S-RANK PATRONS: Get your questions in for December Q&A at https://www.patreon.com/posts/s-rank-patrons-q-45110887 or see the pinned post on https://patreon.com/petedavison/posts

I've spent the evening playing Dreamcast games, because two old favourites from "back in the day" arrived in the post today: Tee Off by Bottom Up, and Tokyo Highway Challenge (aka Tokyo Xtreme Racer or Shutokou Battle) from Genki. After a bit of fiddling with my slightly temperamental Dreamcast — it briefly stopped outputting sound, then only output sound through the right stereo channel — everything was as it should be, and I was happily reliving some gaming experiences that I probably haven't had for nearly 20 years or so.

Tee Off remains one of my favourite golf games; it's just a wonderfully arcadey golf game, though it highlights the fact that more recent golf titles like Everybody's Golf are a hell of a lot more forgiving on the timing front. I love everything about this game, though; the simple but slick presentation, the fun course designs, the variety of options (including a "sci-fi croquet" variation!) and, of course, its wonderful music. If you've ever wanted to play a golf game that sounds like Sonic Adventure, I urge you to pick up a copy of Tee Off.

Tokyo Highway Challenge is one of those games that I remember picking up in spite of mediocre reviews from publications at the time. Something about that game really resonated with me; I was especially fond of its "point battle" mechanic for racing rivals, where it's all about draining fighting-game style health bars by staying in the lead rather than actually completing a set number of laps or checkpoints. Those who enjoy RPG-style power creep, but with cars, will be in heaven, too — this is a grind-heavy racing game all about making incremental upgrades to your ride and gradually challenging more and more powerful opponents.

I've got a copy of Metropolis Street Racer on the way, too, but that hasn't arrived yet. I'm looking forward to revisiting that one, though; I absolutely adored that back in the day, and its all-original soundtrack is the stuff of legends.

I'm having a lovely time right now, and not a bug-ridden triple-A title or next-gen console in sight!

Having picked up a few things I wanted with some Christmas money from generous parents and in-laws, I thought I'd grab something I'd been meaning to get for a while with what was left. And that something is an original Xbox.

There are many things I regret getting rid of in a moment of weakness when I was attempting to appease my first wife many years ago. (There are many reasons she's an ex; this is one of them!) A beautiful copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for PS1. Complete-in-box copies of both Lunar: Silver Star Story and Lunar 2. And solid collections of games for a variety of platforms, including PS2, Dreamcast, original Xbox and more. And while I've rectified some of those mistakes in more recent years — though I still lack Castlevania and Lunar 2 — there are still holes in my collection that didn't need to be there.

I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to get back on the Xbox train, because over the last couple of days in particular I've found myself enormously nostalgic for Microsoft's original "do not drop on children" beast. And I think it's something to do with the fact I often find myself rooting for the underdog when it comes to gaming hardware. Because unlike the generation which followed it, the original Xbox was very much trailing behind Sony's offering, despite being technically superior in a number of ways. And this was also the days when there were meaningful exclusives on a platform — exclusives that had a distinct "feel" to them rather than them just being "you can only get this generic-looking open-world Western game on one of these two near-identical consoles".

Part of the reason for thinking back so fondly on the Xbox and its library of exclusives, I've come to realise, is the Sega connection. I commented to my podcasting partner in crime Chris earlier that I got a similar vibe from the original Xbox that I do from the Dreamcast, and he pointed out that that is perfectly understandable; in many ways, the original Xbox is the "Dreamcast 2" that we never got. Not only were there a bunch of cool Sega exclusives on the system, but supposedly people who worked on the Dreamcast-based NAOMI arcade hardware also contributed to the Xbox's tech.

So it's time to start building up that collection again. Xbox games are crazy cheap right now — perhaps even cheaper than their PS2 counterparts in many cases — because, for one reason or another, nobody seems to want them. Now, you might think this is strange in a world where Microsoft fanboys are constantly praising the modern Xbox platforms' backwards compatibility. But actually, only about 40 of the original Xbox's games are "backwards compatible" on modern Xbox platforms (Xbox One onwards) due to the way the system works.

The reason for this is that it's not just a case of putting the disc in and loading it; the original disc works as a "key" that allows you to download an updated version of the original game that has been recompiled for the newer platforms. The internal architecture — particularly with regard to processors — is so different between the OG Xbox and the modern ones that this is, apparently, necessary.

So why have they only done 40 of them? Surely a game system that plays four generations of games with no caveats would be a massive selling point for them? Well, yes, it would be — but the difficulty with many of these titles is licensing. Since they're effectively "re-releasing" these backwards compatible titles by recompiling them and making them available for download, any licensing contracts that applied to the original releases are likely no longer valid. You'll notice among the list of 40 games that there are very few that feature licensed music, or where music was a particular focus. No Jet Set Radio Future. No Grand Theft Auto games. No Need for Speed. No racing games at all, in fact, from what I can make out.

And not just because of music, either. OutRun 2 is nowhere to be seen, because it had the Ferrari license. Sega GT 2002 isn't there because of car licensing. Project Gotham Racing and its sequel aren't there, presumably for the same reasons. Most of the list consists of either first-party games, or a very safe list of games that you'd expect to see there bearing licensing shenanigans in mind — plenty of Star Wars and Tom Clancy games. The stuff that it's worth renewing the license on because they have timeless commercial appeal, in other words.

With all this in mind, I feel vindicated in purchasing an original Xbox. There's a substantial library of great games for this platform that is worth exploring. I think there's just under a hundred genuine exclusives for the system, plus a bunch of other games where the Xbox version is preferable to the PS2 or Gamecube versions for one reason or another. And, outside of special cases like the legendary Steel Battalion, none of them are especially expensive. So I think I might have a new project to pursue…

Do you have any favourite original Xbox games that you think I should check out? Let me know if so, and I'll look out for them.

Finally got around to remembering to do this. All right, folks, it's time for you to submit some questions! I've pencilled in the weekend after Christmas (the 27th/28th) to record the answers to this, so please ask me whatever you like in the comments on this post by December 26 at the latest.

Remember, you can ask me absolutely anything! It doesn't have to be about video games, it doesn't have to be about anything I've covered on the site or on YouTube — it can be whatever you want. I reserve the right to veto anything too overly personal or which might cause any sort of… "issue", but I'm pretty open to whatever you want to ask. If you want a look around my game shelves or at some limited editions, or to see an old computer or console in action, that can probably be arranged.

You can ask more than one question if you want, too. Just keep it reasonable! 🙂

Fire away! I'll put regular reminders in the daily posts if you don't have time to think of something now. I look forward to your Qs so I can A them good and proper!

I've been spending a fair amount of time with Pinball FX 3 over the last few days. A Christmas present of a Nintendo eShop voucher led me to download all the Zen tables, so I now have a decent selection to fiddle around with — so far I've done the best on the "Mars" table, which appears to be nicely beginner-friendly, though the "Sorcerer's Lair" table you get as a freebie is also quite good in this regard.

Playing earlier today, I actually noticed a distinct improvement in my play. "Shoot this lane," the game said, and after two or three misfires I actually successfully managed to shoot that lane. Prior to this I'd been playing pinball very "reactively", simply hitting the flippers when I kind of sort of thought the ball was in the right place, but today I got the distinct feel that I instinctively knew where on the flipper I'd need to flip the ball in order to get it going in particular directions.

I'm not perfect by any means — any sort of momentum prior to flipping the ball still messes with my ability to calculate these things — but I feel like I've made a distinct improvement. I'm still a long way off being able to confidently "complete" one of these tables, but it's satisfying to feel like I'm better than I was. Hopefully that will demonstrate itself in my scores.

Trying to figure out how I want to write about Pinball FX 3, because I certainly do want to. I'll definitely do some sort of general overview of the program, but so far as individual tables go I'm not sure I quite have the specialist knowledge required to comment on them effectively as yet. At the same time, there may also be some value in a layman's view of all these different tables — anyone coming to Pinball FX 3 for the first time will be presented with a wide variety of options and have little to no idea where to start, after all!

Anyway, I'll mull it over. In the meantime, off to bed with Flip Grip in hand for me… there's time for a round or two of Mars before I sleep, I'm sure!

I've been playing some Jaguar this evening, and I'm feeling good about my purchase. This is an interesting system for sure, and while it's irrefutable that many of the games (particularly the 3D ones) pale in comparison with what the PS1 and Saturn offered, there's an absolutely unique feel to Jaguar-exclusive games that is quite unlike anything on any other platform.

I've been pondering exactly what that unique aspect might be, and I think it's a distinctly "old-fashioned" feel to a lot of the games. I don't mean that as a pejorative, either; I mean that the Jaguar feels like a platform that provides similar sorts of experiences to what we had on '80s home computers, only with somewhat more up-to-date technology. I've been playing Hover Strike this evening, and it feels rather like something I would have played on the ST, albeit with marginally better graphics. Cybermorph is much the same way, and the other game I got with my eBay bundle, Sensible Soccer, was available on the Atari ST!

It's hard to nail down exactly what constitutes this distinctive feel, but it most certainly stands out when compared to other types of game on other platforms. I think it's a sense that there's just a little more complexity to the experience; a feel that it's designed less as a fast-action arcade-style experience, and more as something that almost has a more "sim" feel at times.

At least part of this is down to the controller. The Jaguar's numpad on the controller allows for a certain amount of flexibility a more conventional controller doesn't offer, but the nature of its design means that its functions are best left for things you don't need to press quickly. In Hover Strike, for example, you use the numpad to target things and fire missiles, and the game is designed in such a way that you can do those things from a distance. In many ways, it seems a lot of Jaguar game designers were well aware of the machine's limitations, and so rather than designing games that were unplayable due to the system's dodgy frame rate when doing 3D, they instead worked within those limitations and designed the game to accommodate the technical shortcomings. It's rather interesting — though those technical shortcomings are also likely the reason so many people bounce off the system.

I'm bidding on a couple of Jag carts on eBay and holding out for the (supposedly soon-ish) release of the Jaguar GameDrive, as the latter will allow easy access to both most of the commercially available games and the more modern homebrew efforts. I'll likely start doing some coverage in earnest of the games on the system in both written and video form once that's all sorted — though I already have an article in mind for now, so I might post that tomorrow. We'll see!

Anyway. Enough of that for now, it's time to go play pinball in bed. Have a pleasant evening!

As I hoped, today was another nice quiet day with no commitments. I spent a lot of the early day playing Atelier Ayesha, and Warriors Orochi 3 kept me hooked until nearly 2AM. Me and that game, we're going to have a long and fruitful relationship, I feel.

I'm officially counting down until I leave the current day job now, which is exciting, and I even have a few days off over Christmas to use up the last of my holiday. I broke the news to work on Friday and they all seemed fine with it; as I think I said back then, it will be nice to leave a job behind on good terms for once rather than because I was treated poorly in some way.

I've not had the best luck with jobs in the past. Teaching nearly killed me, but I was worried going into it that it would be a bad idea. Beyond that, I struggled to pin down what I wanted to do; I get a bit of a mental block any time I look at job listings because they're always written in such impenetrable, meaningless corporatespeak these days that it's impossible to glean any meaningful information from them. All the opportunities I've had to date are those I've come across via other means… and I'm grateful for all of them, even if many of them ended badly.

Anyway, I'm hoping this new job will be the start of something great. I'll tell you all a bit more about it once I'm settled in! For now, I better get some sleep before I kick off one of those final weeks!

I had a day of doing absolutely nothing useful whatsoever today — I finished off Warriors Orochi 2 on Xbox 360 and made a start on Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate on PlayStation 4. I enjoyed the former a lot, but the latter is on a whole other level. I'll doubtless write some things about both in the very near future, but suffice to say for now that Warriors Orochi 3 is one of those games that provides enough stuff to do to fill a lifetime.

The first two Warriors Orochi games had a fun progression system that encouraged you to use a variety of characters, but the third looks like it rewards sticking with particular characters for a while, as there are a lot of things you can build up on an individual character. Experience level, a "promotion" system whereby you reset your character's level from 100 to 1 and get a bonus, weapon compatibility, skill proficiency, weapon abilities, items, bonds with allies… bliss. This is DRPG level of character and party progression, only in a hack-and-slash. Exactly what I want from a Warriors game — and I'd argue that this game specifically is pretty close to my ideal Warriors game in terms of progression and structure. At least that's my first impression.

The narrative aspect is interesting, too. After Warriors Orochi and its sequel followed directly on from one another, Warriors Orochi 3 unfolds after the cataclysmic arrival of the gigantic Hydra, which kills pretty much everyone (save for three plucky heroes, conveniently) and obliterates the parallel world that the Warriors Orochi series has been unfolding in so far. What then transpires is a time-travelling tale where the surviving three heroes go back to key events after the Hydra's arrival and change history. They then take the people they save back to the "present", with the ultimate aim being to assemble an enormous army of badasses from the world of Warriors Orochi and be able to take down the Hydra once and for all.

This is a really neat structure that provides a clear long-term goal to aim for; the "prologue" mission to the game is basically the final boss, except you have absolutely no chance of winning whatsoever. Any time you return to your camp, the final boss is just outside the gates, so technically you can go back and get your ass kicked any time you want, but the majority of the game involves figuring out the tangled timelines and ensuring everything is in place to ensure the survival of important characters.

Anyway. Early days so far, but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's 2AM and I could happily play a lot more, but it would probably be unwise to. Also Patreon seems to think that this post is "promoting a raffle" using some sort of auto-detection routine that is clearly broken. I don't know what it took from the above to make it think that I was promoting a raffle, but, dear Patreon robots, I most certainly am not. Thank you.

Hope you've had a pleasant Saturday. Onwards to an equally useless Sunday!

I was wandering around in the kitchen just before sitting down to write this, and thinking about what I might write, when the post I wrote called "Weekendend" popped into my head. It felt like I wrote that post yesterday, when in fact I wrote it at the beginning of the week — indeed, as the weekend was ending. This whole week has just disappeared into a void, and I don't really know why!

Perhaps it's the excitement and nervousness over the new position. I'm looking forward to that, but as with any change of job there's plenty of worrying to go with it! Current day job is aware that I'm leaving now, though, so that's a weight off my mind — it was all very cordial and nice, so I intend to keep it that way before I depart. It'll be nice to leave a job under circumstances under my own control for once — thinking back over my past career, I've regrettably not had the opportunity to do that all that often for one reason or another, which perhaps accounts for my general uneasiness regarding anything to do with employment.

Perhaps it's just been a fairly unremarkable but relatively enjoyable week. I've been having fun with Pinball FX 3 over the course of the last few days, and my new Atari Jaguar showed up today, so I've been having a bit of a play with that, too. Cybermorph is more fun than I remember. I'm definitely looking forward to the GameDrive becoming available as a practical means of expanding my library a bit, though — Jaguar games are a bit pricey, so sticking a bunch of them on a GameDrive would appear to be the way forward. That said, there are a few I definitely want to own "legit" copies of — it'll likely have to be a case of picking those up gradually over several months rather than in a big armful from CEX, though!

This weekend I'm going to have a nice quiet one. As I mentioned previously, I have several weeks' worth of videos ready to go, so I can afford to take a weekend completely for myself. (Aside from the stuff for $5+ Patrons I've promised!) Not that I resent recording the videos or anything — on the contrary, I love it — but sometimes it's just nice to have a weekend where you can think "I have absolutely nothing I have to do today".

Anyway, that weekend starts with a good night's sleep. So I will bid you farewell for now, thank you for your support, and wish you a pleasant weekend also. Have a good one!

I'm going to be a bit vague here for the moment, but I wanted to share some good news with you all: I've got a new job! I'm starting in mid-January, so I've already put my notice in at my current day job. At present I'm not going to share any more information than that, but I did want you kind people to be among the first to know, since you've listened to me complaining often enough. Thank you for that.

It's all been a bit of a whirlwind that happened over the course of the last couple of days, so I'm still reeling a bit from the reality of it. I'm looking forward to having a nice quiet weekend to process all of it — I have enough videos in the bag at the moment that I don't "need" to do anything this weekend, so I'm going to take some time to unwind, enjoy myself and figure things out! $5 Patrons, I'll get the wallpaper I owe you done at that time, too, so watch out for that. I'll also put up the post for this month's Q&A video over the weekend, too, so keep an eye out for that as well.

This is a nice way to finish the year. Well, something good had to happen in 2020, didn't it? Fitting that it would be at the very last moment. Here's hoping that things continue to get better for all of us; we could all use a bit of a "lift", I suspect.

Anyway, this seems like a good time to thank you all once again for your support, and I hope you're all able to enjoy some sort of pleasant news in the latter days of this accursed year too.

I had a bit of a hankering to play some pinball this evening for some reason, so I downloaded Zen Studios' Pinball FX 3 for Switch. I used to like the original Pinball FX on Xbox 360, but haven't really followed it since, so I was intrigued to check it out. Right now you get two tables for free: the ever present Sorcerer's Lair and Fish Tales by Midway.

Pinball FX has always been an interesting series in that it kind of straddles the line between "pinball sim" and "video game pinball". Most of Zen's original tables have features that wouldn't be possible — or would be very expensive to implement — on a real table, while the licensed tables they have in there are loving recreations of classic tables. Apparently they've even tweaked the physics specifically for the "real" tables to give them a more authentic feel, while the "video game" tables remain with their classic physics for an arcadey feel.

It seems like an interesting package so far, and there are a lot of different tables to choose from. It can potentially get a bit pricey if you shell out for all of them, but in practice you'll probably want to pick up a pack or two to begin with and see how well you get on with those tables, rather than filling out your entire collection right away. Analysis paralysis is a thing, after all.

I haven't bought any extra tables yet; if any of you reading this are familiar and have any table recommendations I'd love to hear them! In the meantime, I'm going to go try the game in vertical mode with the Flip Grip in bed… that sounds like it would be a fun time!