Yeah, remember how I said I was going to take it easy a bit this weekend and maybe only make a week's worth of videos? That didn't happen, I recorded two weeks' worth, because why not. That then means I can use my week off to get super ahead of schedule, which will be nice. Plus I was having fun!

I haven't done editing yet, but that's something I can crack on with when things are quiet with the day job in the daytime… which they often are. I need to try and get out of the habit of napping in the daytime when things are boring/quiet/there's nothing to do, because it's not productive and probably not a helpful habit to train myself into. Bed is so nice though… particularly when I'm rudely ejected from it early in the morning to talk to people I really don't feel like talking to every bloody day.

Anyway! Positivity. Lost track of calories today so wrote it off for now; back on the straight and narrow again tomorrow, though. I've stocked up on diet-friendly snacks, which will help matters, and I'm getting into quite a good habit of drinking plenty of water, which I'm sure will be beneficial in the long term — if not necessarily for weight loss specifically then just for general health purposes, anyway.

Just a week to survive through and then I can enjoy that blissful week off… and fill it with projects and work I actually want to be doing. I might start experimenting with some ideas for that Intellivision project I mentioned yesterday — again, no guarantee that it will be going anywhere, but there's no better time than a week off to fiddle around with stuff like that and see if it might be practical.

On that note, I should bid you a good night. Up early to talk to the aforementioned people I can't be arsed to talk to every bloody morning tomorrow… and then the drab tedium of the daily grind. But, as always, there are video games to enjoy at the end of it all — and I've got plenty of articles and videos lined up to hopefully entertain you all in the coming week, too.

Hope you've had a good weekend — good night!

No stats today, as I gave myself a "day off". I haven't gone crazy or anything, but I've had a good week and I just fancied treating myself.

Anyway.

I was pondering things earlier, prompted somewhat by a conversation between my good friend and podcasting partner Chris Caskie where we were both bemoaning "next-gen bullshit" like the grumpy old (gamer) men we are. And, through a convoluted mental process I can't quite explain, after Chris wandered off into the woods to clear his head, I found myself browsing the information about the upcoming Intellivision Amico system.

For the unfamiliar, the Intellivision Amico is a new console from the current rights holders of the Intellivision brand, which includes famous video game composer Tommy Tallarico. I haven't looked into the full details as yet, but I understand the previous rights holders (who released the Intellivision Lives! compilation as well as preserving a number of historical documents and other information) have subsequently been rebranded as Blue Sky Rangers, but they are collaborating with Tallarico and co, who are now known as Intellivision Entertainment.

The Amico is a system designed around some admirable principles. Its games are intended to cost between $2.99 and $9.99 for downloadable versions (and $30 for a physical release with some sort of "special features" that haven't been announced yet) and must be ad-free, microtransaction-free and family-friendly. They must contain a single-player component and are preferably designed for people in the same room to play together. And they must make use of the system's unique features.

The standout feature of the console is its controller. This is a chunky iPod-style device with a touchscreen and a clickwheel at the bottom; it looks very much like a modernised version of the classic Intellivision controller. Pleasingly, we've already had confirmation that players will also be able to download an app to their phone and use that as an additional controller. The controller features buttons, the aforementioned clickwheel (which appears to be both turnable and pressable), a touchscreen, built-in coloured LED lights and motion sensors, allowing for a variety of different control options. They charge wirelessly by simply resting them in the "bed" on top of the console, or can also be plugged in via USB-C.

The system will cost $250 at launch, and come with six games; five of these have been confirmed as Skiing, Shark! Shark!, Astrosmash, Cornhole and Farkle, several of which are updated remakes of games from the original Intellivision platform with new presentation but similar gameplay. A bunch of games have already been confirmed to be in development, too, with Tallarico estimating that the library will be balanced as roughly 20% updates of classic Intellivision games, 20% completely original games, 20% sports and recreation, 20% tabletop/card games and 20% educational titles.

What's interesting about the Amico is that it's not designed to be super-amazing technology that wows everyone with its stunning visuals or anything like that, but the hardware does appear to be built like a brick shithouse, and from what Tallarico and co are saying, they want this system to last. In other words, they really do want it to be more like a classic console from the '80s than a modern setup — the only difference is that the games will primarily be distributed digitally and downloaded either to the system's internal memory or a microSD card.

Now, it's easy to pooh-pooh this system and write it off as another Ouya, but I think there's definite potential for something interesting here. For starters, this isn't an Android box running crappy free-to-play bullshit on your television; it's its own thing. Secondly, it's been designed as a premium product rather than a piece of plastic crap. And thirdly, even with how successful the Switch has been, no-one, not even Nintendo, has really tackled the "family-friendly, people playing in the same room" market since the original Wii; everyone is too afraid of mobile.

So I'm wondering a few things. Firstly, if the system is worth investing in and exploring, since I think there is potential for a variety of unique experiences in its library — including new takes on old classics. And secondly, if there would be a market for a website that provides information on the system, its games, and news surrounding it.

What I've idly thought of this evening is a site that, in the run-up to Amico's launch, offers a couple of things: news announced by the company, and nostalgic looks back at the original Intellivision's library. Once the system launches, the site would then transition into a source of information on the games available for the platform including a variety of different types of information, corresponding to the various audiences that this thing is supposedly for. I'm thinking:

• Basic concept of the game

• The content (i.e. exactly how "family-friendly" it is) — similar to the info my brother's old site "What They Play" (RIP) offered

• The basics of how to play it

• Its connections to classic games (where applicable)

• A more detailed writeup on how the game plays, the interesting things it's doing etc.

• No review scores, just information and a personal perspective, perhaps gameplay videos etc

This is something I'm vaguely interested in pursuing myself, because as far as I can make out, there are no "Amico websites" out there at the minute. I mean, with the thing launching in April of next year, that's not altogether surprising, but this could potentially be an opportunity to get in early on something that could be really interesting and rewarding to be part of.

I have a number of hesitations, however.

• Does the broader Internet audience actually want this?

• Is Amico going to succeed — i.e. is this something worth pursuing in the first place?

• How can I establish myself quickly as a reliable source of information on the platform — and someone that the Intellivision Entertainment team might want to work with directly?

• Do I have the time to do this alongside my other projects and my day job?

• What do I do about funding?

The latter one is a bit of a key question, because while I could just set up another WordPress site and get started that way without spending anything, immediately having a domain name and a (preferably ad-free) site ready to launch whenever I'm good and ready would be much more preferable for a variety of reasons — most notably from a credibility perspective, so far as your average, less "gaming-savvy" Internet denizen might be concerned; your average non-gamer, I feel, is probably more likely to trust something.com than something.wordpress.com.

Since I would rather the site be ad-free, crowdfunding would appear to be the logical way to go — but what approach? Donations? (Can't rely on those.) Patreon? (Need to provide meaningful rewards, something I worry a lot about already with what I do here!) Kickstarter? (I tend to perceive that as being for projects bigger than "make a website", though I could be wrong)

One possible option is to set up the site on a free WordPress setup and just not hit the "launch" button to make it available to the public initially. Then, when I have a bunch of stuff prepped and ready to go, I can launch a preview of the site to use as something to go "hey, this is what I want to do" to prospective crowdfunders/donors/whatever.

I dunno. These are nothing more than idle musings at the moment, but it does strike me as an interesting possibility for the future — and with plenty of time until Amico's launch, it would seem to make sense to get something prepped and ready ahead of time. I hasten to add that even if I do decide to pursue this, I have absolutely no intention of abandoning either MoeGamer or my retro-centric projects on YouTube, because I know one (or both) of those are the reason why you're here reading this in the first place!

Just thought I'd share with you all. Don't any of you go stealing my ideas now — not that I think any of you would. 🙂

Calories: 2143 – 80 from exercise = 2063/2040
Ring Fit? No
Water intake: OK

Slightly over on the calorie goal today but I was really hungry. I'm not going to guilt-trip myself about it, but I am going to be honest about it — and if I know I'm going to go over, I'm taking care to pick something that won't take me a lot over. 100 calories of sweet chilli rice crackers is better than 400 calories of Pop-Tarts, after all.

Anyway, it's Friday, traditionally the day when everyone flops down in a chair in their living room and makes that noise your Grandad used to make all the time. It hasn't been a super-exhausting or stressful week workwise, but with both Andie and I shaking off some form of non-specific "not feeling well", it's not been a super-pleasant one, either. Thankfully Andie seems to be over it now and I seem to be following her pattern a couple of days at most behind her, so I'm hoping I'll feel a bit more fresh over the weekend.

With another "lockdown" looking imminent, Andie is paying her mother a visit this weekend, leaving me free to make some videos. Good job, too, since after tomorrow's Atari A to Z Flashback I'm out of stockpiled episodes. I might take it relatively easy and just make episodes for a single week rather than the two at a time I normally do; next weekend marks the beginning of a full week off for me, and I'm going to spend a good chunk of it recording and getting ahead of schedule on videos.

It remains painfully slow progress on videos, but I am pleased with what I'm achieving, and I seem to be getting a lot more new viewers and commenters recently than I have done in the past. I've done some minor rebranding on my channel to make it a bit clearer what I do, mostly consisting of the new trailer you may have already seen (watch it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNpsaRjXcHg if you haven't) and the new channel art you can see in all its glory here:

This new art, I think, sums up what I'm all about, since it incorporates all the things that are important to both me and my channel. We've got the various games I've covered in the regular series in the background, we've got The MoeGamer Podcast there, and we've got mascot Midori reppin' as usual. If you're wondering about the layout, the text is positioned so that it appears nicely in the "banner" form of the channel art on PC, mobile and tablet, and the broader image will be seen if anyone visits my channel on a Smart TV, if indeed anyone ever does that rather than going via another Internet-connected device. (I know I've certainly never used the "apps" on my TV, but then I do have my PC hooked up to it, so there's no point.)

Anyway. Hope you've had a good week and you have a pleasant weekend ahead of you. I'm going to chill out with some Fuel on PS3, I think; I'm enjoying that game a lot, and with its ridiculous scale I can see it becoming a go-to chill-out game for me at some point. Doubtless a short;Play video on the subject will follow soon, so watch out for that!

Net calories: 2129 – 127 from exercise = 2002/2040
Ring Fit: Yep (127 cal)
Water intake: Not bad, could be better

I'm really impressed with Star Ixiom, the sequel to Star Luster, as you can probably tell from my writeup today. I've been playing through the Command mode this evening because the Conquest mode is just a little too daunting right now, and it's really interesting how the missions in Command provide practical examples of how various strategic options will work.

The mission I've spent most of the evening on and took lots of attempts turned out to be a lesson in "acceptable losses". You're given a relatively small area to play with, two bases and two planets, and a whole mess of Galaga on the way to mess shit up. You lose if your ship is destroyed, if both the bases are destroyed or if both the planets are damaged. You do not, however, lose if one of each of the bases and the planets are destroyed, so depending on your own strategery and efficiency at picking off Galaga from a distance, you can get away with sacrificing some of the things you're supposed to be protecting in the name of the greater good.

War is, as they say, hell.

The more I play, the more I notice cool little things about it, too. It was already apparent that the Galaga behaved differently from the Battura, but it becomes very apparent in this mission that the Galaga are especially prone to flying right at your ship and causing damage by smashing into it. Given the way the original Galaga game worked, this is, of course, entirely appropriate.

I'm definitely going to do a short;Play video on this in the very near future. It's too good not to celebrate a bit more! Watch out for it in the coming weeks.

Calorie goal: 2000/2040 (-40)
Ring Fit?: Nope
Water consumption: Yuri Nation

So, I know it's only been three days since I started focusing on counting calories for (hopefully) some weight loss, but I'm feeling positive so far. I haven't found it too difficult to stick to the calorie goal — though I do tend to find myself getting a bit peckish by this time in the evening, so I should probably save some calories for an evening snack — and I don't feel like I've been having to "miss out" on anything, so long as I look carefully at what I'm about to eat.

That, essentially, is all any diet is, really: looking at the things you're about to stick in your mouth and determining whether or not it's actually a good idea to stick it in your mouth or not. That's what she said, I know, I know. But I'm keen to see whether what I've been doing for the last few days will have a noticeable result, because I know it really works for some people — YouTuber Larry Bundy Jr. is an incredibly inspirational example — and I'm curious to know if I need to make any further "adjustments" beyond simply spreading out those calories across the day.

It's when things get more complex, annoying and inconvenient that I find myself struggling with diets. When a diet requires you to make overly convoluted recipes just to avoid the things you're not "allowed" — or, worse, requires you to eat some sort of revolting astronaut food — then that's when I tend to find myself losing motivation, feeling frustrated and getting depressed by the whole thing.

Conversely, right now I've been enjoying pretty much what I want, just in a bit more moderation than I would do under "normal" circumstances. I've also been making a point of drinking a lot more water (both lightly flavoured and "plain") and I've found that drinking bottles of mineral water is a good way for me to manage that. Mineral water is also much better than the grotty, hard shit that comes out of our taps, too — and it's not even especially expensive. Plus it seems mineral water bottles are fully recyclable these days, too, so any objections one might have about it being a waste of plastic can be overcome with this information.

I dunno. It's early days yet, as I say, but at the moment I'm feeling reasonably positive. I haven't yet incorporated Ring Fit Adventure into my daily routine because both Andie and I are coming off the back of some illness (not COVID, we don't think) that knocked us both around a bit, so I haven't felt up to pushing myself while I've been spending significant parts of my morning feeling exhausted and dizzy. Once I put that in there, I'll have a few extra calories to enjoy, even — or just a bigger deficit.

Anyway. I'll report more on progress when I have a better idea as to whether or not there has been any progress. For now, I'm off to bed!

I watched a great video earlier. Here it is. Don't worry, it's safe for work/parents/children/whatever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIxY_Y9TGWI 

This video, by focusing on the music side of things, wonderfully sums up why corporate life drives me crackers. It's all so insincere and pointless. None of it matters. And yet the people involved seem to feel the need to role-play it being important. I seriously doubt any of them really give a shit though.

It's not just working corporate life that this stuff infests, though; it's everyday life. The stuff Tantacrul shows us in that video is just as true for advertising as it is for internal corporate videos. Mindless, soulless, pointless. Nonsensical. Irrelevant statement. That's why we believe something that is nothing to do with the irrelevant statement we just vomited out.

I appreciated that video, though. Modern corporate music had been bugging me for a while, but I had been struggling to express exactly what it was about it that bugged me. Tantacrul is an actual musician, so he was able to explain the musical clichés that go into making this nonsense. And now I'm in two minds as to whether or not this music is going to annoy me more or less now I know exactly what it's doing!

You have to laugh, really, don't you. The alternative doesn't seem to help.

EDIT: I had the info all ready and then forgot to add it!

Calories: 2020/2040 (-20)
Ring Fit?: No (give me time)
Water intake: Pissing like Niagara Falls

I was actually going to post this last night when I was somewhat lacking in inspiration, but here we are now. Before anything else, though:

Calorie goal: 2023/2040 (-17)
Ring Fit?: No
Water intake: About 2L

See? Told you I was going to keep myself honest. Anyway. Some favourite Atari Lynx games, some of which are on the way to the Evercade soon, and some of which I hope we see on there eventually! I used to have a Lynx and I regret selling it during a moment of fiscal tightness… though judging by the state of the Game Gear I own I doubt it would still be going strong without a bit of TLC.

Anyway!

Turbo Sub

I guess you'd call this a game vaguely akin to Space Harrier, but it unfolds from a first-person perspective. You're piloting a sub that can also, apparently, fly, and stages alternate between above-water blastathons and underwater avoidathons. In the latter stages, you can collect crystals that allow you to purchase powerups and extra lives between levels.

This game was a real showcase of the Lynx's hardware scaling capabilities, and is still a lot of fun today. Apparently there was an arcade version of this, too, with the Lynx port coming several years later; I never knew this back in the day. It was just "that kick-ass scaling game" for the Lynx!

Steel Talons

This isn't a particularly fondly regarded Lynx title, but I loved this back in the day. I was a big fan of the arcade machine, which had realistic helicopter controls (cyclic and collective pitch levers!) and was an early polygonal 3D blaster. The Lynx actually does a very valiant effort of recreating the arcade experience, albeit in low resolution. It's a fun, if fairly simple, game.

Electrocop

This game still wows me today by how it makes use of the Lynx's sprite scaling to create a convincing 3D environment where you can run left and right (with convincing parallaxing on the floor) and "in" and "out" of the screen. It's actually an interesting game, too, involving negotiating maze-like levels, blasting enemies and hacking computers to open locked doors. One of the platform's more ambitious efforts, for sure — and great music.

Checkered Flag

There weren't a ton of good racers on the Lynx. This one was probably the best of them — and it was a great one. While at the time I bemoaned the fact that it didn't have hills — those who have been watching Atari A to Z for a while will recall that young Pete had an obsession with Racing Games With Hills — I recognised it as a really solid, enjoyable and challenging Pole Position-alike. I bet this would have been great in multiplayer, but did you know anyone else with a Lynx?

Gates of Zendocon

Probably the best blaster on the Lynx, this game takes you through a wide variety of stages with some really interesting and unusual enemy and obstacle patterns. One level you might be fighting off predictable waves of enemies; in another, shooting your way through organic… "things"; in another still, blasting a path through abandoned scrap metal. Ton of fun, lots of variety — and, again, great music.

—

The latter of these three are coming to Evercade later in the year, which I'm super-excited about. The first two I'd love to see at some point but I don't know what the licensing situation is with them. Fingers crossed, though; a couple of companies seem to have been hoovering up rights for classic Lynx games, so hopefully these are among them. We'll see!

Anyway, with more that 2L of water inside me I really need a piss now, so I'll bid you farewell for the evening. Have a good night!

Morning all, a "business" post today — I've updated my Patreon account to be in GBP rather than USD. Fees have been going up for international transactions meaning that I haven't been seeing as much of your kind donations as I should have been, and hopefully switching to GBP will fix that.

This shouldn't affect anything for any of you existing Patrons — please let me know if you encounter any issues — but if you're in the UK, switching your pledge to my new tiers will save us both conversion fees. I've simply switched my tiers from $1 and $5 to £1 and £5, so that does mean any of you wishing to switch currency will pay a tiny bit more for equivalent tiers (£1 is about $1.30 right now, £5 is $6.47), but that should be counterbalanced by the saving in currency conversion fees, which is 2.5%.

You don't have to change if you don't want to, but if you do it allows me to take home a bit more of your kind donations each month rather than losing it to fees.

 

To avoid any additional conversion fees for the both of us, I suggest that those of you in the UK change to your local currency. For those of you who would like to switch your currency you can follow these steps:

1. On Patreon.com, hover over your avatar in the top right of your screen.

2. Click Manage memberships.

3. Find this page, and click Edit.

4. Under Currency, choose your preferred currency.

5. Click Update to save your settings.

Thanks for your understanding — I'll reiterate, you don't need to do anything, but if you wish to or are able to update your pledge to the new tiers that would be much appreciated!

Shout if you have any questions!

I've been trying for a little while to kickstart myself back into some sort of weight loss routine, but it hasn't really been working for me. I haven't put enough "pressure", for want of a better word, on myself, and as such I've just found myself thinking "ah, this won't hurt, I'll just get back on it soon".

No more! Probably. From Monday (I'm giving myself tomorrow to eat all the tasty things I bought yesterday, haha) I'm going to make an honest effort at this. And in order to ensure I keep said honest effort honest, I'm going to record relevant bits of information in this 'ere blog each day, even if they're not directly relevant to what I feel like talking about.

At the very least each day I'm going to record my calorie consumption; I'm using MyFitnessPal to record my calorie intake as well as a recommended number of calories per day. I'm also going to try and force myself into a habit of doing a bit of Ring Fit Adventure every day. It doesn't have to be a lot, but I can build that up over time, and doing just a little bit every day will surely help — as well as burning a few calories. Where I do remember to do Ring Fit Adventure, I'll record how long I did it for and the calories burned in that period.

I'll also record weight loss each week. I'm not going to provide exact weights because that's just a step too embarrassing at the moment, just the amount I've lost using Monday as a starting point. That should hopefully allow me to track things nicely over time using this blog as well as MyFitnessPal.

Doing something positive starts with good intentions. And I feel adding that little bit of extra "pressure" on myself to do this properly will help me out somewhat. So I hope you'll support me in this endeavour!

I'm pleased that so many people have been discovering the joy of Star Luster recently. It really is one of my favourite Evercade titles. And I'm pleased to say that I've managed to secure a copy of its PS1 sequel Star Ixiom — that should hopefully arrive in the next few days, so I'll be sure to do a short;Play episode on that at some point in the near future, as well as a writeup on MoeGamer.

I've been spending a bunch of time recording footage for the games we'll be talking about on the upcoming episode of The MoeGamer Podcast. As an EXCLUSIVE REVEAL, just for you, I can confirm that we will be talking about 3D arcade racers — a genre which, when you look at it in a bit more detail, is actually really several different genres that tend to get bundled together. I'll explain on the podcast.

Anyway, recording footage for the games I intend to talk about has led me to a few interesting conclusions:

• Burnout 2 is best Burnout
  – The people who made Microsoft Flight Simulator made some really cool games in the past
  – I like offroad games a lot more than I thought I did
  – Rockstar used to make games, not microtransactions

There's a few clues to some of the games I'll be educating Chris on in those conclusions, plus more to come, too. I'm looking forward to the discussion — it should be a fun one. For now, I'm still trying to shake off whatever lurgy I've got right now, so I should probably hit the hay for the evening. Have a lovely weekend!