#oneaday Day 477: The things all modern games do

I saw a fun comment a little while back — I forget who it was and even where it was posted, so apologies to the person who originally made it — that put forward a theory: you could release a game from ten years ago today, such as Metal Gear Solid V, and no-one would be any the wiser, outside of maybe some improvements in performance and/or resolution.

This made me laugh, because there's a certain amount of truth to it. It feels like modern mid-to-big budget games that have chosen "quasi-photorealistic" as their aesthetic of choice are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from one another. This type of visual style has long since stopped impressing me, and it's actually kind of starting to bug me how much all the top-end developers appear to be shamelessly cribbing from one another.

So here's a list of things that I would really rather see less of. Very few of these things are "bad" as such, it would just be nice to see some games that didn't do them.

Gears of War cam

You know the one. Third-person, camera shifted a little back from the character enough to see most of their upper torso but not their legs (because if you can see their legs you can see that we still can't quite animate people going up and down steps properly) and to the right, positioning the character just to the left of centre on your screen.

Bonus points if the camera wobbles around when the character is sprinting, in simulation of a cameraman running behind the character while attempting to hold an unwieldy camera steady.

The slow pan down to interactivity

The "seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay" thing stopped being impressive a long time ago. Final Fantasy VII pulled it off (kind of) in 1997. Just once, just once, it would be nice for a cutscene to end without a slow pan to Gears of War-cam while the background audio and music fades to calmness and the protagonist slowly, but perfectly in time with the camera pan, takes a stance ready for action.

Painfully obvious objective markers

"Go through the door". No, really? This door that I just spent half an hour solving puzzles to open? Really? You want me to go through it?

A health bar that grossly misrepresents how much damage you can take

To be fair, this has been a problem since Namco's Rolling Thunder gave you a segmented health bar that suggested you would be able to take up to eight hits before keeling over, then immediately killed you if you got hit by a single bullet. But this has become so common it's a bit of a problem ever since everyone decided that everything needs, to one degree or another, to be a Souls-like.

If you're giving me a health bar of a reasonable length, I don't want 75% of it to fall off the moment I take one hit from an enemy. Not every game has to have "brutal, hard-as-nails" combat, as marketing people like to put it. Sometimes it's okay — even desirable — to have flashy, button-mashy combat where the protagonist can take as much punishment as the enemies do.

Opening a single drawer from a chest and finding nothing

I don't know which game first did the "protagonist searches a chest of drawers by opening one completely empty drawer and 90% of the time doesn't find anything" thing, but it's an absolute plague these days. Granted, at the other end of the spectrum we have Shenmue, a game which can be looked upon at least in part as the world's most detailed cupboard-opening simulator, but I feel like there's probably a happy medium somewhere.

See also: lootable objects in non-RPGs with nothing in them. Why do you do this?

Progression mechanics in games that aren't RPGs

Stop it. I don't need to level up and I don't need to grind in every single game. Just give me what I need to beat the game from the outset. You may — may — under certain circumstances unlock new moves and weapons as the game progresses, but these should not be tied to any sort of "experience" system.

Photo mode and New Game+ added as post-launch updates

You know you're going to do them. Just put them in from the start.

And just for good measure, one thing I wish we saw more of:

Post-game unlocks that significantly alter the game

My benchmark for this is Silent Hill 3, which, under the correct circumstances, allows you to dress the protagonist Heather up in a retro-futuristic outfit and unleash her devastating "Heather Beam" on enemies. Optionally, you could also add an on-screen health bar to the game, which is not normally present because it's a survival horror game. These two elements completely changed the feel of Silent Hill 3, and offered an incentive to replay that wasn't just "play through the entire thing again with some minor changes to get a different ending".

These days, sadly, costumes are primarily DLC and additional modes that significantly alter the way the game plays just don't really feel like a thing any more. Part of this is down to modern games being considerably expanded in length over stuff from, say, the PS2 era (which is when Silent Hill 3 originally came out), but also some developers just don't seem all that willing to have a bit of silly fun with their creations. And that's a bit sad!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 476: A few first impressions from Silent Hill f

I'm excited to be playing a brand new Silent Hill game in 2025. I wasn't sure how I felt about Silent Hill f transplanting the series from late '90s/early '00s America to 1960s Japan, but thus far it appears to be a change that works. If you've played any entries in the Project Zero/Fatal Frame series, you'll know that small-town Japan has plenty of scope for eerie activities, and such is the case with Silent Hill f.

I'm just shy of four hours in so far and thus far I've been having a good time. Protagonist Hinako, in true Silent Hill tradition, clearly has some Issues to work through, though the exact specifics of these haven't been revealed as yet, aside from the fact that her father is an abusive alcoholic and she resents her sister for moving away to get married. She also may or may not be dead; my internal jury's out on that one thus far.

As with prior Silent Hill games, Silent Hill f sees Hinako wandering through a sort-of open environment, stumbling across interesting happenings and finding horrific trouble at fairly regular intervals. This time around, rather than being completely alone, Hinako regularly runs into her school friends, who are seemingly seeing the same things she is seeing — there's always been some ambiguity in the series as to whether things are "really" happening — but for the most part she ends up having to act by herself in order to catch up with her peers in various ways.

Part of the narrative is clearly going to involve how Hinako is ostracised from certain parts of her supposed "friendship" group for refusing to conform to behavioural gender norms. Her best friend is an icky boy named Shu, and even as teens, they are still obsessed with their imaginary "Space War" games that they've been playing together since childhood. I'm interested to see quite how far the game ends up leaning into matters of gender identity, because it would very much be in keeping with the series' past of exploring psychosexual matters, among other things.

Much of Silent Hill f sees Hinako stumbling around in the fog as is series tradition, but likewise there are times when she finds herself in "other" places. In one sequence, she finds herself lost in a seemingly endless field of scarecrows and must solve a puzzle to find a way out; on several other occasions — seemingly when she's unconscious in the "fog" world — she goes somewhere completely different, shrouded in darkness, filled with mysterious temples and shrines, and guided by a man in a fox mask who almost certainly is not entirely trustworthy.

As you might expect, the game dives deep into traditional Japanese spiritualism and superstitions, with the main angle exploring the fox god Inari. There have been a couple of mentions of an "ancient god" that may or may not be Inari at various junctures too, though, so it remains to be seen where all that ends up — and whether Inari is a force one should feel comfortable putting one's faith behind.

Mechanically, it's pretty much as you would expect for a modern survival horror game. Combat takes a few cues from heavy-hitting stamina management action RPGs because of course it does, everything seemingly has to these days, but since the Souls games, trope codifiers for this type of experience, are effectively survival horror RPGs in many respects, it does make a certain amount of sense. It also helps to highlight that Hinako, as a teenage girl, is not a fighter. She can't take much punishment and she isn't particularly agile at swinging anything around with the intention of doing damage. As such, combat has a rather deliberate pace, though mistakes are punished quite severely, even on the default "Story" difficulty.

Initially I wasn't all that enamoured with this, but once you get a feel for its distinctive rhythm and learn to spot enemy tells — including some particularly explicit ones that allow you to counterattack — it's probably a good fit for Silent Hill, if indeed the series really "needs" combat at all. (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was an attempt to do a Silent Hill game without combat, and it was mostly successful, though the "chase" sequences it had in lieu of actual fights were, at times, a little frustrating.)

The puzzles have been interesting so far, though despite the default puzzle difficulty being "Hard" none have been too taxing as yet. The trickiest one thus far took place in the aforementioned scarecrow field and required reading of body language and facial expressions to match a particular statement; I'm not entirely sure I solved this one "correctly", but it made internal sense to me while doing so and thus I'm counting it as a success.

I'm intrigued, then. I want to know more about Hinako's situation and what is really going on with her. There are quite a few different ways I can potentially see things proceeding from where I am thus far, and in keeping with series tradition, not many of them promise a happy ending for our heroine. And we longstanding Silent Hill fans wouldn't have it any other way.

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#oneaday Day 475: A traitorous experience

As noted yesterday, today was a Work Day Out. Not a Work Day Out where we had to do any work, but a Nice Thing To Do Together, presumably for the purposes of "team-building" and suchlike. I may sound cynical, but honestly my workplace is such a nice, small company that any occasion like this just feels like a nice gathering of friends — albeit one where the boss foots the bill. Winner.

Our main activity for the day was The Traitors Live Experience, an interactive group game based on the (apparently) popular TV show. (I've never seen it. But that doesn't mean much these days.) I was a little concerned ahead of time that we might end up playing with strangers, but thankfully we had enough people in our group to ensure that our game, which had 11 people total (and could have supported up to 14) was entirely people who knew each other. While The Traitors TV show is based on the assumption that most of the participants won't know one another prior to playing, they have a lot longer to get to know each other; as such, since The Traitors Live Experience is just shy of two hours in length, I suspect it is best played with people you have, at the very least, a passing acquaintance with.

I'm going to explain how the game works now on the assumption that you, like me, have never seen The Traitors, so if you're a big fan of the show and you feel like I'm stating the obvious, I can only apologise. I am not able to comment on the experience from a fan's perspective, so this will have to do you for now.

After an opportunity to hang out together in a comfortable bar area (with seating!) before your game starts, you are led into the depths of the venue, through a series of creepy Resident Evil mansion-style corridors, until you eventually reach your "Round Table" room. Once ensconced in your seat of choice, which you will stay in for the majority of the game, your host introduces the game and how it works.

Before play proper begins, at least one Traitor is selected. This unfolds through everyone seated at the table blindfolding themselves with blackout goggles, then loud music playing while the host stalks around the room and taps one or more people on the shoulder, indicating that they are the Traitors for the game. The remaining players are the Faithful.

The Traitors Live Experience unfolds in two parts: "day"-based missions and "night"-based potential betrayals. During the day, the group as a whole is given some sort of task to complete, and successfully achieving this rewards the group as a whole with "gold". You don't actually win any cash (unlike the TV show) — the "gold" is simply a score of sorts. At the end of the game, if all the Traitors have been eliminated, the Faithful score all the points, while if even one Traitor remains, the Traitors take all the points. The venue has daily leaderboards for how well Faithful and Traitors have performed.

At night, everyone dons their blackout goggles once more, but the Traitors are invited to take them off partway through proceedings. At this point, one of several things can happen: they can "murder" someone by pointing at them; they can "blackmail" a Faithful, causing them to become a Traitor (though I believe there are conditions on when this can occur, such as when a Traitor is eliminated from the game) or nothing at all can happen. Once again, if someone is "murdered", the host silently taps them on the shoulder, and they remove themselves from the room before everyone else takes their goggles off.

Being murdered (or, in later rounds of the game, "banished" by the Faithful if they believe you are a Traitor) doesn't mean your game is completely over; instead, you are removed to a separate room where you can watch live camera feeds of the surviving players, and at various junctures you are given the opportunity to interact with the games they are playing by solving puzzles in the other room, or perhaps by finding creative ways to communicate "from beyond the grave", as it were. There was a nice vaguely "escape room" feel to this side of proceedings, helping even those who are eliminated early to feel involved in the complete game.

As it happens, I, a Faithful, was murdered quite early on due to my strong performance in one of the missions and making some solid observations during the pre-Banishment deliberations. I was worried that getting knocked out early would be boring and annoying, but actually it was rather fun, particularly once some other people joined me in the room and we had to discuss whether to help the survivors or actively sabotage their attempts.

The missions themselves are all pretty simple parlour game-style puzzles — I assume they have a bank of them available to randomise so that two games aren't exactly alike. In our game, we initially had a straightforward puzzle where we had to rotate dials on the table to accurately depict the cycles of the moon. This was followed by a "spot the difference" game where we were showed a model of a crime scene and some photographs of a few details from it, then shortly after, we were shown a different model of the same crime scene (and "the same but potentially different" photographs) and tasked with spotting five changes, with bonus points on offer if we could determine how the corpse was actually murdered.

After that, we had a game where we were challenged to press a hidden button under the table after an exact amount of time had elapsed — this was the one I excelled at, since I've always been rather good at that sort of thing — and, after I'd been eliminated, the group were tasked with arranging a set of Tarot-like cards in order (with us "assisting" from beyond the grave by flashing the lights in the Round Table room from afar) and, as the grand finale, the group were challenged to recreate several scenes shown in silhouette by equipping themselves with props and standing in place.

I don't know how close in execution the whole thing is to the TV show, but plenty of effort has been made with the presentation of everything. There's plenty of cool lighting effects, dramatic music and suchlike, and the "Round Table room" is nicely detailed, even concealing a secret exit to "Traitors Tower", where the finale sequence took place. The whole thing was very enjoyable, and I'm glad I overcame my initial misgivings about playing a game so based on social cues to enjoy the experience.

As I say, I feel like for certain types of people, the experience will lose some of its appeal if you attend in a small group and end up being paired up with strangers, but likewise some people will thrive in that environment. It's good that the game is seemingly flexible and doesn't force anyone to do anything they're uncomfortable with — prior to starting the game, you're given the opportunity to privately indicate if you'd rather not be a Traitor from the outset, though this doesn't preclude you from potentially being "recruited" later in the game if the Traitors' ranks find themselves thinning.

We followed our time at The Traitors Live Experience with a late lunch at The Ivy Market Grill, a posh and expensive restaurant on Covent Garden that lets you go "I had lunch at The Ivy" without having to actually go to the real Ivy in the West End or pay the astronomical prices required to become a member of The Ivy Club. I had a cheese souffle, a sirloin steak and a chocolate bombe for dessert. All of them were delicious and I am still stuffed even now, a good four hours after we finished eating. The diet has gone out the window for today, of course, but y'know what, it doesn't matter. I had a good time, and I can be back on track tomorrow. It's not as if I'm going to be eating like that every day, after all.

Anyway, all in all it was a very good day, and I'm glad I went along. I'm knackered now, though; on paper it might not sound like we did all that much, but when you take into account the train travel in both directions, add the walking required when progressing across London in various ways, add the energy required to keep your social batteries topped up for most of a day with the same group of people, it all adds up. So I'm back home now, writing this in my pants, feeling thoroughly satisfied. Probably an early night tonight, though.

Although Silent Hill f did arrive today, so…

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#oneaday Day 474: Archiving with mixed results

My 5.25" floppy drive and power source came today, so I've been tinkering this evening attempting to image some Atari 8-bit disks from the big boxes I have buried in a cupboard upstairs.

After a few frightening mechanical noises and some initial frustrations — the most annoying of which by far was discovering I had the floppy drive cable inserted into the Greaseweazle the wrong way around, causing the drive to perpetually spin and never actually read anything — I got the setup up and running, and successfully ripped a couple of disks, initially to the "raw flux" .scp format, and then converted them to the more commonly used (for emulators, MiSTer and suchlike) .atr.

(For future reference, Atari disks are 40 tracks, meaning you need to set Greaseweazle to read cylinders 0-34 and 35-39. I don't know the technicalities behind this, but it worked.)

My initial success was reassuring, but I had a number of failures after that. I think some of these disks may be beyond help — and frustratingly, so far it appears to be the disks with more "personal" contents.

I attempted to rip a disk that had some of my brother's early BASIC programming experiments on it (including a simple multi-choice adventure game called Treasures of Crylos that I remember being rather fond of), but the disk barely registered as having any contents at all when I attempted to rip it.

I had a little more success with "Pete's Disk 1", which was a SpartaDOS X-formatted double-density disk, so a bit of an unusual edge case. The disk seemingly ripped successfully, and loading it into an emulator with SpartaDOS X installed allowed me to view the disk directory, but I was unable to actually load and run anything from the disk. So close! So very close. Also man, SpartaDOS X could fit a hell of a lot of stuff on one floppy disk. No wonder my Dad set me up with it for my personal disks rather than trusty old DOS 2.5. You can squeeze a lot more on when your file sizes are measured in bytes rather than sectors.

Other successes I had included what we colloquially referred to as "The Dutch Demo", a multi-part graphics and sound demo that is, unsurprisingly, Dutch (and I don't think I've ever seen archived anywhere online, so I will be sharing that at some point); Red Rat's Technicolour Dream Demo, which is a slideshow of pictures produced with the software in question, which supported considerably higher colour depth than the Atari was "supposed" to support; and a couple of disks of collected games.

I haven't started ripping and organising in any great depth yet, but I would like to rip as many of these as I can, then archive them somewhere online. While most of the software on these disks is archived via other means elsewhere around the Internet, it's the little things, like the menu systems used to collect these games together, and the specific combination of things on each disk, which is unique to my own computing history — and something that I'm keen to preserve if at all possible.

I don't know how many of these disks are going to be salvageable. I'm already seeing that some brands of disk have much better longevity than others — thus far, Radio Shack and Verbatim's disks have had the highest success rate, with Wabash being the worst — so it will be interesting to find out exactly how much I might be able to recover and (re)discover throughout this process.

I'm done for the evening, though. Back to it on Friday, since tomorrow is a Work Trip. A fun Work Trip, but still one I have to get up early and catch a train for, so I better get some sleep.

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#oneaday Day 473: The worst MIDI file in existence

It may sound peculiar in these days of being able to stream or download pretty much any piece of music you'd care to mention in its original format — be it legally or less-than-legally — but back in the '90s we had a lot of fun downloading MIDI files.

Some of these MIDI files we downloaded with the intention of using them somehow — primarily in Klik and Play and The Games Factory projects — but sometimes it was just for fun. And it was fun! Even with the limited synthesis capabilities of the sound cards most of us had at the time — it was very much the days of OPL FM synthesis being the norm, as wavetable cards were an extremely expensive luxury, if you could even get them at all — we used to enjoy tracking down MIDI files of songs we recognised and playing them back.

One day, my friend Edd found the worst MIDI file in existence. It is called EWOK.MID and I've been attempting to track it down for a good twenty years. Recently, I succeeded in my search and rediscovered EWOK.MID in all its glory — though I did forget to make a note of the website where I found it, so you'll have to settle for a version hosted here. (EDIT: It was here. Which appears to be buried deep in the depths of an SEO-optimised, likely AI-generated site about tech, which I suspect is built atop the remnants of a long-abandoned website that has somehow kept all its old uploads intact since 1999.)

I would like to share EWOK.MID with you now, but given that MIDI file support is no longer a given on modern machines, you'll have to settle for a recording of my computer playing it back in the name of universal compatibility.

Isn't it magnificent? Someone spent time on that. Moreover, someone thought that the time they spent on that was worth sharing with the world. And I am unironically glad that they did, because EWOK.MID has given me many, many laughs over the years.

What I find most amusing about it is that they clearly got the gist of the track from Star Wars that they're trying to ape, but then weren't quite sure how to do all the other bits. I suspect they started with the melody line first, and then attempted to play the drum parts "live" over the top of it. At that point, the sensible thing to do would be to use MIDI sequencer features such as quantizing to get the notes a bit more "in time" with one another, and get the whole thing sounding a bit more "professional". (Of course, quantizing demands that your notes are vaguely in time in the first place, so I do find myself wondering if EWOK.MID is possible to save.)

But no! Our heroic arranger decided that the work they'd done was enough. This was their magnum opus; their note-for-note recreation of a classic theme from a classic movie. So they uploaded it to the Internet one February morning in 1999, and sat back to enjoy the reactions of everyone who stumbled across it, whether deliberately or by accident.

I salute you, heroic arranger, whoever you are. You have brought me many hours of joy over the years, and I'm glad I finally rediscovered your finest work. I hope you're doing well, wherever and whoever you are.

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#oneaday Day 472: Goodbye and thank you to Billy Chaser

I've made a YouTube video about this (above), but I thought I may as well type something up also. I will likely repeat myself.

Today I learned that a few days ago, Billy Hudson, better known as Billy Chaser and one half of The Game Chasers on YouTube, lost his battle with a brain tumour and passed away. I was deeply saddened by this news, because Billy was a wonderful part of the retro gaming community, and someone who had entertained and inspired me ever since I first stumbled across his channel about ten years ago.

At that time, I was working a boring, dead-end office job. I wasn't having a terrible time or anything, but I was bored and creatively unfulfilled. I was fortunate enough to have a desk with its back to the wall and in a corner, so I could watch YouTube videos without anyone noticing.

As it happened, prior to that job I had never really taken the time to explore YouTube at all, so I didn't really know where to start. I forget exactly how I found my way to The Game Chasers, but it was via a deep and branching rabbit hole that included channels such as Classic Gaming Quarterly, Classic Game Room, LGR, ProJared, Game Grumps, Game Sack and all manner of other folks, many of whom are still making great videos to this day.

The Game Chasers was really striking, though. This was a YouTube channel that had the production values of a TV show. Each The Game Chasers video could have easily been a broadcast TV show. Billy, one half of the core pair of Billy and "Shady" Jay, was a trained filmmaker, and it showed in his fantastic editing for each and every episode of the show.

The Game Chasers' concept was simple. It was like those reality shows where people rummage through storage lockers in search of treasure, but with a focus on video games. Billy and Jay would visit flea markets, antique stores, storage lockers and all manner of other places in search of retro classics — and often find some real wonders. This was in the years before "graded" collecting pushed the price of retro games up into ridiculously unattainable territory for most of us, so their stories were inspiring; indeed, watching The Game Chasers was pretty much the direct cause for me expanding my own collection so massively.

Billy was a wonderful character. He was funny and silly, but smart and knowledgeable. Part of the beauty of The Game Chasers is it made the viewer feel included. It made the viewer feel like they were part of the excitement of taking these trips, and part of the joy of discovering hidden treasures in dusty old lofts. It made the viewer feel like a valued friend.

And that was important to me! I have tried, and I have tried, and I have tried to get across to the people I know "in real life" how important retro gaming and computing is to me, but with each passing year, I grew more and more lonely as it became very clear that people not only don't care, they are, at times, actively hostile.

This was heartbreaking, because a hobby is so much more fun if you can share it with people. And as time went on, it was starting to feel I just… didn't really have anyone like that. As unhealthy as parasocial relationships are, watching shows like The Game Chasers made me feel less alone. It made me feel like there were other people out there as passionate about this as me. It made me feel like I wasn't the only one who still enjoyed all this stuff that I grew up with — and for more than just nostalgia. I enjoy collecting, playing and exploring retro games in the here and now — including both revisiting titles from my past, and discovering brand new favourites. That's entirely what my YouTube channel is about.

And that's why it's so sad that the retro gaming community has lost as wonderful a friend as Billy was. Most of us didn't know him personally, but I suspect if we found ourselves at a convention, he would have made the time to shake each of us by the hand and make us feel as welcome as we do watching his videos. And those out there who were fortunate enough to know Billy in real life had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. He would play up the joker aspect for the camera, but in private he would be an incredibly supportive friend.

The world is a worse place without Billy in it. And I hope wherever he is now, he finds eternal happiness amid endless aisles of every video game one might ever want — and endless friends to enjoy them with.

Rest in peace, you magnificent chode. You will be missed, not just by your close friends, but by the entire retro gaming community.

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#oneaday Day 471: A more in-depth look at the MiSTer Multisystem 2

I realise I've talked in passing a great deal about the MiSTer Multisystem 2 that I recently acquired from Heber and the Retro Collective, but not written anything substantial about the system itself. So I figured I'd use today's post to talk a bit about the system in general, and perhaps answer some questions anyone stumbling across this post might have.

What is it?

The Multisystem 2 is an all-in-one console built around the open-source MiSTer standard, designed for hardware emulation of classic home computer, console and arcade machines using a technology known as FPGA. With it, you can use software designed for these platforms either on a modern display or, with the "Analogue" model, on a CRT television or monitor.

What is FPGA?

I'll be 100% honest with you: I don't have a clue what FPGA is, other than it's something to do with a special chip emulating the original circuitry, chips and other internal shenanigans of this old hardware. It is often — though not always — more accurate than emulation done entirely in software, and thus, in theory, provides an experience much closer to using original hardware than software emulation can provide.

Is it plug-and-play?

Unfortunately not. Like most MiSTer setups prior to the Multisystem 2, there is a degree of sorting things out required before you are able to use it. You will need an SD card and a means of writing to it on your computer. You will need to download a piece of software called "Mr. Fusion" (which can be found here) and image it to your SD card using a suitable piece of software such as Balena Etcher (which is free, and can be found here). You will need to boot the Multisystem 2 with the imaged SD card inserted while connected to an HDMI display. Then you will, ideally, need to connect the Multisystem 2 to the Internet either via Ethernet or a USB Wi-Fi dongle (not included) and run the built-in update script or an alternative such as the more comprehensive update_all. Then you will need to fill your SD card (or USB external storage) with the games and software you would like to actually run on the system.

Then you're ready to go. It might sound complicated, but it's fairly straightforward. A few tips I found from my own setup process that you might find useful:

If connecting via Wi-Fi, connect to an access point with strong signal, otherwise the update scripts will take a very long time. (Like, more than 24 hours.) Ideally, connect via Ethernet.
Use update_all rather than the built-in update script. It has a lot more flexibility.
Once you've run update_all, run it again to make sure it got everything. If the initial run of update_all fails to finish downloading some things, it will retry a couple of times but eventually give up. Having half-finished downloads can cause problems, so running update_all again helps ensure everything is completely downloaded to the right place.
This is entirely optional, but since update_all can, with the appropriate options, download a bunch of arcade games, it's worth having an SD card big enough to fit them all on. Many MiSTer users recommend using external storage for computer and console game files, but keeping the arcade ROMs and cores on the SD card means that subsequent runs of update_all won't redownload everything unnecessarily.

One important difference with the Multisystem 2 compared to a traditional MiSTer setup is that you don't need to buy multiple pieces of hardware or boards to get up and running. Everything you need hardware-wise is built-in (except for storage) — though I would recommend adding a powered USB hub, particularly if you want to use external storage without its own power supply — so all the setup you need to do is software-based.

How does it work once it's set up?

Once you turn on the MiSTer, it will take a moment to start up, showing a simulated "snow" display similar to that seen on an old analogue TV that isn't tuned in to anything. After a moment, the main MiSTer menu will appear. If you have set things up as above, you'll see options for Arcade, Computer and Console, along with a few other things. Using a controller or a keyboard, navigate the menu and choose the system you would like to emulate.

Note: using a controller uses the "Nintendo" layout by default, though this can be redefined in the MiSTer menu to your liking. Controllers that use non-standard layouts (such as those which recreate the N64 or Mega Drive/Saturn layouts) are worth configuring before you get too into anything so you know for sure which button does what.

Once you've chosen a system, the "core" for that system will take a moment to boot. On systems with a built-in operating system (such as home computers, PlayStation and Saturn) you will, after a moment, see a familiar boot screen. On other systems, the screen will remain blank. Hitting the Menu button on a controller or F12 on a keyboard allows you to access various options, including the all-important options to mount or boot magnetic disk, optical disc and cassette tape images or cartridge ROM files. Simply pick something and play!

How does it work on HDMI displays?

There's a lot of customisation you can do. You can adjust the way the system scales its visuals, including doing "integer scaling", for a clean multiple of the original system's resolution. This helps reduce "pixel shimmering" during scrolling, among other things, but can lead to borders around the display depending on the resolution of your HDMI display.

There are also a lot of visual filters you can apply, most of which are in the name of recreating a semi-authentic CRT-style experience on a modern display. There's a lot more than just simple scanline filters, so be sure to explore the presets or tinker with creating your own — you can actually create some very pleasing effects. Sharp pixels are always an option if you prefer that, though.

How does it work on CRT displays?

The Multisystem 2 can connect to a CRT in one of two ways. The first option is through an RGB SCART cable with a mini-DIN plug on the end — the same found on Mega Drive 2 consoles, though take care, as certain cables, notably this one, will not work. I found some cheap ones from Amazon work perfectly fine and produce a beautiful quality picture — no need to break the bank on posh cables.

The other alternative is to use the VGA output, though note that this doesn't necessarily mean you need to connect to a VGA monitor. You can, and for some classic computer systems with peculiar resolutions or refresh rates it might be a good idea to, but VGA to SCART cables also exist and produce a very good quality image.

The advantage of the Mega Drive 2-style mini-DIN cable is that it carries audio and sound on one cable, so if your CRT TV has decent speakers, you won't need to connect sound separately.

Speaking of which…

How do I get stereo sound?

If, like me, your CRT only has a piffling mono speaker, the Multisystem 2 has both a 3.5mm headphone-style jack that can be connected to headphones or speakers, plus an optical output. Take your pick.

Is it easy to use?

Once it's all set up — and that might be a big "if" for some people — the MiSTer software is dead simple to use. The only thing that might be an adjustment for some is the necessity to manually "finalise" save files for console games before turning the system off — this just means popping into the menu and choosing the appropriate option, otherwise you'll lose anything saved to a virtual cartridge or memory card when you switch the system off. There are ways to set this up to happen automatically, but for maximum peace of mind, it's worth just taking a moment to do it manually.

Consoles are, as you might expect, completely straightforward. Home computers benefit from attaching at least a keyboard and, in some cases, a mouse. Since many home computers had their own non-standard keys (the Atari 8-bit had Help, Start, Select and Reset keys, for example, while the Commodore 64 had Run/Stop, Commodore and more) you will have to take a bit of time to learn what key on a modern keyboard maps to the "classic" keystroke, but this is just a matter of practice and muscle memory.

Is it good?

A hearty yes. While some of the cores aren't quite perfect to the original hardware specification, all of the popular ones are updated with new features and tweaks quite regularly, so any issues you encounter will probably be resolved with a bit of time and passion from the enthusiast community responsible for maintaining the MiSTer project as a whole.

For those with a suitable CRT television setup to take full advantage of the "Analogue" model of the Multisystem 2 (there's also a slightly cheaper "Digital" model which only has the HDMI output) I unreservedly recommend it. It's one of the most affordable ways to get an incredibly authentic-feeling retro setup, without any of the expense and hassle of purchasing and maintaining vintage hardware and media.

For those gaming purely on HDMI devices, be prepared that you may want to do a bit of tinkering with the visual filters to get things looking exactly as you want them, but the MiSTer project as a whole was originally designed with modern displays in mind. An HDMI display is also a lot more flexible than a CRT television when it comes to resolutions and refresh rates different from broadcast standards, so it opens up the possibilities of running things like MS-DOS PC and X68000 games without having to fiddle with settings to get them working. (That said, it is apparently possible to get both of these working on a TV with enough determination. I haven't had any success myself as yet.)

Pair the system with some good controllers, a keyboard and a mouse (I use several 8bitdo controllers depending on what system I'm emulating, plus the 8bitdo C64-style keyboard and the optical Amiga mouse from Retro Games Ltd's TheA500 Mini) and you have a fantastic "retro room" setup that you can just plug in and enjoy whenever you like — no fussing with power adapters and SCART cables, no wondering if ageing cartridge, magnetic or other physical media is still going to work — plus the whole thing is nicely portable if you want to take it over to a friend's house to enjoy some classic games.

Something something piracy

Yes, as with anything emulation-related, it's worth noting that the vast majority of software you might want to use with the Multisystem 2 will be unlicensed, unofficial copies sourced via questionable means. There are developers out there making new games for classic systems who will happily sell you a ROM of their new game, but for classic games that haven't had a modern reprint, you're on your own for sourcing software.

Granted, in the age of the Internet this isn't all that difficult, but some may have understandable qualms about this, particularly while some publishers and developers are making an effort to do official rereleases of their classic titles. Heck, I work for Blaze on the Evercade, and our entire business is official rereleases of classic games.

But also look at it this way: there are some games that are never, ever, ever going to get rereleased for all manner of reasons. And for those that do, you have options to buy them to assuage your guilt — or perhaps you still have your own copies from back in the day. Better to actually enjoy these games as they were intended than pay eBay scalpers' prices, anyway, I say!

How do I find out more?

Check out the official website!

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#oneaday Day 470: Time travel

I like reading old magazines. I always have done, ever since I was a child — and in fact, the "old magazines" I read today are pretty much the same old magazines I read when I was a child: that is to say, old issues of Page 6 and Atari User, with an occasional PC Zone or Official Nintendo Magazine from the mid to late '90s.

Part of this is down to the family connection: my Dad, my brother and I all contributed to Page 6, so it will always be important to me. None of us wrote for Atari User, but as the only other magazine devoted to Atari 8-bits around at the time, we bought pretty much every issue. Likewise, my brother worked on PC Zone for quite some time in the mid to late '90s — I even went and did my Year 10 work experience with him — and I did a few freelance gigs for the Official Nintendo Magazine during my latter days of Sixth Form and early days of university.

I don't just re-read these magazines because I'm proud of the people involved, mind. I read them because while I'm reading them, for a brief moment, I have escaped 2025, and I have travelled back in time to when they were current. I've caught myself numerous times genuinely thinking that I wanted to order something from one of the companies advertising in the magazines, before remembering that they almost certainly do not exist any more, particularly in the case of those supporting the Atari 8-bit computers.

But it's nice. While I was a bit young to be involved in things like user groups, computer clubs and (let's be honest here) piracy exchanges back when these magazines were current, reading them, even now, makes me almost feel like I'm there. It almost makes me feel like I can reach out and touch the past — and find great happiness there.

This is the root of nostalgia, of course, and some would argue it's not necessarily a healthy thing to fall into the habit of. But to that I say pish, pfaugh and all manner of other Victorian expectorations, because 2025 sucks balls, and any escape from it is welcome — particularly if it can be achieved through a means as simple as opening an old magazine and reading Garry Francis ranting about Scott Adams adventures, or Patrick McCarthy writing an entire preview in "Franglais", or even the odious "street talk" house style that was used at the Official Nintendo Magazine at the time I was doing occasional freelance work for them.

Many of the people involved in these things have moved on to better things in later years. In the case of the early Atari magazines, some of them may not even be with us any more. I wonder how many of them, penning their lines for the latest print deadline, would know that their words would carry great comfort and meaning for someone — even if it's just me, and no-one else gives a shit any more — so many years later?

A few articles in some magazines might seem like a small legacy to leave, but it is a legacy nonetheless. I wonder if, many years from now, someone might find something I've written and draw some comfort from it? If that's you, I pre-emptively appreciate your time and attention, and I hope the future doesn't suck quite as bad as our current present.

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#oneaday Day 469: Where have all the 5.25" drives gone?

Earlier today, I had an idle thought that has occurred to me numerous times over the last little while, but today I thought I'd look into actually doing something about it.

A while back, I bought a Greaseweazle, which is a USB device you can connect to a modern PC at one end and a floppy disk drive at the other, then "rip" floppies using a particularly accurate method of imaging known as flux imaging. These images can then be converted into various formats, such as those commonly used with emulators (or MiSTer), and can then be safely archived.

I've got two boxes of 5.25" Atari 8-bit disks in my cupboard upstairs that I'd quite like to get all the stuff off — assuming the discs themselves have survived. I know some of them have (and, equally, some appear to have not) and so I thought it would be a nice, interesting and fun thing to do to archive my unique collection of disks, which in some respects are a snapshot of family life in the mid 1980s.

Besides the obvious disks full of pirated games, my brother and I both had our own disks that we'd save BASIC programs to — both those that we'd typed in from magazines, and those which we'd written ourselves. Then there's a bunch of disks that my Mum and Dad did stuff with — my Dad did all manner of things, including writing, music and various productivity things (that and Flight Simulator II, which "isn't a game") while my Mum, on several occasions, spent some time writing. My brother made pictures with AtariArtist. And I'm sure there are plenty of other hidden treasures among them, too.

Now, here's the problem. I bought the Greaseweazle with a mind to making some floppy disks that could be used with the Atari ST, which uses 3.5" 360K or 720K disks. (Actually, Atari format can push the 800K+ mark, but they're broadly MS-DOS compatible, so 720K is a sensible limit for everyday use.) The device worked great for that, though I ultimately got an UltraSatan for the ST (which is an SD card-based storage solution that effectively emulates a hard drive) and have now moved on to the MiSTer for most of my retro computing needs and wants.

I'd been putting off getting a 5.25" drive to archive these big boxes of Atari stuff, though. I knew the process of getting a 5.25" drive hooked up was a little more involved, for one thing, since a 3.5" floppy drive can power itself from the Greaseweazle, while a 5.25" drive generally needs an external power source. But something in me today said "right, go on, get this sorted". So I headed for eBay in search of what I thought would be an easy thing to find: an old, discarded but working 5.25" floppy disk drive that someone had grabbed out of an obsolete PC and decided to sell online.

Reader, it turns out that 5.25" drives are not, in fact, easy to find. In fact, there seem to be very few floating around out there, and the ones that are are surprisingly expensive. While you can score yourself a 3.5" drive very easily — and it probably be in decent working order, too — 5.25" drives are, apparently, like gold dust.

I did find one promising looking unit earlier, which was actually a self-contained enclosure with a power supply and two 5.25" floppy drives, but after bidding on it a few times, the price went a little higher than I was comfortable paying, so I dropped out. (Also, I was having dinner at the time the auction ended, so I kind of sort of forgot to check in.) The final price was over £80, though, which would have probably given me a certain degree of buyer's remorse. Or maybe not. I guess now we'll never know.

I'll keep keeping an eye out for reasonably priced drives, though. I really would like to get those disks archived and share them with my family — it's something I probably should have done a long time ago (before 5.25" drives went completely extinct, apparently) but I guess it's going to be a bit of effort to get up and running!

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#oneaday Day 468: Determination

Predictably, I put on a fair amount of weight during my time away, but rather than feeling despondent about this, I am using it to provide myself with a sense of determination to crack this thing once and for all. After we got rid of all the leftover holiday goodies, I started strictly calorie counting, and thus far (admittedly it's only been a couple of days) I have managed to stay within my budget.

The challenging thing with any diet, I find, is keeping it sustainable. Gimmicky and fad diets may sound like an amazing way to quickly get some weight off, but in practice it doesn't take very long for their limitations to become suffocating and oppressive — which makes you not want to pay attention to them, which in turn makes you feel guilty, and for many of us, that makes us eat… you see where the problem lies.

I'm looking long-term. I'm using an app called Lose It! which came recommended from a few people I know, and that seems pretty good about having a solid built-in food database to make tracking calories straightforward, and also at setting appropriate goals and giving you an estimate of when you should reach them if you keep going at your current pace.

The thing I need to get into the habit of is recording things constantly, rather than just when I feel like a day is going well. One difficulty I've consistently had in the past whenever doing any kind of food tracking — be it Slimming World counting Healthy Extras and Syns, Weight Watchers points or anything else — is feeling too guilty to write down when things have gone wrong. And once you break that streak of being disciplined, it becomes significantly harder to recover. The ideal situation, of course, is to acknowledge that, for one day, things didn't go quite according to plan for one reason or another, but not to let that ruin everything.

One day is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, particularly when you're doing something as long-term as weight-loss, so acknowledging that one day out of a much longer journey proved to be a bit of a "blip" is healthy. After all, what journey of self-improvement does happen without facing challenges along the way? The thing you need to do is face those challenges head-on, and see if you can figure out some ways to prevent them occurring again — or, at the very least, developing a strategy for what you will do next time they arise.

For me, I think a big challenge is lunchtime. It's always tempting to just go to the shop and get a Meal Deal, because what harm can a sandwich do, really? Except that Meal Deal isn't just a sandwich. It's a snack, too, which is often a bag of crisps, and shops seem to only sell giant "Grab Bags" of crisps these days. And then it's nice to have a chocolate bar afterwards too, right? And, of course, shops seem to only sell king-size or "Duo" bars these days. It's like they want you to overeat.

I've thought about this, and I don't really know why they do this. Some shops have, of course, made an effort to make the "impulse purchases" shelves near the tills have more "healthy choices" (usually bags of fruit and nuts) but most people going into a shop for a Meal Deal are going straight for the Meal Deal aisle, not the "healthy choices" shelves. And when given the option between a bag of wood chippings and a Star Bar Duo, what do you think most people are going to pick?

Or maybe it's just me. I actually find it genuinely quite difficult to fathom how people successfully live on the 2,000 calories a day we're "supposed" to have, when everything that surrounds us on a daily basis that isn't a handful of house plants and chia seeds seems to be absolutely packed with calories. How is it that people are going out for coffee every day and not ending up as big as I am?

Activity is probably the answer there, I know, but I refuse to believe everyone I see enjoying a cake in Starbucks is going to spend two hours in the gym working it off later. Maybe it's just about walking more, or cycling to work, or whatever. I don't really know. There are lots of things I probably need to get a better handle on to make this work over the long term, but for now, getting into the discipline of counting the calories is working quite well. We'll see how things go from here.

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