One thing I've been keen to do with MoeGamer for a while — not just with regard to Patreon, but generally — is do something "physical".

Those of you who are familiar with my complete career in and around games will know that I grew up around magazines. My father, brother and I all contributed regularly to a UK Atari magazine called Page 6 (later New Atari User after it merged with its big rival), then my brother made the apparently wise decision not to go to university, and instead to jump straight into a job in magazine publishing, initially on Europress' daring experiment with a weekly games magazine, Games-X, and subsequently on Maverick Magazines' Mega Drive Advanced Gaming, PC Player and Dennis Publications' PC Zone before heading over to the States to work on EGM, OPM, 1up.com and later GamePro and Gamespot.

I wasn't quite so lucky with my career trajectory, though I did contribute on a freelance basis to a number of publications including PC Zone and the UK's official Nintendo magazine before my later stints on GamePro and, most recently, USgamer. It is fair to say, however, that being in print is somewhat "in my blood".

As such, to get to the point at last, one of the things I've been interested in doing with MoeGamer is finding some means of publishing at least some of my articles in a physical form — either a book or a magazine format. Self-publishing solutions are fairly widespread these days, so I've been investigating a few.

So far, I've found two that are particularly interesting, though I think only one of them will prove to be reasonably practical. I'll share them both with you for now, though, lest you too are interested in such things.

The one I've become aware of most recently is BlookUp, recommended by someone I follow on WordPress. This promises to "make a book of your blog" and indeed it appears to deliver on that; simply pop in your blog's details and, after a short loading break, you can easily import your content (including images and video thumbnails), tweak it as necessary and then have it laid out automatically (albeit fairly basically) into a book for you. It's a neat service with an excellent preview function, but it seems to be quite pricey for what you get, so it's not entirely practical for what I want to do, I don't think.

The other that I'm much more interested in — but which requires a lot more work — is Blurb. This offers a really solid suite of tools for assembling self-published books and magazines of various types, and even has some downloadable software to use that doesn't suck. (Anyone who has ever used, say, proprietary CD labelling software will know how much of a crapshoot this sort of thing can be.) I've previously done an experimental book based on my Senran Kagura Estival Versus articles and it came out really beautifully in terms of quality, but again was a little pricey for what I wanted — but then I did use the highest possible quality settings.

What I'm going to experiment with when I have a moment is Blurb's magazine option, which seems to be much cheaper. I'm interested to see what the quality and pricing is like — first impressions are that it's a lot more practical, but as with most of these things, it will depend on how many pages are involved. If it proves to be a practical option, I'll look into both selling them separately and providing them as a tier of Patreon reward, like a "subscription".

I'll keep you posted!

Not long after Dream Daddy, another Western-developed visual novel themed around gay men has hit Steam: Coming Out on Top. While I applaud the efforts of developers to cater to both the gay male and fujoshi crowd, I was struck by the quoted comments from the reviews on the Steam store page.

Pretty solid reviews, I'm sure you'll agree, yet they leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Why? Because these comments would never be made by a publication such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun or Eurogamer with regard to a visual novel or dating sim that was aimed at heterosexual men and/or homosexual women. In fact, visual novels or dating sims aimed at heterosexual men and/or homosexual women are lucky to get covered at all by mainstream publications.

Let's take something like the Grisaia series as an example. These aren't "dating sims" as such, but they feature narrative routes that can be distinguished by which of the games' five heroines they focus on. Everything Queerty says about Coming Out on Top can also be applied to Grisaia: it is sharp and well-written, it's witty, it has believably goofy characters who show multiple facets to their personalities, and its sex scenes are incredibly hot. I still hold Grisaia up as a prime example of how 18+ versions can be superior to all-ages editions, simply because its erotic scenes are not only incredibly hot, they're also integral to character development and make a great deal of sense.

I have to admit that while I have nothing against Dream Daddy and Coming Out on Top and, indeed, as I say, welcome the fact that hungry gay men and fujoshi are being catered to — both are underserved markets in the West — it's somewhat galling that experiences that do the exact same thing for heterosexual men and/or gay women are ignored at best, unreasonably censured as being misogynist or sexist at worst.

The most galling thing is the fact that games like Dream Daddy and Coming Out on Top are often being hailed with ridiculous hyperbole like "the best game ever" (obviously not intended to be taken seriously, but still) and the implication that they are something new, exciting and daring, whereas the concept they are based on is nothing new. Visual novels and dating sims have been around for a long time now, even in the West, and the fact that the intended audience for many of them is heterosexual men doesn't preclude them from having excellent characters. In fact, as many long-time visual novel fans will happily tell you at great length, female characters typically get way more development and characterisation than males… though Grisaia's Yuuji is an admitted exception in this regard!

All this is why, so far as I'm concerned, sites like MoeGamer and others who pay attention to the wider market of visual novels are important. Many of these games are great, and despite having a specific target audience, can often appeal to people outside of their core demographic through compelling narratives, witty writing and strong characterisation.

As I've said a number of times already, I don't begrudge the success and positive reception of titles like Dream Daddy and Coming Out on Top. But I do object to the double standards on display here. I want to see good works of this type featuring heterosexual relationships celebrated and enjoying some success, too — because they're simply not at the moment.

This is almost certainly part of the toxic culture of political correctness surrounding mainstream games coverage, where anything that can be tied to the amorphous "queer" identity must be celebrated at every opportunity, and anything that might appeal to the terrible evil white straight male (Japanese straight men also fall into this category, despite not technically being "white") must be demonised whenever possible. It sucks, and it needs to stop; everybody should be able to enjoy whatever they like and celebrate it without guilt, regardless of preferences, orientation or… well, anything, really.

If you'd like to read some of my own work on visual novels of this type and haven't already, have some links — feel free to share, too, please!

Grisaia
Frontwing's incredible series about the unusual young man Kazami Yuuji and the equally remarkable young women who become his "family" of sorts.

Ne no Kami
A visual novel based around Shinto myths and legends, with a touch of Lovecraft and Norse mythology thrown in for good measure.

Nekopara
An adorable series of kinetic novels about catgirls starting a new life with their master.

Fate/stay night
An epic, lengthy tale (well, three epic, lengthy tales) about supernatural forces battling for the Holy Grail in modern-day Japan.

Katawa Shoujo
A heartwarming tale about learning to live with disabilities, and how people learn not to let themselves be defined by their shortcomings.

School of Talent
A story about growing up unremarkable in an environment surrounded by utterly remarkable people, and how you can form a connection with another person in that situation.

Supipara
A tale about rebuilding your life after a major upheaval, rediscovering the people and the things that are important to you… and determining whether or not the local witch really has your best interests at heart!

A sincere thank you to you for your support; it's times like this where I feel like what I do with MoeGamer — and what other people I know do with their own sites, too — is all the more important, so I intend to keep celebrating these great games as much as I can, and hopefully at least a few people will pay attention along the way!

Since Fate/stay night's coverage ended up being so close to the wire (I was still finishing off Heaven's Feel right up until the end of the month!) I decided to get started on next month's games nice and early so I'd be able to write about them in plenty of time. (This is also why I chose the Ridge Racer series for this month's coverage — aside from the fact I love it, it's also rather less time-consuming to revise, research and write about!)

As I've noted a couple of times previously, I decided to cover MangaGamer's recent(ish) release of Rance 5D and Rance VI next month. Rance is a series that I have previously only had a passing familiarity with. I never played any of the old Japanese versions or fan translations, and my only real contact with it was with a friend I used to podcast with mentioning Sengoku Rance a few years back, and him having a lot of very positive things to say about it.

I'll delve a bit more into what Rance is all about next month for those who are unfamiliar with it, but suffice to say for now that it's a particularly interesting series to examine because it's actually one of the longest-running series of PC games out there, especially from Japanese developers. Beginning in 1989 on NEC's PC-98 platform and later moving to Windows-based systems, Rance is nearly as old as Square's venerable Final Fantasy series, and has seen as much if not more "reinvention" over the years, taking in adventure games with RPG elements, dungeon crawlers, top-down RPGs, grand strategy games and even installments that defy easy description such as Rance 5D.

Rance is noteworthy for having a protagonist who defies pretty much every JRPG hero convention there is. He's selfish, arrogant, generally only in things for his own benefit (or at least he takes great pains to put that impression across) and rather prone to treating people around him in a less than gentlemanly manner, even going so far as to sexually assault enemies and allies alike should the opportunity arise — but he also steps up to the plate when needed, and will use his considerable strength for others' benefit if there's something in it for him. In D&D terms he's hovering somewhere around the Chaotic Neutral mark; he certainly does things that are indisputably "evil", but likewise it's clear that there's good in him too. Sometimes.

In other words, he's a deeply fascinating character, even if he is absolutely morally repugnant on paper. (In practice, I must confess he and the characters around him are written with such wit that it's hard to truly dislike him even as he gets up to his most questionable activities.) As such, I'm greatly looking forward to exploring him and his games in detail.

I already beat Rance 5D and was so struck with how much I enjoyed the experience that I've already composed my article on the subject for next month. Now I'm delving into the much more substantial Rance VI and having a great time with it. I was expecting what you often get with Japanese PC games, which was a visual novel with some lightweight RPG elements, but no; this is a full-on, super-deep dungeon-crawling RPG with really interesting and creative mechanics, great characters, cool level design and some badass music.

I can't wait to share my thoughts with you in more detail — and I will also most certainly be preordering both Sengoku Rance and Rance Quest Magnum when MangaGamer make them available!

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I adore having a physical collection of games. I'm by no means one of those people who's all "no physical, no buy", but where the option exists to have a physical copy, I will most definitely take a physical copy.

This option doesn't always exist, however — and in the cases where I get review copies, I'll inevitably receive digital versions instead because those don't have to be "shipped" anywhere. So, what to do in that situation, then?

Why, roll your own, of course.

Okay, I'll grant you this isn't an option that is going to appeal to everyone given that it takes time, effort, expenditure and resources to do this, but I like having these things on my shelf, so if that means I have to print my own inlays and labels, so be it!

I don't just do this to fill my shelves up for the sake of it, either; I find that having a physical copy of something is an excellent reminder that you actually own something rather than it ending up buried deep within a purchase history list, email account or Steam library. It's a nice memento of having actually played something (as in these instances, all these cases are for games I've played and enjoyed) as well as a reminder for a year or two (or more!) down the road that I might want to revisit one or two things.

There's a more mundane, practical reason for it, too: archival and backups. In the case of something like Fate/stay night, which never got an official English release, but which has received a wide variety of patches and updates from the fan community, I'm keen to preserve those efforts in a form that I can easily show to someone else, install on a new computer in a few years' time, or just look back fondly on.

It also, to me, instills these games with a greater sense of "value" — as soon as they become physical copies they become actual possessions rather than just something you downloaded on a whim one day. They're something to be enjoyed rather than just passively consumed.

So how do I go about this? Well, I don't do anything particularly complicated. I simply knock up a quick case design in OpenOffice Draw (template attached to this post!) using official box art where it exists in suitably high resolution, or using other high-resolution official art that I just like the look of in other cases.

On the spine I try to include the authentic logo where possible (and where it's readable!) otherwise I'll go for an approximation using the same fonts, colour schemes and designs. And on the back, I just use another piece of artwork; while it's tempting to mock up screenshots, blurb, system requirements and suchlike, there's really no need to, and where actual box scans exist, they're inevitably much too low resolution to print at any decent quality.

I then print the artwork at the highest possible quality onto A4 photo paper, then trim it down to size with a guillotine. The photo paper gives a lovely glossy finish and really makes the colours shine much more than with plain paper.

And that's how they look on a shelf alongside "real" physical editions. Pretty nice, non?

Hello, dear Patrons. I hope you're all well!

I can always tell when something I've been playing has had a profound impact on me in one way or another, because I inevitably start dreaming about it. This has been the case ever since… I think Klax on the Atari Lynx, where I used to fantasise about the female voice that went "ooh!" and "yeah!" whenever you got 4- or 5-block Klaxes, but I've been particularly conscious of it recently.

The most notable examples of this happening in recent memory have been Final Fantasy XIV, where my dreams would largely consist of simply playing out fights I had done a hundred times already — perhaps just my mind reiterating how to do them to ensure I didn't mess them up — and, most recently, Fate/stay night, current Cover Game on MoeGamer.

Since Fate/stay night is a pure visual novel, there's no actual "gameplay" for me to dream about, so instead I find myself imagining the characters, the settings and the things that go on in that world. Interestingly, I tend to find that these dreams aren't simply reliving the plot of the novel that I've explored to date, but rather they consist of me just spending time with the characters, hanging out and having a relatively "normal" existence with them — well, as "normal" a time as you can expect in a world where magic is real and summoned heroic spirits battle to the death over the Holy Grail, of course.

This kind of thing going on in my subconscious is, to me, testament to the game's strong writing and characterisation more than anything. For my subconscious mind to be in a position where it is able to imagine these characters outside their normal narrative contexts and behaving in a consistent manner suggests that their depiction in the game is sufficient to give me a fully rounded picture of who they are, how they behave and what they do.

I've found my mind particularly drawn to Saber in these dreams in preference to the other main heroines Rin Tohsaka and Sakura Matou. This isn't necessarily because Saber is my "favourite" — I like her a lot, particularly her unintentional deadpan humour seen outside of the Fate route — but she has certainly left a strong impact on me, perhaps because she's such a constant presence throughout all routes of the game, not just the one that focuses on her.

This isn't to say I don't like the others, mind you. I'm a particular fan of Rin, since she not only embodies a number of character traits and visual tropes I like, she was actually the originator of some of them. Most notably, she's arguably the origin of the tsundere trope, and her magical skirt/Schrodinger's pantsu/grade-S zettai ryouiki combo is formidable, to say the least. And, of course, there's her defenseless anus, but, well, everyone knows about that by now, I'm sure.

I'm on track to finish Heaven's Feel by the end of this week and get the last of the articles up on the site, then I can relax a bit! Fate/stay night has been a long journey for sure, but one I'm definitely glad I've taken; I can see why it's regarded as such a classic, and I'm now all the more disappointed it's never had an official English release!

Hello lovely Patrons.

As I continue to work my way through the substantial Fate/stay night in order to write about it this month, I find myself pondering what to cover next. Because there's a whole lot of goodness out there that is well worth looking at in great detail… as well as a whole bunch of stuff on my shelves that I've been meaning to get to for the longest time!

I have a short-ish term plan in place for the next couple of months: next month, I'm going to cover the mainline Ridge Racer series for something a little bit different to the norm — and because this is a series that doesn't get talked about too much these days. (Also, something a little more lightweight after the heavy going of Fate/stay night will be much needed!) After that, I'll be delving into MangaGamer's release of Rance, since this is a series I've been interested to look at for a while.

Beyond that, though, there are a whole lot of possibilities — so I wanted to see if you, my Patrons, were particularly interested to see an in-depth exploration of any of the following.

This list is a combination of games I have preordered that will be arriving soon(ish) and titles I have on my shelf that have been waiting to be played for a long time. My synopses are based purely on my pre-existing knowledge of them so I can't vouch for their accuracy! If you'd particularly like to see any of them get the Cover Game treatment, let me know. Well, let me rephrase that; I'd like to cover them all at some point, so if there are any you'd like me to get to sooner, let me know!

Blue Reflection
Gust's "magical girl" game, featuring beautiful graphics and a combination of "daily school life" and turn-based combat. Expect pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Nights of Azure 2
Sequel to Gust's spectacular lesbian vampire demon 'em up that I previously covered back in January. Expect, uh, pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Senran Kagura: Peach Beach Splash
Latest installment in Kenichiro Takaki's series about everyone's favourite ninja girls, this time offering third-person shooting action rather than the usual brawler gameplay. I know nothing about the story to this, but if there's one thing I've learned about Senran Kagura over the years, it's that no matter how ridiculous the premise, it still manages to produce a thoroughly compelling narrative full of excellent characterisation. Also, pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Ys VIII
The first new Ys game for quite some time. I previously covered the Ys series as a whole last year, but it will be interesting to take a detailed look at the new one. There is also, of course, the promise of pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Muv Luv
Another classic visual novel (or more accurately, series of visual novels), and a title I backed on Kickstarter. This is another title I feel is pretty much essential to explore at one point or another, like Fate/stay night, but I want to hang fire on it until the localised release is fully complete with Director's Cut patches and suchlike. I expect pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Family Project
An older visual novel from D.O., developers of the classic Kana Little Sister. Another game designed to destroy your emotions and turn you into a sobbing wreck through tactical use of pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Yume Miru Kusuri
I don't know a lot about this one, but I know it's a very well-regarded visual novel. I anticipate pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Seinarukana
Successor to Aselia the Eternal (which may also be worth covering in its own right in more detail at some point), this game, like its predecessor, features a combination of visual novel and strategy RPG along with, of course, pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

Yumina the Ethereal
An unusual hybrid of dungeon-crawling RPG and visual novel, featuring a battle system themed around arguments. I don't know much about this game beyond that, but it looks really cool and I've been meaning to get to it for a while. Something something pretty girls, incredible music and a thought-provoking story.

I'm sure there are plenty more I've forgotten offhand, but these are ones I've been thinking about for a long time now. If you're particularly interested in any of them, let me know in the comments and I can prioritise them once the next couple of months are done! Patrons' privilege. How about that.

Thank you once again for your ongoing support of MoeGamer; I'm extremely grateful for you helping me to continue doing what I love, and your contributions are all invested in expanding my collection, improving my gear and ultimately having more stuff to write about!

Please continue liking, commenting and sharing my articles (and videos on YouTube!) and do pass this Patreon page on to anyone you think might enjoy what I do and want to support it.

A sincere thank you once again, and I'll speak to you all again soon!

Hello Patrons,

As you may have surmised from a previous post, I am something of a games collector.

I'm not the kind of collector who purely has shelves full of rare games just to look at, mind you; my games are there to be played, and I seek out rare and interesting games because they're… you know, interesting.

There's one thing that concerns me a little about modern gaming from an archival perspective, however, and that's the case of "post-launch support".

Post-launch support, be it in the form of free content updates, paid DLC or simple patches, is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it allows a game which perhaps had to be rushed to market to be improved and "fixed" over time. On the other, however, it makes it very difficult to determine what a "definitive" version of a game is — in other words, when that game should be archived and be in a playable state should one return to it in five, ten, twenty years.

This, of course, wasn't a problem prior to the seventh generation of games consoles because while the Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox and Gamecube all had the capability to connect to the Internet for certain games, this functionality wasn't a fundamental part of the system's OS, and consequently it was primarily used for playing multiplayer modes online, not distributing extra content. In other words, on these platforms, the game you got in the box was the game it always had been and always would be.

Once the subsequent generation rolled around and built its consoles around the assumption that they would always be online, however, there was a shift in thinking, particularly in the highly corporate, business-focused world of triple-A publishing. To these publishers, games were, in many cases, no longer "products" to be sold and moved on from; now they were "platforms" or "services", intended to stick around for a lot longer than the shelf life of previous generations' games, kept relevant with patches, content updates, premium customisation items and paid DLC.

This wasn't entirely new to the seventh generation, mind you, though the idea of a game being kept relevant through patches and additional content had primarily been the domain of PC and other home computer gaming prior to that point. Expansion packs and data disks for games had been around since the 8-bit generation of computers, and PC games were getting patched long before the Internet was as widespread as it is today — though it may amuse those who came to gaming more recently to learn that you typically had to request a patch be mailed to you on floppy disk or CD rather than simply downloading it online.

But the seventh generation's approach was a bit different.

Expansion packs in the pre- and early-Internet eras tended to be significant affairs that were often on a similar scale to the base game. Look at Paul Woakes' The Second City for his 8-bit 3D adventure Mercenary, for example, which added a second… you know. Or, a little more recently, the expansions for the Baldur's Gate series, or the third Elder Scrolls game Morrowind — vast in size and scope, often more than doubling the size and play time of an already substantial base game.

I became conscious how different the seventh generation's approach to additional content for games was when I downloaded the DLC for BioWare's classics Mass Effect and Dragon Age. In both cases, the content was not particularly substantial, and in the case of Dragon Age, not only did it take me less than two hours to beat, it didn't even make an attempt to integrate itself into the game in the way that, say, Throne of Bhaal slotted neatly into Baldur's Gate II.

In cases like these, I don't feel like the DLC adds a great deal of value to the games in question, and consequently I don't mind too much if the passage of time and the death of digital storefronts means they end up lost — the games are the important bits, after all.

Where I am a bit concerned, however, is in the case of games like Final Fantasy XV, which Square Enix has been taking an almost MMO-like approach to ever since it launched, with the game's current state being quite different to the version I wrote about on MoeGamer. The sheer amount of significant updates and DLC there is now available for this game means that, from an archival perspective, the disc I have on my shelf is pretty much worthless because it doesn't accurately reflect what the game became… and moreover, there's no way of actually archiving that version, unless at some point Square Enix decides to release a "complete edition" of the game with all the DLC and all the patches on disc.

What also concerns me is the fact that a lot of consumers seem to be starting to expect this. Look at Steam or App Store reviews for digital-only games in particular and you'll often see people criticising games purely for "lack of updates", even when the game is quite obviously complete and working absolutely fine.

While it can be quite cool for a game to grow, change and evolve over time, it doesn't need to be the case for every game. Something like Final Fantasy XIV needs to expand regularly by its very nature as an online game, but Final Fantasy XV doesn't. Not every game needs DLC, either, and I certainly don't need games trying to get me to download DLC before the base game is even released, as has been the case with Ys VIII and its "Adol's Adventure Essentials" pack that Atlus (who, bizarrely, neither developed nor published Ys VIII) emailed me about this week.

The upshot of all this is that I'm enjoying collecting for older systems (particularly PS1 and PS2) a lot more than for modern systems right now, because I know those old games are always going to work just fine, even if I have to replace my console. PS3 and PS4 games, though? It's a concern for me every time I insert a disc and the first thing that happens is a patch download. That makes me wonder if these games are going to work properly in the future… but I guess on the positive side it makes me want to take extra-special care of my current consoles so I don't lose any digital content I might have downloaded for these games!

I have no intention of stopping collecting due to this. I love having shelves full of games. It's something I'll be interested to see the long-term consequences of, however… but I guess that's not something we'll know for a long time yet.

Good morning, dear Patrons! I hope you're well today. It is grey, miserable and raining here and I've had a rubbish few days for various reasons, but at least it's nearly the weekend.

I picked up copies of Taito Legends and Taito Legends 2 for PS2 this week, and I've been having an absolute blast exploring them. And they got me thinking about my changing attitudes towards this sort of thing over time.

Back when the PS2 was "current", I very much enjoyed arcade compilations, particularly the Midway Arcade Treasures series — but there was a condition: I only really felt like I truly enjoyed compilations like this where I actually remembered the games in question. Not necessarily remembering having played them, mind you; just remembering their existence, seeing them in magazines and suchlike. I found it fun to revisit games that I played in my youth — and exciting to play games that I'd always wanted to play, but for one reason or another had never had the opportunity to.

What this meant in practice, though, was that I would tend to pass up compilations such as Taito Legends largely because the vast majority of games in the collection were titles that I wasn't familiar with for one reason or another. Perhaps they were too new — arcades were never really a big thing over here, and by the time the PS2 was around, they were all but completely dead, so it was very rare to see mid to late '90s arcade machines — or perhaps they were simply games that I'd never come into contact with. Either way, the fact that I'd look through the list of games on the back of the Taito Legends cases and think "I only remember two or three of these at most" would put me off taking the plunge.

Nowadays, however, my outlook is completely different. Now, I relish the opportunity to try out things that I've never come across before. I absolutely love stumbling across a game that I'd previously been unaware of and discovering it's exactly the sort of thing I enjoy. And even with the titles I don't enjoy all that much, I can usually find something interesting about it, even if it's not personally to my taste.

The individual games in the Taito Legends compilations are ripe for future articles on MoeGamer, so I'll refrain from going into too much detail here, but I wanted to highlight a few titles in particular that have stood out since I first booted up the Taito Legends discs — games that were previously unknown to me, but which became firm favourites within the space of less than five minutes each.

First up is Puchi Carat, which I vaguely remember seeing on shelves in the PS1 era, but never played or indeed knew anything about. Turns out it's a weird combination of Breakout and Bust-a-Move, featuring patterns of gems hanging from the top of the screen which you have to break by bouncing a ball back at them. Like in Bust-a-Move, you can knock down huge chunks of gems at the same time by removing any gems that are attaching them to the ceiling of the play area, and this is how you attack your opponent in the 2-player mode.

The main attraction in Puchi Carat is the enormous, beautifully animated character sprites that sit in the background of the play area, reacting to what you do. These are a glorious combination of late '90s anime style and pixel art, which tickles me in all my happy places, particularly when it comes to Perydot. Mmm, Perydot.

Um, anyway. That's Puchi Carat, then, which I like so much I ordered a copy of the PS1 version to complement the arcade version in Taito Legends 2.

Also of particular note was Cleopatra Fortune, which I realised I'd actually already recently purchased for PS1, though again I believe there are a few differences between the arcade and home versions.

Cleopatra Fortune is an unusual falling-block puzzle game in which you clear things from the screen by either enclosing "treasure" objects completely with stone blocks, or by forming complete Tetris-style lines of the same type of object.

It's a solid puzzle game that I like a lot, but the thing that truly tipped me over the edge from "like" to "love" was the wonderful music by Taito's sound team Zuntata. Have a listen; it's quite something.

Between the two compilations, there's a ton of excellent games that are prime fodder for the Puzzler and Shmup Essentials columns in particular, but there are others I definitely want to find an excuse to write about too, so I anticipate there will be some sort of Taito Essentials column added to the mix in the near future!

Anyway. I'll leave that there for now, but look out for some articles and videos relating to this Taito awesomeness in the near future. And don't waste too much time looking for Perydot artwork…

Thanks again for all your support of what I'm doing with MoeGamer! It really is appreciated. Please continue to enjoy my articles and videos, and share them with friends, family and followers if you think they might appreciate them. And feel free to drop me a comment or message here or on MoeGamer itself; it's always great to hear from people 🙂

Take care of yourselves and have a lovely weekend.

Good morning, darling Patrons, and once again, thank you for your continued support of my work on MoeGamer (and, increasing gradually, YouTube).

The other week I shared the state of my collection and said that my wife and I were planning a bit of a shakeup in order to display things a bit more efficiently and effectively. Well, I'm pleased to say that this particular project is now complete, so I wanted to share that with you today.

I actually want to make a video taking a closer look at each shelf to give you the opportunity to see exactly what I have, but that will have to wait a little while. In the meantime, here are some photos!

As you can see, the previous big black Billy bookcases have been replaced by some nice white wall-mounted shelves — still Ikea specials, this time from their Algot range of wall-mounted solutions. They're dead easy to put up and very flexible — just put up the wall strips, clip in some brackets and stick some shelves on top. Or some hooks. Or a clothing rail. Or whatever. Shelves were the main thing I was interested in, and the least deep ones on offer were a good size for putting DVD-sized game cases on.

So, a quick tour then, ahead of a more in-depth look at what's there in a future video.

On the far left, you'll see some short shelves displaying some limited edition packages I have. These are pretty much all from Idea Factory International and Marvelous Europe, both of whom do nice quality LEs with the sort of stuff I like having in an LE without offering them at a bank-breaking price. Your typical IFI or Marvelous LE tends to come with a soundtrack CD (my favourite addition to any LE), an artbook and "something" to display, be it a cushion cover, dakimakura cover, poster, wall scroll or set of art cards.

From top to bottom, we have Senran Kagura 2 and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, then on the next shelf down there's Senran Kagura Estival Versus and Valkyrie Drive Bhikkuni.

Then begins the IFI festival, with Hyperdimension Neptunia U, Superdimension Neptune vs. Sega Hard Girls (which I still need to play), Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies and the awesome Megadimension Neptunia V-II.

Next up are the older Neptunia titles, including Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 2 and 3 (there's no 1, since that didn't get a physical release here in Europe — boo!) along with the criminally underrated Hyperdevotion Noire.

Under that are some non-Neptunia IFI LEs, including Trillion: God of Destruction, Fairy Fencer F and MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death, and underneath that there's Omega Quintet, Drakengard 3 and Corpse Party: Blood Drive.

Moving across to the right we have some PC limited edition releases of visual novels, including School Days HQ, the Kickstarter edition of Clannad, JAST USA's release of Steins;Gate and School Days sequel Shiny Days. Under that we have my small but perfectly formed PS1 collection along with my ballooning PS2 lineup (which has actually expanded even further since this photo was taken).

On the smaller set of shelves in the middle we have PS3, PSP, Vita and PS4, with a bit of room for each to expand, since the latter two in particular are still systems for which there are lots of games I want to collect. The PS3, on the other hand, I don't see my collection expanding considerably beyond what I have now; I have pretty much every localised JRPG on the system (with the exception of the Disgaeas, which I'm inclined to grab the better versions of on Vita) and that's primarily what I'm concerned with.

In the top right we have PC games, mostly visual novels but with a few classics in there such as a pack of LucasArts adventures that I can't quite bear to part with even though I have better, more compatible versions on Steam and GOG. Under that there are DS and 3DS games, then Gamecube and Wii, then Wii U accompanied by the "Estra's Valley of Warmth" boobie mousepad that came with MeiQ, then finally Xbox 360 at the bottom.

As I say, for those curious about specifics, I'll do a more in-depth video soon, so watch out for that!

Here's the reverse angle of the room, showing the surviving Billy containing the bulk of my board game collection. My wife used her formidable Tetris skills to fit all of the big boxes on these shelves, then found a suitable place elsewhere in the room to put smaller titles such as card games and suchlike.

Here's a view from the back of the room looking forward. On the left is the fireplace that my wife blocked up because it was hideous and in the way. Now it's just a wall.

And here's the view from the couch, showing my media setup and fancy-pants new microphone for video commentary. Connected to the TV we have a PC, Xbox 360, a hacked Wii (I did this purely so I could play Trauma Team), a Wii U, two PS2s (one PAL, one US NTSC), a PS3, a PS4 and a PlayStation TV. My Mega Drive, Super NES and Atari 800XL are all upstairs in what was my "office" while I worked from home.

So that's that! I hope you enjoyed this quick tour.

Hello lovely Patrons, thank you once again for your continued support of MoeGamer, and welcome to the new Patrons!

It's September! The year is flying by, and a new month, of course, means a new Cover Game to explore. Over the course of the next month, we'll be taking an in-depth look at the legendary visual novel from Type Moon, Fate/stay night.

I've wanted to cover Fate/stay night for a long time now because I think it's in a rather fascinating situation; it's one of the few well-known "classics" of the visual novel medium that has never actually received an official localisation, with it instead being brought to the West in a strictly unofficial capacity through the efforts of dedicated fan translation groups.

And yet, despite the original visual novel never receiving an official localisation and consequently needing a bit of effort to get up and running in English, the Fate series as a whole has gone on to become popular and influential here in the West, spawning numerous anime adaptations, video game spinoffs and, of course, recently released mobile game Fate/Grand Order.

Fate can be a daunting franchise to get involved with, but speak to anyone familiar with it and one of the most common things you'll hear them say is "read the VN". This makes sense, as the original VN goes "from the beginning", as it were, introducing the core concepts of the series as well as key recurring characters who show up in other related works.

And if you became familiar with Fate through those later works, discovering the original interpretation and depiction of these characters can be quite an eye-opening experience. I'll refrain from too many spoilers for now, but suffice to say those who found Illya particularly appealing in Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA almost certainly haven't read the original VN, because OG Illya is genuinely frightening and horrific.

I'm looking forward to writing about Fate/stay night for the next month, as it's a hugely influential work that hasn't had a lot written about it over the years. It's also a rip-roaring tale of magic and adventure in its own right, with a nice balance between slice-of-life, comedy, fantasy, horror and tragedy, and the excellent fan-made localisation makes it very approachable while maintaining its distinctively Japanese character.

Due to the fact it never got an official release in the West, acquiring a copy can be challenging and somewhat legally questionable, so I can't point you in the direction of a specific link for now… but it's not hard to find the information and patches you need to get up and running, so if you want to read along for the next month and join the discussion, do feel free!

Thank you once again for your continued support. It means a great deal to me.