#oneaday Day 665: Restlessness

I'm having one of those days where I feel, I don't know, restless and sort of dissatisfied with existence. It's a long weekend, and times like that tend to be prone to such feelings, because when you're given a nice block of time off from the day job, the natural thing — for me, anyway — is to wonder how (or whether) you can spend that time in a vaguely "productive" manner, doing something that adds some sort of "value" to your life.

This is not necessarily a good way of thinking about things, of course. Obsessing over whether what you're doing is "worthwhile" can lead to grindset nonsense, and those people are soundly mocked by well-adjusted individuals with good reason. But all the same, I do, at times, feel myself wanting to… I don't know, it's hard to even express. Achieve something, I guess?

I've had this conversation with myself before. I do achieve things in my daily life and with my day job. My contributions to my workplace are a critical part of the entire process of bringing actual physical, tangible products that are worth money to market. Shouldn't that be enough? Isn't that enough of a "legacy" to leave behind?

Well, perhaps. But I'm sure many of us have had grander plans in the past. Plans to write a book, make a game, compose an album of music, all those sorts of things. And, as we get older, it becomes easier and easier to tell ourselves that we "don't have time" to do those things — when, in fact, many of us probably have pretty much the same amount of free time as we did when we were younger.

I think with me, a significant part of it is loneliness. When I was younger, I would fill many of my days spending time with friends and enjoying the things I loved together with them. I can still sort of do that via the Internet, but enthusing about something over a chat application is a very different feeling from having them in the same room with you, reacting in real time to the things that are happening, discussing things as they happen and, you know, laughing and having fun with one another.

I guess I'm a bit sore because it's coming up on my birthday, and for several years I hosted an event with friends around that time where we got together, ate food, enjoyed drinks and played games together as a fun little competition. Last year the response I got to such an event was rather rude, and it upset me a great deal, following a few other things that had frustrated me in past years (including one occasion where I bought a prize for the event and ended up with it returned to me), and I've not heard a peep out of the people involved for nearly a year at this point, so I guess that's that.

Still, at least I have a game of HeroQuest to look forward to tomorrow, and a trip to The Cave towards the end of the month (around my actual birthday date!) so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Now I think I'll go see if I can finish off Resident Evil 6, and stop worrying about whether or not I've spent the bank holiday "correctly".

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 664: Visual novels!

I've been getting back into visual novels of late thanks to Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death (which I wrote more about over on MoeGamer recently, if you'd care to check it out) — and it hasn't taken me long to remember exactly why I enjoy this type of experience so much. I have been once again trying something that I did a while back with some success, which is to replace watching a TV show or YouTube videos over lunch with a visual novel on auto-play, and it's a fine way to enjoy the unfolding story. In fact, I've often found that the bit of time I get to enjoy some of the story at lunchtime makes me more inclined to want to continue after work in the evening.

Following Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death, I've started a VN that's been on my shelf for a very long time, but which I've not yet got around to. It's called WorldEnd Syndrome, and it's by the same company as Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death. In fact, it supposedly unfolds in the same narrative "universe", though exactly what that means is so far not clear; the main setting and core cast are different, so I suspect it may just be a case of the two games having a similar overall vibe.

One of the things I really like about visual novels is the fact it feels like you're really getting to spend some quality time with a (hopefully) interesting cast of characters — characters who you will doubtless have an initial reaction to, and may well change your opinion of over the course of a complete story that involves them. This was certainly the case with Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death, which has an excellent ensemble cast who have a lot of chemistry with one another, and plenty of interesting things to learn about them. The only unfortunate thing is that the concluding hours of the story are very much setting up a sequel and possibly a larger series of multiple games, and so I was left rather wanting more at the end of proceedings!

As someone who has often suffered loneliness, and who has difficulties with self-esteem and confidence when even contemplating socialising with real people out in the real, three-dimensional world, visual novels have always provided a certain sense of comfort. By their very nature, they include you in a close-knit group of people, and give you a sense of "belonging" — even if the way their narrative is constructed makes it clear that you are not the protagonist yourself; you just happen to be riding along in their head, able to hear their innermost thoughts.

A lot of visual novel writers are clearly wise to this particular appeal element of the medium, too, as many of them are set up with characters designed to be varying degrees of relatable, dealing with real-life issues that anyone can understand — and that is comforting. Although the people involved are not real, knowing that someone is aware enough of feelings that you have had to be able to compose a story that involves and acknowledges those feelings — and perhaps even provides some suggestions on how to cope with them (or how not to cope with them) — is reassuring and, in its own way, helps counter some of the loneliness the modern age brings with it.

I'm looking forward to seeing how WorldEnd Syndrome unfolds. I'm only a short way into it so far — still in the introduction, very clearly — but it's already intriguing, and from what I understand, this one does some interesting things with narrative structure. So I might just go and read a bit before bed, now…

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#oneaday Day 663: Ten of my favourite Evercade cartridges

I've got a relatively ambitious Evercade-related project in my mental "to-do" pile, but I haven't yet found the time to kick that off. So in the meantime I thought I would spend some time talking a bit more about the thing I spend my days working on.

There's a weird sort of culture a lot of people have about not talking about where they work. I understand it to an extent — if people know where you work, that can open you up to harassment as a result of something your workplace did or announced, plus people can (incorrectly) assume that anything you post on a personal account or site is you somehow acting as a "spokesperson" for that brand. In less enlightened workplaces, too, management can spy on the things you do in your free time and inevitably make the least charitable interpretation of the things you say possible so that they have ammunition to treat you like shit at work.

Thankfully I have not suffered the latter for a good few years now, and I am using this paragraph to make abundantly clear that although I work for Blaze on the Evercade project and related products, this post is my opinion only and does not, in any way, reflect the opinions, values and anything else about my employer. I am writing this post 'cause I love Evercade, and have done since I took a chance and splashed the cash on that "All-In" bundle back in 2020.

Anyway, what I want to do today is pick 10 Evercade cartridges I particularly like and share them with you. There may be some cartridges in this list that are no longer available due to the expiration of licensing agreements between Blaze and the license holders, or all manner of other circumstances, and I make no apologies for this; something good doesn't stop being good just because you can't buy it as easily any more.

With all that in mind then, let us begin:

Namco Museum Collection 1

Although both Namco Museum Collection cartridges for Evercade have not been available for a while due to Namco deciding to be extremely weird about releasing their stuff on physical media these days, they remain highlights of the Evercade's launch lineup — and since they formed the part of several launch bundles, there are a fair few copies out there to be found relatively easily.

I have a tough time picking a favourite out of the two, but on balance I think it has to be the first one, which features some all-time classics and favourites, plus some interesting curiosities. On the classics front, you have good versions of Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Xevious and Mappy, while on the lesser-known front you have the excellent (and surprisingly accessible) strategy game, Metal Marines, plus the awesome space sim Star Luster. And this is just my personal favourites from the cart; there's also Mappy Kids, Libble Rabble, Battle Cars and Quad Challenge, too, making it a well-rounded and fun collection.

Data East Collection 1

If there's one cartridge I feel like I plop in the Evercade more than any other, it has to be Data East Collection 1, for two main reasons: Burnin' Rubber and Midnight Resistance. Both are truly excellent games for very different reasons, but they do have one thing in common: great music.

That's not all that Data East Collection 1 offers, though. There's the beat 'em up action of Bad Dudes and its spiritual sequel Two Crude Dudes, a good version of BurgerTime, the excellent (if totally unrealistic) pool game Side Pocket, the manic puzzler Magical Drop 2, the colourful platformer Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics and the one-on-one fighters Karate Champ and Fighter's History. All of these games have something worthwhile to offer in 2026.

Jaleco Collection 1

Jaleco is one of those publishers I feel people often forget about, but when you look at their library of stuff you realise they've actually put out a lot of bangers over the years. Jaleco Collection 1 features some stars from their console lineup, including the beat 'em ups Brawl Brothers and Rival Turf!, the firefighting action-adventure The Ignition Factor, the sci-fi top-down run-and-gun Operation Logic Bomb and more.

I don't think I've ever loaded up Bases Loaded but I believe it's a relatively well-regarded baseball game from the 8-bit era, and likewise for soccer with Super Goal! 2. Super Earth Defense Force is a solid scrolling spaceship shooter, Astyanax and Totally Rad are decent 8-bit platformers, and City Connection is a really fun arcade-style game that only really suffers due to its excruciating music. There's not a bad game in this bunch, so I come back to this cart frequently.

Gaelco Arcade 1

The two Gaelco Arcade cartridges are some of my all-time favourites from the Evercade library, but I think the first one just about has the edge in terms of the number of games I keep coming back to. My personal standouts are the brilliant World Rally, which has possibly the best handling of any isometric racer of the era; the unusual gameplay of Glass; and the wonderfully silly run-and-gun action of Biomechanical Toy.

If you're unfamiliar with Gaelco — and I'd forgive you if you are, since I'd never heard of them prior to us putting this cart out — this is a great way to get to know them. Expect polished visuals, challenging gameplay and some truly excellent digitised guitar noodling.

Renovation Collection 1

This one won't come as a surprise to anyone, as it's an oft-cited favourite from many longstanding Evercade fans. Featuring an extremely cool range of 16-bit games, many of which have an awesome anime style about them, there's a ton of value on this cart. Highlights for most are Valis and Valis III, El Viento and Arcus Odyssey, but there's plenty more to enjoy here, too.

Gaiares and Sol-Deace are good (if very tough) shoot 'em ups. Granada and Final Zone are great multidirectional shooters. Dino Land is a fun and quirky take on pinball. Traysia is a solid RPG if you go into it with the appropriate expectations (it's channelling Ultima, hard). Beast Wrestler is the weak link for many, but I bet you can find some fun there if you try hard enough.

TheC64 Collection 1

In the absence of some good Atari 8-bit cartridges — we haven't yet got a commercially licensable Atari 8-bit emulator we're happy to work with just yet — I will have to satisfy myself with its great rival, the Commodore 64. Fortunately, the three C64 collections we've put out to date include some of my all-time favourite games, and while I will always prefer the Atari versions in most cases, the C64 versions are good, too.

My personal highlights in this collection are Lee (originally Bruce Lee but now not for hopefully obvious reasons), Jumpman and Gateway to Apshai. There's a really broad mix of games in here, including some real legends (Impossible Mission!) — plus the two "Games" games are great with friends. I know home computer games are a hard sell for some people who grew up with consoles, but honestly, the three C64 collections plus the Thalamus cartridge are a great in-road for the curious.

Duke Nukem Collection 1

It felt like we'd finally hit the big-time with this cartridge. Duke Nukem is a huge license to land, and the fact we got the excellent Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered as an exclusive was, for me, the moment we had really got a proper "killer app" for Evercade.

Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered is, of course, great, and probably the best way to play these shareware classics today. Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown has its detractors, particularly as there are more recent ports of Duke3D that run more smoothly and control a bit more elegantly with a controller, but it's one of those things where if you take it on its own merits and consider that it was running on a platform that, despite having a 3D focus, was still just a little underpowered, is actually perfectly competent and enjoyable. The exclusive levels are a hoot, too — if extremely tough!

Sunsoft Collection 2

Sunsoft is one of those developers that, again, I suspect few people would count among their absolute favourites, but they have a really solid back catalogue of titles to draw upon. This second collection of their games is my personal favourite, primarily due to the presence of the excellent Ufouria: The Saga, which is a truly great exploration platformer.

I'm also a big fan of Pri Pri Primitive Princess!, which is an interesting puzzle game that very much feels like it may have been a home computer game at some point in the past. By this I mean that it's clunky but creative, and if you come at it with the right mindset you'll be well and truly hooked.

Toaplan Arcade 3

I knew I wanted — no, needed — to include a Toaplan Arcade cartridge in this list, and after much deliberation I settled on this third one, primarily for Batsugun and its variant, Batsugun Special Version. Out Zone and FixEight are a hoot, too, Truxton II is just as punishing as its predecessor (but fun once you get into its groove), Ghox is a weird but cool take on Breakout, and Vimana is probably the company's most accessible shoot 'em up.

Toaplan's arcade games are among some of my favourites in the Evercade library, and this is an excellent cartridge full of some of their best titles.

The Turrican Collection

Despite being a home computer gamer in the '80s and early '90s, Turrican is a series that completely passed me by. I always saw gushing praise for it in magazines of the era, but never actually got around to playing it myself. I don't think I ever even played a demo for it. This is a shame, because with The Turrican Collection I've discovered that I like Turrican a lot.

I've also discovered that, unsurprisingly, those who criticise it for having sprawling, meandering levels in which it's easy to get lost were exaggerating somewhat; there's always a clear path forwards, and whether or not you go exploring for goodies is up to you. Plus as the series goes on, it settles into a more "Japanese-style" linear formula, culminating in the technically gorgeous Super Turrican 2. Absolutely banging soundtrack, too.

And there we are. Ten of my favourite carts. Ten of my favourite carts. They might not be yours. But they are mine. And, honestly, if you asked me on another day, I could probably pick out ten more favourites, and repeat the process many times over. In fact, I can find something to love on every single Evercade cartridge — and I'm not just saying that 'cause I work on them. I really am thrilled to do what I do — and I hope that comes across in my contributions to the products in question!

Now after all that, I think I'll go boot one of these up and have a nice retro evening…

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#oneaday Day 662: Nexus announcement day

I get to talk a bit about the day job today! I say "get to" like someone hasn't been allowing me to do so. What I mean is: we had a big announcement today, and I'd like to talk about it!

That announcement was for Evercade Nexus, a new Evercade handheld featuring a much bigger, brighter screen, significantly louder speakers, dual analogue sticks and a host of other cool features. You can see the trailer here:

Evercade has always been a platform that plays a wide variety of retro games — the library actually covers six different decades (from the 1970s up until today) — but Nexus has been designed with a bit of a '90s flavour, hence the somewhat different look and feel to the new trailer. The dual analogue sticks are designed to complement 3D games from the 32-bit era that we already have in the library (and have planned for the future), as well as our upcoming brand new native ports of 64-bit legends like Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, and these games all hail from the '90s, so it makes sense for the branding to reflect that.

You can still play classic Atari games on it as well, though, (plus, of course, all the other classic consoles the Evercade library covers!) and the bright colours found in your average old-school pixel art title will look lovely on that screen — plus with the all-new extra-loud speakers, you can subject everyone in the vicinity to the sound of Pitfall Harry and/or Lara Croft falling to their death for the umpteenth time.

I've said it before, but I'm super proud to work on Evercade. Ever since I first went for the "All-In" bundle of the original handheld back in 2020, which came with the first 10 cartridges released for the platform, I knew it was something special — and hoped that one day I would be able to be part of it. Well, now I am part of it — I have been for some time, and will hopefully continue to be for a long time yet — and it's a delight to be able to look at a product like the Nexus and think that I played a part in that, along with every cartridge release we do.

It's an interesting feeling to have lived long enough to remember these games from first time around vividly enough to still be excited about helping rerelease them on a new device. I never stopped loving games like (Bruce) Lee, MegaMania, Checkered Flag and myriad others — it's a genuine privilege to have been part of making official rereleases happen. Right now I'm working on the Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie double pack that is bundled in with Nexus, and it's hard work, but also immensely rewarding when I think about how good this release is going to be when it's finished.

And there are many more exciting games coming down the road — including a bunch more of my all-time favourites. I can't wait to share them with you all, and if you're new to Evercade, I hope you'll consider jumping on board with Nexus or one of our other devices! Preorders for Nexus open tomorrow — you can find out more here.

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#oneaday Day 661: When people would gnaw off an arm for a freelance writing gig, using generative AI is unforgivable

In the last 18 years, 4,535 posts and 3,263,700 words (yes, really, I got a plugin to count them and everything), I have never once felt the need to outsource my thinking and creativity to a machine. There are two posts written by "guest authors" (which, spoiler, were actually both me in a cunning disguise!) and there are a couple of posts where I perm i tted drunken friends the opportunity to contribute a sentence or two to a post I was writing while out and about, but the remainder is all me, scooping out the contents of my brain and plopping it onto the page for no other reason than the fact that I enjoy doing so, and occasionally find it helpful.

Today, this notice appeared in the New York Times on a book review it had published:

Editors' Note: March 30, 2026:
A reader recently alerted The Times that this review included language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian. We spoke to the author of this piece, a freelancer reviewer, who told us he used an A.I. tool that incorporated material from the Guardian review into his draft, which he failed to identify and remove. His reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer are a clear violation of The Times's standards. The reviewer said he had not used A.I. in his previous reviews for The Times, and we have found no issues in those pieces. The Guardian review of "Watching Over Her" can be read here. (link)

This, to me, is unforgivable. Supposedly there are plenty of writers out there who are doing this — or something like it, anyway — but to me, it is unfathomably awful. To be a writer, someone who cares about one's craft, you have to give a shit. And absolutely nothing says "I don't give a shit" quite like relying on generative AI so heavily that your article has to be pulled because its plagiarism was too obvious.

I mean, when you think about it, it's obvious that this would happen, given the way generative AI works and is trained — if it's pulling all its wording from existing texts that it has absorbed (without any compensation for the original authors) from around the Web, then of course it's going to come up with some of the same things, perhaps even the exact same phrasing.

You'd think it would be obvious, anyway — and that any writer worth their salt would not, as a result, rely on it — but apparently this is not the case. Much how the above-linked Wired article should really result in all the authors named being blacklisted from every freelance writing pool, effective immediately, this incident should be the end of Alex Preston's career. There should be no second chances. To quote the old Batman meme, this is the weapon of the enemy; we do not need it; we will not use it.

Believe me, at this point I've heard every pro-AI argument there is — some, like the nonsensical "back in the '90s some people thought the Internet would be a bad thing!!" one, more than others — and none of them stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. AI does not make you a better writer. AI does not make you a writer. The only thing that makes you a writer is, quite simply, writing. And if you are not sitting down and writing something for yourself — whether that be through putting pen to paper, tapping away at a keyboard or dictating your words verbally — you are not a writer. And no, "writing" your prompt to get the bot to churn out a thousand words for you does not count.

Humanity's written languages have survived for thousands of years — albeit with plenty of evolution — through people being taught how to use them. It is, today, a fundamental part of your early socialisation process to learn how to read and write; yes, some folks have specific learning needs that make it harder or even impossible for them to do so, but even for them, generative AI is emphatically not the answer, as we have plenty of assistive methodology and technology that can allow these people to thrive that does not rely on the odious fad that is presently bleeding the planet dry.

So I'm sorry, I have no patience left whatsoever for any incidents like this. The people involved in the Wired and New York Times articles above deserve to be kicked out of their career. Because if they have no respect for writing as a craft, why on Earth should any readers be expected to have any respect whatsoever for the shit they've churned out through the bots?

There are myriad people out there who would chew off their own arm for an opportunity to have a byline beneath a prestigious masthead — and every one of them who relies entirely on their own writing abilities, rather than outsourcing their creative process to the planet-burning chatbot, deserves those opportunities a million times more than those who clearly have no respect for themselves, their peers, or their readership.

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#oneaday Day 660: This one particular type of headline is very annoying

Did you click on this article? Probably not, because statistically speaking most of you read posts from the site's front page (where the full posts are published) or in your email inbox. (The really cool ones read via RSS, of course.) I don't feel the need to clickbait on this site largely because 1) it's my personal site and I don't really care if anyone reads it (though it is nice) and 2) I have always found clickbait incredibly annoying.

I don't know if I'm just in a bad mood right now or if there really has been a rise in clickbait headlines of late, but I feel like I'm noticing it a lot more of late. I'm talking about stuff like this:

That's a piece from Kotaku about LGR building himself a warehouse. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone reading Kotaku on a semi-regular basis does not know who LGR is, so to deliberately obfuscate his identity in the headline just feels like it's being annoying on purpose.

One could argue that this headline has been written appropriately, however; it gets the broader point across in a way that is accessible to all, regardless of whether or not they know who LGR is. So I will begrudgingly give it a pass.

I do not give the following (from GameSpot) a pass, particularly because they "spoil" it in the accompanying image:

Just say Hercules. We can see it's Hercules. Also I'm not 100% sure Hercules counts as one of Disney's more "iconic" movies. I guess it was in Kingdom Hearts.

GameSpot is very fond of this sort of shit right now:

Yeah, fuck off with that. Just tell me what it is.

Double fuck off for this being based on a "rumour", something which I was always discouraged from reporting on when I was working the news beat in the games press. If your headline has "could" in it, just stop.

But let's not pick exclusively on GameSpot.

Let's also pick on GameRant, which, to be fair, is part of the odious Valnet group. This headline can get right in the fucking bin. (It's Elder Scrolls Blades, if you gave a shit.)

This one can, too. (Horizon Chase Turbo in this case.)

Look, I get it. If you're on the endless churn and trying to juice your site's SEO results in order to maximise your KPIs for men in suits who don't know what video games actually are, it's easy to feel like it's necessary to pull this shit in order to "get people curious enough to click". But people are savvy to it now, to such a degree that it's a practice that gets routinely mocked.

Just say what the article is actually about rather than this bullshit playground teasing ("I know something you don't!") and if the story has any merit, people will click through to it anyway to find out more details. Those "more details" someone clicks through to find out more about should not, repeat, not be the name of the subject of the story.

This sort of thing is rarely the fault of the individual reporters — although I'm sure there are a few out there who love pulling this little stunt. No, it's inevitably an edict from on high for the reasons just stated. With the general health of video games media being deep within the "critical danger" territory, the suits want quick solutions that, in theory, get results.

Only I'm not convinced this sort of practice does get results any more. Like I say, people are wise to it now. I refuse to believe that I am the only one who simply won't click on an article whose headline is a deliberate cocktease.

Look at it this way: why should I give a shit that "a Switch game is being delisted on June 1"? There are thousands of the fucking things, many of which I don't care about. "The eShop is full of crap" is a meme for a reason. I do, however, own a copy of Horizon Chase Turbo, and thus would be interested in hearing why that specific game is being delisted. (It's stupid, by the way. And you can blame Epic for it.)

Anyway, that has been your nightly grump. Please write meaningful headlines, especially if you want the few remaining dregs of the video games press to be taken even a little bit seriously.

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#oneaday Day 658: A random selection of pieces of music that make me smile

It's getting late and I haven't thought of anything to write and I'm full of curry, so let's do a MULTIMEDIA POST, shall we?

I'm partly inspired by a discussion I had earlier in a Discord that I'm a member of, in which we talked about things we liked from creators who clearly just made things for the joy of creating them — not in the hope of "going viral" or making a living out of them. I'm talking about stuff like Badgers, Badgers, Badgers and its ilk — although as it happened, a lot of those works did end up going viral and doubtless making their creators a fair amount of money. The point is that they weren't created with that in mind from the outset.

Funny, silly comedy songs and animations aren't the only thing I want to talk about today, though. More broadly, I just want to share a few things that always make me smile. Not always because they're funny, but because I just find them uplifting in some way. And where better to begin than with the irrepressible Hatsune Miku?

I'm not sure what exactly caused me to hyperfixate on this piece of music from Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S so much, but make no mistake; I most certainly did hyperfixate on it, as for a significant portion of my time playing the Picross-esque puzzles in Logic Paint S, I had set the in-game playlist to be nothing but this track.

I think I like this just because it's undeniably cheerful, bouncy and upbeat. It feels like it fits Miku nicely, and it's a good accompaniment to doing some puzzles — or just for when you need a bit of a pick-me-up.

My first encounter with Cave's classic bullet hell shoot 'em up series Dodonpachi was on iOS devices, where there was an excellent version of Dodonpachi Resurrection. One thing which still stands out about the mobile version of this game is that it features an exclusive game mode that not only has its own mechanics, it has a completely different soundtrack to the game's regular, rather more moody score.

People like the standard Dodonpachi Resurrection music a lot, and to be sure, it's good. But there's something I really like about these completely new tracks from the mobile version — and particularly this one, which accompanies the opening level. It's got that real adventurous "we're setting off on a brave, bold mission!" feel to it that I really like; it's full of hope for the future, rather than a bleak sense of submission to the endless horrors that await. And I think we could all do with a bit of that right now.

I maintain that Inti Creates' Gal*Gun games are some of the best games that no-one will admit to playing because they're about making girls collapse in euphoric ecstasy by pointing at them. All three of them are really solid rail shooters, each with their own distinctive mechanics and story to follow, and they all have great soundtracks, too.

This track, used for a lot of the regular levels in Gal*Gun 2, is a short but sweet track that really sums up the game's energy. There's not a trace of maliciousness anywhere in any of the Gal*Gun games, and their music never fails to make me smile.

Right, time we had a silly one. I remember coming across this one for the first time and absolutely pissing myself laughing. It still always makes me chuckle now… particularly the "Cock!" break in the second verse.

This sort of thing is very representative of what was going on in the Badgers, Badgers, Badgers-adjacent space on sites like rathergood.com, b3ta.com and Weebl's Stuff back in the mid '00s to the early '10s. The thing I like is that although endearingly lo-fi, particularly in the vocal samples, the whole thing is very well put together and works as a standalone song. It's just better with the animation.

Regrettably, the original animation for this piece is no longer available. It used to be that you could type in "2204355" into Google Search, hit "I'm Feeling Lucky" and it would take you to a technicolour Flash animation featuring a pixelated dancing guy from an old KFC advert and this delightful chiptune remix of the theme from ALF. Thankfully, the person behind the music came forward and published the music in its full glory on YouTube some 15 years ago, so even though the Google trick doesn't work any more, we can, at least, still enjoy the tune.

Side note: this blog is old enough that I blogged about when I first found this. It was, it has to be said, a particularly dark period in my life, when I had just split from my first wife and was at the lowest I've ever been. I happened to stumble across this one evening and found that it drove the darkness away for a few minutes at a time, so I watched that stupid animation over and over for hours. Thank you, mystery 2204355 creator, and thank you, Zalza, for helping me in my hour of need, even if you have no idea that you did so.

I wrote a bit about Sbassbear the other day, but I can't not mention their most recently published Game Grumps remix, as it's one of their best yet. Once again, this is a video I just keep returning to because it makes me smile.

Actually, to hell with it, there's another Sbassbear one I love also, and I can't pick between these two, so you're getting both:

I love BEANS because it's just so chaotic and ridiculous. But I love Shnigedy Ding Dong because it encapsulates the feeling you get when playing Tetris Effect Connected — and specifically, the wonderful mode where three people team up against another player, every so often bringing their independent wells together into one giant superwell, accompanied by a massive crescendo in the music and… as Dan says in the video, "ohhh, I love it so much!"

Right, that's enough. Off to bed with me now.

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#oneaday Day 657: Drain Blaster

After over 4,500 posts on this blog (and another 2,300 or so on MoeGamer), it will probably not surprise you to learn that I sometimes have difficulty thinking of something new to write about. Indeed, there are a number of topics I have written about multiple times, often without realising it — and often with inadvertently using some of the exact same arguments and phrases each time I do so. At least nobody can say I'm inconsistent in the way I do things.

With that in mind, and given that this is a personal blog, it stands to reason that I should probably start talking about weird, hyper-niche things that, statistically speaking, very few people probably give a shit about. But if Chris "Papapishu" Person's work over on Aftermath is anything to go by, there will always be an odd little audience who are very much into weird, hyper-niche things.

I guess part of the reason I tend to hold off on writing about weird, hyper-niche things is worrying about whether or not I will actually be able to fill a convincing blog post on the subject, but, well, I've taken care of about half of what I consider the "bare minimum" for each day with this preamble, and thus I now feel suitably equipped to actually tell you what I want to talk about.

Today I would like to tell you about our toilet plunger.

A plunger is one of those things that you don't really think about needing until it's too late. At least, I've always been that way; I am fortunate in the fact that my wife likes to be prepared for all sorts of eventualities, and thus she is the sort of person to purchase a toilet plunger in the anticipation that we might need one at some point.

But my wife didn't buy just any old plunger. Oh, no. She bought a Drain Blaster.

You might think that looks quite like a normal plunger, and you would be partially right; like a regular old plunger it has the big rubber thing that you put over the hole in the bog, along with a smaller head for dealing with, presumably, plugholes. (I have only ever used it for the toilet.)

Where a Drain Blaster differs from a regular plunger may well already be apparent from the picture above, but just in case it isn't: it's all in that thick cylinder of a body, and the handle above it. Because you can pull that handle out to fill the cylinder with air, and then blast the air back out by plunging the handle back in.

And you know what? It does an amazing job of unblocking a toilet. I don't really know how one uses a regular plunger for the same job other than just sort of… plunging it in there and hoping for the best, but with the Drain Blaster it really is as simple as putting the rubber bit over the hole in the toilet, pulling up the handle and pumping it a few times until you hear everything proceed on its merry way down your soil pipe. I am yet to encounter a blocked toilet that has been able to stand up to even the briefest assault from a Drain Blaster, and, as someone who blocks the toilet more frequently than he would perhaps like to admit, I am exceedingly grateful that, at some point in the past, my wife decided to go hard on our choice of plunger.

I am reminded of a legendary group text (it may have been an MSN Messenger conversation, given the era) from among my friendship group at university, when one of our number (not me, surprisingly) admitted that he had produced a poo so formidable that he absolutely could not get rid of it. It eventually took several kettlefuls of boiling water to break up the beast enough for it to finally vacate the premises, and he chronicled the entire process, which was unfolding late at night when, being university students, many of us could be relied upon to be a little bit tipsy and thus very receptive to such a saga. Thankfully this was an age before smartphones, so there were no pictures involved, but the entire process was chronicled in exhaustive detail. I will never forget it.

I mention this because I wonder how different his experiences would have been if he had a Drain Blaster. I don't even know if Drain Blasters existed back then, though given that the device is essentially a bike pump with a plunger head, I would be surprised if they didn't. Could the sheer volume of this legendary turd stand up to the relentless assault of a Drain Blaster, or would the boiling water still be necessary? I guess we will never know.

Anyway, that's what I wanted to talk about today. If you read all of that… uh… well done, I guess?

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#oneaday Day 656: User error

One reason I absolutely cannot wait to ditch my professional social media responsibilities (which will be at some point in the next few months, in all likelihood) is the phenomenon of users making an error themselves, then yelling at us for their own mistake. There have been two separate examples of this just today, and I'm glad I was too busy to reply to them (the chap who's been helping us out with social media handled them) because I'm not sure I would have been able to resist being sarcastic. (Naturally, I won't name and shame or give the exact examples here, but anyone who has worked in any sort of tech with a vaguely public-facing aspect will likely know the sort of thing I'm talking about.)

Whenever I see something like this, it just comes across as a completely alien way to react. If I'm using a device, and it behaves in a way that I don't expect it to, the first thing I look for is if I'm doing anything wrong — which I inevitably am. I use it as an opportunity to learn exactly what it is that I'm doing wrong, then to never make that same mistake ever again, because I learned what the problem was and how to fix it. The absolute last thing I would consider doing is going on social media and yelling at the company who makes the product in question — particularly when there is absolutely no way of them solving my issue without making me look, at the very least, a little bit stupid.

I get that people are frustrated when things don't work the way they expect and they don't know why. But receiving a message filled with swearing and abuse because you didn't think to press a single button that would immediately resolve the problem you are having — yes, this really was one of the incidents today — does not make the person who has to answer that message feel particularly inclined to want to help you. I mean, most of the time they will go out of their way to help you, even for particularly stupid questions — contrary to popular belief, there are, in fact, stupid questions — but you can rest assured that they're having a good giggle at you behind your back.

Note that I absolutely do not have a problem with someone who does have a question with a simple and straightforward answer, and who asks that question without becoming abusive. I am more than happy to help anyone like that out. But someone who bursts into an inbox with no prior contact and fills their message with "wtf" and "ffs" and all that sort of shit… well, they're not getting their relationship with us off on a particularly good foot now, are they?

The only time I've ever yelled at a company on social media was when CEX missold me an expensive arcade stick with the promise it would work on the consoles I asked if it would work on, and it did not do that. After the staff in the shop refused to help, I had little option but to Karen it up a bit and eventually got the situation resolved. I'm not particularly proud of that little episode, but I did manage to get it resolved without any swearing or abuse at the staff in question — just a lot (a lot) of repeating myself.

Anyway, don't be rude to staff of a company if the fault is actually completely of your own creation. It's not hard.

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#oneaday Day 655: I would rather play Atari 2600 games than mobile games

I probably don't need to say anything more than the headline, but I will expand on it for the sake of having actually written something today. I mean what I say, though! I would genuinely rather play literally anything on the Atari 2600 than a modern mobile game. And with the 2600 being so easy to emulate these days — not to mention the fact I have worked on both devices and game cartridges featuring Atari 2600 games — you can even take the experience on the go with you.

I remember when mobile gaming first became a thing with the Java phones. Well, actually, technically it first became a thing with Snake and the other games no-one remembers on the Nokia 3210 and company. But expandable mobile gaming — by that I mean the ability to download new games onto your phone — really took off in the Java era.

At first, it was mildly exciting… at least until you downloaded a Java game and realised that a lot of them were Not Very Good. Often not for lack of trying, and there were some genuinely decent ones — I recall a good version of Lumines, for example — but for the most part, they were a pale imitation of even the dedicated handheld games consoles that were around at the time. The Game Boy and its successors ruled the roost in that regard for a good long while — and deservedly so.

The advent of iOS was a huge shift, though. Anyone who was around for the launch of the App Store will doubtless remember things like ngmoco's output (before they became free-to-play garbage peddlers), Epic's "Castle" tech demo that eventually became Infinity Blade, and doubtless many others that are lost to time. Quite literally in many cases, because these were digital-only games that were often exclusive to iOS — and while I'm sure some have been preserved, I bet there are plenty more that we'll never see again.

Things seemed… interesting for a while. The ambition of this new breed of mobile game was hard to fault, but many folks (including me) found that touchscreens were less than ideal for console-style experiences. The best games were ones that were built around the inherent limitations and inaccuracy of a finger-based touch interface — or which used other methods of control, such as tilt.

Then, one day, Apple announced that it would be introducing the concept of "in-app purchases". I knew immediately that this would be an awful idea, as the general gaming community had a collective bee in its bonnet about DLC at the time, and adding DLC to mobile games sounded like a really bad idea in that climate.

Unbelievably, though, I underestimated quite how awful things would end up becoming in the mobile space. While there are still a few "premium" games available for a one-off purchase these days, most of them are available on other platforms with actual controllers, leaving the vast majority of mobile-exclusive titles these days as free-to-play gacha crap.

I've done my time in the gacha mines. I've made the mistake of thinking I'd sling a game twenty quid to "support" it because I'd been playing it quite a bit and I liked the look of the current character banners. But in more recent years I've become hyper-aware of quite how much those games exploit horny young men in particular, with massively sexualised artwork designed not to add depth to the characters they depict, but purely to get said horny young men convinced to open their wallets in the hope of acquiring a JPG — or an animated GIF if you're lucky — of their favourite waifu in a skimpy outfit. And I say this as someone who likes sexy games!

No more. I swore off all mobile games quite some time ago now, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. Now, at the times when I would typically want a mobile game — when I have a few minutes to spare, when I'm bored, when I just want something to do with my hands that I don't have to think about too much — I will quite happily reach for an Atari 2600 game, because those fit the bill perfectly.

Your average Atari 2600 game can be played for sessions of maybe 1-5 minutes at a time, and that feels like a satisfyingly self-contained play session. You can keep playing to beat your high scores, or to get a little further, or compete against a friend if you're playing together — or you can move on to something else, and have another 1-5 minutes of fun. And at no point in the entire process will these games attempt to monetise your erection.

On that note, may I remind you that Activision Collection 2 is coming to Evercade next month…?

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