expandable mobile gaming — by that I mean the ability to download new games onto your phone — really took off in the Java era.

At first, it was mildly exciting… at least until you downloaded a Java game and realised that a lot of them were Not Very Good. Often not for lack of trying, and there were some genuinely decent ones — I recall a good version of Lumines, for example — but for the most part, they were a pale imitation of even the dedicated handheld games consoles that were around at the time. The Game Boy and its successors ruled the roost in that regard for a good long while — and deservedly so.

The advent of iOS was a huge shift, though. Anyone who was around for the launch of the App Store will doubtless remember things like ngmoco's output (before they became free-to-play garbage peddlers), Epic's "Castle" tech demo that eventually became Infinity Blade, and doubtless many others that are lost to time. Quite literally in many cases, because these were digital-only games that were often exclusive to iOS — and while I'm sure some have been preserved, I bet there are plenty more that we'll never see again.

Things seemed… interesting for a while. The ambition of this new breed of mobile game was hard to fault, but many folks (including me) found that touchscreens were less than ideal for console-style experiences. The best games were ones that were built around the inherent limitations and inaccuracy of a finger-based touch interface — or which used other methods of control, such as tilt.

Then, one day, Apple announced that it would be introducing the concept of "in-app purchases". I knew immediately that this would be an awful idea, as the general gaming community had a collective bee in its bonnet about DLC at the time, and adding DLC to mobile games sounded like a really bad idea in that climate.

Unbelievably, though, I underestimated quite how awful things would end up becoming in the mobile space. While there are still a few "premium" games available for a one-off purchase these days, most of them are available on other platforms with actual controllers, leaving the vast majority of mobile-exclusive titles these days as free-to-play gacha crap.

I've done my time in the gacha mines. I've made the mistake of thinking I'd sling a game twenty quid to "support" it because I'd been playing it quite a bit and I liked the look of the current character banners. But in more recent years I've become hyper-aware of quite how much those games exploit horny young men in particular, with massively sexualised artwork designed not to add depth to the characters they depict, but purely to get said horny young men convinced to open their wallets in the hope of acquiring a JPG — or an animated GIF if you're lucky — of their favourite waifu in a skimpy outfit. And I say this as someone who likes sexy games!

No more. I swore off all mobile games quite some time ago now, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Now, at the times when I would typically want a mobile game — when I have a few minutes to spare, when I'm bored, when I just want something to do with my hands that I don't have to think about too much — I will quite happily reach for an Atari 2600 game, because those fit the bill perfectly.

Your average Atari 2600 game can be played for sessions of maybe 1-5 minutes at a time, and that feels like a satisfyingly self-contained play session. You can keep playing to beat your high scores, or to get a little further, or compete against a friend if you're playing together — or you can move on to something else, and have another 1-5 minutes of fun. And at no point in the entire process will these games attempt to monetise your erection.

On that note, may I remind you that Activision Collection 2 is coming to Evercade next month…?

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