I finally got together the motivation and energy to make some videos, which you'll be seeing over the course of the next little while over on YouTube. I made four in total, which I'm pleased with, as that means I don't need to be in a rush to make any more for a little while. Not that I ever "need" to be in a rush, but I've felt in a bit of a rut with the channel recently, and have really struggled with motivation.
Not so today, though! I think it helped that it's rained a fair bit over the last few days, and that's cooled things down a bit, meaning it's not quite so unbearable to just exist. It's amazing quite how much energy a bit of heat can sap from you; I'm sure I could have probably mustered up some energy to do something vaguely productive if I really cared that much, but I think the "break" also did me a bit of good and revitalised my enthusiasm for some of the things I want to cover.
Today's videos see me returning to the Atari 8-bit for the first time in a while. Every time I come back to the humble 8-bit after spending a bit of time away, I'm reminded how much I love that system. Seeing its fonts is like coming home; it's a comforting, warm blanket that makes me feel thoroughly pleasant. I'm sure part of this is nostalgia talking, but I do genuinely mean it when I say I find it a comfort. I got to know the Atari 8-bit and its capabilities so well when I was a child fiddling around with Atari BASIC that just the sight of half-height, double-width Graphics 1 characters is enough to make me smile today. Throw in the games I grew up playing, and, well, that's a happy place I feel like I should probably spend some more time in, judging by how much I enjoyed today's recording session.
The games I covered today are Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Mountain King and Stealth. There was no particular reason for picking these, aside from knowing that Donkey Kong Bananza is on the way for Nintendo Switch, so I thought it would be fun to look at the "Nintendo on Atari" games; Mountain King I chose because I happened to rewatch Classic Game Room's review of the 2600 version the other day, and Stealth… I can't quite remember what brought that to mind recently, but it's a game I've always loved. Or, perhaps more accurately, I always loved its prototype version, Landscape, which we had on one of our Big Box of Pirated Disks that everyone had back in the 8-bit era.
I haven't published any of the videos yet, but make sure you're subscribed over on YouTube if you want to see them when they go up. I'll likely put one up tomorrow, and the rest over the course of the next little while. I have my monthly trip to the office on Tuesday night to Wednesday this coming week, so that will be… fun, probably? I don't relish the long drive every time I have to do this visit, but it is always nice to see everyone. Unfortunately I don't get to stay in a hotel this time because the usual place I book was full up this time around, and the local Travelodge wanted £120. I'm not paying over a hundred quid to stay in a fucking Travelodge, particularly with how they've repeatedly fucked up bookings I've tried to make with them in recent months. So anyway. I will be staying with my parents and delivering my Dad his belated Father's Day gift, which I inadvertently delivered to myself instead. Whoops.
Anyway, videos are uploaded, eyelids are drooping and it's a school night so I guess I better get to bed. Enjoy the vids once they're up!
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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Every now and then, I like to hit the "Random Post" button on this site and see what I was writing about at some point in the past, be it a few weeks ago or, in some cases, years ago.
Today, the Random Post button threw up this post from early in my first run around the #oneaday track. For those too lazy to click (I know you are, everyone is these days), it was a post about the then-imminent arrival of Game Room on the Xbox 360, and some feelings of positivity towards the whole thing.
For the unfamiliar, Game Room was a piece of software for the Xbox 360 that allowed you to kit out a virtual arcade and populate it with not only virtual tat, but also real games. The software was free, but in order to get any real use out of it, you had to buy either individual games or bundles of games. These games could then be placed into your arcade as "machines" that you could go and play, and, in an attempt to get people to care about Xbox Avatars, you could sometimes see virtual representations of people from your friends list wandering around and playing the games.
What was rather interesting about Game Room for me at the time was the fact that it included not only arcade games — which we already had a few of in downloadable form via Xbox Live Arcade — but also Atari 2600 and Intellivision console games. I had a passing familiarity with some 2600 hits at the time, but Intellivision was completely alien to me, so I was fascinated by the prospect of discovering some new favourites from the dawn of gaming.
There were a lot of objections to Game Room prior to its release, though. Indeed, that post was partially in response to a post on the official Xbox forums (RIP), where an Xbox player called "A Patch of Blue" described the upcoming programme as "a shameless attempt to siphon off Microsoft Points by dumping regurgitated content into our laps with a pretty bow on it". Their primary objections were that the games cost an equivalent of $3 each (a bit tight, I feel) and also that "guests" in your arcade could only play a game once before having to pay-per-play to the tune of 40 Microsoft Points (approximately 50 cents) unless they went away and bought it themselves.
Here's part of my response:
The biggest concern people have with digital distribution is that one day, your content will be switched off and, despite having paid for it, you’ll no longer be able to use it. This is a fair concern, as no-one likes splashing the cash on things that they won’t be able to use at some point in the future – but when you think about it, in the world of tech, this is nothing unusual. Products come and go, specifications increase, chipsets change – and at some point it’s necessary to leave the old behind. Did people complain that the Amiga wasn’t backwards-compatible with the Commodore 64? Do music enthusiasts complain that it’s getting harder and harder to find a cassette deck to play those old albums that you only bought on cassette because they were cheaper?
Well, yes, they probably do, but that’s beside the point. What I guess I’m trying to say is this: isn’t the “built-in obsolescence” of digital distribution the same thing? I have a stack of PC games in a box here, some of which it isn’t possible to run any more. Okay, maybe with some tweaking and playing with software like DOSBox it’s possible to get it going – but to a (for want of a better word) “casual” user, they’re defunct and obsolete. The only difference with potentially expiring digitally distributed products is that there’s no workaround like DOSBox. Once the content’s gone, it’s gone. And yes, that’s not a great thing, but it’s not something to be surprised about.
Oh, dear 2010 Pete. How silly you were. How foolish. How you should have probably listened to A Patch of Blue. Because you can't play anything you bought for Game Room any more, can you? No, you can't, because they switched the servers off, and that means, for some reason, you can't play any of the stuff you paid for.
Actually, I do maintain that Game Room was a lot of fun while it lasted. In particular, I adored the real-time leaderboards, because it was a genuine game-changer in stuff like River Raid for 2600 to see yourself climbing the rankings as you played. No-one has done anything quite like it since; even Hamster's otherwise excellent Arcade Archives releases on modern platforms only update the leaderboards after you've completed a run and specifically told it to update your score.
That sort of stuff, being server-driven, obviously couldn't last forever. But completely switching off the entire application, meaning you could no longer play anything, even single-player stuff with no leaderboard functionality, was kind of shitty, and I'm still a tad bitter about it.
Game Room was a great idea for numerous reasons. As I point out in that post from 2010, Game Room was the first real attempt to put out a fully legal, officially licensed, console-based multiplatform "emulator for the common man" system out there. There was no faffing around with configuration, no diving into dodgy ROM sites looking for the games you wanted. You just fired it up, bought the stuff you wanted, played, and enjoyed the features it offered. It's unfortunate that it's no longer accessible, as there was no "end of life" plan beyond "just turn it off".
These days, we have other options for officially licensed ways to play classic games, including my place of work, the aforementioned Arcade Archives series, compilations for modern platforms and numerous other products. Most of these have been designed in such a way that they will continue to function indefinitely — assuming you have them downloaded, in the case of digital products like the Arcade Archives games — which is an improvement over Game Room's completely closed, proprietary and online-dependent ecosystem.
I still miss Game Room, though. I'd love to see someone take its really good ideas — chief among them that real-time leaderboard thing — and run with them in a way that's a bit more considerate to players over the long term, and compliant with things like the Stop Killing Games initiative.
Hell, this sort of thing is the exact situation Stop Killing Games is seeking to prevent happening again: it's not saying that Microsoft would have needed to run things like the leaderboard servers indefinitely, because obviously that's not practical or cost-effective. But in an ideal world, I'd still be able to open up Game Room today and still play all the games I bought to use with it. As it stands, the money I spent on it — and I seem to remember I spent a fair bit on it — now has absolutely nothing to show for it.
So yeah, 2010 Pete. I admire your optimism, but I'm sorry to say that it was misplaced. Still, I know you enjoyed it while it lasted, so it's not a complete loss. But I hope you learned your lesson.
I did.
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Today I went out! All by myself and everything. Specifically, I went to Retrofest 2025, a new event held in sunny Swindon that promised a room full of sweaty old men and their peculiar computers, and delivered on that promise in spades. While the event was short on things to actually buy and come home with, it was thoroughly interesting to see some of the things people (and a few organisations) had chosen to exhibit from their personal collections.
I took a few photos from throughout the day. This isn't a comprehensive rundown of everything by any means, but I'll attempt to remember what everything was and tell you a bit about it. In no particular order:
Those who know me well will know that I have a major soft spot for Philips G7000 "Videopac Computer", a games console with a membrane keyboard. This is the "PS5 Pro" equivalent of that system: the G7400, which only came out in France to my knowledge. It runs all the G7000 games, including enhanced visuals for some of them, as well as more advanced titles specifically designed for it. That big grey lump on the back of it is a module that attempts to turn it into more of an actual computer, featuring additional RAM and Microsoft BASIC for programming.
Sadly, this wasn't up and running to play with, but it was a pleasure to actually see one.
Here's an Atari XE Games System, colloquially known as the XEGS. I've never actually seen one of these in the flesh. This was an attempt by Atari post-ST to revitalise the flagging 8-bit range by rejigging the 65XE computer into a games console with a detachable keyboard. Unlike the 5200 from several years earlier, the internals of the XEGS were identical to the Atari 8-bit home computers, so you could use pretty much any software and peripherals with it.
If this all sounds a bit like Atari didn't really know what they were doing at the time… you would be absolutely right. This thing is still cool, though. I like how the function keys look like those flying saucer sherbet sweeties.
I was really interested to see this, a device known as both the CreatiVision and the Dick Smith Wizzard. Those who follow my videos may recall I saw this device advertised in an early issue of Page 6 magazine and had never heard of it. I asked the owner, Quang from Asobi Tech, about it. Apparently it's an Italian system from a roughly similar era to the ColecoVision (as one might expect from the design). Its capabilities are also roughly similar — which in turn means that it has similar capabilities to the MSX standard — but it's not cross-compatible with either the ColecoVision or the MSX itself.
Its notable feature is the full keyboard that spans the two controllers. These can either be used as an individual set of buttons for two players (presumably with overlays available) or "docked" into the system for a full-width keyboard of sorts.
The system wasn't a success, but it somehow made it to Australia, which is where the Dick Smith branding came from. Dick Smith was basically Australia's Alan Sugar, and he loved putting his mug on everything he sold, and the "Wizzard" was no exception.
Here's a fully working Asteroids Deluxe cabinet, the middle-sized one that lacks the "floating" backdrop of its larger counterpart. I spent quite a lot of time playing this today, and it turns out I don't dislike Asteroids as much as I thought I did.
Part of it was down to playing with those lovely leaf-switched arcade buttons and hearing the sound booming out from the internal speakers. But I just found myself enjoying the game in general a lot more than I have in the past.
The owner of the Asteroids Deluxe cabinet, streamer Rage Against The Retro, also brought a selection of other systems, all playing Asteroids. On the left there is a Vectrex, and situated next to it is an Apple Macintosh Plus. There's an Amiga A600 just to the right, also.
It occurred to me when playing both the Asteroids Deluxe cabinet and the Vectrex that I'd never actually played games on an authentic vector monitor before. The effect (which absolutely does not come through on either photos or video) is stunning, particularly the piercing brightness of your shots. This is one thing that emulation absolutely cannot do complete justice to.
Here's two very tiny TVs, both hooked up to games systems. The bigger one was hooked up to the A600 from the previous image, while the teeny one was attached to a Spectrum. Both were playing variants of Asteroids; the Amiga had follow-up Blasteroids, while the Speccy was playing a decent recreation of the arcade original.
More Asteroids! This time we've got an Atari 7800 playing a recent(ish) port, plus there's the Spectrum running one of the tiny TVs. Note the custom arcade controls Rage had set up to mimic the arcade version's control panel.
Here's some interesting rarities. On the left, we have two variations of the COMX-35 computer, which was designed to be low-cost, but which seemingly failed to leave any impression on the industry whatsoever. At least part of that may be down to the fact that it used the distinctly non-standard RCA 1802 processor while most other home computers of the era were using either the Zilog Z80 or the MOS 6502. It also had a peculiar 35K of memory. But it did have a built-in joystick, making it a nice little games machine.
On the right, we have Bandai's RX-78 "Gundam" home computer. And yes, it was named after the giant robots in an attempt to make it more appealing. This completely failed, however, as the system disappeared quickly with only about 20 pieces of software available in total. It looks neat though!
Here's a closer look at the COMX-35, with its chiclet keys and its fun quasi-industrial design. The more I look at this thing, the more I like its overall aesthetic.
And the RX-78 up close, too. Note the BASIC cartridge plugged into the back, ready for 10 PRINT "FARTS" 20 GOTO 10 shenanigans, and the matching joystick to the right.
This beauty is a Commodore RX-64, a "luggable" version of the Commodore 64 with integrated keyboard, floppy disk drive and monitor. Unsurprisingly, this beast of a thing completely failed on the market due to the fact it weighs ten and a half kilos and cost over a thousand dollars in the mid '80s, when the C64 itself was less than half that price.
It is a lovely thing though, and Commodore enthusiasts seem to enjoy it a lot. I can see why — it's fun to have everything integrated, and despite a few differences in the OS ROMs, it's mostly fully compatible with disk-based Commodore 64 software. It can't load tapes, though, as it has no tape controller at all.
This may look out of place, but the show was at Swindon's "STEAM" railway museum, and this little display was part of a display on train sets run by digital controllers from the 1970s. I didn't look into this too closely, but as someone who occasionally had the opportunity to play with Hornby trains when I was little (my family had a nice collection stuffed up in the loft that occasionally came down for an outing), it was nice to see this.
Here's some prototype Acorn machines. Without these, you might not have a smartphone! Yes, that's right, the "A" in "ARM" was originally for "Acorn", though now it is for "Advanced". ARM processors first appeared in Acorn Archimedes machines, which were a generation beyond these initial prototypes; these things would have ultimately become the BBC Micro and the Electron.
This is a teletype machine! This was an incredible amount of tactile fun to type stuff on, and unlike a regular typewriter it would type things back at you! You could also run a program on it that would punch out a message on the roll of paper tape to the side. I don't really know what this was "for", as such, but it was very cool!
Here's a pre-production prototype of the Dragon 32, the computer that Americans know as the TRS-80. Well, there are a few differences, but they're pretty similar internally. I don't know much about this machine but it certainly has its fans on both sides of the pond.
This is a Commodore MAX. I don't really know what this is! Apparently this was a cousin to the Commodore 64 that was mostly sold in Japan. It has similar capabilities to the C64, but a lot less RAM and a really horrible membrane keyboard. It also lacks much of an internal OS on ROM at all, making it more of a games machine that can do a few computery things than a full-on home computer.
This is a Spectravideo device that allows you to program in BASIC on the Atari 2600. At least, it does if you can figure out how on Earth to actually type things on it, because it uses a weird keyword-based system where pressing a single key inputs a full command, similar to Sinclair's BASIC. This is another thing that I'd seen in a magazine in a video I'd made, but had no idea even existed until quite recently. A thoroughly interesting little thing, though!
Finally, here's probably the rarest thing at the show: a Mattel Aquarius II home computer. The Aquarius range was such a flop for Mattel that it was cancelled mere months after its release, and as such very few Aquarius II units made it out into the wild. We're talking like maybe 25 out there — and this is supposedly the only one known to be in full working order. It's owned by a chap who has been developing games for the system for a while — at this point, he has now made more games for the Aquarius range than were released for it in its original lifespan.
And that's that! It was a really fun day out, and I enjoyed it a lot. It was good to see some YouTuber friends, set a few high scores, have a play with some intriguing rarities and see what the retro enthusiast community in general was up to. Particular shout-out to this guy, who is doing near-arcade perfect ports to the BBC Micro, of all things. His Missile Command and Frogger were particularly stunning.
Anyway, now I am very tired so I am going to go and lie down. If you're in the Swindon area tomorrow, first of all, I'm sorry, and second of all, maybe try and pop in to Retrofest — I'm pretty sure there's still a few tickets available. You can find out more here.
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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Well, I didn't finish Kathy Rain 2. I think I'm on the last "day" of it, though, so I should have it all wrapped up by the end of tomorrow evening, I reckon. I could have probably pushed through it tonight, but I hadn't written this, and I hadn't done stupid social media things that I do every day (the "#365games" tag on Bluesky) and I have had a stomachache all day, so I thought I should probably call it a night.
Of all the aches and pains it is possible for one to experience, few are worse than a lingering stomachache, because while something like an achey back or joints can be at least temporarily relieved by moving around a bit, a stomachache stubbornly sits there and demands your full attention, even when you have a lot of things to do. And I had a lot of things to do today, let me tell you.
It was the Evercade 5th Anniversary Showcase today, during which we revealed two more NEOGEO cartridges, two cartridges from Taito (surely a pleasant surprise for everyone who thought Taito stuff was forever confined to built-in games on specific pieces of hardware), and a single-game cartridge featuring the truly excellent Roguecraft DX, an enhanced and expanded version of a very good (and award-winning!) Amiga game that came out last year.
It was a good show all round, and I think most people were happy. There were the usual moaners and complainers, but I'm pretty much just tuning them out at this point, because 95% of them are moaning and complaining about things we haven't said, just working on doomsaying and assumptions. And when someone's being like that, it's frankly not worth getting involved.
I'm really excited about the stuff we've got coming up this year. It's a relief to have been able to let the cat out of the bag for some of it today, but there's even more coming later in the year that I think people are going to be even more excited and surprised by. Evercade has been going from strength to strength in terms of the quality licenses we've been able to agree each year, and this year in particular is a string of big names. I obviously can't tell you what the unrevealed ones are as yet, but if you're into your retro gaming, you'll be pleased to see them, I can tell you that.
I should probably stop typing before I say anything I shouldn't, and go and lie in bed groaning until this stomachache goes away. It is small consolation that Andie has also been suffering today, suggesting to me that something we both ate yesterday probably wasn't good, likely the burgers we had for dinner. That also, hopefully, means we'll both be feeling better tomorrow. But for now, I anticipate an uncomfortable night ahead, perhaps with a side of thunderous farting. Yes, I could definitely go for a thunderous fart or two right now.
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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I did what I set out to do today, which was to record the voiceover for my MotorStorm video (I'd already taken the footage) and edit it together, plus record a Let's Play for The Sword of Hope. I actually ended up liking The Sword of Hope enough to record three episodes, and I'm going to play it through to completion, so some more recording of that is on the agenda for tomorrow.
This is good. This was fun. Sometimes what you need to do is just do something a bit different from the norm to get you reinvigorated and reinspired to work on things that are important to you. The fact I've just made a video on a PS3 game and a Game Boy game doesn't mean I'm abandoning the home computer stuff on my channel — it just means that I felt like doing something else for a bit, so I'm doing that. It is, after all, my channel, and while I'm creeping close to 4,000 subscribers now, none of my audience is so entitled that they've ever complained when I felt like taking a hard turn into something completely different for a while.
I've also decided to attend the RetroFest 2025 event in Swindon next weekend. My blog post a little while back about The Cave got me thinking that it's been a long time since I actually got out of the house to see some of the equally nerdy old men who also make YouTube videos about old computers from various different perspectives, and it would be nice to actually be sociable for once. Yes, I may have a cripplingly low sense of self-esteem due to my physical appearance repulsing me, but these folks are all nice people, and I had a nice time the last time I spent the day with them, so all good.
I also grabbed Roadcraft on PC yesterday, which seems to be a pleasantly relaxing sim about driving big Tonka trucks through the mud, laying roads and establishing infrastructure. I liked the developer's previous game Snowrunner, and this is a similar sort of affair, only with a bit of a different focus. The controls are simpler than Snowrunner, too, which has made some particularly hardcore simheads a bit sniffy about the new games, but honestly it's a change for the better. I still don't really know what "differential lock" does, but at least I can remember what button turns it on and off now.
Anyway. My MotorStorm and The Sword of Hope videos are all rendered now, so I'll be posting those over the course of the next little while. And I'll be recording some more The Sword of Hope — and maybe some other bits and pieces, too — tomorrow. So I should probably go get some sleep now, because, as ever, I have left this to the last minute. One day I will get into the habit of writing this at a time well before my brain starts entering its shutdown mode, but today is not that day. So, dear reader, I will bid you farewell before IT'S NOW SAFE TO TURN OFF YOUR PETE
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I think I pinned down what I want to do for some videos. As I've noted a couple of times recently, I've been feeling a bit short on inspiration and motivation of late, and I've been wondering how I might shake things up a bit for myself.
The answer is to do something a bit different to usual! So I'm going to do just that. Specifically, I've set myself the goal of doing two main things this weekend: one, a pre-scripted video on the subject of PS3 racer MotorStorm, which I've only just played for the first time and really like, and secondly, an "Exploring Together" Let's Play-type video on one of the Game Boy games that has just been added to Nintendo Switch Online: a Kemco title called The Sword of Hope.
I'm really interested in the latter. I've never heard of it before — although I must confess that's not hard with me and Game Boy games, since I only had a limited library when I was younger — but I saw someone describe it earlier as a cross between a conventional RPG and the Icom Simulations adventure games. You know, Deja Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate.
I really like those games! And I really like the NES and Game Boy ports of them, even if they lack a fair old chunk of the text found in the computer originals. So the idea of playing something that appears to be inspired by them, but which adds some additional mechanics over the top rather than just killing you every five seconds, sounds very appealing to me indeed.
I'm going in as blind as possible because I want to include my immediate reactions to the game in the video. And I think, long-term, I'd like to cover some more Game Boy stuff — not just the stuff on Nintendo Switch Online, but in general, too. The Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance each have vast libraries, and there are some thoroughly interesting titles among them. Presumably because development for these platforms was so cheap — and because they didn't have nearly as much critical scrutiny on them as the TV-connected consoles — developers were, seemingly, quite keen to be very creative with their work on the system. So there's some wonderfully experimental Game Boy (Color/Advance) games out there, and I think there's plenty of scope to explore those through both Nintendo Switch Online and the MiSTer Multisystem 2.
So that's my plan for this weekend. Some of it, anyway. It's a long weekend here in the UK, so I can take my time and enjoy it, then it's back to the ol' grindstone from Tuesday. We've been enduring a particularly busy and stressful period at work for quite some time now, so it's nice to have an extra day off to decompress a bit. It'll all be worth it in the end, though.
Before that, though, bed. Sleep! Sleep is good.
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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As I'm eagerly anticipating the MiSTer Multisystem 2 in a few months, I find myself pondering how to handle the "loading games onto it" situation. The temptation with devices like this is always to just load it up with absolutely everything and then you have a magic retro gaming box that can play anything you want at any time. And, to be fair, doing so is pretty easy these days, with how many systems have complete ROMsets archived online. The legality is, of course, questionable, but the reality is that these sets exist.
With disc-based systems, though, it pays to be a bit more selective. I mean, I've got a 1.5TB SD card to load stuff onto, so I could just load the full PS1, Saturn, Mega CD and PC Engine CD libraries on there. But is it a good idea to? I'm increasingly thinking not. After all, the disc-based consoles are where we really started to see a lot of shovelware starting to appear, since discs were a lot cheaper to produce than cartridges, and thus there are big old chunks of the PS1 library in particular that I think no-one would miss.
I also have the consideration that the CRT screen I intend on using with the MiSTer Multisystem prefers 50Hz PAL games. It'll run NTSC stuff, but sometimes not entirely right, meaning I will probably want to load the European versions of games onto the system by default. And, unsurprisingly, with the US-centric nature of much of the Internet, it's a lot harder to find a full PAL set of PlayStation games than it is to download the entire NTSC-U/NTSC-J library.
So I feel like I might be selective. I may well change my mind on this depending on if I manage to find a suitable archive of PAL games, but at the moment I'm thinking I might just load things on there that I know I want to play or that I had in the day, and then if anything else happens to come up, I can always find it later.
There are games I've played before and I'd like to revisit, like The Adventures of Alundra and the original release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. But there are also games that I never played back in the day but want to, like Azure Dreams, Tecmo's Deception and Legend of Kartia. I still have a modest PS1 collection here in the house, so I will recreate that digitally as a starting point, then fill out with the games I remember owning and playing back in the day. It's a shame I didn't have a blog back then, because before I got bitten by the "collector" bug I did a lot of trading and exchanging games to afford new ones, as I'm sure a lot of us did. (I also did a fair bit of buying games at least twice if I decided that I really liked them, which I'm sure at least a few of us did, too.)
When it comes to Saturn, Mega CD and PC Engine CD, though, I'm in the dark. But those libraries are also quite a bit smaller than the PS1 lineup, so I can probably just bung the whole lot on the card and explore a bit at a time.
Regardless of what the contents of that SD card end up looking like, I'm still really looking forward to the MiSTer Multisystem 2. Count on there being much more anticipation in the coming weeks and months, and hopefully gushing praise for the thing when it's finally in my filthy hands. Oh, I should probably add; if you have no idea what I'm talking about, check here.
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I have been, as you do, contemplating my impending ownership of a MiSTer Multisystem 2. And, as so often happens with such things, I have been pondering how I might make good use of it as something that spurs me on to be creative.
The obvious, simple answer is to use it to write about things and make videos in the places I already have: this site, my YouTube channel, MoeGamer. But part of me also wants to start something new, something a bit different.
Let me tell you the idea I've been kicking around in my head. I'm not particularly looking for "feedback" on this, but I think it will help me out to get this out of my head and onto the page.
You know how everyone likes to say they have a "newsletter" now, rather than a "blog"? Well, I was thinking about that, and thinking about how it might be fun to take that "newsletter" idea a little more literally. Specifically, I was thinking about how practical it might be to do some sort of newsletter/blog thing where, rather than individual articles being about one thing, each post was actually an "issue", like a magazine.
I was thinking it might be interesting to do such a thing with the MiSTer Multisystem 2. Each "issue" could have a brief summary of any news about the system itself — and perhaps about the broader MiSTer ecosystem, though as I type this I know absolutely bugger all about that — and then move on to some magazine-style features, perhaps with a theme for each issue. There could be a "preview" of an upcoming "modern retro" game by one of today's indie developers. There could be a "big review" of a noteworthy game that particularly fit the theme. There could be tips and tricks for classic games. There could be short, capsule reviews for smaller games. And, of course, there could be straightforward features on a particular subject, using the MiSTer Multisystem 2 as a means of exploring and researching that subject.
Realistically speaking, I'm not sure such a thing would really work, because you know what people's attention spans are like these days. Were I to put all that in a single blog post or email newsletter, how many people would read beyond the first paragraph? Perhaps it might be better to do individual posts on an existing site, and then provide some sort of separate newsletter that people could subscribe to via email. I used to do this with Rice Digital and it was fun. The newsletter had a good number of subscribers, too, but honestly I inherited most of those from the previous owners.
The reality of the situation is that it would almost certainly be piss in the wind, because you almost certainly know how hard it is to get noticed online these days. The recent rise of independent publications is great, but in a lot of cases these are already well-established names, and I think (no, I know) there's a lot of great individual independent creators out there who just don't get the credit they really deserve when putting their work out into the world.
So I dunno. I have a lot to think about, but I also have a lot of time to think about it, given that the MiSTer Multisystem 2 isn't arriving until August.
I could also just enjoy the damn thing without worrying about any of this nonsense, but where's the fun in not agonising over things that don't matter, hmm?
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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I am presently awaiting two new games consoles with "2s" in their names: the Nintendo Switch 2, and the MiSTer Multisystem 2. And I think I might be more excited about the latter.
I've never used anything FPGA, but I'm led to understand that it's a marvellous thing. And the sheer number of different things that the MiSTer supports is exciting me. With the setup I intend to slot it into, I'm looking forward to being able to use it as a retro computer as well as every games console ever up until the PlayStation, Saturn and N64.
Now, the one difference between the Nintendo Switch 2 and the MiSTer Multisystem 2 is that the latter is going to require a lot more setting up and fiddling around with than the Switch 2 will. But I am hoping that any tinkering will be a one-time process, and that once it is done, the MiSTer will be able to just sit there and do whatever I want it to. Within reason, obviously.
I'm going to hook up a keyboard and mouse to the system as well as a controller, so it can be used for actual computing as well as just playing games. I'll probably get another one of the 8bitdo retro-styled keyboards for this purpose — the C64 one would certainly be thematically appropriate, in the absence of an Atari ST or Atari 800XL one, though the one that looks a bit like an IBM Model M is also quite nice.
I'm also probably going to invest in some nice speakers rather than relying on the single mono speaker of my trusty Trinitron CRT. That built-in speaker is surprisingly decent considering its size and placement, but it would be nice to be able to give console games in particular a bit of oomph.
So all told, I think the setup will probably look something like this, but with less wobbly freehand mouse-drawn lines.
With that, I should be sorted for some retro gaming and computing fun for quite some time. At some point I might consider looking into the various solutions available for using real classic controllers on the Multisystem 2, but I don't think I'll make that a priority to begin with. Let's get it up and running and working — and doing what I want it to do — and then we can talk customisation. Because there's a lot of customising you can do with a MiSTer, I'm led to understand!
It's an exciting new world that I can't wait to get involved in. I have a bit of a wait before that happens — the Multisystem 2 is coming out in August — but I guess I can occupy myself with the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World in the meantime…
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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It occurs to me that a while back, I went to visit the Retro Collective museums over in Gloucestershire, and I don't think I actually wrote about the experience. Looking back at my Google Photos, it seems that it was 2023 (wow) when I went, and I hadn't yet kicked off this particular round of #oneaday shenanigans back then. In fact, the only thing I wrote about on this blog in the month that I went was a vitriolic diatribe on how much I detested the TikTokification of comedy, something which, rewatching Friends, the subject of much of that post, I still maintain my position on. But I digress.
So! Anyway, what am I talking about? Well, the Retro Collective is a group of people and organisations that make their home in an old mill in Chalford, Gloucestershire, just outside of Stroud. The main attractions for most visitors are the two hands-on interactive museums: "The Cave" upstairs for retro computers, consoles and general gaming tech, and the "Arcade Archive" downstairs for… well, I think you can probably guess.
The Cave is run by Neil Thomas, a thoroughly lovely gentleman who started a retro tech YouTube channel back in 2012, and gradually became considerably more ambitious with what he was getting up to. Notably, he actually followed through on those ambitions, and the result, in collaboration with the other members of the Retro Collective, is a fantastic day out for anyone with the slightest interest in the history of computing and video games.
Neil still makes YouTube videos along with running The Cave — an operation which has a number of regular staffers and volunteers helping out — and he often does restorations on classic computer hardware. If you're into that sort of thing, his YouTube channel, which is now the home of the whole Retro Collective on YouTube, is well worth a follow. You might even see a familiar face in the video below:
The Cave is designed to be nostalgic and comfortable to explore and experience. The main room is absolutely packed with classic computer and console hardware, and the vast majority of it is hands-on and interactive. If you had a favourite computer or console growing up, chances are it's there, and there are plenty of games available to play on it. But there are also lesser-known devices to fiddle around with too, some of which are on a bit of a rotation thanks to being on loan from other collectors, and others of which are part of the permanent collection.
A particular highlight when I went back in 2023 was the Sharp X68000, which, as any fans of Japanese gaming will know, is a bit of a "holy grail" of home computers. Immensely capable and home to some near-as-dammit arcade-perfect ports, as well as games that were as good as — if not better than — the 16-bit consoles of the era, it was a pleasure to finally have a play with this, even if I inadvertently found the inevitable hentai puzzle game that had snuck into the collection of games installed on the machine's hard drive! (I wasn't looking for it, honest. I was more enamoured with the system's excellent version of Namco's Star Luster, anyway.)
As well as all the classic machines that are set up and ready to play, there's a bunch of less common, more valuable stuff on display, with resources to learn about them. There's a huge library of magazines you can browse through at your leisure. And one of the most impressive parts is a little side room built to resemble the software section of a WHSmiths circa 1990. Not only is this an immensely nostalgic recreation of a long-gone shopping experience, but it's interactive, too; the room is equipped with a MiSTer Multisystem hooked up to a barcode scanner, which allows you to scan the barcode of any game in the "shop" and play it. Very nifty.
The Arcade Archive, meanwhile, for which tickets are sold separately — though you can buy tickets for both The Cave and the Arcade Archive at the same time, visiting one in the morning and the other in the afternoon — is situated downstairs in the mill, and is… well, it's just a recreation of a classic arcade. It's dark, lit with neon signs, filled with the noise of a variety of machines competing for your attention, and they've all been lovingly restored to full working order (and free play!) for you to explore and play as much as you like.
Like The Cave, the Arcade Archive has both a permanent collection and a rotating selection of guest cabinets on loan from other collectors. At the time I visited, a particularly noteworthy inclusion was a little-known Nintendo arcade machine known as Sky Skipper, which had quite an interesting story behind it.
Elsewhere in the mill is the engineering company Heber, who work on a wide variety of interesting things, many of which have a retro gaming focus. Notably, they're responsible for the design and manufacturing of the aforementioned MiSTer Multisystem and its upcoming follow-up model, but they also make accessories and all manner of other bits and bobs.
I can't recommend The Cave and the Arcade Archive enough if you want a great, highly interactive day out, whether you're a grown-up or a kid… or just a kid at heart. The museums are immaculately kept by people who absolutely love what they do, and you feel the passion for everything the moment you walk in the door. It's a truly special experience that everyone involved with the Retro Collective has created, and I'm looking forward to paying the place another visit sometime soon.
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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