I have an absolutely raging headache this evening for some reason. I feel like I have sunstroke despite not having really been outside all day and it is exceedingly painful, so this may not be the most coherent and/or long post I've ever written — just to warn you!

My parents came to visit today, which was nice — we've not had the opportunity to see one another for a long time what with all the lockdown shenanigans. My mum managed to convince my dad to hand over his complete collection of Page 6/New Atari User magazines, so I've got all those to go through at some point — looking forward to it!

Made the mistake of looking on Twitter a little while ago only to find not one but two separate toxic gaming arguments raging on for no real reason whatsoever. I closed the tab and didn't look any further — I'm really not in the mood for that shit today. I swear, if all the people who spent all their time being mad about something tangentially video game related spent that time actually playing video games instead, everyone would be a whole lot happier.

As for me, I got through one of my favourite bits of Final Fantasy XIV in my New Game Plus run earlier — The Final Steps of Faith, home to one (well, three) of the most spectacular pieces of music Soken has ever given us. That's still an incredible "final" battle that brings that particular chapter of the story to a close, and it was good to experience it in context once again. Just a little more and I can get into Stormblood again — and once I clear the base Stormblood story I'll be into stuff that is all-new to me! Looking forward to that.

Trying to work out if this headache is particularly conducive to any sort of gaming this evening. I have already popped some paracetamol and the temptation to just go lie in bed is enormous, but it's only 9pm. Maybe something nice to eat will help.

Anyway, hope you've had a good weekend — and for those of you who have tomorrow off too (like me!) I hope you have a good holiday Monday!

Played through Sumire today; this is a game that caught my attention back during the Steam Game Festival a while back, and I was looking forward to trying the full thing. Turns out my first impressions were correct — this is a very wonderful, very sad game.

I'll write a more detailed article on the subject over on Rice in the week, but suffice to say for now that if you enjoy story-centric games that pretty consistently tug on the heartstrings throughout, Sumire is a must-play. Beautiful visuals, understated but emotional music and an excellent script — it really is absolutely wonderful.

The basic concept is that you play the eponymous heroine, who is a young girl struggling with her current life situation. Her parents seem to be splitting up, she's lost the person she thought was her best friend, and she's in love with someone she feels to be far beyond her reach. More than anything, though, she misses her grandmother, and is haunted by constant dreams of said grandmother wanting to tell her something, but never finding out what.

What follows is a side-scrolling adventure game in which Sumire attempts to have "the perfect day", in conjunction with a mysterious flower she meets early in the story. The flower encourages her to do all the things that she has wanted to do for a while, but has been too afraid to or felt like she wouldn't be able to — these range from reaching some sort of resolution with the former best friend to getting one last chance to see her grandmother.

As you progress through the story, you're presented with a number of opportunities to make choices and perhaps help others out. Sumire's "karma" is tracked as you do so, and the combination of this karma value and the people she's helped out at the end of the game determines the ending. What's interesting is that the karma thing isn't always entirely straightforward; you know that you need to lie to help someone, but is it right to do so?

The whole thing is absolutely dripping in this wonderful sense of melancholy, which might not sound like something you'd want to immerse yourself in for three hours — but as anyone who has played a good "nakige" will attest, sometimes it's healthy and even desirable to play something that you know is going to make you cry. And indeed, for a good half of my Sumire playthrough — possibly more — there were genuine tears rolling down my cheeks.

Anyway, as I say, more on this over on Rice in the week. In the meantime, if this is the sort of experience you're up for in your games — I know it's not everyone's cup of tea — then I strongly recommend Sumire. Just make sure you're prepared to deal with the consequences.

I don't play console games on PC — even if the PC versions are supposedly "superior" (and by that, people usually mean "run at a better frame rate" and little else). There are a number of reasons for this — the lack of physical versions being a major one, and the fact that games designed for consoles first often end up being buggy messes when ported to PC.

For me, the PC has the same value it had back in the late '90s — the fact that it plays host to a number of experiences that you can't get anywhere else. Back in the '90s, those experiences were things like strategy games and simulations… and the same is actually true today, too — though more and more popular titles are starting to show up on other platforms, these days, particularly the Switch.

Where the PC, for me, truly shines is in the more experimental side of things. I spent a bit of time playing BeamNG.drive this evening, since it was on sale on Steam — and while I've barely scratched the surface of it, I can see it being something highly entertaining over the long term through a combination of its developers continually working on it, and the community contributing too. It's the kind of thing that just wouldn't really work on console — and that, for me, is what PC gaming is all about.

The lines are a lot blurrier these days than they once were, what with the plateau in overall "power" today's computers and gaming systems are reaching. But those lines are still there to a certain extent; there are some experiences that just feel more "right" on the PC — and those are the games I keep a gaming-capable PC up and running for.

Well, that and 18+ visual novels… but those tend not to be too taxing on the ol' hardware!

The Evercade VS Founder Edition went up for preorder today, and did very well, by all accounts. By virtue of having a certain degree of "behind the scenes" access, I am privy to a certain amount of more specific information which I won't be sharing for now — but suffice to say it's been a very happy day at Evercade HQ, and I suspect once preorders go live for the regular editions of the console tomorrow they'll be even happier.

I've said multiple times that the Evercade's launch last year was, in many ways, considerably more successful than the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series launches. Sure, PS5 and Xbox may well have done better numbers-wise, but in terms of goodwill and community-building, Evercade has been hard to beat.

And if we look at what each platform is primarily known for, the picture's even clearer; PS5 is known for being The Console You Can't Buy; Xbox Series is known as The Game Pass Machine; Evercade is known for having a passionate team of people working hard on it and doing their best to preserve some games that we haven't seen for 30 or more years in some cases.

It's no surprise that the Founder Edition did so well today — and it doesn't seem like a scalper situation, either, even with the Founder Edition being a limited-run affair.

And while the Evercade is an emulation-based device rather than a fancy-pants FPGA affair, after an exceedingly negative experience attempting to preorder the Analog Pocket a while back, I absolutely know where my loyalties lie. Particularly as collecting for the Evercade involves buying a couple of £15 cartridges every few months rather than attempting to track down working original carts for obsolete systems… or just loading up an Everdrive, but where's the fun in that?

Anyway. If you're at all interested in what the Evercade has to offer, Funstock still has a few Founder Edition bundles available — and these are very good value, since they come with two controllers, the link cable required to connect the handheld to the console and use it as a controller, and six game cartridges. Check it out here.

Having one of those evenings where depression threatens to set in and brings with it that most frustrating of things: analysis paralysis. The fear that if you start doing something, it will somehow be the "wrong" thing and you'll regret it. Even if the things you are contemplating doing are all, without fail, things you will enjoy.

This is such a weird thing when you think about it. Why on Earth would you deliberately make the choice to do nothing when given the choice between multiple things, all of which you know you'd like? Of course, making the choice to do nothing under these circumstances is rarely deliberate, which is the problem, really; if we could all just easily discard the stupid options without giving them a moment's thought, we'd probably all be doing a whole lot better.

Still, as the cliche goes, admitting there's a problem is an important first step, so I'm hoping by writing this down out of sheer frustration it will spur me on to actually go and do something enjoyable. It's starting to get a bit late, so maybe I'll go play some retro games in bed on the Evercade. In fact, yes, that sounds like a smashing idea. Decision made! Easy.

I don't know if there's something in the air, or if it's just "one of those times of year", or if the shitty weather is doing something, but I've been feeling kinda crappy both mentally and physically of late. I feel stressed out and tired — neither of which are due to work, thankfully, which is a nice change — and I keep feel like I'm waiting for something to be "over" or "finished".

I guess I could be thinking about the whole pandemic situation, of course, but honestly that hasn't been bothering me too much up until this point, so I don't think it's that. I feel like it's just one of those natural ebbs and flows that one's life seems to undergo as time passes; biorhythms or some other such (possible) nonsense.

Trouble is, given that these feelings of vague dissatisfaction and occasional panic are so ill-defined, it's difficult to feel like there's anything I can really do about them other than just sort of ride it out, and minimise contact with things that might make things worse. Like, you know, the Internet.

Time to go get some sleep, I think; didn't get to sleep until quite late last night, so I suspect that's part of why I'm feeling a bit crap today. Here's hoping things improve!

Was in a bit of pain and feeling a bit miserable this evening, so decided to play something I didn't need to think about too much. Final Fantasy XIV may not be the first thing that springs to mind for some people when I talk about games that you don't need to think about too much, but I'm still playing through my New Game Plus run ahead of getting into stuff that is all-new to me — post-launch Stormblood stuff, followed by the entirety of Shadowbringers.

I'd been sort of holding Final Fantasy XIV at arm's length because I know how easy it is to get wrapped up in it, and how good Heavensward's story is in its final hours certainly isn't helping matters. I managed to beat the base Heavensward story this evening, however; I'd forgotten quite how excellent that whole "finale" (I use the term loosely) sequence was — and how much it's teasing things that will, I guess, only come to fruition come Endwalker.

This is clearly a game that's had its narrative thought about over the long term given how much stuff was teased even back in A Realm Reborn. I'm intrigued to see how the whole story arc wraps up with Endwalker, because supposedly after the base game of that is done and dusted, we'll be into an all new "main story". At this point I'm wondering what form that might take, but not having any Shadowbringers context means I'm very much in the dark when it comes to possibilities.

Anyway, I enjoyed my evening and found finishing off the base Heavensward game in my New Game Plus run to be relaxing and enjoyable, which is exactly what I was hoping to get out of the experience. Now to head to bed and hopefully feel a bit better in the morning. Hope you've had a pleasant evening!

Got a lot done today! The nice thing about cutting back to just three videos a week for the moment is that when I need to get two weeks' worth done in advance, it doesn't feel like a massive effort. And with both sets of parents coming to visit us next weekend, I needed to get two weeks' worth done in advance!

Got some fun stuff coming up on the various series, including some games I've always meant to try but, for one reason or another, never got around to. Probably the "biggest" one of those is on the Atari ST, and you'll see it the week after next! I ended up having an absolute blast with it, and regretting that I hadn't tried it sooner. I'm expecting a fair few slaps for not trying it sooner when I reveal what it is!

Also on the agenda was the Atari 5200 version of Star Raiders, which is indeed an almost infinite number of times better than the 2600 version. I still prefer the 8-bit computer version purely for how much more straightforward the keyboard controls are, but you can make Star Raiders 5200 work on a controller without having to do anything too fancy. It feels like Star Raiders, which the 2600 version failed to do, so that's all that matters.

This week I've got plenty of interesting things to write about. The Resident Evil 2 remake, Nijisanji EN's debuts, some retro stuff and doubtless some other things that have temporarily slipped my mind. For now, though, I'm going to pay attention to my cat, who is seemingly desperate for me to go to bed, make myself a crisp sandwich and try to get up at a sensible hour in the morning. The other parts of that list shouldn't be a problem, but we'll see how that latter step goes…

One of the things that annoys me the most about social media these days — out of many things that annoy me about social media these days — are people who come and yell at you for enjoying things "wrong".

If you've known me for a while, you'll know that the Ar Tonelico games are incredibly important to me. They were a hugely influential factor in influencing my gaming tastes today, along with my desire to develop specialist knowledge in that particular part of the games industry. They are also amazing games that deserve a rerelease.

Which is why I'm sure you can appreciate when someone comes along and whinges at me for not having a particular problem with the dodgy localisation Ar Tonelico 2 had — which I don't; that game shone regardless of the issues with the text — I am not going to have any patience with them. I've taken to simply not responding to these people any more; they go right on the mute list. If my first interaction with you is you bellowing at me that I'm enjoying something "wrong", then I have absolutely no desire to interact with you further.

In the case of Ar Tonelico 2, I recognise that the localisation has issues and wasn't NISA's best work. But ultimately it doesn't really matter. It absolutely doesn't. Ar Tonelico 2 is still an amazing game that made me laugh and cry — and it inspired me to learn more about a whole bunch of things. It's a big part of the reason I'm here typing this right now. And for someone to try and devalue that experience because they don't like the localisation is kind of a bit shit, really.

A friend of mine firmly believes that original-language versions of works and localised versions of works should be treated as distinctly separate products — and I agree 100% with that. If official localisations — which, remember, will have been approved by the original creators in 99.9% of cases — aren't to your liking, then the original versions are still out there. Oh, you don't speak Japanese? Then learn. You claim to know enough to know that the official localisation is "inaccurate", so put your money where your mouth is and play it in Japanese, then let the rest of us enjoy our English versions in peace.

Or do what I do and play with Japanese voices and English subs, then when you recognise a disparity between the two you can raise an eyebrow and go "huh, interesting" and perhaps make a mental note to talk about the distinction between the two versions if you're writing or making a video about it — and then think no more about the matter as you continue to enjoy it. Here's an example of me doing just that when I wrote about Criminal Girls ages ago.

In this instance, both the term "punishment" and "motivation" are perfectly acceptable for the scene, because while the actions you're performing are effectively BDSM-style punishments, the end result is an increase in the characters' motivation levels — otherwise why would they learn skills from it?

This never used to be an issue for anyone, and I sort of hate that the Internet has made it an endlessly tedious topic that comes up any time an English version of a Japanese game is released. It really makes it difficult to publicly express enthusiasm and passion sometimes, because there's always some Billy No-Mates ready to come in and "actually" all the joy out of life.

Well fuck off Billy No-Mates, I will continue to enjoy things as I — and plenty of other people who don't waste their time on the Internet all day — see fit.

Played a couple of hours of Resident Evil 2 Remake this evening, and am pleased to see so far that it appears to live up to the positive reception it had when it first released: it feels like a Resident Evil game while simultaneously also feeling pleasantly modern.

I am particularly pleased to see that the way in which you use items to solve puzzles and manipulate objects in close-up is still present; this feels like an important part of the "survival horror" era of Resident Evil, and it just wouldn't be Resident Evil 2 without it.

I'm not going to talk too much about the game right now as I'll be writing about it on Rice Digital as part of the ongoing Resident Evil Retrospective I'm doing over there, but suffice to say that it's been a good time so far — and I'm also very impressed with its performance on a base PS4, too; I wasn't expecting it to run quite so smooth and slickly, but it really does look great.

Instead, I thought I'd share a story about the original Resident Evil 2 from back when it originally came out. It's not a story with any real point to it and it's probably only interesting to me, but it's an important part of why Resident Evil 2 is such a fond memory for me.

Resident Evil 2 came out just in time for a long, hot summer while my friends and I were enjoying our time in post-compulsory education. After a year of studying for our A-Levels — and with another year ahead of us still to go — we were, of course, pretty keen to let our hair down in the summer holidays.

As it happened, my parents had gone away for a trip to the States to go and see my brother. It was my first time "home alone", and of course I did some things I regret that I got into a lot of trouble for, but that's a story for another time perhaps. The majority of that summer holiday was spent in the company of a couple of good friends who were pretty much as nerdy about gaming as I still am.

When Resident Evil 2 came out, we all picked it up, and since my house was becoming the default place to hang out, become intoxicated, eat Pot Noodles and play video games, that was the venue for us playing it a whole bunch.

As a tangent, I'll just point out at this stage that some weeks prior to the incident I'm about to describe, another friend had helpfully informed me that I "say the word 'cock' like a porn star". This led to the word "cock", being said like a porn star, becoming something of an unofficial greeting, term of endearment and general-purpose mildly offensive word between most of our friendship group.

Which leads us to the Resident Evil 2 incident. Our friend Ed had gone to bed as he hadn't been able to take the Frogger marathon we'd enjoyed earlier in the evening. Naturally, we left an active metronome outside his door to see how long it would take for him to notice. (Quite a while, as I recall… at least until we put the bell on.) My other friend Woody and I, however, we had been drinking, and we were up for some zombie action.

We began a Claire A playthrough. And after some initial laughing at the dialogue — "that guy's a maniac! Whhhhhy'd he bite me?!" — we settled into a routine of saying nothing but "COCK" to one another in the aforementioned style of a porn star. (If you want to recreate it for yourself, say the word "cock" while throwing your head back, placing a strong emphasis on the "oh" phoneme and a slight pause before concluding with the "ck")

This continued for approximately two hours as we played through most of Resident Evil 2 for the umpteenth time. To this day, I still have no idea why we started doing this, nor why it continued for quite that long. But it remains an oddly special memory to me, even though it's absolute complete and utter nonsense — and thus whenever I think of Resident Evil 2 on the PS1, I think of "Cock! Cock! Cock!"