I think I'm probably going to make a video along these lines sometime soon — although my prior video on the announcement of The400 Mini a while back covers a lot of the points I'd want to cover — but it's on my mind today, so that's what we're talking about today.

One of the reasons I want to talk about Atari 8-bit computers is because I don't feel they get nearly enough respect. No, they were by no means as popular as the Commodore 64 and Spectrum — the former of which is the subject of a cover feature in Retro Gamer magazine this month — but I also feel like they had a significantly stronger foothold in the market than other "failed" micros from the era. Not only that, but they are historically very significant for a number of reasons, some of which I'll try and outline today.

This is going to be a bit of a stream-of-consciousness sort of probably autistic infodump, because I'm just banging this out as I feel like it. If and when I do decide to make a video about all this, there will probably be a bit more structure, research, that sort of thing. Like I say, this was just rattling around in my head today, though, so I wanted to at least get some thoughts down on paper. So here it is.

For the unfamiliar, the Atari 8-bit range consists of several models:

• The Atari 400, which released in 1978, and initially features 8 kilobytes of RAM, though later revisions bumped this up a bit. This was marketed in some areas as a games machine, as it was the cheaper of the two models to release in 1978, had four joystick ports and sported a flat, supposedly spill-proof membrane keyboard to make it suitable for "family" use.
• The Atari 800, which released alongside the 400 in 1978, and was positioned as a more "serious" machine. It had a "normal" keyboard, user-upgradable RAM (up to a maximum of 48 kilobytes) and two cartridge slots instead of one (though there were very few releases that took advantage of this) — and it cost considerably more.
• The Atari 1200XL was the first step in a refresh of the Atari 8-bit line in 1983, intended to replace the 800. It came with 64 kilobytes of RAM, a completely redesigned case, built-in self-test features and a rather nice keyboard. It was also much too expensive and had a number of issues, causing Atari to pull it from sale before long, and to not release it in PAL territories at all.
• The Atari 800XL (pictured above) was a do-over of the 1200XL project. It also had 64 kilobytes of RAM, the newly designed case (now not quite so deep), built-in self-test features and lovely keyboard, but also added built-in BASIC to the mix along with revisions to the operating system. It was Atari's best-selling 8-bit home computer.
• The Atari 600XL was a cost-reduced version of the 800XL, which had an even slimmer case and only 16 kilobytes of RAM. With the 800XL replacing the 800, this was effectively the replacement for the 400, but it did not sell very well compared to its big brother.
• The Atari 130XE was launched in 1985, after Jack Tramiel took over Atari, and was designed to look like a "little brother" to the 16-bit Atari ST. It featured 128 kilobytes of RAM, new revisions of the operating system and BASIC and a new case design, but otherwise didn't bring anything significantly new to the table. It is a nice machine, though, and my Atari 8-bit of choice.
• The Atari 65XE was essentially identical to the 130XE, only with 64 kilobytes of RAM instead of 128.
• The Atari XEGS was a 65XE in a console-style case with a detachable keyboard. It was positioned primarily as a games console, even more explicitly than the 400 back in 1978, but was a fully functional computer that would work with all Atari 8-bit peripherals.

Broadly speaking, these models are all cross-compatible with one another, aside from obvious exceptions such as programs that need a particular amount of RAM to run properly. There are a few compatibility issues between very early pieces of software that were designed for the 400 and 800 and the later XL/XE models, but these can usually be got around by using a "translator" program to temporarily load in an older version of the operating system, and the Atari community at large has also been hard at work patching many games to work universally on all Atari 8-bit systems.

Like most other 8-bit computers, the Atari 8-bit had three means of loading software: ROM cartridge, cassette tape or 5.25" floppy disk. ROM cartridges are incredibly simple: plug them in, turn on the machine and the software is there, ready to go. These were primarily used for games, particularly in the early days of the platform, but there are some pieces of utility or productivity software that run from cartridge, too. Notably, using a cartridge effectively allows the ROM within to "extend" the Atari's capabilities; a good example of this is the SpartaDOS X package, which adds an MS-DOS style command line for manipulating files on floppy disks.

Cassette tapes were certainly used by Atari enthusiasts, but not to the same extent as on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. The reason for this is that the tape loading system in the Atari 8-bit was significantly slower than on its main rivals, resulting in load times of half an hour or more for games that would take just a few minutes on other platforms. That said, the Atari 8-bit could make innovative use of the tape medium by playing back audio during a program — a good example of this is the Conversational Language series of packages, which teach French, German, Italian and Spanish through interactive lessons, with recorded speech coming straight off the tape and being played back through the TV speakers at the appropriate moments.

Instead, disk drive use was very popular. There were two main disk drives in the prime of the Atari 8-bit's lifespan: the original Atari 810, which followed the design language of the 400 and 800, and the Atari 1050, which was designed to fit in alongside a 600XL or 800XL setup. There was an even later XF551 drive, but this didn't really catch on for various reasons, and these drives are a lot harder to find today.

You connected a tape deck or disk drive to the Atari via its proprietary Serial Input/Output (SIO) port, and this brings us to one of the most historically significant things about the range: SIO was designed as a universal connector for all manner of different peripherals, not just media storage devices. Sound familiar? That's right; it's very much a precursor to modern USB; Joe Decuir, who created this architecture, holds patents on USB.

SIO had a few differences to modern USB, most notably the fact that devices could be daisy-chained together. This means that even though the system only had one SIO port, you could connect multiple devices simply by linking them together. Obviously this was dependent on the device in question having a suitable port — and not every device did — but in theory you could keep on linking as required, making it easy to have, for example, setups that used multiple disk drives, and even cassette and disk simultaneously if you so desired.

Using a disk drive with the Atari 8-bits required one extra step: the use of a Disk Operating System, or DOS. Atari made its own DOS that underwent several revisions over the lifespan of the Atari 8-bit models, and although closed source and distributed under a proprietary license agreement, it could be redistributed. Good job, too, because in order to actually boot something from disk, DOS needed to be loaded first. If you wanted to be able to save BASIC programs to disk, you also needed to boot DOS from disk before starting to write your program.

The most commonly seen versions of Atari's DOS from back in the day used a menu-driven interface that allowed various disk functions such as copying and deleting files as well as locking/protecting them, loading executable files that were not set up to automatically boot when turning the computer on, formatting disks and creating new DOS disks.

Programming on the Atari used, like most of its contemporaries, a dialect of BASIC. Unlike many other BASICs at the time, it is not a version of the popular Microsoft BASIC (although this was available) and thus had a number of its own unique Atari-specific commands. Carrying out many functions, particularly relating to graphics, that would require POKEs on other platforms could be done with dedicated commands on the Atari, but conversely Atari BASIC lacked the ability to create arrays in string variables. It was, on the whole, a well-liked language, and the two main Atari magazines of the era, Page 6 and Atari User (which later merged to become New Atari User), typically printed type-in listings for all manner of programs in every issue. Not just games, either; both magazines were keen to position the Atari computers as capable, multi-function devices that were far more than just sources of entertainment.

Other programming languages were, of course, available. Those keen to get their hands dirty could write programs using 6502 assembler, while as the years went by, speedy languages such as Action! and Turbo BASIC XL came along and offered compelling alternatives to the built-in or cartridge-based BASIC that was, for many, the foundation of programming on the Atari range. These languages could be compiled into executable binaries, too, meaning that an end user would not need a copy of the language to run a program written in it.

The Atari's audio-visual capabilities were very solid. The dual ANTIC and GTIA graphics chips offered hardware scrolling, built-in "player-missile" sprites, and a wealth of different graphics modes allowing various balances between memory usage, resolution and colour depth. The POKEY chip offered four-channel audio with a good amount of customisation — although not quite as flexible as the SID chip found in the Commodore 64. It also handled a lot of the Atari 8-bit's input/output, meaning the system has the charming feature of making blippity bloop sounds when loading and saving from/to disk or tape rather than the horrific screeching heard on other platforms.

And then we come to the games. While some of the high-profile software houses — notably outfits like Ocean, Imagine, Ultimate and suchlike — refused to support the Atari 8-bit, others, like Electronic Arts and Activision, did, at least in the early days, and the budget companies like Mastertronic, Atlantis, Zeppelin and Alternative had a good presence on the platform, too. The end result of this from a 2026 perspective is that the Atari 8-bit library is largely unique, with many titles not being found on any other platforms — and in the case of multiplatform affairs, the Atari release often being a particularly good version. (There are exceptions, of course; the Atari 8-bit versions of Action Biker and The Last V8 are woeful compared to the C64 releases.)

There's also the fact that a lot of games which went on to worldwide success on a variety of platforms often originated on Atari 8-bit. All-time classics like Boulder Dash, M.U.L.E., Miner 2049'er and Spelunker debuted on Atari before spreading to other platforms, and esteemed creators like Archer Maclean were really able to make the system sing with games like Dropzone.

The only thing the library is lacking compared to its more successful 8-bit counterparts is a library of solid arcade conversions from the years following the initial early '80s "golden age"; those early '80s titles are well-covered, however, with excellent versions of Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Qix and plenty more — and a wealth of "unofficial" clones, too.

So why doesn't this system get anywhere near the love and attention that the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum do? I honestly don't really know, because although the platform undoubtedly sold considerably less than both of its main rivals, I don't think one can in any respect call it a "failure". Its longest-lasting magazine published its final issue in 1998, for heaven's sake — and said magazine was including material for the Atari 8-bit right up until that very final issue. Not only that, the modern "homebrew" scene is incredibly active and vibrant to this day, with some truly amazing new games being released for the platform on a regular basis, along with some excellent ports of C64 and Spectrum games that never made it to Atari back in the day.

I would love to see the Atari 8-bit get more acknowledgement. There are some YouTubers who do give it its dues — Kim Justice is a good example — but I do wish the field of "gaming history" would, more broadly, pay attention to the Atari 8-bit: a platform that still has a lot to offer, which is a hell of a lot of fun to have been involved with since its original inception, and which is dead easy to explore today with solutions like Altirra for software emulation, and the excellent Atari800 core for MiSTer if you're an FPGA person.

Still, that's a big reason my YouTube channel exists. So I will continue to champion the system how I can — and at least then I know that I have done my part in remembering this wonderful platform and the many amazing journeys it has taken me on over the years.

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The post #oneaday Day 723: The Atari 8-bit doesn't get its dues appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I talked a bit about social media with my therapist yesterday. I discussed how conflicted I feel about existing online right now, what with the emphasis on short-form video and vapid content rather than longer-form, more meaningful material. I'm not saying that the stuff I post here isn't vapid nonsense, of course, but I have always said that I would far rather read someone's vapid nonsense than be delivered it as shouty-face-at-camera content, so this blog continues with that in mind. And if no-one is interested in my vapid nonsense, then at least I still have somewhere to bang out some words and express myself, which is what this has always been about.

Anyway, the kind-of-sort-of conclusion I came to was that at least a minimal presence on social media is somewhat desirable for me, because otherwise I just end up feeling completely isolated. While I enjoyed the total break from all social media, including Bluesky, that I took last year while I was on holiday, I found that I didn't want to maintain it afterwards, as it just left me feeling even more lonely than I already was. And I'm already feeling pretty damn lonely.

Still, the other thing that came to light in yesterday's session is that although I have always kind of feared social interactions and find myself overthinking conversations before I have them — sometimes to the extent that I never actually start the conversation in reality for the fear of coming across as boring or annoying — I am, in many respects, feeling kind of ready to challenge myself in at least attempting to make some new friends, to have some people that I can connect with and, basically, to stop feeling so danged lonely.

The challenge that I have found along the way is not so much initiating those interactions when the opportunity arises — although that is still a somewhat scary prospect for me — but rather finding those opportunities in the first place. I cited an example of when I first went to university and attended a pre-term music course, and I took the uncharacteristically bold step (for me) of introducing myself to someone I was in a lift with while we were transporting ourselves to our respective floors in the tower block where we were staying. That resulted in a longstanding friendship (albeit one that I will hold my hands up and say that I have been very poor at maintaining) and was proof that, as little as I think of myself at times, I can come across as someone that people actually do want to know and are not, in fact, actively repulsed by.

Those opportunities of being "trapped" in a lift with a stranger and the choice being either awkward silence or attempting to clunkily start a conversation just don't really seem to arise these days, though, because I'm never in that sort of situation. I work from home, I don't go out a great deal, I'm not a member of any "groups" or anything (and don't really know how one would go about finding a "group") and I do not have a publicly accessible elevator in my house.

What I am going to at least attempt to do a bit more, though, is to attend some in-person events where I know some people with whom I have at least a casual acquaintance will be attending. My trip to The Cave a few weeks back was a good example, and last year I went to the RetroFest show in Swindon — that is actually happening again this year, but I left it a bit late to organise a trip there. I mean, I could probably snag a ticket and go along tomorrow (today's tickets are sold out), but can I be bothered to do that?

Hmm, can I be bothered to do that…? I might have a think about that throughout the course of today. Swindon is a fairly long way to go, but it might actually be nice to go along and see some interesting things and clever people.

Hmmmmm.

Anyway, today we are going food shopping, so that's fun. Thank you for participating in this experiment of whether or not this thing actually posts correctly to Bluesky via the ATmosphere plugin. If it does, I'll likely hook up MoeGamer proper in the same way. Tatty-bye for now then.

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The post #oneaday Day 722: Entering the ATmosphere appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

As such, I ordered myself a YETI Rambler Straw Mug, Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Mug with Stronghold Lid, Rescue Red, 42 oz (1.2 l). You will notice that mine is considerably larger than hers. I thought I might as well get a big 'un because the fewer times you have to fill it up, the more likely you are to drink all of it and, by extension, have what is supposedly "enough fluids" for the day — something which a bit of casual research last night (not using AI) suggested there is actually no real scientific or medical consensus on.

£45 felt like a lot to spend on a mug, but then I figured everything is fucking expensive right now, so I might as well buy a nice thing that I'll get some use out of. I went to the shop the other evening to get some drinks and snacks and it somehow came out to more than £70. By those standards, video games seem like quite a bargain right now.

I like the mug! It's big and hefty and satisfying to use, the reusable straw seems to work just fine, and it is indeed nice and convenient to be able to carry around over a litre of drink in a receptacle that keeps it nice and cool. Or indeed to just have it on my desk, to be consumed bit by bit over the course of several hours.

The whole meme about "staying hydrated" honestly annoys me quite a bit, because it seems to be just one of those things that people say without really thinking about it. And yes, it is a meme. Because the population of the Internet is completely incapable of doing anything with any sort of sincerity and seriousness, the whole thing started as a big joke. Sure, over the long term, it may well have got people drinking more fluids throughout the day — and thus can we really call it a bad thing? — but to me, the people who always bang on about "staying hydrated" always come across as performative, like they want to appear superior to everyone else because they drink a bit more water than you do.

I realise it's a bit of a silly thing to get annoyed about — why get annoyed at good advice? — but like I say, it's the whole insincerity of it that grates somewhat. Because some people do just say it, not out of a desire to see their friends be healthy, but just because it's a funny haha meme that they've seen their favourite streamers say. Hell, there's even a bot on Twitch designed to "remind" people to drink water.

I also think it comes across as somewhat infantilising, and that's a real problem that the younger generations in particular appear to be suffering with right now. Just yesterday, some of us were chatting on Discord about an encounter one of us had had where a 21-year old was proving very difficult to deal with because they seemingly wanted to be treated like an incompetent child. (It was to get out of financial obligations.) Any time some streamer tells their audience to "stay hydrated", I get that same energy.

But anyway. There are worse things that people could be saying — and, of course, do elsewhere on the Internet. So I probably shouldn't let myself get too wound up by this sort of thing. After all, since I, too, now have a big-ass sippy cup, I am officially equipped to be smug about Being Hydrated.

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The post #oneaday Day 721: Sippy cup appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I could be wrong, of course. It could just be Windows 11 being shit (although in that regard, my work PC also runs Windows 11 and seems fine performance-wise, despite being a meagre mini-PC) and it could also just be my PC being shit (the living room PC, much as I love it, has had a litany of problems over the years that has necessitated multiple reformats and reinstalls) — but for now, I'm taking Chrome out of the equation down here.

I've been putting off doing this, because changing Web browsers feels like a massive pain in the arse. You have your previous one all set up the way you like it with extensions, saved passwords and everything already logged in, and then you switch over and have to set everything up again, log into everything again and it's… man, it just feels like work, y'know, and all I want to do is look something up online.

That said, despite the mental block I've historically felt towards doing this, the process of switching over to Firefox has been mostly painless so far. The export-import procedure seems to have gone fairly smoothly (though it did import duplicates of all my bookmarks which it has apparently previously imported from Chrome) and thus far Firefox has neither crashed nor frozen my entire system for minutes at a time, which is more than I can say for the current state of Chrome.

I even managed to export my passwords from Google Password Manager to Firefox's autofill feature, so logging in to most websites hopefully won't be a huge pain in the arse, aside from those that insist on two-factor authentication and I have, inevitably, left my phone in a location that I am not in.

Firefox isn't perfect, I know, but I do have a modicum of respect for it for allowing you to set a blanket "fuck off with all this AI shit" switch. It unfortunately doesn't prevent Google from serving you up stupid AI Overviews or stop the Internet in general from obsessing over this loathsome technology, but I like being able to ensure the software I am running locally on my computer — at least while it's still possible to do that — is working the way I want it to and not, say, downloading 4GB local LLMs in the background.

Talking about one's Web browser is the height of tedium, I know, but it's been very hot today, I'm very tired and stressed out, and I just wanted to write something before my chicken wings arrive. This was the first thing that came to mind, so that's what you get. Hey, I never promised that every day's posts would be interesting, all right?

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The post #oneaday Day 720: Finally ditching Chrome appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I've already written at length about how the modern concept of "streaks" is inherently unhealthy and encourages people to just game the system rather than actually properly developing good habits, but this is a whole new level of stupid. I was curious as to exactly what a "streak freeze" entailed, so I clicked through on the notification and found the following explanation:

So let me get this straight: WordPress (or Jetpack, I think, specifically) has a "streak" mechanic built in to encourage you to engage with… something every day. (Note that the explanation above counts "liking, commenting or following" as "activity", not just "posting something on your site".) But after 7 days, you can just go "ah, fuck this" for a day and still keep your "streak" intact?

Now, I've hopefully already made my feelings on "streaks" clear (and yes, I know it might seem a tad hypocritical given that I'm posting daily, counting how many days I have done that for and have even done extra posts some days to "catch up" on days I missed but… shut up) but to me the concept of a "streak freeze" just feels like… cheating? And, more to the point, it's a completely pointless form of cheating in which the only person you are actually cheating is yourself. (Yes, I am familiar with the copypasta.)

It's not just me seeing this, right? Given that your "streak" in WordPress or Jetpack or whatever is visible to no-one but you — there are no "Share" buttons on these stupid "achievements" it has apparently started giving you — there is absolutely no point whatsoever in cheating the system for any reason other than to deny to yourself, and no-one else, that you failed to do something as simple as click "Like" on a thing every day for [x] days.

As I say, I acknowledge completely that all of the above might be a bit rich coming from someone who has occasionally missed a day on his "daily" blog and then "caught up" the following day, but I do always acknowledge when I've done that, and I'm not giving myself any "awards" or anything besides counting how many days have elapsed between June 8, 2024 and today. (And yes, I did just use the opportunity to check that my post numbering is correct. It is.)

The way this is implemented as platform "achievements" just feels like they wanted to completely gamify the posting experience, then got cold feet partway through and thought but what about all the people who care about their streak and just don't have time to click Like on something every day?! — as if they were afraid that they would get complaints from people who thought it was "unfair" that they broke their streak just for not… maintaining that streak.

I dunno. I am very aware that this is all a completely pointless thing to get riled up about, but it is very hot, I am very tired and stressed, and just wanted something easy to write about today. So that's what you're getting. Now I'm off to go and swallow an entire iceberg or something. And not the kind that freezes streaks.

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The post #oneaday Day 719: Get out of here with your "streak freeze" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Naturally, all the usual arguments are taking place over whether or not people from the UK really have a right to complain about it being hot, given that certain parts of the world are far hotter than it gets here, and they get by perfectly well without air conditioning, what happened to that stiff upper lip and all that, eh what? To anyone having thoughts of that nature, I say a hearty fuck off, it is boiling here and we, as a people, are very much Not Built For That.

We are a people built for overcast days, where the weather just sort of exists in the background without doing anything. We don't mind an occasional rainstorm, because that means we can complain about it. But when it gets hot — and for a good few years now, the summers have been getting real hot — it is actively unpleasant, and quite possibly dangerous for some people. One of the people I work with said that the temperature was almost 40 degrees C in his office today. That is not any sort of condition that a human being should even be attempting to exist in!

But still. At least it's a good opportunity to get the ice out, have some cold drinks, enjoy an ice cream or ten and occasionally sit in the garden if you think you can get away with doing so without irradiating yourself beyond repair. Maybe even have a barbecue! Some people in the nearby vicinity have been having barbecues over the past couple of days and they have smelled delicious. We have not, as yet, planned to do one, because neither of us fancy standing over a hot thing on a hot day, and with only a couple of weeks left until we go away on holiday, the opportunities for socialising before we head off are limited. Maybe when we get back.

Anyway, aside from the heat, today has been relatively unremarkable. I have done some work, I have played some Final Fantasy XI, I enjoyed a chicken sandwich with some Sweet Baby Ray's barbecue sauce. The cats have been yelling at us, and all is, it seems, mostly well.

It's just too bloody hot, is what it is!

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The post #oneaday Day 718: Melting appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's been a lot of fun thus far. I'm about 80 hours deep into the game, and I haven't really felt particularly "roadblocked" at any point. There have been two separate occasions where I have had help from higher-level players — once to open the "Three Mage Gate" I mentioned a few posts back, and once to help me with the fight against Siren as part of the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel series of missions that run parallel to all the main stories — but for the most part, I have successfully beaten and bashed my way through the game as a solo player using the computer-controlled "Trust" party members.

I thought I had reached a roadblock towards the end of the Rise of the Zilart storyline where you are presented with a chain of five difficult boss battles, and I was having real difficulty with a couple of them. As I'm playing a Warrior, I have been working on the assumption that I should be the main "tank", you see, and thus trying my best to ensure all enemies fixate their attention on my while my Trusts repeatedly punch them in the buttocks. This is, after all, the way things are in Final Fantasy XIV, even though mechanically the two games are otherwise quite different.

However, what I discovered in these difficult fights (the "Ark Angels" fights, to any FFXI veterans) is that being the sole human player and the main tank is not always desirable. Y'see, some high-level enemies have the ability to Charm you, and when that happens all your Trusts get unsummoned and the fight effectively resets. It's an instant "kill", in other words, and I really thought this was going to roadblock me.

Then I thought about things a bit, and wondered what might happen if I let one of the Trusts handle the tanking instead. Wouldn't you know it, those fights suddenly went much more smoothly. I could keep dealing damage — which, besides tanking, is the other thing FFXI Warrior is good at — while Trust-y Valaineral the Paladin took the brunt of everything the boss threw at a single target, including that pesky Charm. And, because I also had Kupipi the White Mage and King Of Hearts the Red Mage in my party, they cleansed that status off him pretty quickly. I only really came close to failing in one of the fights, where everyone got Silenced and Valaineral got knocked down because no-one could heal him. Thankfully, this happened late enough in the fight that the remaining party members, including me, were able to finish the job.

By contrast, the actual final boss of Rise of the Zilart was very easy indeed. Granted, I was probably a few levels higher than "intended" for this encounter — Final Fantasy XI isn't particularly rigorous about locking stuff to particular level restrictions, particularly in the main story sequences — but it was still pretty straightforward. Fun, though; it was satisfying to finally bring down a "big bad" who had been taunting me for some time.

Now I'm on to the Chains of Promathia expansion, which a lot of longtime players seem to think is one of the best bits. It makes the curious decision to base the early hours of its story around the level 30 mark, rather than assuming you would be at the level you're probably at around the conclusion of Rise of the Zilart — 75+ — but I assume that things ramp up pretty quickly, as the official "content guide" on the Final Fantasy XI website recommends the expansion as an activity for level 75+ players.

I'm really glad I've done this! I'm going to write a big, detailed article about my experiences over on MoeGamer when I'm finally done with everything I want to do in the game, but for now, my feelings are that, in terms of gameplay, progression and a general sense of adventure, this is actually one of the very best Final Fantasy games. Yes, it is the very epitome of a "guide dang-it" game, in which you will almost certainly not get very far without looking some stuff up, but the moment-to-moment gameplay, the overall sense of progression and the fact that it feels like a Final Fantasy game, arguably a lot more so than XIV, has really left me with a big grin on my face. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the game has to offer.

I have played pretty much all day, though, so I should probably stop for now, though, right? Probably…

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The post #oneaday Day 717: Putting down the Zilart appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For anyone unfamiliar with a Feast, the original incarnation of them was a chocolate ice lolly with crunchy biscuit pieces embedded in the chocolate, and inside the chocolate shell was chocolate ice cream, which surrounded a hard chocolate core. Much like a Cadbury's Creme Egg, I'm sure people had their own ways of eating a Feast, but I always liked to flake the chocolate outer off, then eat the ice cream, then have the hard chocolate core as the grand finale.

Now, though, they have changed. Now you still have the chocolate outer with the crunchy bits embedded, but the chocolate ice cream has been replaced with vanilla, and the hard chocolate core has been replaced with a chocolate hazelnut core that appears to occupy a curious state somewhere between liquid and solid. It sticks to the lolly stick and retains its shape, but it doesn't have the satisfying "snap" that the old hard chocolate core did; it's more chewy and sticky.

Taken on its own terms, the new Feast is not an unpleasant experience to eat. Chocolate, vanilla and hazelnut is a good combination, and they work together. But I'm not sure they should have replaced the basic Feast model with it. The original Feast was a classic, and one of my favourite ice creams, and now it appears that it's just Not A Thing any more, because this "new recipe" has seemingly replaced the old one. At least they haven't had the gall to keep calling it "Feast Original", because, well, it's not original any more.

Apparently there is also a Feast Caramel now, which replaces the new hazelnut core with a caramel sauce centre, and I can see that being pretty good. But, again, I feel like it's not really a Feast as we once new it; the hard chocolate core was a central (no pun intended) part of the Feast's identity, and I'm not entirely sure why it has been taken away, rather than being positioned as a new variant called "Feast Hazelnut" or something. Did we have to lose the classic "Feast Original" for this?

There are, as you might expect, some people online who are absolutely furious about this. I wouldn't put myself in that category, as I found the new Feasts perfectly tasty — they're just not what I expected from a Feast, and it seems strange and confusing that they would make this change now, after so long of them being the same thing.

The common assumption, of course, is that this is an instance of enshittification, but I'm not sure that is the case; perhaps the vanilla ice cream is cheaper than the chocolate ice cream, and perhaps the chocolate hazelnut half-sauce-half-solid otherworldly substance in the middle is cheaper than a hard lump of chocolate, but I have no real way of knowing that. I'm just a bit sad to see something I've enjoyed since childhood feel the need to change fairly drastically for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Oh well. These things happen, I guess. This is, it seems, what a Feast is now. Although apparently Aldi do a good clone of the original Feast, known as Fiesta. Might have to track some of those down…

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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The post #oneaday Day 716: They changed Feasts and I'm not sure how I feel about it appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is, I won't beat around the bush, disgusting. Tying pay to article performance is already a shitty thing to do, but to withhold pay completely based on view counts is outright exploitative. And it's not as if writers on Valnet sites are getting paid fairly anyway.

As several people replying to Luddy on that Bluesky thread pointed out, this has been a longstanding problem with online media in general. It should be the writers' responsibility to produce the material, and it should be the people running the website from a business perspective's responsibility to promote that material and ensure it gets read.

Unfortunately, for a long time now, writers have been forced into a position where they have to write provocative, baiting articles in the hope that they will get clicks, because the people running the sites seemingly just… don't do anything other than lay people off. And, of course, bring generative AI into the picture, because this type of Business Idiot has no understanding whatsoever of how the actual audience has zero desire to read AI-generated content, instead believing that because generative AI is fashionable and responsible for billions of dollars of imaginary money being thrown around, they might be able to get a piece of that pie by enshittifying their website.

And the really stupid thing is that you never can predict what is going to spread across the Web and "do well" if it's left up to the writers. There is no magic formula that says "IF you write an article like this, THEN it will always succeed". There are manipulative tactics — like clickbait and ragebait — that sometimes work, but more and more people are wise to them today, and refuse to share material that falls into that category. Video game enthusiasts are some of the most online-savvy people out there for the most part, so resorting to these tactics is declining in effectiveness as time goes on.

What does seem to work — to an extent, at least — is having someone who is responsible for making sure those articles get seen: advertising the website. Effective use of a dedicated social media manager is why longstanding sites like IGN and Eurogamer are still just about hanging in there, but they are the last few remaining holdouts of a once vibrant and thriving media sector — and they have their own issues. IGN, for example, is currently butting heads with its Creators' Guild union over fair pay rises in line with inflation, and Eurogamer cut its editorial staff considerably a while back.

Once again, I have to say that I am baffled by this. Video games, as a creative sector, are bigger than they have ever been, with a broader, more diverse range of releases than ever before. So why are we, collectively, apparently completely incapable of sustaining an enthusiast press?

Moreover, retro gaming is more accessible than ever before, too, meaning that there is a worthwhile place for some retro-centric sites to spring up and do a good job of covering classic gaming material — but so far, we've seen very few outlets even attempt to step into this space, with only Time Extension online and Retro Gamer in print coming to mind outside of the unpaid (or at least non-commercial) enthusiast blog sector.

The usual answer to this is "b-but YouTubers and streamers!" and I'm sorry, I don't buy it. YouTubers and streamers have a place in the modern media landscape, sure, but they fulfil a completely different function to a traditional press — and moreover, they demand a completely different sort of attention to written material. And if you've ever accused a traditional press outlet of "paid reviews", then I have some unfortunate news to tell you about a widespread concept known as "influencer marketing".

I am sad about all this! I spent a significant portion of my life looking at my brother with intense admiration for his role in helping to shape the games press in its prime, both in print and online, and hoping that I would one day be able to follow in his footsteps! And yet, by the time I did manage to get a meaningful foothold, things were already starting to collapse. I was, somehow, too late — and I am having great difficulty understanding why, because it's not as if video games have gone anywhere. One would think with the sheer number of the bloody things being released pretty much every day at this point, a functional games press would be a desirable thing to have. And by "functional", I mean "one with full-time employees who get paid a fair salary on which they can live, enjoy the medium that they have chosen to specialise in and be able to have a good work-life balance".

And yet here we are. I despair sometimes, I really do.

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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The post #oneaday Day 715: Fuck Valnet appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I am tired. Very tired. I'm also worried that we have not-very-long to get a hell of a lot done, but no-one else seems to be panicking about it, so I'm trying not to panic. Trying. I am mostly succeeding, but there are times when I do feel a bit "OH GOD OH SHIT WHAT THE HELL". I can usually get through those times, though.

This is something I was talking about at therapy this week. One of the things that has sort of… emerged in our conversations is the fact that I do have what my therapist describes as a "wise" side, which, at times of great difficulty, anxiety or stress, can usually break through the noise of poor mental health and set me if not completely "right", then certainly on a somewhat more productive path than staring at a wall wishing the entire world would go away for a bit.

It is a challenge, sometimes, to allow that apparently "wise" part of myself to speak, but one thing I am learning to acknowledge about myself is that this part of myself does exist, and that when I do allow it to speak, it usually has something eminently sensible to say. It's not a part of me that admonishes me for making mistakes or doing things inefficiently; it just calmly, gently says to me something along the lines of "look, here are the facts, here is what you can do about it, here is what you probably should do about it" and then, barring a complete breakdown of mental health, I can usually then get on with the thing.

Of course, in the past I have experienced times where that voice can't get through. I have experienced times where things really were bad, and I knew there was no way of really avoiding the "bad". I endured, though, and I like to think my experiences have made me stronger as a result. After all, as much of a state as I consider myself to be in at times, I am still here. I am still going. I am still fighting. I haven't given up.

And oh, there have been times when it would have been easy to give up. At least one of those occasions has been immortalised on this blog, although at the time I sort of danced around the subject in the things I was writing, because I think on some level I was conscious of the fact that although I was having thoughts of giving up on everything at times, I didn't really want to follow through on them in any sort of way that would have had permanent consequences. Hell, I'm doing it now, because part of me doesn't believe that I was ever really willing to give up.

And I guess maybe I wasn't. Because, like I say, I am still here. There are things I would like to change. Things I would like to improve. Things that I wish were different. But I know all of those are things that I can, potentially, do something about. I am not helpless. I am not useless or worthless. There is reason and value to my existence.

That got a tad deeper than I perhaps intended, but it was one of those occasions when the thoughts just sort of started flowing, so I thought I'd run with it. Anyway, I'm off to go and eat ice cream and play some video games now. Have a lovely long weekend, everyone.

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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The post #oneaday Day 714: End of a long week appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.