#oneaday Day 628: Return to UFO 50

I played a lot of UFO 50 when it first released back in September of 2024, but I decided to hold fire on further exploration when I learned that there was a physical release of the Switch version on the way. Not only that, but it would have a rather cool limited edition that came with a bunch of extra "feelies" to help sell the fantasy that you were exploring a "lost" games console. You can read all about that special edition over on MoeGamer, and I'll be returning to commentary on each of the individual games shortly.

I just wanted to talk about the package generally this evening, and a little about Night Manor, the game that I've played through this evening. It's an adventure game in the mould of Icom Simulations' adventure games (Shadowgate, Uninvited, Deja Vu and the like) but, like most of UFO 50's other games, with a few subtle modernisations to make it a tad less frustrating — like not being able to die permanently.

The thing that impresses me about UFO 50 the most is not just the fact that it's a collection of 50 excellent games, it's that each and every one of these games, in its own way, pays absolutely perfect homage to a particular aspect of retro gaming. In the case of Night Manor, it's clear that the whole thing was an Icom Simulations homage from the moment the opening line began "The last thing you remember is…" — which is the opener for pretty much all of the old games it's paying tribute to.

The most astonishing thing about the package as a whole is that all the games feel fully fleshed out in their own right. Sure, some are fairly short, but so were real games from the '80s. I haven't played any of the RPGs from the collection as yet, so it will be interesting to see if those feel like they're "rushing" through, or if have a decent amount of substance to them. But definitely when it comes to things like arcade-style games and adventures, it absolutely was not at all unusual for a game to be over within a couple of hours — sometimes less.

Of course, real retro games — and, indeed, many of UFO 50's titles — are designed to be replayed and enjoyed over and over again, particularly where there is a skill-based element that rewards the player with score or something similar. Even Night Manor in UFO 50 has a certain amount of replay value — alternative endings for beating the game without suffering any unfortunate mishaps, an outright alternative solution, and even a secret mode accessible via a "terminal" command that presents you with "a more lighthearted version" of the game. And, indeed, there are several older retro games that I have played over and over again, simply because I enjoy them — see: various Sierra and LucasArts adventures, to name just a few.

UFO 50 really is an absolute masterclass in game design, because it demonstrates both an understanding of where video games were in the past, and how they've evolved over time. The result, a collection of fake retro-style games designed with subtle modern sensibilities baked into them, is a truly wonderful piece of interactive entertainment that I anticipate I'm going to be spending a lot of time with over the coming months.

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 627: Finding your niche

I was a bit of a latecomer to YouTube. I remember a friend of mine trying to encourage me to follow some of the YouTubers she liked, and feeling curiously resistant to it all. In some respects, I am still quite resistant to certain quarters of YouTube — I have no intention of ever watching a Mr. Beast video, for example — but it's fair to say at this point that YouTube, as a general cultural entity, is an important part of my daily life for various reasons.

One of the things that I've particularly enjoyed about more actively engaging with YouTube over the last decade or so is coming across channels that have very much found their niche, and stick to it. Sometimes this is as simple as "gaming", but oftentimes I find that the most interesting and enjoyable channels are those that get a little more granular: those that choose to focus on a specific aspect of something that they enjoy and dive deep into that.

This can take many forms, so I want to share a few favourite channels in this regard today. Not all of them are gaming related, but all of them are run by people who have found something they enjoy doing and continue to do just that, often regardless of what "the algorithm" supposedly wants or viewing figures. I respect this because it's what I aspire to do with my channel; while my YouTube channel is broadly a "variety gaming" channel with a focus on retro, my preference is to explore overlooked and underappreciated games and platforms from over the years — and sometimes to give games that had a less than stellar reception on their original release another chance.

But I digress. This is not about me. This is about some channels I enjoy, so let's go on a little wander around YouTube, shall we?

Yesterzine

As you probably know if you've been reading this for any length of time, I enjoy old video game magazines, and as such I'm gratified to see how many people out there enjoy making videos and writing about them. One of my favourites is Yesterzine, a channel that describes itself as "The Literal Magazine Show", because it takes a "magazine show" format and is also about magazines, you see?

Presenter Dudley (who, full disclosure, I Actually Know) has a characteristically deadpan style that works well with the show's humour. He strikes a good balance between acknowledging and celebrating the original cultural context of these publications and providing appropriate modern commentary and criticism of aspects that, in retrospect, have not aged well for one reason or another.

Yesterzine videos are worth sitting down and paying attention to rather than putting on in the background, and with such a rich vein of classic magazines to draw on for future episodes, it's a show that will continue for as long as Dudley can be bothered, and he's showing no signs of slowing down just yet.

Zilog and Moto

I've always enjoyed Sega games, particularly from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. In fact, if you follow my YouTube channel, you'll notice I'm going through a bit of a Master System phase right now.

Zilog and Moto is a channel with a bold aim: to collect all the English language releases for Master System, Mega Drive/Genesis, Mega CD and 32X, then play and review all of them. Presenter Dave is making good progress in both regards so far. His videos are simply presented but effective in what they do, consisting of a short introduction to camera, a look at the game's physical component and then some commentary on how it actually plays.

Dave clearly spends time with each and every game and gives it a proper chance — even in the case of notoriously bad titles. Sometimes this leads to pleasant surprises… and, of course, sometimes those poor receptions are well-deserved. Either way, an episode of Zilog and Moto is always a worthwhile watch if you're an old-school Sega fan.

League of Extraordinary Board Games

This channel, a collaborative affair between well-known tat acquirer Stuart Ashen, CheapShow's Paul Gannon and movie enthusiast Oliver Harper, has a simple premise: dig out an old, obscure board game of the ilk you would have once got at a jumble sale, then give it an honest shot to see if it's any good.

The trio doesn't always get through a full game of something — particularly if it looks like running particularly long, or if it is clear that the game itself is not actually very fun — but they always give it a chance.

It's especially interesting to see the variety of licensed board games based on TV shows — I have fond memories of these from back in the day and wish I'd held on to more of the ones that I used to have copies of. As it stands, all I still have is a copy of MB Games' adaptation of Williams' arcade game Defender.

Anyway, this has a similar feel to Gannon's CheapShow: the sense that you're being let in on a group of friends just having fun together. A good show for when you're feeling a bit lonely.

Lord Heath

I won't lie: I found Lord Heath's channel because of his frankly astonishing fart videos, one of which can optionally be enjoyed above. But I've been enjoying his other… err… output too, the majority of which are the rather more socially acceptable and/or safe for work reviews of drinks.

These are short, simple, self-explanatory videos: he tries a drink, he gives his thoughts on it. Most of them are under three minutes long, but they're all rather entertaining; Lord Heath himself is a joyfully exuberant character who is not afraid to make a twat of himself in public, and he always makes a point of shooting his videos in some pleasantly picturesque locations.

In many respects, this is perhaps the purest example of what I'm talking about today: he's clearly got a vision in his head for what his YouTube channel should be, farts and all, and he's stuck with it. He's not trying to be Internet famous; he's not trying to clickbait; he's just a cheeky chappy who likes burping, farting and trying an increasingly esoteric selection of beverages. Eternal respect to him.

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#oneaday Day 626: Restless

I'm having one of those frustratingly "restless" periods when it comes to my free time at the moment. I've got a few games on the go, but somehow none of them have quite "grabbed" me completely yet. I did at least manage to finish Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment a little while back, though, so that was nice to finally get that ticked off the list.

Let's ponder the other things I've got on the go, then.

First up is Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, which, I don't know, just hasn't clicked with me in quite the same way as some of the other entries in the series. I feel like it's succumbed a little to the "bloat" that a lot of modern games end up with, boasting myriad collectables and optional little bits and pieces to make you feel like you haven't really beaten the game unless you've done all the optional stuff. And the optional stuff just… well, it isn't really very fun. I might just plough on with the story — which I am enjoying, at least — and leave it at that. I want to punch whoever decided that the documents you find around the levels are called "Readables", though. "Documents" or "Files" would have been perfectly fine.

Next up is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which I actually haven't really touched since before Christmas, but I hadn't really got that far in the story with anyway. I was enjoying it a decent amount and had got a fair amount done; the thing I particularly like about that game is something I also appreciated in Breath of the Wild: at any given time, you can just start walking in a direction and you'll stumble across something interesting, with many of these things being unscripted. I like this! It works well for Zelda. But, like its predecessor, the sheer size of the game is a little overwhelming, and starting it gives one the feeling that one will never, ever finish it. But I did finish Breath of the Wild — not to 100% completion or anything, because that seems like a fool's game — and so I'm sure I can do the same with Tears of the Kingdom.

Next up is Lost Odyssey, which I've been meaning to get to for ages. I was having a real hankering for just a straightforward, conventional RPG, so I thought it was time to kick it off. I really like what I've seen so far, though the first two bosses are absolutely brutal, which gave me a certain amount of pause. I understand that these two bosses are notoriously difficult, and the game should be a bit of a smoother ride from hereon, so given that I've been enjoying what I've played so far, this is probably going to be the "priority" for the immediate future.

Then there's Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, which I started playing at the end of last year and was enjoying, but burnt myself out on a bit by getting a little obsessive over level grinding. I don't quite feel ready to go back to that one just yet.

At the same time as all this, I also kind of fancy playing a gridder dungeon crawler. But then I worry that having too many RPGs on the go will overload my brain. So that's probably not a good idea.

I think my immediate priorities are going to be Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus to get it ticked off the list so I can write about it, and Lost Odyssey, because that's probably the thing I'm enjoying the most at the moment. Tears of the Kingdom can be my "backup" game for when I don't fancy either of those things. And I shall repeatedly tell myself not to feel any guilt if there are evenings when I just feel like going and playing Sega Master System games all night.

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#oneaday Day 625: It sucks to see someone defeated

I am, as I've mentioned a number of times in the past, a big fan of Mark Bussler's Classic Game Room video series. It's one of several things on YouTube that I found enormously inspirational in starting up my own channel, and his many, many videos on classic retro games are among my most-replayed YouTube videos.

I've known for a long time that Bussler was intensely dissatisfied with the way the online landscape had been going — and how it had meant that something he once clearly loved doing had become something that it felt like it was pointless to carry on with. After he stopped doing Classic Game Room as his main thing, he tried various other projects online, but has seemingly met with nothing but frustration with pretty much every one of them.

I still follow his Patreon for updates on what he's up to, and today he mentioned that people should have a look at his website, classicgameroom.com, to see what he's up to, since he doesn't really do social media any more. And his FAQs made me feel very sad indeed.

The question he gets more than anything else, I reckon, is "is Classic Game Room coming back?" and his answer is simple:

No. The Classic Game Room video game review series is permanently discontinued. There are no plans to bring the video series back in any way on any platform.

He expands on the reasons thus:

After the YouTube channel was largely demonetized, people stopped watching in favour of influencers and short-form videos. No other formats seemed to work. After a few different format changes, the show is now discontinued.

The cynics would say that this was just Bussler failing to adapt to the changing media landscape online, and that's not an incorrect statement to make, but the thing that makes me so sad about all this is that there is demand for stuff that isn't influencer-led short-form content. Just not enough to be commercially viable, unfortunately; not enough for one of the OG online video creators to want to continue with the thing that made him famous — and which, I suspect, is at this point completely unknown to a couple of generations of people.

Bussler worked hard on Classic Game Room and his other projects, and it must have been so frustrating for him to continually feel his efforts knocked back — particularly when he tried all manner of different things after it seemed that Classic Game Room had, for one reason or another, fallen out of favour.

So I'm sad for him. I'm sad that he has felt the need to, in his words, "permanently retire from filmmaking, game journalism and animation". At the same time, I completely understand why he has taken that decision. Again, in his own words:

Mark spends his free time reading and biking instead of using garbage social media apps. He has no patience for algorithms and prefers looking at old-fashioned paper.

I completely understand why one would want to retire from the Internet in this age of relentless, pointless, disposable short-form content. I often feel like I want to do so, too. I've spent many years carving out a little corner of the Internet that I can feel proud of with places like this blog, MoeGamer and my YouTube channel, but sometimes it all feels incredibly pointless.

I'm sad to see someone whose work I enjoyed, and that I respected immensely, be so completely and utterly defeated by what passes for "culture" online today. I'm sad because I know how he feels. I understand why he's so frustrated. And I don't know how we fix this — or if it's even possible at this point.

Perhaps it's all part of getting old. You pass beyond a point of relevance, and the world feels like it isn't "yours" any more. Perhaps we all reach this point. But that seems like a bit of an inefficient way for everyone to live their lives. Surely there's a way for different types of "stuff" to coexist, without everything having to be dominated by whatever the latest "viral" bullshit is?

Apparently not. But oh well. I'm not going anywhere just yet. Even if no-one's reading, watching or listening, I still enjoy the act of creating something. It gives me some satisfaction — and it's perhaps for the best that I've never got to a point where I'd be tempted to try and use online content creation (ugh) as my main source of income.

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#oneaday Day 624: Revisionist gaming history

A few weeks back, someone started an argument with me about Final Fantasy VIII. They asserted that everyone had always hated Final Fantasy VIII, and that I was somehow wrong for remembering that my friends and I were super-hyped for it, enjoyed it immensely when it came out, and that reviews of the time were also very kind to it. Review scores aren't the be-all and end-all, of course, but they do act as a pretty good barometer of roughly how positive the critical reception for a given title was.

I bowed out of the conversation early on because it was pretty clear from the outset that the person attempting to start this argument was not going to listen to any viewpoint other than their own, even when it was coming from someone who lived through the experience of that game coming out, and they just wanted to hate on something that had, in recent years, become fashionable to bash.

Now, I'm not going to attempt to convince you one way or the other about Final Fantasy VIII at this point. It's one of those games that you either "get" or you don't, and I don't blame anyone who doesn't "get" it. But to extend "I don't get this" out to "everyone everywhere always hated this" is ridiculous. It's absolute revisionist history, and it's something that drives me absolutely bonkers about online discourse over video games these days.

It happens with more recent games, too. Take Mario Kart World, a game which does some really interesting things with the Mario Kart formula, and one which is designed with so much polish that I really can't take anyone who says it is a "bad" game seriously. And yet to some folks it is "the worst Mario Kart there has ever been" and, again, "everyone hated it". No, no they did not.

Or another example: I saw a post just this evening that implied that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was a bad game, primarily due to the fact that none of the original team who worked on the first ever The Legend of Zelda game (which is celebrating an anniversary milestone right now) worked on it. I take two issues with this: one, that everyone who worked on the original The Legend of Zelda is probably either an old man or dead at this point, and thus should be left to get on with their life in peace, and two, Echoes of Wisdom wasn't a bad game! Not even a little bit!

EDIT: The account in question has since clarified that they meant it was "sad" that Echoes of Wisdom was the first game without any of the original team that was involved, not that they thought it was a "sad" game due to it not being any good. I have left the preceding paragraph as-is to take ownership of my own misunderstanding — and to acknowledge that I wasn't alone in it, hence the account's clarification of what they said.

And don't even get me started on Final Fantasy XIII.

There is one thing that all these examples have in common, though, and that is the fact that all of them do something different to what is expected as "the norm" in their respective series. For Final Fantasy VIII and XIII, this should be no surprise to anyone who has ever paid attention to the series and its core philosophy of "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy" (as I wrote about nearly ten years ago right here), but, to this day, people are confused by the fact that Final Fantasy VIII and XIII are very unconventional in a lot of ways. (Interestingly, very few people seem to have a problem with Final Fantasy XII these days, despite, in many ways, it being a way more significant disruption from the series "usual format" than many other entries.)

For Mario Kart World and Echoes of Wisdom, those two games were always in a bit of a no-win situation. Do something the same as previous games and they would be regarded as pointless and unambitious. Do something a bit different, as they both did, and people complain that they're not like all the other games in the series! Seriously daft.

The most annoying thing about this constant revisionist history is that it makes it impossible to have sensible discussions about these games. Pretty much as soon as it became clear someone was spoiling for a fight over having the "correct" opinion about Final Fantasy VIII (and what "everybody" thought of it, apparently), the entire thread derailed and became impossible to have a reasonable discussion in. Anyone who attempted to highlight the things that they, in fact, liked about it was shouted down, and it just became pointless to even try. I've seen enough threads like that in my time to know that it really wasn't worth trying in the first place, which is why I bowed out of it early.

When it comes to Final Fantasy VIII, I'll just leave you with one little story from my past. In the period between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII coming out, our friendship group had a perpetually running joke with the local computer shop owner, in which literally every time we went in there (and we went in there a lot), we would ask him if he knew when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out, to which he would reply by mumbling something mostly incoherent about "stocks". This became such a notorious exchange among our friendship group that during our obsession with the Klik and Play games-making software, one of our number immortalised the discussion in his project Resident Evil EX, by incorporating a fully-voiced scene in which the protagonist, Agent Wesley Wilson, would walk into a computer store in the in-game mall, ask if the shopkeeper knew when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out, to which he would reply "asfhgblaskbkljblkl stocks".

That's how excited we were for Final Fantasy VIII to come out. And when it eventually did come out, I had people in my university room almost every night to come watch and see what would happen next.

So don't fuckin' tell me that "everyone always hated" something. Because, inevitably, it isn't true. In pretty much every instance like this, what the person saying that "everyone always hated" something means is "I didn't really like this" and "I'm unwilling to entertain the possibility that anyone else did".

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#oneaday Day 623: The slow, agonising death of Xbox

In case you missed today's news, Xbox head Phil Spencer is "retiring", and his supposed heir apparent, Sarah Bond, has also resigned. Replacing Spencer is Asha Sharma, an AI person who has said that there will be no AI slop on Xbox. Suuuuure there won't.

The continual mismanagement of the Xbox brand pretty much ever since the Xbox One was first announced has been fascinating and horrifying to watch. Everyone knew something was up as soon as we saw "TV, TV, TV" and it hasn't really gotten any better since.

Oh, I know some of you are thinking "what about Game Pass?" and, to be sure, Game Pass seemed like a good thing for a while. Pay a monthly subscription and get access to loads of games? Brilliant! I'll never finish a video game ever again!

Of course, Game Pass wasn't so rosy for developers who were getting the video game equivalent of Spotify's fractions of a penny per stream, but the consumers didn't care about that, they got "free" games!

Today, I have seen some begrudging acceptance that Game Pass may have played at least a little role in the Xbox brand's current and ongoing woes, and I have to say, it's a tad frustrating. Those of us who saw Game Pass for what it was from the beginning have been screaming from the rooftops that this situation was inevitable for literally years at this point, and now you go "oh yeah, maybe that was an issue"? Come the fuck on.

Regardless, I cannot remember the last time Xbox announced anything that I was even a little bit excited by. I can barely name any things that are "iconically Xbox" at this point, because all their big franchises have jumped ship to other platforms — including their biggest rival, Sony, in numerous cases. So what reason even is there to own an Xbox at this point?

That's the root of the problem, really. There is no reason to own an Xbox. Couple that with confusing messaging about exactly what an Xbox "is" — I still maintain that going Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X is just bafflingly stupid branding, particularly given that consumers were demonstrably dumb enough to not know Wii U was a distinct thing from the Wii — and you have a disaster waiting to happen. Xbox didn't even really have the distinction of being a "Game Pass box", because you can get Game Pass on PC, too, and even stream a bunch of stuff without having gaming hardware up to the job of running these things locally!

I genuinely, truly believe that there's a fascinating story behind the scenes here, and I hope that one day it will be told. I feel like it will make a great book. For now, I can look back on the two Xbox generations that were actually good — the one where it was a stealth Dreamcast successor, and the one where it comfortably led the entire pack — and still enjoy those games, while shaking my head at the veritable litany of errors that have transpired since those days.

The games industry is in a funny old place right now. Between Sony shuttering Bluepoint Studio without allowing them to do the one thing that they're good at — remaking games — and this latest Xbox shenanigans, this feels very much like the high-end of things starting to crumble and collapse. When the dust settles, there will still be a games industry, but it's going to have to look and operate very differently from today if it wants to survive.

Turns out chasing perpetual growth in the name of the rot economy doesn't actually pay off. Whoever could have seen that coming?!

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#oneaday Day 621: Tired

I am, as these things tend to go, back from my day at the office, following a horrible long drive home in the cold and wet, featuring a stop for a Burger King at Fleet Services that I honestly kind of regret now. I got back too late to pick up my prescription from Tesco, too, so that was annoying. If I hadn't stopped for the Burger King I might have made it. But oh well.

As a result of all this, I am extremely tired and my brain feels like it is firing on roughly 30% capacity. As such, I have started writing this without any particular topic in mind, so I'm just going to babble my way through it until I've done enough words to satisfy myself, and then, honestly, probably just go to bed.

Ooh, here's something I can talk about. Last night I got around to finally watching Pixels to Pages: The Story of Electronic Gaming Monthly, a well-regarded documentary put together as a collaborative affair between the My Life in Gaming and Game Sack channels. I have slightly mixed views on it, because while I cannot deny that it was a well-crafted, well-produced and beautifully edited documentary, it purports to be "the story of Electronic Gaming Monthly" while it is, in fact, "the story of Electronic Gaming Monthly's early years".

Since, as a Brit, I came to EGM rather late, primarily due to my brother taking up the Editor-in-Chief's reins in 1998, I only really knew it from when it was well into the Ziff-Davis era, and the documentary was disappointingly scant on anything from that age of the magazine. My brother got a passing mention as "they got some new guy in, I think he was from England?" and that was it; the vast majority of the documentary focused on the people who helped start it at Sendai Publications, with a few contributions from Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation and Dan "Shoe" Hsu, who joined EGM in 1996 and remained with it until 2008.

For context, EGM ran between 1988 and 2009, and the Ziff era started in 1996. To be fair, the story of EGM's early days is fascinating, and its history is populated by real characters, but it just seemed a bit odd for the documentary to position itself as telling the story of a publication and then just… not really acknowledge anything that happened after 1996 beyond a brief, cursory mention. I'm not just saying this because I'm biased and want to see a family member's contributions to the publication's legacy acknowledged — though that is, of course, part of it — it just felt a little odd to rush through a good 12 years of the magazine's existence as if they didn't matter.

Still, like I say, the documentary is a worthwhile watch, and even with its specific focus it's quite a lengthy affair. It's entirely possible that they just decided to focus on the early days because they thought that was the most interesting story to tell — and I reiterate, it is an interesting story! — or perhaps there was some reason people from the Ziff era were unable or unwilling to contribute their voices to the whole thing. The net result was that it left me with somewhat mixed feelings about the project as a whole, but happy to recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter.

Among other things, this documentary, along with the continuing excellent work of the Fun Factor podcast, has rekindled a desire to do more Magazine Stuff on my YouTube channel. So I'm going to do exactly that this weekend. There's a lot of different things I would like to cover, so you'll have to wait and see what I decide to do!

Anyway, that's enough of that. Time for bed.

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#oneaday Day 618: Triple threat

Had a productive weekend of making some videos. There are three new ones on the way soon, and I've got another Wolfenstein one with its voiceover recorded that just needs assembling into some sort of shape.

For the upcoming videos, there's a couple of Master System games involved. The Sega Master System is a platform that I'm very fond of that doesn't get nearly enough love — and which I haven't spent nearly enough time fiddling with, either. So these two games will likely be the first of many in total. I'm looking forward to exploring the library further, because as a Japanese console that was particularly popular in Europe and failed to make any sort of impact whatsoever in America, it's a thoroughly interesting platform.

It's one of those situations where I'm not entirely sure why it never broke America, either. In technical terms, it's quite a bit better than the NES, but as numerous generations of console hardware dominated by Nintendo have shown, it's not always the most powerful system that wins the race. You've gotta have the games, you've gotta have the cultural penetration, and you've gotta have a lot of luck.

I guess one could argue that the NES has more "iconic" games — there are three Super Mario Bros. games alone on it — but the Master System has some solid versions of Sega arcade classics, and some truly excellent Sonic the Hedgehog games. While not as fancy-looking and sounding as their 16-bit counterparts, many argue that the Master System Sonic games are, in fact, the better entries in the series. I haven't quite made my mind up in that regard — I do love a 16-bit Sonic — but I do know from covering a huge heap of Sonic games a few years back on MoeGamer that the 8-bit Sonic games are very good indeed. (Just avoid the Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.)

Anyway, the Master System games I covered today come from two extremes of the "spectrum", if you want to call it that. There's one game that I imagine is pretty readily available for not much money (although interestingly CEX doesn't appear to have it listed) and another that is notoriously rare and expensive. After beating it in half an hour today, I'm glad I haven't spent £400 on it. It was fun for that half an hour, at least.

So yeah. Those videos, along with an Atari 8-bit port of a true classic, are on the way for the coming week. Watch out for them and please enjoy them when they're live! Or don't, if you don't want to, particularly after what I said yesterday. But it'd be nice if you did. My channel's over here, if you've never paid it a visit.

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#oneaday Day 617: Single screen

There are a few people I follow (and a few I've followed recently) that I primarily followed because I like what they do in terms of streaming — but I'm almost certainly never going to watch them. This is not because I dislike or do not enjoy what they do on their streams, but because I honestly don't understand how anyone has the time to sit and watch streamers.

This is probably at least partly a "me" problem. I am the sort of person who prefers to engage in a single activity at a time. If I'm playing a game, that's all I'm doing; splitting my attention between that and a podcast, video or stream feels like I'm being disrespectful to the developers of the game; they crafted it to be paid attention to, after all, and thus I feel like the least I can do is appreciate it as intended, with my full attention.

I sometimes feel like I'm in a bit of a minority in doing this, though. People talk a lot about "second screen content" — some streamers, like the excellent Josh Strife Hayes, make a recurring joke about it — but I've tried, and I just can't do it. The way my attentiveness works is that I can pay attention to one thing or the other, not both. If I'm paying attention to the game, I'm not listening to the podcast, video or stream; if I'm paying attention to the podcast, video or stream, I'm not giving the game my full attention.

I guess part of this is down to the games I play. I don't play any multiplayer-centric games or MMOs that demand you repeat things over and over again, and thus I don't really play anything that really lends itself to dividing your attention away from it. I am, as I always have been, generally inclined towards games with interesting stories or compelling mechanics, and in both of those instances you are robbing yourself of the full experience if you're not giving those your full attention. Perhaps I might feel a bit differently if I was grinding my way through a Battle Pass (ugh) or still on the Tomestone grind in Final Fantasy XIV, but I am not doing either of those things right now. I'm not ruling out a return to Final Fantasy XIV at some point, but I'm pretty certain my days of playing that game hardcore are well and truly behind me.

I mean, I guess I could have put a podcast or video or stream on while I was playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment recently? There are some repetitive missions in that, but then there are also story missions where I want to pay attention to what's going on, and I like enjoying the whole audio-visual experience of that game: the graphics; the sound; the music; the voice acting. Now I've reached the postgame, I could feasibly grind my way through some of those challenges with divided attention, but I'm not sure I'm going to do that; I'm likely going to move on to something else instead, and maybe dip into the postgame any time I just feel like punching Moblins.

My wife, meanwhile, has YouTube videos on constantly, whether she's playing Final Fantasy XIV or whichever farming and crafting game has caught her attention recently. She even does some work sometimes, inevitably with a YouTube video on.

See, I even find it quite difficult to do work with a distraction like a video, podcast or stream; I do work quite well with a musical accompaniment, mind. I think it's the talking. If someone is talking, my mind tells me, repeatedly, pay attention to this. And if, for whatever reason, I'm not able to, I start to feel genuinely stressed out. I know this because I'm very conscious of it any time someone tries to talk to me while I'm in the middle of, say, watching a video, or TV show, or something like that. Two people talking at the same time makes my brain melt and I don't like it.

The other completely unrelated issue is that many of the streamers I might otherwise be inclined to watch are often playing games that I want to play at some point. And if I haven't played that game myself yet, I will tend to avoid anything else about it online (including reviews) until I have at least tried it for myself. That's just a habit I've fallen into — although I must admit, there have been occasions where I have watched a YouTuber like GameGrumps or ProJared play something and thought "yeah, that looks fun, I'll give it a go myself".

Because yes, it's not that I don't watch any video game stuff online at all. We quite often watch Game Grumps with lunch or dinner. But those are 20-30 minutes at most, focused on the game (well, focused on Arin and Dan's experience of playing the game, at least) and coming to a clear conclusion after a set amount of time. Your average stream, meanwhile, is several hours long and includes boring bits of downtime, shout-outs to donations and subscribers and all that stuff, and I just find all that very distracting.

I dunno. I guess I just have to come to the conclusion that there are parts of the Internet experience today that I just don't really get and probably won't ever get. And I think I'm fine with that.

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#oneaday Day 613: The impenetrability of certain sports games

One thing I found while doing my Atari A to Z Flashback series a few years back was that I actually rather enjoyed a lot of Atari 2600 sports games — because they put "being a fun video game" first, a realistic simulation of the sport a distant second. Likewise, I rather enjoy Irem's 10 Yard Fight, as it is by far the most accessible take on American football I think I've ever seen — with Doug Neubauer's Super Football for Atari 2600 close behind.

The reason these games are so accessible is because they implement the sort of basic understanding of the rules that can be picked up very quickly and don't get bogged down in the intricacies. They don't assume knowledge beyond "man kick ball, score point" and don't throw you in at the deep end with a series of impenetrable-seeming options that, as a beginner, you have no idea what to do with.

I've felt like this about American football titles in particular for a very long time, ever since I first played the original John Madden Football on Sega Mega Drive all those years ago. Yes, the parallaxing, quasi-3D field was super-impressive, and back then that was reason enough to boot the game up, but as soon as those "play selection" screens popped up, I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do with them.

And what's worse, the documentation for those games doesn't explain anything about it, either — meaning that, for someone who has only ever been vaguely aware of American football as a sport that exists, and who occasionally was allowed to stay up late with his Dad to watch it on Channel 4, there is seemingly no real route "in" to picking up and enjoying these games. And, rather than modern games getting more accessible and inclusive, they've just become more and more complex over time.

I feel the same about wrestling games. The last time I played a wrestling game was Smackdown 2 on the original PlayStation, and I didn't entirely understand what was going on there. Oh, sure, I knew what the buttons did, but not how you were actually supposed to use those buttons effectively to demonstrate your skill at the game.

I've tried wrestling games that came out both before and after it, and I have not found a single one where I felt comfortable that I could explain to anyone else "how to play". At least Smackdown 2 had that incredible character creator, and to be honest, that was where the majority of the appeal was — we had many a drunken night at university making digital recreations of people we knew, cartoon characters and, on one memorable occasion where my friend managed to get the sliders to go outside of their usual ranges, an absolutely horrific looking monster known as "The Freak", who would burst on stage with his iconic war cry, "Baggogh!", and stare his opponents down with a growled "Durgogh."

Every so often, I get a strange urge to want to learn how to play either American football and/or wrestling games. And every time I am hit with the same issue: there does not appear to be any good way to "learn" them. There do not appear to be any helpful guides online that don't assume you already know how to play the games (and have an in-depth knowledge of the sports themselves); the documentation for them is threadbare at best and non-existent at worst; and any "tutorial" or "training" modes in the games focus on telling you which button does what, rather than actually how to play effectively.

I feel like there would be a good article or two in learning how to play these games! I could even tell other people how to learn how to play them, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who has looked at these two genres (and other, related types of game like, say, baseball, or football management) and thought "I'd bet I'd like that if I understood it"!

Only trouble is, I don't understand them. And I don't even know where to begin doing something about that!

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