I failed in my habit-establishing today. I either slept through my alarm or just fell asleep again. Either way, my body was apparently telling me I needed to rest a bit more. So I did.

I'm not going to let this discourage me, however. Establishing new habits takes time and willpower, and there will be failures along the way. And that's fine; failures are part of those challenges, and when they're failures that don't really affect anyone or let anyone down, I don't mind them too much. (Failures where I do feel like I've let other people down, meanwhile… I will dwell on those for weeks, months, years afterwards.)

I've been up and down fairly wildly in terms of mental health and overall emotional wellbeing recently, but today I'm feeling reasonably positive. I'm pleased with how the latest episode of The MoeGamer Podcast came out, I'm enjoying the things I'm writing about and I'm making my best efforts to improve myself in a few ways, both physically and mentally. There will continue to be struggles, I'm sure, but for today at least, I don't feel too bad. Aside from the usual desire for the working week to be shorter, but I don't think that's particularly unusual for anyone to be feeling at this time on a Tuesday.

I spent some time recording some new Atari ST A to Z videos last night, including a number of games that I haven't tried before — Quartz by Paul Shirley was a particular highlight, and you should see that later this week. I've also been playing a bunch of games on the Atari Flashback Classics collection and found myself worryingly addicted to Pool Shark, which is a stupid game, but an entertaining one. Sometimes stupid is good. Sometimes stupid is ideal for playing on the toilet. Sometimes you want to keep playing stupid until you achieve some sort of arbitrary goal like, say, potting all the balls in the space of 30 seconds. (I did it. Eventually.)

Later today, we've got a new Atari A to Z video and an article about a long-awaited (by me, anyway) sequel to an RPG/visual novel/life sim hybrid I liked a lot when I played it a few years back. And more Atelier Meruru… God, I love that game.

In the meantime, I have a working day to get through, so wish me luck with that, and I hope you have a good day!

I feel like I've developed something of an appreciation for virtual costume design quite recently.

I mean, I've always appreciated a character with a good, interesting design, but just recently I feel like I've been enjoying a particular appreciation of how a character dresses: as a means of that character expressing who they are, their role in the story, the themes of the story and all manner of other things.

There are simpler ways to enjoy costumes too, however, and I've been feeling these things quite acutely recently.

I'm quite a "tactile" person, for want of a better description. I enjoy the sensation of touching things, feeling their texture and perhaps how they "move" if they're a container of some sort. I'm particularly fascinated with very soft textures; if I find something that is particularly pleasing to the touch in this regard, I'll often spend a very long time idly touching it in various ways. It's why I enjoy petting my cat so much; she is very soft.

I believe all this is something to do with being "on the spectrum", as it were, although I believe sensitivity to touch relating to autism more commonly manifests itself as an aversion to touching things or being touched, so I don't know. I don't pretend to understand it all. All I know is soft thing good.

Which is why I like Meruru from Atelier Meruru so much.

Meruru's design is pleasing to me in so many ways. And although there's little doubt that she's an attractive, cute girl, the things I feel about her when I look about her aren't sexual; they primarily relate to her costume, and the tactile feelings I've just described.

I find it very easy to imagine how different parts of Meruru's costume feel. Particular highlights for me include the silvery-white corset that forms the front of her dress, and the inside of her cape. I imagine the corset as feeling like soft satin (in certain artwork and the in-game 3D models, it appears to have a slight "shine" to it, which emphasises this feeling) and the cape lining as being extremely smooth silk — the kind of silk that you touch and your fingers just glide across, sending shivers down the spine in some cases.

I also like her boots, but not in a particularly "I want to touch them" sort of way, I just think the way they look suit her very well.

To reiterate, the things I'm describing here are not sexual in nature; I'm not saying that if Meruru was real I'd feel an uncontrollable urge to grope her, because come on now. I just find the way she's depicted to be a particularly, oddly strong stoke to the fires of the imagination, particularly with regard to an aspect of sensory perception that appears to be quite sensitive in me.

This is probably more than you needed to know about me, but it struck me this morning, and I thought it was vaguely interesting. Please continue to go about your day!

Yep, late again. In my defense, I was editing a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast all yesterday so… that's not really an excuse, I know! Apparently I need to take my own post about establishing habits to heart a little more…

Speaking of habits, though, I've been doing well at hauling my considerable arse out of bed of a morning and ploughing through a Fitness Boxing routine. And while I hesitate to say I'm "enjoying" it, because exercise, it's certainly quite satisfying to get through a complete routine and not be dead.

I find exercise most satisfying when there's a bit of "stiffness" afterwards. Not… that kind of stiffness, but, you know, muscle stiffness. Before any exercise junkies jump in at this point and say "you should be stretching", I am stretching (it's part of the Fitness Boxing routine), I am just also extremely unfit! The stiffness, for me, is a physical manifestation of my effort; it reminds me that I did something I didn't have to do, but which will ultimately (hopefully) be good for me.

As I've been progressing through the software, the workouts have been gradually getting more complex. I quite like the way the workouts are paced; it seems that they tend to follow a set routine that goes something like this: Stretches > Short (5 min ish), easy workout you've done before > Long (10+ min), moderate workout perhaps introducing one new move > Long, challenging workout, perhaps again introducing one new move > Short, easy workout you've done before > Stretches > Done. By doing this you get a mix of the familiar and stuff that pushes your "limits" a bit; at present, the "easy" workouts tend to be simple punches, while the more difficult ones incorporate dodging of various types — ducking, dodging to the side and weaving to the side.

The punches are fine. The area I need to work on a bit is evidently my legs. The ducks and side dodges are killer on the legs. Since I'm a big fella, my legs have to work pretty hard just to hold me up, so getting them to do things other than holding me up is a significant challenge. Not impossible by any means, but a challenge, certainly. It also doesn't help that I have a bit of an ache in my left knee at times, and bending it in the "wrong" way can sometimes provoke that somewhat. Perhaps I should invest in one of those oh-so-flattering knee supports; I don't know how effective they are.

Anyway, it's going reasonably well so far. At the moment, I'm establishing a routine of getting up early every weekday to do Fitness Boxing, then taking the weekend off so I can enjoy a bit of a lie-in. This feels eminently doable; as I said the other day, it's just a case of estabishing that habit.

Now if I can just do the same to remember to write these posts on the correct day! Sigh. Oh well. I guess I'll see you again later today! 🙂

I finally got around to replacing my Atari 8-bit's dead 1050 disk drive, which means the system is fully functional again.

I was sad to see the 1050 die, as it was the original model I'd grown up with, so it was like an old friend. I was also reminded quite how much I'd missed the noise that old disk drives make — for me, it's an important part of the old computer experience, and one that, sadly, you don't really get to experience with emulation. (That said, I believe ST emulator STEEM does have a "simulated disk drive" noise, but it's not quite the same!)

I dunno, it's a weird thing that I don't expect more modern gamers to understand, really, given how quiet today's consoles are. But I've always drawn peculiar comfort from the sound of disk drives through the ages, and this love stretches right back to the 8-bit era. The only disk drive noise I didn't like was that of the Atari 810; that actually used to frighten me as a child, because coupled with that drive's hideous gaping maw and its alarmingly industrial red activity lights, I found the whole thing a bit disturbing. The 1050, however… I came to associate that chook chook SNARRRK noise with good times, happy times; whenever I heard it, I knew that something I enjoyed was going to follow.

This is why I've liked certain consoles over the years for the strangest of reasons. People mock the Dreamcast's noisy GD-ROM drive today, but I loved it; it reminded me of the trusty old 1050. Likewise, I like it when I can hear the drive reading on systems like the PS2 and Wii — the original Wii has a particularly good drive noise.

The things you come to draw comfort from over the years are strange and wonderful, aren't they?

Talking of old habits, man, I sure am sucking at remembering to do this, huh? I think I need to establish myself a routine for remembering to do this too, preferably not "shit something out at 2am because I forgot" as I occasionally did with my old blog!

Anyway, my "excuse" this time is that after a long and quite tedious week at work, I sat down and played some Atelier Meruru. And, well, I frigging love Atelier Meruru. Don't get me wrong, I love Atelier Rorona and Atelier Totori too, but there's something really special about Meruru. I am now understanding why the Atelier fans I know tend to highlight it as a particularly good part of the Arland trilogy.

I'll obviously write more about the details of Meruru when we get to it in the current Cover Game feature on MoeGamer, but suffice to say for now that it takes all the interesting and fun bits from Rorona and Totori and wraps them in an immensely satisfying game structure with an adorable protagonist and some wonderful supporting characters.

Meruru herself is an absolute delight. I've always had a soft spot for the "spunky princess is bored with being a princess" archetype, and she inhabits that role perfectly without feeling like a trope. She's friendly, she's pleasant, she cares for her friends and she's a bit of a nosey bugger too.

Most importantly though, she gets things done. More than the previous two Atelier games in the Arland subseries, in Meruru your actions have a very obvious effect. Areas outright change in response to the tasks you complete: buildings appear, forests are cleared out and become farmland, old ruins become a formidable fort. It's incredibly satisfying to see the world evolve and change as a direct result of what you do; it gives you that real sense that although Meruru is a thoroughly personable protagonist, she's also quite an "important" one who is able to achieve things like this. This is a marked shift from Rorona and Totori, both of whom very much had to sort of "prove themselves" to the world over the course of their respective adventures.

But enough ranting, otherwise I won't have a Meruru article left to write in a couple of weeks! Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll be back… uh, later today 🙂

I'm attempting to establish a new habit. I don't know if I will be successful, but today was a successful first step.

I mentioned back when I talked about new year's resolutions that besides eating a bit better by following the Slimming World plan, I also wanted to try and be a little more active, and with that in mind I decided to pick up Fitness Boxing for Switch. I'd previously had some success with Wii Fit and EA Sports Active, so I thought I'd give this one a shot — the fact it required less setting up than EA Sports Active in particular was rather appealing, and I enjoyed the demo.

Anyway, the habit that I'm attempting to establish is to get up early and do a Fitness Boxing workout first thing in the morning before breakfast, before a shower and before going to work. I've heard from numerous people that doing an early morning workout is supposedly a good way to give yourself energy for the rest of the day (though right this second I'm not quite feeling it!) and so I wanted to give it a try.

I've been wanting to get up earlier for a while. The habit I need to break is letting my alarm go off and snoozing it until literally the last possible minute before I need to get up and go to work. I may have trouble getting to sleep at night, but for some reason in the morning I seem to have no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, even this morning despite getting up earlier than usual I was still later than I intended because I fell asleep after my first alarm… and had a very odd dream in the process, but that's a story for another day.

I know that getting up early in the morning is a good thing, particularly if it allows you to do things you wouldn't have time to do otherwise, or that would interfere with your "free" time in other ways. I could keep getting up at the same time I have been and do my Fitness Boxing workouts in the evening, but that takes up a chunk of the evening I'd rather spend writing and/or gaming. This way, I get to do something positive first thing in the morning then have my whole evening free to whatever I want (or need) to.

I actually used to get up super early in the morning back when I was working in teaching. Of course, part of this was necessity, since I was working in a school 35 miles away from where I lived, but I managed to train myself into the habit of getting up early enough that I could watch a full-length episode of Alias on DVD before leaving the house to face the day. So I'm pretty sure I can get myself into the habit of getting up early enough to do a 35-minute workout before heading to my work that is just a couple of miles from my current house. At least it doesn't mean getting up at 5am.

Anyway, this is the intention. Who knows if I'll be able to stick to it? We'll see, though. We'll see!

Inspired by Irina over at I Drink and Watch Anime, I thought it high time I took a look at the search terms that are bringing people to MoeGamer.

At least, that was the plan. Turns out that the search results bringing people to the site are all rather boring (albeit thankfully to the point and relevant to what I write!), and there aren't even any funny or awkward questions in there to share. Shame. I used to get some real crackers on my old personal blog, but that was because I wrote about any old bullshit day after day (much like I'm doing here, in fact, funny that), and thus I would get a selection of results that can be best described as "eclectic", ranging from "why teaching sucks" to "monster cock". 42 people found my old blog by searching for "erect penis". Good work.

The whole "optimising for search engines" thing kind of annoys me these days, because it's so flagrantly transparent when sites do it. Imagine there's a TV show you want to watch — let's say, I don't know, Game of Thrones or something. You don't know what time it's airing and you don't have any streaming services, so you head to Google and type in something like "what time is Game of Thrones on?" Before you get any information direct from the source, there will be approximately 76 pages of tabloid-style garbage all with the headline "What time is Game of Thrones on? What channel does Game of Thrones air on? How can I watch Game of Thrones? Everything you need to know about Game of Thrones tonight. Game of Thrones." And I don't click on any of them when that happens.

This is also why video game sites publish "guide content" these days (with very similar "question" headlines), and why bigger sites like IGN have "wikis" set up for every game in their database. I say "set up"; they have a blank page ready to be filled in for everything in their database, but so far as Google is concerned, that counts as a relevant page about the game in question — so if you're looking for information on a semi-obscure title, good luck trawling through all these empty pages before you actually find any helpful information.

This is also why video game sites publish "reviews in progress" of big games on release day. They need to get a page up that has /call-of-duty-review/ in its URL, even if they haven't finished (or indeed played) the game. It's part of clickbait… and once again, I don't click on it.

I'm not sure at what point I became so cynical about commercial online content, but given the existence of numerous "Saved You a Click" Twitter accounts, it seems I am not the only one. And all this is why you will only ever see simple and clear headlines on MoeGamer that — hopefully at least — give you a good idea of what it is you are about to read. (Patreon teasers are another matter, mind you. You'll hopefully forgive me for that at least.)

Playing around with Honey Select Unlimited Extend yesterday reminded me in many ways of how I used to play with toys growing up.

Obviously I'm not talking about the explicit sex scenes or anything; I am, instead, referring to the Studio NEO app and the Honey Unlimited Studio software that came before it. These pieces of the overall Honey Select experience are nothing if not pure, true digital dollhouses — they provide you with a selection of environments, some "dolls" to play with (bonus: you get to design them yourself!) and no objective whatsoever besides letting your imagination run riot.

When I was a kid, I liked to spend any time that I wasn't playing video games with toys that stoked the imagination — toys that allowed you to set up some sort of situation, and then explore it somehow. I was particularly fond of anything that had lots of "bits" that you could arrange in various ways to create dioramas; I'd try and imagine how those components would come together, how they might move, how they might interact and what their "story" might be.

A favourite of mine was a set of toys called Manta Force. This consisted of three main playsets: the large Manta Force "mothership", which contained a variety of air, sea and land vehicles along with little figures to put in them; the Red Venom "mothership" for the "bad guys", which was very much along the same lines, and the Manta Force Battle Fortress, which was the most interactive of the three, featuring targets you could fire discs at to catapult vehicles and people off platforms, working guns of various sizes and a pleasing sense of "solidity". I never owned Red Venom, but both the original Manta Force and the Battle Fortress had enough "Venom" figures to allow you to set up a few villainous situations.

When I played with Manta Force, I'd get down on the floor with it and play with it "up close". I'd try to imagine the vehicles life-size, like I was right there with the little coloured figures that represented Manta Force's air, sea and land specialist troops. I'd make sounds, I'd make up stories, I'd perform dialogue. I must have looked like a right cock. But I enjoyed myself.

Despite this, some part of me was always slightly aware that I was playing with a toy; this stuff wasn't real, I couldn't really get into the ship and see things from the perspective of the little spacemen and, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't really fly, drive or dive in the smaller vehicles. I wished that there was a way I could shrink myself down and play in "their world", but I couldn't. So I made do.

Now, here's where stuff like Honey Select comes in. While I'm not quite "inhabiting" that world in full 3D like I really want to, I am afforded the opportunity to get up much more close and have much more control than I would have done with my childhood toys. I can move my viewpoint wherever I want, I can pose the characters however I want, I can imply whatever interactions I like by placing them in various circumstances.

In short, when I fire up Studio NEO or Honey Unlimited Studio before it, I'm finally able to pretty much realise those dreams I had when I was a kid. Okay, I'm playing with pretty girls rather than spacemen, but really, the context doesn't matter all that much; the thing I enjoyed with my childhood toys wasn't sci-fi spacemen pewpewpew, it was the simple joy of expressing myself and exploring my imagination. Don't tell anyone, but I actually kind of envied the female friends I had as a kid; I always sort of liked the idea of toys like Barbie as they were prime material for imaginative play. But I also know that if I'd had Barbies as a boy in the '80s, I would have been beaten up at school even more than I was already, so it's probably for the best.

Oh well. I can make up for it now with my digital dolls. And I'm certain I will!

A little while back, I decided that, as much effort as it would be to get started, I wanted to catalogue my game collection. So I fired up Google Sheets and got underway. You can take a look for yourself here.

I'm glad I did this. I find it interesting and satisfying to look at. I'll probably add some more data to it at some point — such as whether I've played, beaten and/or written about the game already, and, since this only covers physical releases at present, I might think about some means of including digital titles too. Digital games are people too!

I enjoyed putting together the "analysis" tab, too, even if it's largely pointless. It's interesting to see how my collection has naturally developed over the years, and where my priorities have clearly been.

For those who don't care to look at the sheet directly or aren't able to where they are, here are a few facts about my collection:

• I have a total of 1,077 physical copies in my collection at the time of writing. Assuming I haven't forgotten to add anything I've picked up recently!

• The platform I have the most individual games for in physical form is PS2, with 216 titles at the time of writing (20.06% of my collection). This is closely followed by the Atari ST, with 183 (16.99%).

• The platforms I have the fewest games for are Game Boy and Game Boy Color, with two each.

• The most popular genre in my collection is the RPG (not including DRPGs, ARPGs and SRPGs, with 171 titles, making up 15.88% of the collection. If you include DRPGs, ARPGs and SRPGs, this figure goes up to 258, or 23.96% of the total collection. Nearly a quarter RPGs of various descriptions! That sounds like me.

• My Atari 8-bit library of physical games only consists of 16 games… but this isn't counting the mountains and mountains of pirated floppy disks I have, each of which have five or six games on them along with a bunch of utilities and other pieces of software. The situation is same for the ST, though we have a lot more "legal" copies of games on that platform as my brother got them as review copies.

• Of the current generation, PS4 has been my favoured system to date, with 65 games. Switch is on the way up with 26 physical releases acquired since I got the system last Christmas, and with Sony being dickheads about ecchi content now, most of the time I will be picking the Switch versions of Japanese games wherever possible.

• From the previous generation, PS3 is currently beating out Xbox 360. I have a few duplicates between these two systems, because the PS3 versions were typically expanded from the Xbox 360 releases. Eternal Sonata is a good example. Each system has a selection of good exclusives, however; interesting RPGs on PS3, shoot 'em ups on 360.

• I have no Saturn games despite technically owning a Saturn. This is because I have no idea where the controller, power cable and TV cables are for the Saturn, so it is mostly a display piece in my "retro room" at present. I should probably get it up and running sometime.

• I own all of the Atelier games released physically to date except (Shallie Plus on Vita) despite, before this month on MoeGamer, having only ever played Rorona and Rorona Plus.

• The copy of Shadow of Memories I still own today is the first game I ever bought for my own PS2.

• I own copies of the first games I ever played on SNES (Super Mario World), PS1 (Ridge Racer) and PS2 (Orphen: Scion of Sorcery).

• Five of the SNES games I own now are the same cartridges I had growing up, though the boxes and manuals are long gone as I used to keep the cartridges in the SNES carry case. I've only added Top Gear and Top Gear 2 to that collection since.

• The most expensive and/or valuable game I own is probably Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. Other noteworthy games in this regard include Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GCN), Vib-Ribbon (PS1), the original .hack series (PS2), the Shadow Hearts series (PS2) and Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water (Wii U).

• That last point has reminded me that I picked up Koudelka on PS1 a while back and forgot to add it to the list, so now all the figures I've quoted are slightly off. I probably better finish there then before I drive myself insane…

Well, here we are! I'm getting this done now so I don't forget again. Hello. How are you?

Today's plan is to get a couple more videos done to pepper throughout the week — I like to pre-prepare video as much as possible so I don't find myself in a rush to make something on the day I'm "supposed" to publish it, since the nature of it means you can't just shit something out in the same way as you can with writing — and then settle down for an extended Atelier Totori session. I can probably beat it this weekend if I try, I just need to stop getting distracted by other things like the aforementioned Atari Flashback Classics. But you know how it is.

My wife is currently in the process of building a "catio"; a sort of lean-to structure out the back of our house that will form an enclosure for our cat Meg (and perhaps a friend-not-yet-met for her) that still allows her to be "outside", but safe and secure from the dangers of the roads. As I've mentioned a couple of times previously, the sudden passing of our beloved Ruby back in November hit both of us hard, so we want to do everything possible to keep Meg safe — and to have some suitable evidence that this is a safe haven for cats were we to head out to try and recruit her a new companion.

Aside from all that, it's a quiet weekend ahead — something we both need after heading back and forth across the country for the Christmas and New Year break. I hope you're having a pleasant weekend too, dear reader, and that the return to the first full week of work in the new year isn't too traumatic for those of you in employment!