#oneaday Day 809: Dolly, Willy and... uh... silly?

There are a number of things I want to talk about today, and I was agonising over which one of them to talk about. But then I thought there is absolutely no reason I can't talk about all of them in one post, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Hold on to your hats, folks, we're entering dangerous territory!

RIP Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80. This is very sad news indeed, because Dolly Parton was the living embodiment of goodness. Among many, many other things, she made great music, she always came across as a thoroughly pleasant person in interviews and suchlike, she was an incredible ally to LGBTQ+ folks, she was responsible for millions of books being distributed for free to youngsters across the world, and above all, she was proof that you can be rich, beautiful, famous and not a shitty person in the slightest, all at the same time.

There seems to be some sort of unspoken assumption that you can only be a maximum of three of those at the same time (and it's usually rich, beautiful and famous) but Dolly proved that there was, in fact, no obligation to become a total piece of shit just because you were loaded.

Apparently Dolly's family has requested that in lieu of flowers and other memorials/condolences, people make a donation to the Dolly Parton's Imagination Library organisation. I've done just that, and I encourage you to consider doing so also. It is fitting that her generosity and selflessness continues even after her passing.

That's about all I am able to say on the subject for the minute, but I wanted to mark the occasion, at least.

Manic Miner's getting a dogshit-looking "remake"

I'll let you into a not-so-secret, dear reader: I don't think ZX Spectrum classic Manic Miner is very good. It has music that makes you want to tear your ears off, visuals that are… functional at best, gameplay that is unnecessarily infuriating and a difficulty curve that is more like a vertical wall, meaning I'm sure there are a significant number of people who have never seen beyond the first screen. There are many, many better single-screen platformers on 8-bit home computers — some of my favourites are Mr Robot and His Robot Factory and Miner 2049'er — and yet a lot of them just don't get their dues, while Manic Miner is consistently held up as an all-time classic. And don't even get me started on Jet Set Willy.

Anyway, BBG Entertainment GmbH — the people who have done some Boulder Dash reboots that are… not bad gameplay wise but kind of dogshit aesthetically — have decided what the world needs is a Manic Miner remake. And, moreover, they decided what a Manic Miner remake really needed was some absolute dog-arse generative AI for its visuals, trailer, pretty much everything. Including one of the most laughable "CRT filters" I think I have ever seen. Not only that, they have been very quiet on whether or not any AI has actually been used, by which I mean there is no AI usage disclosure on the game's Steam page.

(Yes, comments are disabled on YouTube, before you go and check.)

And, I mean, come on. Look at it. Look at it. Even the "retro" screens are wrong in terms of layout! Fuck's sake. If this isn't generative AI, they need to fire their art person. But let's face it, they probably already did that, which is why this has happened.

This isn't the first company doing some sort of "retro revival" who has shat out AI-generated garbage artwork all over a property that actually means something to some people and then denied that they have done so. Hey, I don't like Manic Miner at all, but I know plenty of people who do, and I feel bad for them to see garbage like this.

I've said it many, many times before, but I cannot fucking wait for this goddamn bubble to pop so we can be free of this never-ending torrent of shit.

Commodore is putting out a Cyberpunk 2077-themed C64 Ultimate

Why? In what world does this make any sense as a crossover? Plus with the relabelled keys it looks like a nightmare from a usability perspective, too. But I'm sure someone somewhere will buy it, then leave it in a box on a shelf and, roughly every 6 months or so, mention on all the Discord servers they're in, with an odd amount of pride, that they bought it and have never actually unpacked it.

Burnout Revenge

I have been feeling a bit burnt out on YouTube of late. I put out a video on Terranigma that I thought was a good adaptation of my article on MoeGamer, and it has performed like crap, even with yesterday's announcement of the Terranigma remake. I just don't even know any more. YouTube is so incredibly unpredictable over what does well and what does poorly, and sometimes these things change massively over time, too. I have stuff that I put out several years ago which performed poorly to modestly on their original release, but which now has thousands of views — and I have stuff that I worked hard on and was very proud of which has done less than a hundred views. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to it — and, to be frank, I can't really be arsed to chase the why.

I feel like at some point I have drifted away from the things that used to have me fired up about doing things on YouTube. I have wanted to incorporate a much broader spectrum of things to reflect my own interests, but aside from a couple of standout exceptions to the rule, I don't feel that experiment has really been much of a success. And it's getting me down a bit; I don't particularly want or need YouTube to be a "big thing" for me, but it is nice when you do something and more than a handful of people appreciate what you do.

So I'm going to take a break from YouTube completely until I come back from holiday in mid-September, and at that time I'm going to do a sort of soft reboot back to some things I used to do, only with a bit more in the way of knowledge that I've picked up in the intervening years since I did them first time around. Specifically, I think I'm going to bring back Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z, because those series had a nice sense of structure to them, they were easy to produce but could result in a combination of celebrating big hits and discovering new favourites — and, perhaps most importantly, I really enjoyed making them.

Beyond that, I'll likely still do some occasional "scripted" videos when I feel like it, and perhaps some Evercade games, too, but so far as stuff outside of my "core" subject matter of Atari home computer stuff, it will be the exception rather than the norm. I basically built my audience for that channel on Atari-related videos, and I wonder if attempting to branch out to other platforms has just basically caused YouTube to go "we don't know what this channel is any more", meaning things like my Terranigma video just… go nowhere.

That's the plan, anyway. I will be using the things I've learned about thumbnail design and all that good stuff — plus continue with my current channel branding — and get things back to basics. At least then if only a handful of people watch my stuff, I know it's because they're genuinely interested in what I'm doing, rather than picking up on trends.

So yeah. Watch out for that in mid-September. In the meantime, go watch my Terranigma video. It'd be nice to at least get the sodding thing over 100 views.

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 808: Terranigma is coming back!

Now, I don't want to say that I caused this by finally getting around to playing it recently (and writing about it… and making a video about it) but it certainly is a pleasant coincidence that not long after I finished doing all these things, Clear River Games confirmed that an official modern rerelease of Quintet's hard-to-find and ludicrously expensive classic, Terranigma, is on the way.

This is excellent news, because it means I can buy a copy and not feel bad about playing it through on MiSTer. Not that I did anyway, but it will be very nice to own an actual legitimate copy and not have to pay through the nose for a cart-only SNES copy that almost certainly has a flat save battery and might not even work at all. I might even play it through again to see what improvements have been made.

For the most part, it looks as if the game is going to be kept true to its original incarnation. There's some modern-day UI fluff including bezels and an optional floating EXP window (that will be nice to have, actually) plus the promise of some new art and remastered music tracks, but we don't have many details about all that just yet. For most people, just the opportunity to own a copy of this excellent game will be enough — even if it's a modern rerelease and not the original original version.

Before anyone asks: no, I don't know if this means we'll be able to get it on Evercade. I will certainly be mentioning it to the people who make such decisions, but as I have said numerous times before, I have no control over that part of the business and thus it will simply be an emphatic suggestion. Square Enix is a company we haven't worked with as yet — although we have worked with TAITO, who are technically part of that whole conglomerate now, so I guess we sort of have. What I'd really love to see, personally, would be a cart that contains, at the very least, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, plus ideally Actraiser and The Granstream Saga also. Maybe one day I will be part of making that happen. We'll have to see.

But anyway! If you've never played Terranigma, you're in for a treat. If you want to know more, go check out my in-depth piece on it over on MoeGamer (linked above), but the short version is this: it's an excellent 16-bit action RPG that still looks, sounds and plays really well today. The English localisation is a little bit clunky — though nowhere near as broken as that seen in Illusion of Gaia — but it gets the incredibly ambitious storyline across, and the gameplay is absolutely wonderful.

It's nice to share some good news for once. I hope you all remember to pick up Terranigma this time, because I will not be having any mercy on you if you miss your chance this time around and then come crying to me about having to pay hundreds of quid for a copy. It's there. It's coming. You know what to do.

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#oneaday Day 806: Absolute Direction (5 points)

We had a second game of Big Walk today, and one thing I appear to have impressed on the rest of my group is that I have a very good sense of direction, even in a virtual space. This is not something I tend to brag about — because why would you? — but it is something I know that I am generally quite good at, and always have been to a certain extent.

I'm not entirely sure where this sense came from. Perhaps from years of playing old computer games that didn't include an automap facility. Perhaps from time in the Cub Scouts, at least part of which involved knowing how to read a map. Perhaps from how I used to enjoy just looking at maps. I remember having a kids' world atlas that I absolutely loved just… looking at.

Or perhaps it's something I developed a bit later. I know that I certainly became particularly aware of it once I had left home for university, because it came in very handy every time I got absolutely smashed and had to somehow find my way home in the dark. Despite numerous very drunken evenings, there was not one single occasion where I didn't make it home — even when the night had, for one reason or another, concluded at the house of someone I didn't know very well in an unfamiliar part of town.

Did I develop this skill back then? Perhaps. But it's something that's stuck around with me. I also feel very conscious of it any time I drive to a new city, because I tend to find that I can get a good feel for how all the roads connect to one another quite quickly, even when it's a place I've never been before. This came in quite handy any time I had a job interview in an unfamiliar place, because it meant that even if I initially had trouble finding the place I was supposed to go to — I always left with plenty of time to spare just in case this happened — I would come away from the day with a better understanding of this new place. This is information that may or may not have ended up being useful in the future, depending on whether or not I ended up getting the job.

I do find it especially helpful in virtual worlds, particularly when you have an experience like Big Walk which deliberately eschews the trappings of modern game user interfaces in favour of a more minimalist experience that is dependent on cooperation and communication. On multiple occasions in our session this evening, I was able to lead us right back to something we had previously visited without having to look at a map, and this, I feel, is a helpful quality in a group that is effectively orienteering in the wilderness in the hope of finding exciting and intriguing puzzles to complete. (Okay, I did take a wrong turn once, but nobody's completely perfect.)

One of the things I've determined via various means that I could really do with getting better at is acknowledging the things I am actually good at; the things about me that other people might actually value; the things that I can be proud of and feel okay about feeling proud of. After this evening's session, I feel quite confident in saying that yes, I am quite proud of my sense of direction; I feel it is a useful skill that can help both myself and others, and I am glad to be enjoying an experience where it actually comes in handy, and where people value it.

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#oneaday Day 805: Quarter-circle forward

I have long been intimidated by fighting games. I'm not sure exactly when this started, and there are still some fighting games I do enjoy — most notably the Dead or Alive games, which I've always felt have been the closest I've come to genuinely "getting" one of these games. And I would love to change this situation — particularly with the number of excellent SNK fighters we have on Evercade now.

Like I say, it wasn't always like this, though. Back in the SNES era, I, like literally everyone else I knew, had a copy of Street Fighter II, and played it to absolute death. I remember chatting about it with friends at school, discussing the various characters' endings — back then, people still respected the single-player mode of fighting games rather than treating them as the afterthought they seem to be today — and bragging about how easy we found such-and-such a special move to perform. (My friend Andrew was the only one of us who, he claimed at least, could perform Zangief's Spinning Piledriver.)

Beyond that, I remember having a good time with the original Tekken and Soul Blade on PlayStation, Soulcalibur on Dreamcast, the aforementioned Dead or Alive… it all feels a world away right now.

The obvious answer to this is to just try and play a fighting game again. But the temptation, given the amount of information out there today, is to try and look something up; to try and find a guide to "getting good" at one of these games, before you even start actually just playing it.

The trouble is, most guides these days — even supposed beginners' guides — are filled with impenetrable jargon, and move on to complex concepts way too quickly, making the prospect of even thinking about trying a new game difficult to contemplate. I read a guide the other day that said when you are learning a new fighting game from scratch, one of the first things you should do is look at a wiki and learn the framedata for the character you want to play.

Not "play the game, see how you like it" or "pick a character that you find sexually attractive, consider an aspirational figure or think is amusing for some reason". Look at a wiki and learn the framedata.

Now, while I won't deny that once you're taking a game seriously to a particularly sweaty degree, looking at a wiki and learning the framedata probably is helpful — but man! When you're someone who doesn't really know how to play a fighting game, like at all, but is interested in learning at the very least the basics, and then you're hit with something that sounds like the exact opposite of fun as one of the first things you're suggested to do… well, that doesn't feel like much of an incentive to play!

This is the trouble with having too much information available and the baggage that a large and active "community" brings. Back in the SNES era — and even onwards into the Dreamcast and early PS2/Xbox ages — none of us knew what the "FGC" was, and we didn't need to know. If we were lucky, we still had the original manual for Street Fighter II and knew that a fireball move was down, diagonal, forward and punch, and that was, somehow, enough. The way we played would have probably been considered "button mashing" by someone who knew the game extremely well, but again, it didn't matter! We were having fun with the game, we were enjoying playing it — and we were able to play it well enough to (after a lot of continues, in most cases) actually beat the single-player mode.

Like I say, though, the single-player mode of fighting games is seemingly barely given any thought whatsoever these days. The assumption from most of the "guides" out there appears to be that you must always be looking to get ready for competitive action, to be on top of your versus game, and to be able to perform every move absolutely flawlessly, exactly when you need to perform it. Playing against a computer? Ugh, literally disgusting. Get online and get wrecked, because that's the only way you'll learn.

That may be true, but I wonder how many other people out there are like me: having once enjoyed something like Street Fighter II before all this "advice" was everywhere, but now feel completely and utterly intimidated and demoralised any time they even contemplate picking up a new fighter — to such a degree that they just never even try a game that could potentially become an all-time favourite?

As I say above, I think the answer, honestly, is to simply ignore all this and just have a go. If you're only fighting against the computer, it doesn't matter if you suck. If the only skills you develop are "how to beat the computer" — and you do so enough to be able to see a favourite character's ending on a handful of credits? I think that can be enough.

I think you can make it enough. So y'know what? I think I'm going to make an effort to have a go at some of these absolutely beautiful NEOGEO games we have on Evercade. Sure, I'll likely be turning the difficulty level down to the minimum, at least to begin with — but that sounds a lot more fun than looking at charts full of numbers, abbreviations and terms like "Greco-Roman cancel". At least for now. Maybe I'll find myself wanting to do that at some point down the line — but for now, just playing the game sounds like a good idea.

Now the only question is which game to pick…?

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#oneaday Day 804: More like Golden Shower

A new trailer for an upcoming animated series based on Sega's classic arcade game, Golden Axe, came out today. It is… not good. And I am not surprised. Disappointed, yes. But not surprised.

For some reason, a lot of people making animated series seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking there is only one way you can possibly make this sort of thing: irony-poisoned "adult animation" with a complete lack of sincerity and earnestness. And it fucking sucks!

Now, I'm not someone who swears off the sort of genre-savvy, quasi-fourth wall-breaking meta-comedy style as an automatic and immediate matter of course. There is a time and place for that sort of thing; we call it parody. Right now, I have been casually playing Agents of Mayhem by Volition, which is a spinoff of the Saints Row series that focuses on a band of gun-toting superheroes. It is full of this sort of humour, and it works because the whole thing is set up to be a parody of a particular genre. You go in expecting that sort of thing, and it delivers. You have to be in the right mood for it, but it is not throwing any particular curveballs.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be parody. I still enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, even though series creator Joss Whedon apparently turned out to be a bit of a dildo, to say the least. People who complain about the dialogue in modern Marvel movies often accuse them of being full of "Whedonisms", and that may be a fair point, given his involvement in several of them — but in the context of Buffy and Angel, again, this sort of humour worked, because it was a bunch of kids saying it, and in turn that made it highly quotable in the playground.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is another great example. I thought I was going to hate this series after the first episode, which was pretty "wacky", but I kept watching out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to discover a series with a lot of genuine heart, soul and sincerity — plus an appreciation of and admiration for Trek canon. Sure, it had its silly moments — a lot more than in most of the live-action shows — but it struck a good balance, and at no point did it feel like it was designed primarily to mock its source material maliciously.

But, like, Golden Axe? This is a beloved arcade game that, in its original form, played things reasonably straight for the most part, at least until its ending sequence. Sure, it had its silly elements like the treasure goblins and the weird mount creatures, but it's clear what the intent was: make a game designed in the style of pulp fantasy, complete with loincloth-clad barbarians, bikini-clad female warriors and hairy dwarves.

When you adapt something like this in the obnoxiously referential, wise-cracking "adult animation" style popularised by shows like Family Guy, you just put across the feeling that you don't respect the source material at all; there seems to be an unspoken assumption that if the creators of this show took Golden Axe seriously, then no-one, in turn, would take this animated series seriously.

You could make the argument that Golden Axe, as a franchise, didn't really have much meat on the bones in terms of narrative in the first place, and you'd probably be right about that. But there's more than enough there to act as a basis for something more — and perhaps to build something genuinely interesting which uses the lore that does exist as a starting point. That could have been cool! There aren't that many good fantasy-themed shows out right now other than Game of Thrones and its spinoff, House of the Dragon, and those are very much an acquired taste (not to mention the poster children for "dark fantasy", which is distinct from more traditional approaches to fantasy) — and there's definitely scope for one in the animated space. Remember stuff like Xena: Warrior Princess? Golden Axe could have been a new Xena: Warrior Princess, but animated!

But no. Instead we get a show that just feels like everyone involved with it has complete and utter contempt for the fantasy genre, for the source material, and for the audience. And I don't really know why! It's not as if animated adaptations which take potentially rather silly source material seriously don't exist — look at Castlevania! That turned out great! It managed to tell a compelling, serious, earnest story with interesting characters and even incorporate some humour without it all feeling forced and filled with such a sense of not giving a shit.

I guess ultimately it's no real skin off my nose, because with Golden Axe being on Paramount+, I'm not going to watch it — and I'm certainly not going to make an effort to seek out some alternative means of watching it (be that official or "unofficial"), based on that trailer. It's just frustrating that this sort of thing is so very predictable; it makes it difficult to have any excitement for announcements of potentially interesting adaptations of video game properties into other forms of media, and very easy to be cynical.

I can't say I was particularly hungry for an animated adaptation of Golden Axe generally — and thus, honestly, I'd rather they hadn't bothered at all than come out with this predictable nonsense.

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#oneaday Day 803: Write about an obscure game

It is Michael "Virtual Moose" Klamerus' birthday today, and for their birthday they have set a blog challenge, because that is a thing you are allowed to do on your birthday. The challenge is simple: write a blog post about an obscure game. Challenge accepted!

Being someone who is "into" classic home computers — and particularly less popular classic home computers like the Atari 8-bit line — I have plenty of possible answers to this challenge, and even more that stem from my modern tastes of games that are a bit off the beaten track and often ignored by the mainstream press. So what to pick?

Well, I think it has to be a home computer game, as I saw yet another example of people who have probably never even seen an Amiga making jokes about European computer games earlier, and it annoyed me. It annoyed me enough to want to write about a home computer game that is genuinely good, but which doesn't get talked about that much.

I eventually settled on Jupiter's Masterdrive, a 1991 game for Atari ST and Amiga that was developed by "POF Corporation" (who, to my knowledge, never made anything else under that name) and published by a very early incarnation of Ubisoft, back when they spelled it "Ubi Soft". If you want to see it in action, I played it on my YouTube channel five years ago:

Although I have shelves filled to the brim with Atari ST games up in my study, Jupiter's Masterdrive is actually a game that I have never owned a full boxed copy of. My sole encounter with it Back In The Day was on a cover-mounted disk from ST Action, a magazine I used to enjoy, and this was, as you might expect, only a playable demo.

I remember finding it quite striking when I played that demo, though — even though it was obviously unfinished. (If I am remembering correctly, the demo had no sound whatsoever!) It was a top-down racer, but with an unusual sci-fi theme: not only were you racing on moons, other planets and satellites, you also had access to weaponry with which to upset your opponents. Races were as much about survival as they were about coming out in front.

The game moved smoothly, which was never a given on the ST, which lacked the hardware scrolling facilities of its great rival, the Amiga. The play area was deliberately constrained to a relatively small window on the screen, presumably to keep the frame rate up a bit — but it was also possible to play the whole thing in a split-screen two-player mode, and to my recollection, performance didn't really suffer when doing so. My experience with the game — particularly the full version I played in the video above — was almost exclusively with the single-player mode, but I suspect I would have at least tried the two-player mode with a school friend once or twice.

Demo disks of the era were great for this sort of thing. Despite the fact the demos in question had to be squeezed onto a single floppy disk — and often a single side of a floppy disk in order to cater to those who only had a single-sided drive, with bonus demos on offer for those lucky enough to have a double-sided setup — they were often quite generous in terms of how much they would let you play; certainly enough to give you a good idea of what to expect from the finished product, and often a lot of fun in their own right.

In the case of Jupiter's Masterdrive, that playable demo with no sound lodged itself firmly in some dust-covered recess in the corner of my mind for years — no, decades — after I originally played it, so when I was doing my Atari ST A to Z video series and got to "J" one time, the memory leapt out and bellowed "Jupiter's Masterdrive!" at me. "Oh yeah," I thought. "I liked that demo. I wonder what the full game is like?"

Really good, as it happens. The additional time that POF Corporation worked on the game between the release of the demo and the final game coming out over a year later was evidently well-spent, as the result was a well-crafted, polished, slick game that ran extremely well, even on the humble ST, and was a lot of fun to play.

It had some fun and interesting twists, too. From the demo, I had assumed the whole game would be circuit-based racing, but the full version also shakes things up with some arena-based events in which your aim is to collect a certain number of special objects before an opponent. The small play area isn't a hindrance in these events, either, thanks to a well-implemented radar display that allows you to see at a glance where you, your opponent and the target objects are.

Between races, you can spend the credits you earn and win on various upgrades for your car, including enhancements to your car's performance as well as weaponry and armour to help you survive a bit longer in the tougher events.

It's a game I don't think I have seen anyone else ever talk about online, but for one reason or another it's one that, as I say, got into my mind as a youngster and never really went away. I was really pleased to discover (when I finally tried it) that the full game ended up being as good as it is — and encourage you to give it a look, particularly if you've ever said anything disparaging about home computer games.

This is a quality title that holds up very well indeed, and is a great example of why there's a ton of value in exploring this area of gaming history rather than just laughing at those silly Europeans for "making do" with their stupid old STs and Amigas back in the '80s and '90s. We had a perfectly fulfilling, satisfying time, I think you'll find, as games up to the standard of Jupiter's Masterdrive were by no means an uncommon sight — and if you take the time to explore a bit, you'll find some wonderful games that deserve to be talked about a whole lot more.

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#oneaday Day 801: Eeeeeeees

After getting what I thought was "caught up" on the series a few years back (correction: a decade ago. Fucking hell), I am now very behind on Falcom's excellent Ys series. And, despite already having two "big games" on the go — Suikoden and Yakuza 6 — I am severely tempted to start correcting that.

Ys is not the only series I am very behind on, of course. I am also very behind on Yakuza, which is at least partly why I started Yakuza 6 on a whim the other day. Technically I'm not "behind" on Suikoden because I never started it prior to this — though I am enjoying it a lot — but I do want to play, at the very least, the first two in the HD Remaster collection.

Then, of course, there is Trails, that which has apparently become Falcom's flagship series. To date, I have played the first Trails in the Sky… twice. I also made a start on Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, but almost immediately after I started playing that game, Falcom announced the remake of the first Trails in the Sky (and its subsequent follow-up), so I figured that I would delay starting a proper, honest to goodness attempt to "do" that series until all of these remakes were out. And in the meantime, the far end of the series continues to extend further and further into the distance; I am several games behind in terms of actually buying the games at this point, so hopefully by the time I do actually start playing Trails properly, they will still be reasonably available.

Does it all matter? No, of course not. So long as these games continue to be available and the hardware to play them on remains in working order, I can play them at any time. That said, I do feel considerably more "pressure" of sorts to play current stuff sooner rather than later, given how many of them have downloadable updates. I do tend to make a habit of primarily purchasing limited-print stuff, which tends to be fully up to date on cart or disc, but in the case of stuff that gets a broader retail release — like the Trails games now do — there are often updates of varying degrees of necessity from the moment you put the disc in.

And don't even get me started on Game Key Cards, still officially the worst thing about Nintendo Switch 2.

Anyway, at some point, then, I think I will probably be jumping into Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. I did actually make a start on this ages ago, during a time when we had some friends over, they got a bit drunk and wanted to see some sort of RPG. I haven't touched it for ages, though, so if and when I do start again, it will be going from the beginning once more. I'm also quite tempted to revisit Ys Origin, purely for its finale music. And then there's the Switch versions of Oath in Felghana and Memories in Celceta, both of which I've played, but which it would be fun to have another look at.

And then after that there's Ys IX and Ys X to play, too. Ahh, an embarrassment of riches, truly. And yet how long do you think I'm going to stare at a wall, wondering if I really should start something new when I already have two big games on the go?

No. Fuck it. You know what, I'm just going to do it. I need some howling Falcom guitars in my life right now, and I'm damn well going to go and get them. You see if I don't!

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#oneaday Day 800: Some interesting games I've covered

One of the things I've always been fond of doing over on my other website, MoeGamer, is covering games that don't get much (or any) attention elsewhere — be they brand new or old and crusty. So today, in celebration of 800 daily posts, I thought I would point you at a selection of games that you might not have heard of, and the things I have written about them. Doesn't that sound nice? Doesn't that sound like it'll give you a nice range of things to read on the toilet? I know you're reading this on the toilet!

In no particular order…

First up, here's my writeup on Lapis x Labyrinth, a thoroughly unusual game from Nippon Ichi that blends elements of platformer, action RPG, arena combat game, shoot 'em up and pachinko. (Don't worry, there's no actual gambling or microtransactions.) It's an incredibly compulsive game that knows how very appealing it is when you do something in a game and things explode into a shower of shiny things. Narrative-wise it's almost completely forgettable, but in terms of presentation and particularly gameplay, it's a wonderful thing indeed, and highly recommended if you want to play something quite unlike anything else you have experienced.

Next up, here's a look at Root Letter, a visual novel/adventure game hybrid that I once described as "Ace Attorney for the over-30s", and very much stand by that description. It's a thoroughly compelling mystery story with some spooky elements, and does a great job at juxtaposing the energy and optimism of youth with the glum reality of early middle age. I still have not yet played the expanded version of this which adds the option to replace the hand-drawn artwork with photographic stills; I think probably enough time has elapsed between me playing the original version and now that I can (and should!) give it a go, given that it's on my shelf, and has been for quite some time.

Dragon Quest V is not what I'd exactly call an "unknown" game, but this piece which I wrote on the game's treatment of fatherhood — specifically, as experienced by a child, and how I related it to my own life experiences and memories of family life as a child — remains something that I'm very pleased with. I was emotionally invested in the subject matter, and I think that came across in what I wrote. I'm sure the things I describe will be familiar to at least some of you.

Here's a piece on Criminal Girls, a thoroughly interesting — and oft-misrepresented — role-playing game in which you take on the role of a jailer in Hell, tasked with leading a group of "delinquent" girls on the path to getting a second chance at life and a chance of "redemption" from their "sins". The game explores matters of trust both in its narrative and, quite remarkably, through its mechanics, making it a thoroughly interesting example of how a game's thematic elements are woven throughout the entire fabric of the game rather than simply used as set dressing.

Here's a piece on Namco's Star Ixiom, a game from the company's PlayStation era that never, ever gets talked about — but which is actually really, really good! It's the follow-up to the company's Famicom Star Raiders-like, Star Luster, and is absolutely packed with both depth and a variety of things to do, with multiple ways to play according to whether you prefer a linear, mission-based structure or a more freeform, strategic game. Vastly underappreciated game that I'm bummed I never even heard of back when the PS1 was current — but thankfully, I can enjoy at my leisure today.

Finally, let's close off today with a look at SWERY's The Good Life, a game from this unusual and widely beloved creator's back catalogue that, once again, I never see anyone talking about. It is a thoroughly interesting game that combines elements of cosy life sim, murder mystery and open world adventure, allows you to turn into both a dog and a cat, and you can also ride sheep. It is somehow less "wacky" than it sounds, and has some real heart and soul to it — as well as a thoroughly convincing interpretation of the Lake District landscape to explore.

There are many other games I've covered on MoeGamer to date, so if you want more than the above links, stop by the All Games page on MoeGamer and check out an index of every game I've covered to one degree or another. Or you can hit up the article index (also available organised by date) and browse that way instead, if you prefer. Either way, if you've never paid MoeGamer a visit and you like the things I write about games, stop by and have a look around! It's my favourite thing that I've created on the Internet, and I intend to keep it standing for many years to come, so please enjoy what I've put there to date.

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#oneaday Day 795: Titties - deal with them

There's been Discourse happening today! Specifically on that strange intersection between the "cosy" and "wholesome" spaces, and weird misogynistic, sexphobic, neo-Puritanical behaviour.

Much has been written by people much smarter than me about how the "cosy" and "wholesome" spaces are actually not all that wholesome at all — and in fact can harbour some of the truly most odious, harmful outlooks on life it's possible to have. Fairly high on this list is the complete unwillingness to be challenged by fiction in any way whatsoever — and I don't even mean "avoids material with complicated and difficult themes that even the most strong-stomached would find uncomfortable"; I mean absolutely completely and utterly unwilling to deal with something perfectly normal on the grounds that it isn't "wholesome" by the exceedingly narrow definition they have inscribed inside their own head.

Here's the post that kicked off the whole discussion today. It apparently hails from a mod for the recently full-released Fields of Mistria that makes a character "SFW" (safe for work).

Screenshot from a "SFW" mod for Fields of Mistria, unattributed, which reads: "YES dude. pls pls pls make a SFW mod for Juniper too. i love this game so much but my autism makes me feel so uncomfortable about her sprites, and they don't really make sense with the otherwise wholesome tone of the game. seems like i'm in the minority for thinking that, but would be awesome if the devs made a "sex sexualized sprites" toggle, or if there was a mod that did that."

To be clear: Fields of Mistria is not a porn game. It is not even an ecchi game — one with mild lewdity that stops short of full-on, explicit nudity or sexual content. These are some characters from Fields of Mistria:

A screenshot from Fields of Mistria showing three pixel art anime-style women, including a tanned woman with pink hair and a low-cut top showing her cleavage, a conservatively dressed blonde, white woman, and a black woman with medium length hair dressed in a somewhat autumnal style.

And this is the specific character the commenter above is getting upset about:

Juniper, a sorceress with dark purple hair. She stands with a hand on her hip and is wearing a cropped top that reveals her cleavage and a sarong-like skirt.

Juniper, a sorceress with dark purple hair. She stands with a hand on her hip and is wearing an elaborate bikini that reveals -- gasp! -- sideboob.

Juniper, a sorceress with dark purple hair. She stands with a hand on her hip and is wearing a black bodysuit with a sheer, partially transparent underlayer. Her cleavage is visible in the plunging neckline of the bodysuit.

Busty? Moderately, but not excessively so. Provocatively dressed? Mildly, but I think we can infer from her facial expression, pose and general demeanour that this is a character that is supposed to be sexy — and moreover, one who is very comfortable with that. This is emphatically not the same as her sprites being "sexual". I know nothing about Fields of Mistria but I can immediately infer the intent behind this character just from looking at these three sprites. And, indeed, her official description backs up pretty much everything I suspected about her — and none of it involves her sexual proclivities:

Juniper is a mysterious sorceress drawn to Mistria when she learns that magical mists and monsters of legend have begun appearing in the area after the recent earthquake. She then starts up a bath house. The bath house is largely a cover for testing her newly empowered potions and spells on the player and other unsuspecting townsfolk, usually resulting in buffs (and occasionally funny accidents)

The crucial thing though? This is not porn. This is not even ecchi levels of provocativeness. (Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things in an appropriate context, anyway!)

This is a character in a fantasy game, dressed in a style that fits with the personality and aesthetic the writers decided that she should have, in the context of the fantasy world. There is nothing offensive about this character unless you specifically choose to make it offensive.

And that is precisely what the commenter above has chosen to do. Not only that — and this really pisses me off — but they have chosen to weaponise autism as their justification for this.

No! You do not get to do that! I am autistic and fuckin' love titties! Your autism has nothing to do with you feeling "uncomfortable about her sprites". And, furthermore, it is the height of fucking disrespect to an artist (and the writers behind that character) to request that a third party deface their artwork so you don't have to confront your inability to process a non-sexual image of a female character that happens to dress in a way that shows a bit of skin.

Go outside! There are people who dress like this! (Maybe not the last one, unless it's a special occasion.) There are people whose bodies look like this! If you go to a swimming pool or beach — shock, horror! — you may even see someone dressed like the image in the middle! If your brain's first response to seeing someone dressed like any of the women above — but particularly the ones with visible cleavage, who may or may not have above-average sized breasts — is to immediately start shouting "I AM THINKING ABOUT SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH YOU" and emitting the "awooga" sound from old Tex Avery cartoons via some unknown part of your body, you have a problem!

And, I hate to break this to you, but it is not autism. It is, at its core, an unwillingness to see a woman as anything other than a sexual object for your own potential gratification. You can try and make yourself out to be "wholesome" by very publicly shouting and screaming about how you don't approve of this and how it makes you so uncomfortable and how this lascivious temptation must be removed from your sight, lest you know not what you might do… but in reality you simply have a problem with a woman dressing the way she wants to dress, expressing herself the way she wants to express herself, and, highly likely, not having sex with you.

I will close with a quote on the matter from the Japanese translator, Thomas James:

Shit like this is why I give wholesome games as a movement a constant stink-eye because what that audience often wants isn't relaxed, low stakes fare. They want content with zero intellectual calories that won't challenge them for being emotionally stunted. What a miserably boring way to consume art.

Quite.

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#oneaday Day 794: Motivational music

It will probably not surprise you to learn that I listen to a lot of video game music. Not only that, but I use video game music as an accompaniment to things that are not video games — most notably, exercise.

On my walks on the Common, I have been rediscovering some of the playlists I made many years ago, and I thought today I would share some of my favourite motivational tracks with you. I highly recommend adding these to an exercise playlist if you're struggling with motivation!

Bein' Friends (Super Smash Bros./Earthbound Beginnings)

I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan of Super Smash Bros. — though I did make an honest attempt to get into it with Ultimate — but I do absolutely love this theme from the "Onett" stage. It's a good one to kick off a workout with because it combines drama, whimsy and triumph into a delightful tune that always makes me smile.

The Elite (Split/Second)

Here's another great one to kick off a workout with, because the beginning just builds anticipation — a fine accompaniment to a warmup, or just as you're getting into the swing of things. Then the main part of the track kicks in and you're ready to explode into action. And possibly have a near-uncontrollable hankering to play Split/Second again. Man, that game was good — and criminally mishandled in the marketplace.

Perfection! Space Elementary School Band! (Space Channel 5 Part 2)

Man, I could pick any number of tracks from both Space Channel 5 games to put in here, but I'll try and restrain myself… a bit. Anyway, this track demonstrates one of the things I love about the soundtrack as a whole: the way that each section starts in a familiar way before branching off into something completely different and sometimes unexpected. I love the high tempo of this one — it's a favourite part of the game, and recalling my enjoyment of the sequence that this track accompanies is a powerful motivating factor, for sure.

Riders of the Light (Bayonetta)

Fly Me To The Moon is, understandably, the Bayonetta theme that gets all the attention, but I always thought this theme was just… better, generally. I know I certainly got absolutely hyped up any time a battle was accompanied by it — and it works great for motivational music, too. My favourite bit is that piano-heavy bit after the initial section. Such delicious chord sequences.

Be The One (Trauma Team)

Finale music is, as you might expect, absolutely great for motivation. This one, from the beginning of the buildup to the grand finale of Atlus' incredible game, Trauma Team, is a good example. We're not taking things too over the top, but we are making it feel like we should be taking whatever we are doing seriously. It doesn't matter if you're out for a walk in the park, putting up shelves or cutting into living flesh (with the flesh owner's consent, of course) — this is music to get you In The Mood to… well, Be The One.

Sins of the Father (Beyond Good and Evil)

Man, what a great game Beyond Good and Evil was. We're never, ever going to see that sequel. But that doesn't matter, because you can put this banging track on when you're doing exercise and you'll feel like you can do anything! Particularly during the bit with the dramatic buildup and the creepy chanting. This track has a few good sections that feels like they're good for "exploding" into action. You'll know them when you hear them.

A Toccata into Blood-Soaked Darkness (Castlevania: Curse of Darkness)

Hitting a wall? What you need is Castlevania! The combination of overdramatic orchestra and Gothic-infused rock and electronic rhythms has always got me fired up, and this particular track is a personal favourite of mine — even though it hails from one of the Castlevania games that I haven't actually played. (PAL copies of this one are pricy today.)

Got all that? Should get you through an evening's workout. And if it doesn't, blast out One-Winged Angel to finish off your session. That'll sort you right out.

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