After rather longer browsing through the "Random Post" option than I would like, I am no closer to determining what I might want to write about today. So, as ever in scenarios like this, I am just going to start typing and see what comes out. It might be coherent, it might be nonsense; it might be meaningful, it might just be a summary of what happened today. I don't know yet because I haven't written it yet; the only rule is that I'm not going to stop typing to think. No, think, always type.
I published my video on Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer yesterday. It's done… all right, but this further cements my complete lack of understanding of what "works" on YouTube. Sometimes I'll post something that I feel is completely throwaway and it'll do very good numbers (obscenely good in the case of something like my Super Woden GP 2 video from a while back), then at other times I'll post something that actually had some meaning to me, and it'll struggle to break a hundred views. I think the most galling instance of this happening was back when I covered The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, a thoroughly interesting game by SWERY65 that really got me thinking and learning some things. It was, in many ways, a very personal video, and it did absolute bobbins performance-wise. But I'm still glad I did it.
My Kathy Rain 2 video isn't exactly "personal" in the same way, but I did enjoy the game enough to want to share it with others, because it was a very good point-and-click adventure, and I hope it does well. But at the time of typing this, it hasn't broken a hundred views yet, and I feel like it's been tough to get people to pay attention to it on socials also.
There are times when this happens where I find myself wondering if I should bother keeping on with things like MoeGamer and my YouTube channel. They're both "work" in a sense, and I could probably have a lot more time to myself to enjoy things if I ditched both of them and just lived my life to enjoy myself.
But the trouble is, I really enjoy doing both of them, and neither of them have ever been about viewing figures. Sure, the occasional payout I get from YouTube is a nice little bit of pocket money (and nothing more) but I don't really do either videos or articles for the sake of making Number Go Up. I do them primarily as means of expressing myself about things that I am enthusiastic about, and to share that enthusiasm with others — particularly people I consider to be close friends.
Now, I've found out to my cost and frustration that there are some people I considered to be close friends who don't give a shit, and have never even tried to give a shit when I shared things with them. So I've just stopped trying with them, and instead I just concentrate on doing these things for my own enjoyment, and perhaps to share with people that I know will appreciate them.
Sure, it might be nice to be able to do YouTube as a living, but would it really? Would it really be nice to have one's income completely beholden to the fickle fates of The Algorithm and the massive variation one can see in viewing figures from one video to the next? Probably not. So that is not — and never has been, really — an angle that I'm pursuing.
Best thing is just to keep these things as hobbies, and if certain people happen to stumble across them and enjoy them, great. If not, at least I have something I can look at myself and be satisfied with — and be content in the knowledge that generative AI hasn't come anywhere near those things I've created, either.
Anyway, I have spent enough time randomly pondering absolute nonsense this evening, so I think it's time to go and unwind with some video games. I think some Castlevania: Lords of Shadow might be in order; I've been playing that a bit for the last week and really enjoying it. Patrick Stewart!
So that's what I'm off to do now. And all my self-imposed commitments are already taken care of well before midnight, too. Look at me, I'm growing.
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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.
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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.
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I've spent the evening playing Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer. I played Kathy Rain: Director's Cut a few years back and apparently didn't write about it, but suffice to say I enjoyed it. As such, I was excited to see the sequel show up a few days back — one of several interesting-looking adventure games that have released recently.
I've played about 4 hours of it this evening and I'm not sure how far through I am — most estimates seem to place it around 7 hours in total — so I'm not going to give any conclusive thoughts just yet. I'll save those for MoeGamer and/or YouTube another time. I can give some first impressions, though, and those first impressions are very good indeed.
Like its predecessor, Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer is a point-and-click adventure presented in deliberately low resolution pixel art, albeit making use of modern widescreen resolutions and colour depth to provide a level of detail that wouldn't quite have been possible back in the classic VGA age. It is, I believe, an Adventure Game Studio affair, which accounts for its interface being rather similar to The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, another excellent modern adventure I played a little while back. That's no bad thing, though; Adventure Game Studio is a well-respected engine, used by a lot of modern adventure developers with good reason.
As with most modern adventure games, interactions in Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer are kept nicely simple. Click on things to either look at them or do something with them, click on inventory items to examine them, drag inventory items onto items in the scene or other inventory items to use them on things. Conversations unfold using a Gabriel Knight-style keyword system, where Kathy accumulates (and erases) keywords over the course of her investigation and can ask interactive characters about them, along with also being able to ask them about things in the scene or her inventory. It's a simple but effective conversation system that works well, and there are occasional traditional dialogue options that appear when Kathy has multiple things to ask about a situation.
Kathy's case this time around is that of a serial killer known as the Soothsayer. This individual has committed five murders over the course of the last few months, with the most recent being a local celebrity writer. As a rather down-on-her-luck private investigator, Kathy sees the $200,000 reward money and decides she'd like a bit of that action, so she proceeds to go about her investigation in her own mildly anarchic style. I say "mildly" because while she flouts a few rules and laws over the course of her investigation, she does draw the line at doing anything likely to get her thrown in prison — or, indeed, lose the confidence of her contact in the police force, who, as you might expect, is a helpful resource to draw upon, particularly as he very much wants to get into Kathy's pants.
Thus far in the 4 hours of play, I haven't felt like I've got "stuck" at all, which is good — and the game has kept up a decent pace as a result. The puzzles, while not super-easy, won't take long to solve for experienced adventure game veterans, but they are nonetheless satisfying. There's no moon logic on display here; everything makes logical sense, and those who really struggle can check out Kathy's notebook to get some hints on the objectives she needs to accomplish. The presence of the notebook and a list of objectives in the first place is a helpful addition not normally present in this type of game; it helps keep you focused without spoiling the sense of player agency or working things out for yourself.
I remember the original Kathy Rain getting a bit weird towards the end — and I didn't have a problem with that, I hasten to add — and I have a suspicion something similar is probably going to happen in this one, too. The "weird bit" of the first Kathy Rain led to some eye-opening revelations about the character, so I will be very surprised if something similar doesn't occur this time around, too. But we'll have to see, I guess.
Thus far, then, I've been thoroughly absorbed by this new investigation. The game looks great, has a wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack and decent voice acting, and it plays very well, too. Plus at what looks like it will be 7-10 hours in total, it's a decent length for this type of game, too — particularly when you consider most of the "golden age" adventures from Sierra and LucasArts could be beaten within an hour or two (or even less, in some cases) if you knew what you were doing.
I'm looking forward to seeing how things end up. At this rate, it's looking like I might beat it tomorrow. I will definitely pen some more substantial thoughts for MoeGamer and/or my YouTube channel when I've finished the whole thing. For now, though, it's an easy recommend for adventure game enthusiasts.
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The world can be an overwhelming place for all manner of reasons, and one of the things most likely to overstimulate all of us at one point or another is the sheer amount of media that there is. There is more stuff in the world than one person can reasonably experience in a single lifetime, and most of us likely feel at various times like we're being pulled in multiple directions, the constant threat of Maybe Not Enjoying The Thing You Picked As Much As The Thing You Didn't Pick a common source of analysis paralysis.
Case in point: this evening, I happened to see over Andie's shoulder that she's watching a TV show called Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators. I can tell from the bits I've watched over her shoulder that I would almost certainly enjoy this show, but is it something that I "should" add to my plate, given I have games on my shelves I haven't played, DVDs and Blu-Rays on other shelves that I haven't watched, and an entire Internet full of possibilities just a click away?
The answer, of course, is "stop overthinking it, and if you think you might enjoy it, watch it". And I think I just might. It's not as if I have to commit to watching it to the exclusion of all else, and it's not as if I have to watch it every day without fail otherwise I'll forget what's going on. As a TV show, it's designed to be inherently "disposable", as horrible as that sounds to say about a creative work; perhaps "transient" is a better descriptor. It's something designed for you to enjoy in the moment, then not think particularly hard about. There are plenty of other TV shows that I've watched in the past that fall into this category — I quite often look back over past entries of this blog and see entries about shows I apparently watched but have absolutely no recollection of whatsoever — and I don't feel too bad about that. I enjoyed them in the moment, which was their purpose.
Not everything needs to have meaning, to be life-changing, or to have a particularly strong and powerful message to deliver. Sometimes entertainment is simply for entertainment's sake, and there's nothing wrong with that.
So y'know what? I think I might just start watching Shakespeare & Hathaway: Private Investigators. It looks like a fun show that I think I will enjoy, and my instincts are usually pretty good on these things. I may not remember it a year or two down the line, but does that really matter? Not at all; if it's enjoyable now, and it helps distract from the shitshow that is life in 2025, bring it on, I say. The planet might have burned down in a couple of years, and when that time comes it's not going to matter one jot what my media consumption habits were.
This isn't even a new problem. For as long as television has existed, people have doubtless agonised over which channel they should watch, or if they should do something other than watching television. That particular problem is compounded for those who had satellite or cable TV, of course, as they had even more choice. And in times before electronic media, were people agonising over which book they should read, which painting they should admire or which sonata they should play on the piano? Entirely possible.
Life is short; much too short to agonise over decisions as ultimately trivial as what you're going to do to entertain yourself of an evening. So if you feel like you might fancy something, just take the plunge and enjoy it. There are no wrong choices. (Well, there are, but that's not the sort of decision we're talking about here.) Taking care of yourself is of paramount importance, and allowing yourself to get trapped into a mental spiral of trying to prioritise things of equal unimportance is a sure-fire way to make yourself miserable.
So, y'know, don't do that. I am going to try and take my own advice 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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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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There are a lot of "boutique" limited-print companies around at the moment, and people inevitably have mixed feelings about them. A lot of people feel particularly negatively about some of them — often without being able to say why, probably because they only hate [company] because some YouTuber told them to — but I enjoy what they do. They provide physical copies of games that, in many (though not all) circumstances otherwise wouldn't have had one. And, even better, most of the time those physical copies are archive-ready, in that in the vast majority of cases, the physical print runs don't get done until all the DLC and updates for the game in question are done and dusted. I like that.
There are some companies who take things a bit further, though, and one that I've found particularly worthy of note just recently is called Lost in Cult. They're kicking off a new programme called EDITIONS, where they're publishing games that, previously, were digital-only.
We'll get onto EDITIONS in a moment, but what is also worthy of note about Lost in Cult is that they're also doing standard retail editions of their games, and these don't appear to be limited in quantity beyond the usual business considerations — i.e. how many they think they'll sell, and how long their licensing agreement is with the games' developers and original publishers. What they're effectively doing with these standard editions is doing a non-limited (in principle) physical print run of games that, on release, were assumed to be digital-only. That's great!
But EDITIONS is what I really want to talk about. EDITIONS are their special, collectors' editions of games. Costing £60 a pop, they come in a custom slipcase that contains the game, a decent-size poster, some miscellaneous goodies to do with the game, and an art/commentary book that explores the history, creative process and impact of the game.
Here's an example covering The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, a point and click adventure I played recently and really rather enjoyed, as my article about it on MoeGamer will attest:
Looks pretty lovely, doesn't it? Simple, but effective, and sure to look very nice as part of a collection.
The other games that are available to preorder from the company now include Immortality, a fascinating-sounding FMV game that I remember one of my writers on Rice Digital having a lot of time for a year or two back. The EDITIONS package for that one looks like this:
And then there's the wonderfully hilarious Thank Goodness You're Here!, which the EDITIONS package for doesn't appear to have been revealed just yet.
As someone who is always banging on about collecting physical games, I felt duty and honour-bound to support these releases. I've played The Excavation of Hob's Barrow before, and I've seen Andie play Thank Goodness You're Here!, but I've never played Immortality, and I'm definitely open to returning to the other two.
Lost in Cult's long-term plan is to have a "book club"-like approach, where they do one of these releases a month after this initial batch of three are out the door. I am well up for that, let me tell you. It, of course, remains to be seen what games will get this wonderful treatment, but judging by the initial picks, I feel like the Lost in Cult folks have good taste.
So I guess that's £60 a month accounted for, then…!
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 haven't made any videos for a little while. I haven't been feeling super-inspired of late for some reason. So I'm going to use this evening's post to brainstorm a few things that I might want to shape into some sort of structure.
First up, I have been mulling over some sort of "Games of Summer" ongoing feature, where I talk about games that I find particularly appealing to play when the weather is nice outside. It being nice outside does not necessarily equate to wanting to go outside, however, with how hot the summers have become here, so the thinking behind this is games that provide a pleasant feeling of "going on holiday" or "doing things outside" without having to deal with things like sunburn and heatstroke. Games that I would probably cover include Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 for Xbox 360 (I still like that one better than the third one, because jetskis), TrackMania (there's something about the stadium courses with watery sections that feels very summery to me), maybe Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash and Kandagawa Jet Girls, and, of course, some classic Sega Blue Skies titles like OutRun and its follow-ups, and spiritual successors.
Secondly, I am once again mulling over my usual "format" of videos. I really like doing what I call the "Exploring Together" videos, where I provide a brief introduction to camera, then effectively do a Let's Play with a bit of foreknowledge (or prior experience) of what I'm playing. While this is a format that has somewhat declined in overall popularity on YouTube, there's still very much a place for it, and with the newly independent Giant Bomb getting its Quick Look series back underway after quite some time, I feel like it's sort of "timely" to get into doing this sort of thing.
The bit that's a little tricky is that I feel like I might want to cover some slightly more recent stuff. Stuff that's still a few years old at this point, but which is a bit more modern than early '80s home computer games. I'm talking Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3-era stuff. There are Considerations when doing this, however, not least of which is the number of games I might be interested in covering which have licensed soundtracks. I'd like to take a first look on camera at the MotorStorm series, for example — and the first two of these could probably also fit into the "summer games" theme, too — but the musical accompaniments to the action might be an issue. I guess I could upload some "test footage" and see if that gets dinged for copyright. In fact, I might do that.
Another thing that I kind of wish I could make happen but don't really see how I can do is getting someone else involved, so I have someone to talk to and riff off while I play. I've been watching the Giant Bomb guys since their big announcement, and it's a lot of fun to be included in their sessions of "hanging out" together, playing something and shooting the breeze while doing so. I've always made an effort with my videos to come across as if I'm a friend playing the game along with you, but, y'know, sometimes it'd be nice to have someone to talk to.
A third thing I've been pondering is doing a playthrough of the Ultima games. I'm fascinated by these, but have never really gotten deep into them. I've played a fair chunk of the first one and understand how that works, but I understand the second one in particular is a bit… obtuse. I think it would be an interesting and worthwhile pursuit to finally give those a go, though.
Then finally, of course, there are still myriad games left for me to cover on the classic microcomputer systems. There's all the built-in games on the C64, A500 Mini and Spectrum, for starters, plus the USB sticks full of other stuff I have for each of them. And, alongside that, there's still a ton of Atari 8-bit and Atari ST games I haven't covered yet, either.
That's plenty to be getting on with, surely. I just need to actually get my brain into a motivated space and actually crack on with one or more of these projects, I guess. The weather isn't helping, but I think I will do my best to make a start on at least one of the things I've outlined above this week, even if it's just falling back on my usual Let's Plays of microcomputer games.
On that note, I am at least feeling motivated to go to the gym this evening. So that's next on the agenda!
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.
