I happened to "overhear" a conversation on Twitter earlier, such as you do, among some retro gaming enthusiasts. The question posed was something along the lines of "which of these is your favourite: Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario Bros. 3?"

There was, of course, plenty of discussion of the matter, but my immediate reaction to it was, I must confess… "I don't really care".

To clarify, I'm not saying that I dislike either Super Mario Bros. or Super Mario Bros. 3 at this point. Quite the opposite, actually; I very much enjoy both games. My response was more to the discussion itself; this feels like one of many questions that has been discussed many, many times over and over, and it's just not a very interesting one.

Everyone knows by this point that Super Mario Bros. was revolutionary, and that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the perfection of the NES platformer formula. Any time I see something like this — or indeed, say, a respected games writer reveals that a "secret project" is something like a "deep dive into Super Mario Bros. 3", I just can't help but feel a bit bad for the thousands of other games out there that don't get discussed nearly enough. It's as if music critics only discussed Beethoven, or if literary critics only discussed Shakespeare. I'm sure that happens, but in each of these cases, the respective media are much broader than just a single, well-known example.

This is partly what I've always tried to do with MoeGamer. With only a few exceptions — I covered Final Fantasy XV because I was excited for it, and I think it was a noteworthy and interesting game to talk about — I've deliberately tried to explore these lesser-known games in the same amount of depth that the Super Mario Bros. 3s of the world get on a regular basis. Because they're absolutely worth it.

Okay, some of these games may not be innovative or genre-defining, or anything like that. But there are tons of fascinating things to delve into, discuss and contemplate. I've consistently felt since… probably the PS2 era, perhaps even earlier… that the most interesting games are the ones that people aren't talking about. It's why the first PS2 game I bought was Shadow of Memories, not whatever the "big" games around its launch were. It's why my PS4 library doesn't have any triple-A games in in (except, arguably, Nier: Automata, FFXV and maybe The Last Guardian). And why you're almost certainly never going to see a modern EA game on MoeGamer.

To reiterate: I'm not saying the more well-known experiences don't have any value, or aren't worth talking about at all. What I am saying, however, is that I wish a few more people would talk about a few more different games… both from a modern and from a retro perspective.

Oh well. I'm doing my bit, anyway! 🙂

I'll be starting the full Cover Game feature on this later this week, but I thought I'd give you fine Patrons some first impressions on Death End re;Quest, since I've been playing it for the past few evenings and am now about 9 hours in, coming to the end of the second main chapter.

Idea Factory's Galapagos studio has always been a bit experimental, as we've seen with games like Fairy Fencer F (which incorporated some interesting fighting game-esque mechanics such as launchers and pursuit moves into the Neptunia combat engine) and Omega Quintet (which had a gloriously batshit battle system emphasising showmanship over all else), and I'm pleased to report that Death End re;Quest very much continues that tradition, in terms of mechanics, structure and overall themes.

I will, of course, discuss the narrative, themes and characterisation in detail in the Cover Game feature, but suffice to say so far that the combination of isekai, techno-horror, urban legends, conspiracy theories and Japanese ghost stories is proving to be an intoxicating blend that I like very much. It's a really interesting melange of genres, and the divide between the "game" and "real" world you can switch between at will allows you to explore various aspects.

I'm early in the game so far so I suspect the structure will open up somewhat later on, but I'm also finding it interesting to play a Compile Heart RPG that isn't hub-based; instead, Death End re;Quest has an interconnected world divided into zones, and each of the main chapters so far (remember, I'm only just at the end of the second main chapter) seems to revolve around clearing one main, large dungeon. This involves a combination of navigating through the environment in the game world, finding key items (that are, at times, literally keys; at others, event triggers) and, when you run into a seemingly impassable obstacle, switching over to the "real world" for the protagonist not in the game to do some investigation.

It's interesting to play an RPG that has immediate visual novel-style "bad ends", but that's what you get in this game. Thankfully you can save during dialogue sequences as well as at save points, so it's a very good idea to do that just before you make one of the choices that come up over the course of the game! That said, there's actually some incentive to seek out the bad endings, since an "episode list" in the game rewards you with money and items for seeing the various events, including the bad endings.

So far I'm really enjoying it. It's both pleasingly familiar as a Compile Heart game and something a bit different from their usual fare, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it develops over time. I'd been looking forward to this for a while now, and I'm glad that it hasn't been a disappointment!

Watch out for the first part of the Cover Game feature later this week on MoeGamer.

Earlier today, I was immensely saddened to hear of the passing of Prodigy frontman Keith Flint from apparent suicide. He was just 49 years old; that's no age to go at.

I won't go over the usual platitudes that are usually shared at times like this because they've doubtless already been heard all over the Internet several times already today; instead, I'll simply say that I hope he has found peace far away from this troubled world.

I did, however, want to mention exactly what his music meant to me, and thus what his lasting legacy will be for me personally. Because it was a surprise to me that I even got into it in the first place.

Growing up, I wasn't really sure how to develop the "right" opinions about music. My parents mostly approved of me listening to classical music because I was studying piano (and later clarinet and saxophone) and presumably thought this would be a good influence, but as a youngster I craved something that would help me relate a little more to my peers. But what?

The first album I ever bought was Definitely Maybe by Oasis, who were super-cool at the time. Unfortunately I purchased this album literally the day before (What's the Story?) Morning Glory came out, so that didn't help my cool points at all. This is not relevant to the story as a whole, but it's a fun detail that I can look back on and laugh at now.

I wasn't big on electronic music of any variety at the time. This was partly due to a fundamental dislike of music that didn't really have much of a "tune" to it, and also, again, partly down to my parents' influence. They didn't like it, so I felt like I probably shouldn't look into it. (I'd like to clarify at this point that I don't resent my parents' tastes in music whatsoever and indeed there's a lot of stuff that they like that I now like; most of what I describe here is my own childish assumptions about how to develop my own tastes!)

There were two things that changed my thinking on electronic music, though. The first was my first girlfriend Anna, or more specifically her father Richie. Richie was cool. I wasn't familiar with this. I thought my Dad was pretty awesome in various ways (and indeed still do) but Richie was cut from a different cloth to my Dad. He listened to modern music, for one, and specifically he listened to electronic dance music. His daughter wasn't embarrassed to be interested in the same music as him, either, so through a combination of various "Ibiza" albums heard in the car while getting lifts back from various school parties (at which we absolutely were not underage drinking, nosirree) and the music we would typically make out to, I started to understand the appeal of electronic music.

The second was a school trip — I forget where to, but I do remember that for one reason or another, I ended up sitting next to my classmate and namesake Peter. I was never quite sure how I felt about Peter; sometimes we'd get along, sometimes we wouldn't. He wasn't cool, but I'm pretty sure I was even less cool than he was. One time the cool kids in our year tried to arrange A Fight between the pair of us after school. Neither of us attended. He's a furry now.

But I digress. While I was sitting next to Peter, in an uncharacteristic display of willingness to socialise, I asked what he was listening to on his Sony Discman. It turned out to be the single "Breathe" by Prodigy. He invited me to listen. I did. I was absolutely blown away by it; that single was the next CD I bought after that school trip.

From there, I decided to check out the rest of Prodigy's back catalogue, including The Prodigy Experience and Music for the Jilted Generation. I found myself really enjoying both, once again feeling like I'd discovered something that I'd been missing out on, that I was beginning to understand something that had remained out of reach.

Those albums were CDs that I regularly put on all the way through my time at university. They accompanied through late-night essay-writing sessions, through parties-for-no-reason held at various people's houses and flats, and just through life in general. While most of those tracks aren't things that you could "hum", they're all incredibly memorable tracks that, over time, became important to me; meaningful. Not for any particular reason, mind — they just became associated with a time in my life where, for a brief period, I was truly, unconditionally happy.

I think I will bust out those albums for the first time in quite a while this evening in honour of Keith. Rest in peace, sir; you and your friends made quite the impression on me during an exciting and scary period in my life, and I'll be forever grateful for those good times.

This weekend Chris and I recorded a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, and it's a good one that I'm excited to share with you all!

It's currently rendering the video version as I type this, so that should be ready by the morning, and the upload should hopefully be done by lunchtime or so. There will, of course, be a post on MoeGamer to share the episode when it's up.

The episode is on the subject of horizontally scrolling shoot 'em ups, a longstanding favourite genre of mine — though, as I discuss on the show, one that I kind of discounted as something of a "lesser" experience for a good few years during the late 8-bit and early 16-bit computer eras.

It's kind of interesting to me how things like this have ended up in the long run. I vividly recall games magazines complaining about games being "just another shoot 'em up" well into the 1990s, but now, the shoot 'em up is absolutely a beloved — if somewhat niche-interest — genre that is very well-regarded and respected.

Okay, some of the "just another shoot 'em ups" that were released throughout the 8- and 16-bit eras really were worthy of just being dismissed, but I have a funny feeling that there are a lot more interesting games that I passed up on in those periods than I might have originally given them credit for.

Oh well, no time like the present to investigate, is there? You can count on some of that investigation occurring through a combination of the Shmup Essentials column on MoeGamer, and the Atari A to Z videos on YouTube. Besides some of the favourites I discuss on the upcoming podcast, I'm sure there's plenty of cool games just waiting for me to discover…

For now, though, I think it's bedtime. It's 1am; after finishing off the podcast earlier I thought I'd have a quick go at Death End Re;Quest just to say that I've at least started it, and I'm thoroughly interested in what's going on with it. But more on that another time.

Hope you had a pleasant weekend, and that Monday is good to you!

Whew. Good mo… afternoon. Late again, I know, but what are you gonna do.

My lateness today is due, once again, to 428: Shibuya Scramble, which I have now absolutely positively and totally 100% completed with all of its weird secret content. Be sure to check out this week's feature on the game to find out a bit more over on MoeGamer.

So what's next? Well, I've got a podcast to edit first of all, so that's today's job. Chris and I are having a good (and long!) chat about horizontally scrolling shoot 'em ups, a genre we both absolutely adore, so please look forward to that, first of all. Then after that if I have any time remaining this evening I'm going to make a start on the next Cover Game feature which, as I've previously noted a few times, is Idea Factory's Death End Re;Quest, a game I've been very excited to look into for quite some time now.

Further updates as events warrant later today — and $5+ Patrons, I'll get a wallpaper done for you today, too!

On my old #oneaday blog, I posted more articles than I'd like somewhat upset and frustrated at the state of the modern games press. And, it seems, we haven't gone anywhere since that time. If anything, things are getting worse.

Eurogamer recently published its review of Koei Tecmo's new fighting game Dead or Alive 6. As anyone who has been gaming for a while will know, Dead or Alive is a series that has always proudly, unashamedly been about being heavily stylised, delightfully fluid, over the top ridiculous and sexy. It's long had a significant cast of female characters, each of whom have a good amount of characterisation, backstory and unique personality traits, but of course, the one thing that everyone has wanted to focus on ever since the series' inception is the jiggly boob physics.

Right from early Dead or Alive games, there was a setting in the menu to alter boob physics from "vaguely realistic within the constraints of the technology" to "absolutely, hilariously ridiculous". It has always been part of the series. And it has always been nothing more than a bit of fun, complementing the feeling of "sexiness" that the series has always deliberately sought out with both its male and its female characters.

So of course, in Eurogamer's review, this is a massive problem that makes the game "embarrassing" to play, "icky", "grim" and other such childish words. This, of course, completely fails to take into account the fact that this is what fans of the series have come to expect, even demand from Dead or Alive at this point. And you know what? It's fine! It's absolutely fine.

The usual argument against this sort of thing — it happens to Senran Kagura as well — is that it's creepy, borderline pornography. However, this is a stupid argument; pretty much anyone who is in a position to play Dead or Alive or Senran Kagura is doubtless also in a position to be able to get on the Internet, where there is a literally limitless amount of porn through which you can indulge your carnal fantasies. Including, should you so desire, porn of video game characters. Even the ones you might think there really shouldn't be porn of. Yes, even that one.

In other words, someone buying Dead or Alive is doing so because they like Dead or Alive. They like the way it plays. They like its unique mechanics, such as the multi-level stages with destructible scenery and the countering system. They like the cinematic presentation. They like the characters. They like the competitive scene. Hell, some people might even like the complicated, poorly told and largely unfathomable story, never an especially strong point of fighting games but an area in which Team Ninja has at least always made an effort.

I know that if I buy Dead or Alive 6 — and I might well do that, since it's a fighting game series I've always had a good time with without feeling overwhelmed by complicated mechanics — I will be doing so because of all of these reasons. Not because I want to crack one off over Kasumi's thighs, as glorious as they are.

I'm disappointed that this is still where we're are. We've made no progress since all this started at the start of the decade, and in many ways things have become far, far worse. Sites that I once used to respect and go to for my daily gaming news have completely fallen out of my rotation because I simply can't respect the moral grandstanding they churn out on a daily basis.

I wouldn't mind if they acknowledged these "problematic" games in their entirety. But inevitably when you get a review that opens by calling a game "embarrassing", you can count on the reviewer not having engaged with it on anything other than the most superficial of levels. And so, knowing that, I cannot take anything else that writer writes seriously — moreover, despite publications being made up of individual writers rather than a homogeneous mass, I cannot take that publication seriously, either, because that article presumably (hopefully) went through an editorial process at some point. (And if it didn't, even less reason to respect that publication!)

Right. That's enough of that for now, I don't want to get too hung up on this, but I did want to acknowledge it. And, with that in mind, I also wanted to thank you for, through your kind contributions, continuing to support MoeGamer and my work to engage with these games as intended.

Let's have a good day.

Apologies for the late post, folks, for once it wasn't my fault. Last night we were suffering some weird network connectivity issues that for some reason allowed me to upload to YouTube without difficulties, but which broke pretty much every other site on the Internet — even after the uploads were completed, so it wasn't those monopolising the connection.

Anyway, I'm here now. And it's been a pretty horrible day so far; I woke up with one of my occasional bouts of dull pain in my stomach and I knew I was in for a bad morning. For those unaware, I've been struggling with a hernia for a little while now (and, as with many ongoing complaints like this, quite possibly much longer than I'd realised) and occasionally it flares up of a morning. It begins with a dull pain in my stomach then gradually escalates to excruciating agony for about 30-60 minutes or so, during which the best thing to do is take some painkillers and lie on my back screaming for a bit.

During this time, I can actually see and feel the damn thing sticking out well beyond where it's supposed to be, and when it dies down my stomach feels "normal" again. I do not recommend any of this; it's like being in Alien without any of the fun bits.

I've been to see about getting this treated, but I need to lose some weight before it can be treated with minimal risk of it simply coming back again. This was the main thing that triggered Andie and I starting Slimming World again this time around, and we've been seeing some success so far — I got my award for losing 1.5 st in total since just before Christmas last night, so things are moving along at a decent pace. I still have a fair way to go before the stupid thing is no longer at risk of almost immediately coming back if I do get it treated, though, so I'm going to have to continue suffering like this on occasion indefinitely for now. And when the time does come for treatment, I have to confront my crippling fear of hospitals and surgery! Fun. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

To reassure anyone feeling hypochondriac (or whatever the right word is) on my behalf, don't worry, none of this is life-threatening or anything, it's just extremely irritating and painful, and just something I have to live with for now.

Bodies suck. Take good care of yours.

I've been feeling… I don't know if "confident" is quite the right word for it, because confidence is not a super-familiar feeling to me, but I've certainly been feeling a bit "different" just recently.

I think probably the most clear example I've seen of this is that I quite happily sent two online trolls packing this week without particularly breaking a sweat. (It took just four letters to get rid of the one today, in fact, but perhaps that's a story for another day.) Normally this sort of situation would fill me with anxiety and leave me wondering if I'd done the "right" thing (even if I obviously had) but this week? No, I've been feeling… kind of feisty, if I'm honest.

I'm trying to pin down exactly what's caused this because it seems like something I might want to explore if I want to develop my confidence further. There are a couple of possible factors at play here.

Firstly is that I've been having some therapy recently. I've found myself questioning its value a bit as it unfolds exclusively online via text chat and I feel that there's something a little more "weighty" to a face-to-face interaction, but it's with qualified people from the local health service who know what they're talking about, and it's got me thinking about a few things in a few different ways.

Secondly is a simple change to what I've been doing with my work online; as you may well have noticed if you follow my video work, I've been actually appearing on video now rather than just being a disembodied voice. While I quite like the disembodied voice approach, my wife has been assuring me for a while that it would be a good idea to appear "on camera" so people can get a better idea of who is talking to them. I know there are certainly a few content creators out there whose work I enjoy at least partly because of their "facecam" (ProJared is a particularly good example, though a good part of his appeal also comes from "Miss Editor") so, after a bit of consideration about exactly how to do it, I decided to experiment a bit.

And to my surprise, I found myself actually enjoying it and being proud of what I'd created, rather than filled with a sense of revulsion at seeing myself on screen. I have things I can work on, certainly, but I actually feel quite at ease and "natural" both talking to the camera to introduce a video, and as a "facecam" during gameplay. And I think it's made my videos better as a result. And, in turn, thinking that has made me feel a bit better about myself, too.

Perhaps it's a bit of both of those things. Either way, this is a positive development, even if it is just a small one. Here's hoping I can continue to find productive and fun ways to work on my issues!

One of the main reasons I started the Atari A to Z series was to indulge the sense of nostalgia I've had pretty much all my life.

Even when I was a bright-eyed twentysomething at university for the first time (well, all right, maybe not the "bright-eyed" bit) I was nostalgic for the Atari games and software I grew up with. And revisiting it again now, at the age of 37, and being able to share it with people… that's really awesome.

This week's Atari ST A to Z video is really special to me. I didn't really think anything of it when I started making it; I just needed a "W" game. But between recording it and editing it this evening, yes, I've come to realise that this game in particular really means a lot to me. (It meant enough for me to actually play the whole thing through from start to finish on video!) And I'm not entirely sure why; it's a good game that I enjoy playing now and that I enjoyed playing back in the day, but I don't believe I associate any real specific memories with it.

Perhaps it's just a reminder of good times with family. I had my various struggles growing up, as anyone does, but on the whole my home life was pretty content and comfortable. And I think this game is just one that I associate with that general feeling of "home".

What's the game? Well, here's a "rendering in progress" teaser… if you don't recognise it, you'll have to wait until Thursday to find out for sure!

Graaah. After all that video footage recording over the weekend, I've been having a few frustrations with it… and annoyingly, I suspect it's to do with the software that I have, up until now, used without issue.

I've been using the video editing software Hitfilm Express to produce my videos for a while now. It's a great piece of software with some excellent compositing features; the latter aspect, if you're unfamiliar, is especially good for overlaying titles, special effects and suchlike, allowing you to use Photoshop-esque "layers" to arrange things as you see fit, then integrate them with some existing footage. For my purposes, it's been great for titles, little visual jokes and integrating "facecam" footage.

However, with the latest update to Hitfilm Express, there appear to be some audio-video sync issues that weren't there before. The footage I import from my camera drifts out of sync with the audio I record on my microphone, making it very difficult to do the "facecam" stuff. It's not completely impossible thanks to the magic of editing, but it's not especially practical.

I'm going to try Sony Vegas this evening, which a number of people have recommended, and see if that helps. That's paid rather than free (Hitfilm Express is free, which is another reason I like it!) but if it does the job better I might have to switch! Thankfully there's a free trial I can evaluate it with.