#oneaday Day 302: Portsmouth Anime and Gaming Con

I went out today! SHOCK. Specifically, I went out with my wife and two of her friends that I happen to also get along well with, and we all went along to the Portsmouth Anime and Gaming Con, an event organised by a group called "Animeleague", who claim (as you do online) to host "The UK's most popular anime cons".

The event took place at a Marriott hotel in Cosham, a part of Portsmouth that is so shitty the first things that come up when you Google it are the crime statistics. But the Marriott itself was nice enough, even if its main reception and bar area, where most of the con took place, looked like an aircraft hangar had been clumsily bolted on to the side of the actual hotel. (Aside: I have previously encountered this kind of arrangement once, when I was teacher training, where the school I was placed at had very obviously taken a concourse that was once outside and decided to make it inside using some of the most industrial-looking architecture imaginable.)

The con was… kind of shit, to be honest, but in a charming way. We all had a good time and certainly didn't resent the train fare and ticket prices, but there's no way we would have been able to fill a full weekend with the activities that were taking place there.

The entire con consisted of a fairly small artist's alley (populated with some admittedly talented artists and craftspeople… as well as some other folks who were very obviously reselling AliExpress anime merch) and a "dealer's room", which primarily consisted of a huge booth from a company called Estatic Anime, which sold everything from katanas (a lot of people had been "studying the blade", it seems) to grab bags of Japanese snacks, but which also had some more artists and craftspeople around the periphery. And a wall of Funko Pop landfill relegated to a back corner, as it should be.

The "Gaming" part of the con consisted of a few side function rooms with a bunch of consoles set up, ranging from a number of Switches playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, some laptops with Minecraft and a few retro consoles, including all the major "minis" from the last few years, plus a couple of real retro systems such as a SNES, Mega Drive and a PlayStation. These rooms were pretty busy so we didn't spend a lot of time in them; as Andie said, "we can just do that at home". Quite. I believe there were supposed to be some actual tournaments going on throughout the day, but we didn't see any of that as it was mostly in games we weren't super-interested in watching.

There was a fairly small main stage in one of the hotel's function rooms, and there were Things Happening there all day. We went along to a couple of them: we caught the end of a writers' workshop hosted by a woman who appeared to be exceedingly nervous, but I'm sure addressing a room full of nerds, at least 40% of whom are in elaborate cosplay, is fairly daunting, then stayed on for a "lip-sync battle" where they struggled to find willing participants, then crashed their web browser for a good 10 minutes before they could actually start the competition. Then later in the day we returned for a "cosplay masquerade", which was probably the main attraction we were looking forward to seeing.

The lip-sync battle was quite entertaining, and I have to say, fair play to everyone who got up there, including the two incredibly nervous young girls in full cosplay who got up there, stood stock still and just about mouthed Japanese lyrics if you squinted and looked closely. They were, of course, shown up by those who had a natural talent and flair for performing on stage, including a Junko from Danganronpa performing an exceedingly (and appropriately) slutty take on Kesha's Joyride and an Ichigo from Bleach who was having the time of his life performing Thunderstruck by AC/DC. Both of these had clearly choreographed their routines in advance. One of the con staff also got up and did an excellent performance of You'll Be Back from Hamilton, a song (and show) I'm not familiar with, but which Andie assures me I absolutely should see. But still. It took guts for the two nervous girls to even try, so I cannot and will not take the piss.

The cosplay masquerade was… kind of similar, to be honest. It opened with a bunch of cosplayers who had signed up in advance and had clearly devised themselves some suitable dance (and, in the case of a Deadpool cosplayer, comedy) routines to establish a rapport with the audience rather than just standing there and looking nice. Then there were a few folks who had signed up on the day and either just stood there looking nice, or made some shit up on the spot to show off their costume.

The eventual winner of this was a Sakura Miku who did a fairly elaborate dance routine, but who Andie believes should have been disqualified for not ironing her shirt, making it pretty clear that she had just bought the costume rather than made it; by contrast, there was a spectacular Lulu from Final Fantasy X, who clearly had made her own costume, and she came in second place. Robbed, I tell you. Robbed.

Anyway, we bought some tat (and some sour cherry mead, which is delicious) and then came home to have a pizza. All in all, I'd judge that a pretty good day; as I say, the con itself was not necessarily something I'd particularly recommend to anyone unless they were particularly into bootleg Dragon Ball merchandise, but we didn't have a bad time there, and it was nice to get out of the house and spend some time with the three-dimensional people.

We've got some loose plans to go along to Portsmouth Comic Con, which is… next month, I think? That's in a larger venue so will probably be a bit more of an elaborate affair, so it should be pretty fun. For now, though, I think maybe a snifter of mead before bed, then sleepytime. And I forgot to buy milk. Bugger.

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 301: Weird things from Lidl

My wife Andie and I have started doing a lot of our food shopping at our local Lidl. It's not really any further away from the Tesco and/or Sainsbury's we had typically been going to up until now, it's generally a bit cheaper, and there's something just a bit more fun about it, inasmuch as grocery shopping can ever be fun. Also, I am nearly forty-four years old, and thus several decades too old for people to take the piss out of me for going to Lidl.

For the unfamiliar, Lidl is a budget supermarket that, as well as having the usual supermarket groceries, tends to have a bunch of random crap down its middle aisles ranging from portable greenhouses to cookware via dog toys, and also has an aisle or two that have a rotating "themed" selection of foods, with the theme usually being a particular geographical area.

The one… challenge we have, if you want to call it that, is because Lidl has these interesting "novelty" sections each time you go, the temptation is to do that thing where you go to another country and visit their supermarkets, and then you want to do stupid shit like buy their version of Corn Flakes to see if they taste any different, stuff like that. I know I'm not the only one who does this because Andie does it too.

Okay, the Corn Flakes thing is an exaggeration, but the natural response to seeing unfamiliar but tasty-looking things in a supermarket is to go "ooh, that looks unfamiliar but tasty, I'll give it a try". You will then repeat this process approximately 10-15 times over the course of your complete visit to Lidl — along with deciding that you actually do need a new frying pan, and the one they had in the middle aisle really wasn't that unreasonably priced — and end up with a shopping bill a good £20-£50 more than if you'd just gone to Tesco.

This, I guess, is the genius of Lidl. They can position themselves as a budget supermarket, because they are, but the way they merchandise their products means that people are, on the whole, probably more likely to spend more than they normally would. This is a work of dastardly genius, but I'm not mad about it.

I like being able to do the weekly food shop and discover weird American snacks that are a cross between Wotsits and a bag of salted peanuts. I like knowing that when I'm buying bread and milk, I have the option to also purchase a chainsaw at the same time. I like the fact that I could show up to Lidl at any hour of the day, purchase a large pack of toilet paper, some lubricant and a large item of garden furniture and no-one would look twice at the contents of my trolley. Well, all right, they might in that last instance.

Also, you remember a while back I talked about my lifelong desire to rediscover the brownies the friends of my parents once served me in America one Halloween? Lidl's in-store bakery brownies are the absolute closest thing I've had to those brownies. I still don't think they're quite there, but they are, by far, the closest I've had to those brownies from all those years ago. And thus their merchandising genius can't be all that evil, can it? Unless they're lacing those brownies with something that makes you inherently more suggestible…

Oh well. Anyway, we need to do a food shop soon, so I will be intrigued to see what nonsense we come back with next time. Perhaps I'll even report on it. Bet you can't wait, no?

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#oneaday Day 300: Paying the tax

I make no apologies for admitting that I preordered a Switch 2 today, even after everything I said yesterday. I thought about it a bit, and I basically came to the conclusion that I was almost certainly going to get one regardless of how much I complained about certain elements of it — and that in doing so I may well be Part of the Problem — and so I might as well just get it out of the way and do it.

So I did. Someone I know happened to spot that Argos had preorders go live today, so I snagged one. I went for the one with Mario Kart World pre-installed, so I basically get that game for £30 instead of £75. Not having a physical copy sucks a bit, but at the same time, Mario Kart World is one of those games that is going to get lots of updates and DLC, making a physical version arguably useless in the long term. That's a thing that happens these days, and that's not going away, so I may as well just enjoy the things while they are current, and I may well be dead by the time it's no longer possible to access the online elements. (Not that I'm planning on being dead any time soon, but you know what I mean.)

There's enough about Switch 2 that I like to make it worthwhile. The "Switch 2 Versions" of original Switch games are compelling, for one; I haven't yet played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and now it will be nice to be able to do so at higher resolutions and frame rates. I'm by no means a frame rate and resolution snob — I was eminently satisfied with how Breath of the Wild looked and performed — but if the option is there to make it better officially without getting into hacking, modding and piracy territory, I'm all for it.

There's also some of the multi-format "big" games that are quite appealing. I might finally play Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2, for example, or Hitman: World of Assassination. The nice thing about Switch 2 versions of these coming so late is that they should be "complete" versions with all their additional DLC, updates and what have you baked into the Switch 2 version from day one. And hopefully with a physical release.

One thing I'm not super enamoured with is this "game key card" business. If you haven't seen it yet, it's the replacement for the "code in a box" system, whereby you could buy a Switch case that contained nothing more than a download code. This new version actually has a Switch cart in it, but the cart doesn't have the game on it; instead, it lets you download the game and play it while the cart is in. I initially thought this was utterly stupid, but if you read the fine print on the Japanese website (which a pal graciously translated for me earlier) it became clear that this is not the same as redeeming a game on your account from a code; it is transferable, so you can lend it to others, take it round to a friend's house, all that sort of thing. It's still a bit of a weird way of doing things, but I don't hate it as much as code-in-a-box.

(And look, I get why code-in-a-box is a thing; it lets people buy digital games as gifts and give the person something physical to open on their special occasion. But it's still a pisser to find what you think is a physical release of a game only to discover it's… not that.)

I can sort of understand why the game key card thing is being used for stuff like Street Fighter 6, which is a game that gets updated regularly with balance patches, DLC and suchlike, and which has a massive filesize. I'm a bit pissed the Bravely Default remaster is using this system, though; there's no way that game wouldn't fit on a low-capacity cartridge. But oh well.

Like I say, though, there's enough about Switch 2 that I do like to make it, I think, worthwhile. It will be interesting and fun to use the social features if (and that's a big if right now, particularly with the chaos ensuing from Trump's dumbshit tariffs in the States) my friends happen to pick a Switch 2 up; it would be nice to get some sort of regular "game night" going, and the built-in chat features could even be a decent means of recording a podcast or streaming something in collaboration with another person.

Plus Mario Kart World does look good. I'm still not convinced it's £75 good, but I'm sure I can get £30 value out of it.

It's certainly going to be interesting to spend some time with Switch 2 when it arrives in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to it. Yes, I'd love it to be cheaper. Yes, I'd love it if we had a 100% guarantee that original Switch games will work on it (which we don't, yet, but they are supposedly working on it.) Yes, I wish I didn't have to buy a new format of memory card for it.

But I also understand why all these things are the case, and moaning and complaining about them almost certainly isn't going to change anything about them this close to release. So I may as well suck it up, pay the money and enjoy the thing I knew I was always going to enjoy anyway. And so that's exactly what I'm doing!

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#oneaday Day 299: Switch 2 Tax

It was the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal today. And while there's a lot to like about the system — 1080p and up to 120fps handheld, 4K docked, HDR, nifty online socialisation functions, upgrades to certain Switch games that include both a performance boost and new stuff for the games — one thing is giving me a lot of pause that I wasn't feeling before the announcement.

And that one thing is the price of games. As someone who collects physical video games, I naturally will want to continue doing that for any new console hardware I pick up. But the new Mario Kart is seventy-five fucking pounds for a physical version, and the new Donkey Kong game is sixty-six quid.

Donkey Kong is just on the borderline of what I'll consider paying if the game is legitimately good (and it's a real borderline case here as I don't really like Donkey Kong as a character), but more than £70 for a game that will almost certainly also have paid DLC is well over that line for me. I'm sure Mario Kart World, as the new game is called, will be very good, and I'm quite curious to play it — but £75 to have a copy on my shelf (and not much less than that for a digital-only version) feels… excessive. And I'm someone who voluntarily pays £35 to limited-print companies for £10 indie games just so I can have them on my shelf.

This feels like a mistake for Nintendo. It feels like it might put all the goodwill they built up with the Switch at serious risk of unravelling. I'm sure they will justify it by saying the new cartridges are higher capacity, the tech is more advanced or whatever, but it still feels like… a lot.

Couple that with the fact that while the launch lineup looked neat, there wasn't a singular game that made me go "yes, give it to me, I need this right now". We had a bunch of very welcome ports of stuff like Hitman: World of Assassination, Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (though no mention of Rebirth, interestingly) and numerous others, a Bravely Default remaster that I've been hoping we'd see for quite some time, the aforementioned new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games, and a few other bits and pieces that were perfectly nice enough, but not really "system sellers" for me.

Not yet, anyway. I have no doubt I'll probably end up with a Switch 2 eventually. But today's announcement makes me feel like I probably don't need one at launch. Probably. Probably.

There's a few days until preorders open. I will have to mull it over quite seriously. Quite seriously indeed. In the meantime, though, it's not as if I'm short of regular-ass Switch games to play, including a selection of pretty chunky RPGs I still haven't gotten to.

So we'll wait and see, I guess. It was a good presentation, and there's a lot to like about Switch 2. But I feel like a lot of people who were all set to preorder day one are now having very serious thoughts about the situation, just like I am. I feel like this should have been an easy win for Nintendo, but as it stands, they could potentially have a problem here.

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#oneaday Day 298: Can you give up your phone?

I watched a good video earlier, and I recommend you do too if you have a spare 46 minutes and 4 seconds. It's by a chap called Eddy Burback, who makes videos that are just… about stuff. He always puts in a decent amount of research to the topics he talks about, he makes his discussions both interesting and personally relevant, and he's genuinely entertaining. If you've never watched his stuff before, this video is a great place to get to know him.

For those too lazy or disinclined to click that video and actually watch it, his aim was to go 30 days with his smartphone locked up in a safe so he couldn't use it at all. He wasn't denying himself access to the Internet, social media or anything like that, and he set up an old Mac laptop in the corner of his living room to access iMessage if he needed it, but only allowed himself a cumulative total of 5 minutes across the entire month to check it. He found, among other things, that after checking it once, he decided he didn't really need to check it at all.

The other things he did were deliberate, conscious steps "backwards". He set up a landline with an on-device answering machine. He made plans with friends over the phone, and then just showed up at the place he said he'd be at the time he said he'd be there, rather than constantly checking in via text or chat. He navigated by looking things up on the computer at home, then either writing things down in a notepad or just remembering them. He bought a physical pre-payment card to ride the bus rather than using an app. He handled electronic "tickets" for events and facilities such as the cinema by printing out a hardcopy.

And he seemed happy. I'm sure part of this was to aid with the storytelling — you tend to go into a project like this with a hypothesis that you kind of want to prove — but I don't doubt that spending a month without habitually, obsessively checking one's phone is a healthy thing to do. And as time goes on, I increasingly find myself wanting to do just that.

There are, as Burback talks about in the video, drawbacks. If you're not someone who likes talking on the phone, a landline isn't going to do you much good — and likewise if your friends tend to interact with you primarily via text message or chat applications. On top of that, landlines attract spam calls even more than mobiles do. This means you can very easily find yourself feeling even more isolated than you were already, which is probably counter-productive to the intent of the experiment: the aim is to get off your phone so that you can enjoy living your life a little more, and part of that is spending time with friends. If you can't get in touch with those friends via any means other than a text or chat message, that's a problem.

Most other things, there are ways round, though. For navigation, you can still print out maps and directions from sites like Google Maps and Mapquest (which, yes, still exists!). For convenient payments, most places accept contactless cards now, particularly since the pandemic almost outlawed cash altogether. For public transport, pre-paid cards exist, even if you have to go digging to a retailer who actually remembers where they keep them after not selling one for a decade or more. And for making arrangements with friends? Well, if they're good friends, they'll respect your lifestyle decision and be willing to interact with you and make plans via whatever means you are allowing, such as the phone; the fact that people were perfectly fine with adapting to his situation is one of the things Burback seemed most surprised about.

One thing Burback found was that without the constant connectivity a phone in your pocket brings, he was much less likely to cancel plans on a moment's notice or suddenly decide he wasn't in the mood for something. Instead, if he'd made plans, he'd made a commitment to another person, and not showing up for that commitment would be letting them down. Of course, sometimes these things are unavoidable — but that's why you still have means of communicating like the landline or email. It's not like locking your smartphone away completely cuts you off from society altogether. It just means that you are reachable on your own terms.

And I think that's the important thing. It allows you to really take control of your own life. It means you are not beholden to social media algorithms and the arbitrary schedules of whether or not "interesting" people are online posting mindless content that doesn't really enrich your life in any way. It means you're more likely to pick up a book and read it all the way through, instead of scrolling through 50 TikTok videos, not taking anything in from any of them.

Completely getting rid of your phone is obviously a drastic option. But the conclusion Burback came to was that while there are undoubted conveniences — and pleasures — to having a smartphone accessible at all times, having a month completely disconnected from it allowed him to develop a more healthy relationship with it. He was less inclined to doomscroll through social media, less inclined to experience the world through a camera app rather than his own eyes, and more inclined to having fewer but more meaningful interactions with the people who are important to him. And that, in turn, left a lot more time for doing things that he found enjoyable and pleasurable: watching movies, reading books, all that sort of thing.

I won't lie: that sounds nice. I have already cut back on using my phone a lot compared to what I used to do with it, but there are still times when I really resent its presence. Perhaps I should try a similar experiment sometime.

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#oneaday Day 297: Transgender Day of Visibility - Video Game Edition

It is, apparently, Transgender Day of Visibility. My Bluesky feed has been festooned with cyan, pink and white banners all day, so the "visibility" part is definitely doing all right — but, of course, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of trans acceptance, particularly with the steps backwards in tolerance and inclusiveness that the United States administration appears determined to go through with right now.

So with that in mind, I hope no-one will find this patronising or anything, but I thought I'd highlight some trans game developers I've become familiar with over the years and point you in the direction of some of their works. I'm not going to go too deep into their respective histories, because 1) those histories are pretty well documented elsewhere online, where they have been considered to be anybody's business, and 2) if they aren't, it's not really anyone's business. So today we will mostly be focusing on their accomplishments.

Danielle Bunten Berry

Perhaps the most famous name on this admittedly fairly short and hastily assembled list, Dani Bunten Berry was responsible for some of the most ambitious, audacious games of the early 8-bit microcomputer era.

Her most famous work is probably M.U.L.E., an economic simulation that began life on Atari 8-bit and was subsequently ported to a variety of other home computer and console systems. There have also been several attempts to bring M.U.L.E. to the tabletop to varying degrees of success, but part of M.U.L.E.'s genius is that it can only really be done justice on a computer.

People are still playing M.U.L.E. in its original form today. People are playing hacked versions that allow online multiplayer. There have been several modern ports of the game. It's a widely beloved game with good reason — don't let that "economic simulation" descriptor put you off. It's easy to pick up and straightforward to play, and every game is a little bit different — particularly if you're fortunate enough to play it with other human players. A four-player game of M.U.L.E. is very different to a single-player game against three computer opponents.

That's not the only amazing game to her name, though. She also made Seven Cities of Gold, one of the first ever open-world sandbox games. Casting players in the role of Spanish explorers, the game tasks you with just… well, exploring. There was no set goal, no "right" or "wrong" way to play; just a set of mechanics for you to engage with, and the rest of your time with the game would be spent creating a unique emergent narrative all your own.

Dani Bunten Berry was sadly taken from us in 1998, but her legacy lives on, both through her classic games that are still being enjoyed to this day, and through the games that they inspired.

Cathryn Mataga

Perhaps not quite as well-known a name as Dani Bunten Berry, Cathryn Mataga has nonetheless given us some excellent games over the years, beginning with the 8-bit microcomputer titles Zeppelin and Shamus, and moving on to work on a variety of excellent role-playing games, including the original 1991 MMO version of Neverwinter Nights, and several Dungeons & Dragons games: Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Stronghold, and Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands. She also worked on Rampage 2: Universal Tour, but we won't hold that against her.

One of her most notable achievements was the Game Boy Color version of questionable "classic" laser disc game Dragon's Lair. Unlike the original Game Boy version, which was actually a reskinned Spectrum game port, the Game Boy Color version was more akin to the Atari ST and Amiga versions, which recreated the video sequences of the laser disc original with enormous, screen-filling sprites overlaid atop static backdrops. The result is a game that is still… well, it's still Dragon's Lair, but the technical achievement on a cart-based 8-bit handheld format is absolutely something else.

Rebecca Heineman

Rebecca Heineman is arguably best known as one of the first ever video game tournament champions, but she is also a talented, experienced and prolific developer and writer. After winning the Space Invaders tournament that gave her an initial taste of fame, she was offered writing and consultancy jobs, and as part of all this, still aged just 16, she happened to mention that she had, in her free time, successfully reverse-engineered game code for Atari 2600 games, as you do, allowing her to develop software for the machine without having to go through Atari. This early hacking experience got her a job at strategy game specialists Avalon Hill, where she made a game engine and base code for a variety of projects as well as a ton of documentation and a full game all of her own.

In subsequent years, she worked on a variety of projects, including the notorious Chuck Norris Superkicks for multiple platforms, but really hit the ground running when she co-founded Interplay alongside Brian Fargo, Jay Patel and Troy Worrell. At Interplay, she worked on a variety of projects as programmer, with probably the most high-profile among them being Wasteland and The Bard's Tale. She also designed The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate, Borrowed Time, Mindshadow and numerous others, before moving on to other projects.

She's still active in and around the industry today, and can often be found chatting on Bluesky. It's clear that the passion and enthusiasm for video games and development has never truly left her, and it's inspiring to see, to be sure.

Jennell Jaquays

I must confess, I didn't know this name before I looked at Rebecca Heineman's website, but after reading her story, I feel compelled to include her.

Jennell Jaquays, who was Rebecca Heineman's wife, is sadly no longer with us, as she passed on in January of last year. But her influence can be keenly felt in both the tabletop and video game spaces. Her early career included contributing to a variety of tabletop role-playing game publishers, with her Dungeons & Dragons modules Dark Tower and The Caverns of Thracia often held up as her most influential work. She is regarded as a pioneer of non-linear, flexible, multi-path scenario writing, as opposed to the more typical straightforward and linear scenarios that tended to be published at the time. Supposedly, the term "Jaquaysing" refers to creating scenarios with this sort of thing in mind — though this comes from an uncited reference on Wikipedia, so maybe take that with a pinch of salt.

In the video game space, she worked at Coleco, creating several of the excellent arcade game ports for that system, including Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. She put together one of the first actual development studios for making video games — at the time, many games were solo efforts — and went on to contribute to Epyx, Interplay and Electronic Arts. She had a stint as a level designer at id Software in the late '90s, working on Quake II and Quake III Arena, and went on to develop a pioneering video game education programme, as well as some particularly effective advocacy for LGBTQ+ folks that lead to Barack Obama taking action on banning conversion therapy back in 2015.

There are a lot of wonderful people throughout video game history. These are just four that I consider well worth celebrating. Of course, every day should be about including and accepting people regardless of their age, race, gender identity, sexuality or any number of other characteristics — but it becomes more and more clear by the day that we still have a lot of work to do. That's why days like today are so important — now, perhaps, more than ever in recent memory.

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#oneaday Day 296: Hefty project

I put together a new video this weekend. Just the one, because it turned out being quite a beefy one to put together, but hopefully you will appreciate the effort once it's live, which will probably be tomorrow.

Inspired by the recent launch of the Fun Factor Podcast, I thought it was high time I got back to my retrospective look back over the issues of Page 6/New Atari User magazine that I started a while back, but only got around to doing two issues of. The reason I've been putting off doing any more may well already be self-evident: each "episode" of this takes quite a bit of time and effort to put together!

I mean, to my satisfaction, anyway. I could just turn the camera on, rabbit on about what's in the magazine and leave it at that. But one thing I like about doing these videos — and the bit that's particularly time-consuming — is that I can supplement the magazine's contents with actual footage of the things that are being discussed, whether those are programming techniques or the latest games. Getting together all that footage as well as recording the actual run-through of the magazine takes quite a bit of time all together — but the end result is worth it. I like these videos.

If you haven't seen the previous ones, by the way, may I present them below. Here's a look at the very first issue of Page 6, including the back story of where it came from and what it means to me:

And here's a look at the second issue, in which we observe the rise of a mostly forgotten piece of '80s slang: the adjective "keen" to mean "cheap" or "eminently reasonable", which I had never come across before. Well, I mean, I had, because I'd read this issue before, but somehow it had never struck me as odd:

As I note in the videos, these old magazines are of tremendous importance to me, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to be able to share them with everyone through the medium of video. The ability to splice in footage of the stuff being talked about allows you to get some context that you might not have had just reading the magazine back in the day, and this is a part of retro gaming culture that I'm always happy to celebrate in one form or another.

The new episode is uploading and processing right now, so it should be live on YouTube tomorrow as soon as I've done a thumbnail and all the other gubbins for it. Watch out for it then — stop by my channel and subscribe if you haven't already. Go on. You know you want to.

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#oneaday Day 295: The sky isn't falling

I've had a pretty stressful week, the reasons for which I won't get into for now, but suffice it to say they were work-related issues. (Nothing anyone who cares should be worried about, I hasten to add; part of the problem is my own disproportionate sense of panic-stress to even slight mishaps. And that is, essentially, what happened this week.)

I don't like getting stressed out or annoyed at my current job because, for the most part, I actually like it and want to stay there. At this point I think it's the job I've held on to for the longest without going insane, but I do find myself worrying that The Way My Brain Is is just sort of fundamentally incompatible with… work.

I don't mean that I don't want to do anything, or that I just want to sit around all day doing nothing. I've been there, I've done that, and it's nowhere near as much fun as you might think. I am grateful for my current position, and I believe that if I were to leave (I'm not planning on doing so!) I would be missed, which is more than can be said for some positions I've held in the past.

But still, there's the stress. I'm beginning to feel like work-related stress may simply be an unavoidable part of literally every position out there, and that kind of sucks. Because if I can still be feeling the kind of stress that makes me not want to get out of bed in the morning at a job I actually like and want to keep, it really doesn't feel like there's a way to escape it at all, short of winning the lottery, jacking it all in and living purely for whatever you, specifically, want to do.

Even then, though, the modern world manages to bring in stress. If I were to win millions and be able to quit my job comfortably, I would almost certainly want to continue writing and making videos. And I would not be doing those in an attempt to make money; I would be doing it purely because I want to. But I just know from bitter experience even if you're doing something you absolutely love doing and expressing pure, unbridled enthusiasm for it, there's always someone lurking around a corner waiting to make your day miserable with an unpleasant comment or a wilful misinterpretation of something you say.

The only escape, really, is to completely cut yourself off from everything and live off the grid from a social perspective, only making use of the Internet for essential things. Because at this point, I feel like completely living without the Internet at all is probably impossible.

But anyway. The stress this week was not pleasant, but I survived it, and I need to tell myself every time something like this happens that the world is not, in fact, ending, regardless of anything that has happened. Instead, it seems that Shit does indeed Happen, whether or not you think it "deserves" to, and the only real way to stay standing is just to weather the storms that come your way every so often, learn any lessons that can be learned from the situation, and hopefully come out of the other end stronger.

That's what I should tell myself when this happens. But we all know that's probably not going to happen. The next time Stress Happens, it will have the exact same effect on me, and I will come to this same vaguely philosophical conclusion after the fact once again. It has happened before, and it will happen again.

Oh well. Something about recognising a problem is the first step and all that.

Time for bed, I think!

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#oneaday Day 294: Microsoft Teams is where joy goes to die

Working from home is, on the whole, infinitely preferable to having to do a daily commute into an office to spend time with people I don't know very well or like all that much and attempt to find ways to look busy and/or enthusiastic about working on things I don't give a shit about. (To that I will also add: it is infinitely preferable to have a job you give a shit about, populated by people you like, which thankfully I have. I've paid my dues at shitty jobs full of shitty people.)

But there's one thing I have come to hate about working from home, and that is waking up of a morning and seeing Microsoft Teams notifications already waiting for me. It's my own fault, really, for allowing Teams onto my phone, but there are occasions when it's useful to be reachable when not sitting in front of the work computer, so there it is for now.

I hate Microsoft Teams. I don't really know why. It's not as if it's a completely broken, non-functional piece of software; by Microsoft's standards, it's reasonably not-bad, though like all their other modern pieces of software, it defies pretty much all interface standards which Microsoft set themselves with their own operating system, which continues to baffle me. Plus, as with everyfuckingthing else these days, "AI" is starting to creep into it with the ability to "add chatbots" to conversations.

I think it's just the utter joylessness of it as an application. It's a piece of software primarily designed for facilitating boring online meetings that only the person hosting them actually gives a shit about, and even with the inclusion of the ability to post GIFs in text chat (because, of course, what says "professional" more than copyright-infringing memes?) it just feels so incredibly po-faced at all times.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't want Teams to turn into Discord with its cutesy wutesy oopsy woopsy we made a fucky wucky update notices and gradual introduction of myriad stupid features no-one actually wants or needs. But it's also a program I just find depressing to open up.

And, as I say, I don't really 100% know why I feel that way. Functionally, it's inoffensive, if riddled with strange design decisions. Practically, it's useful for being able to converse with colleagues easily. And yet I still hate it. I hate its ability to intrude on things you're doing. I hate the fact people can just "call" you without you giving your consent. And, as I say, there are few things worse than waking up of a morning and seeing there are already a bajillion Teams notifications waiting for you.

Maybe I should just delete it from my phone and if people can't reach me until I'm at my computer, that's tough shit. I mean, that's no different from working in an office and no-one being able to reach me until I'm at my desk and within reach of my work phone, right?

Not that I ever answered my work phone when I actually had one in the few office jobs I've ever had, mind. Email or bust.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now. Notifications off!

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#oneaday Day 293: Nintendo Direct immediate reactions

There was a Nintendo Direct today, almost certainly the last one we'll ever see devoted to the original Nintendo Switch. So it seems fitting to go through the stuff that was announced and discussed and provide my own personal feelings about them.

Note: my own personal feelings. If you feel differently about any of these things, great! You have an opinion and a personality. You are not wrong for feeling differently to me, just as I am not wrong for feeling differently to you.

Standard procedure Internet of 2025 disclaimer over, let's get to it, shall we?

Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake

Brilliant news. I haven't bought III yet, let alone played it, but I'm thrilled we finally have a modern way to play early Dragon Quest games that isn't those fucking awful mobile phone ports with the horrible visuals. Here's hoping they give IV, V and VI similar treatment, because while I'm lucky enough to own the Nintendo DS versions, I certainly wouldn't complain at the opportunity to play them on the big screen.

To date, the only Dragon Quest I've played to completion is IV. I got right to the end of V, but was underpowered for the final boss and couldn't be arsed to grind, so I never got around to beating it. I loved it up until that point, though. Bianca was my waifu.

No Sleep for Kaname Date

HELL YES. I love Kotaro Uchikoshi's work, and the two AI: The Somnium Files games are absolute masterpieces. I'm thrilled that we're getting another one. If you're yet to play the first two, I highly recommend setting some time aside for them (they're both pretty chunky by adventure game standards) and playing them fully. Can't wait to get back into that world with those wonderful characters.

Raidou Remastered

I never played the Raidou Kuzonoha games back on PS2, and they're super-expensive to collect today. I remember several folks whose opinions I trust enthusing greatly about them 15-20 years ago though, so I'm excited that I'll finally have the opportunity to check one of these games out. And that Shoji Meguro soundtrack sounds great.

I know absolutely nothing about the game other than it's supposed to be a pretty good time, so I'll likely be going in fairly blind to this. But I will be going in!

Shadow Labyrinth

Pac-Man-themed exploratory platformer? Interesting, and I can see the potential there. The "dark and edgy" thing is a bit of a turnoff, to be honest, but if the game's decent I can live with it. Not something I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to play, but I will follow with interest.

Patapon 1+2 Replay

Yes! Never really played the PSP versions much beyond trying them out at a friends house a very long time ago, but I liked their vibe and their music. Plus me and my wife often tease our cat Patti by going "pon, pon, Patti-pon", so it will be nice to finally educate my wife on where that actually came from.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar

I've played a few Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon games in my time and quite enjoyed them, but my trouble is I've got it in my head that they sort of never end. I don't think that's actually true, and that my opinion is probably largely based on the number of people who have been playing Stardew Valley for approximately 300 years, but it's kind of put me off jumping into any of the more recent ones. I think the last one I played was the one on Gamecube?

Certainly not against this, but not rushing out of my way to pick it up, either.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

Cool that it actually exists and seems to be a decent way along. I've still never played a Metroid Prime game, though, so my excitement for this is somewhat tempered compared to many other folks. I do like Metroid from my relatively limited contact with the series to date (mostly Super Metroid) — I just haven't made the time for other entries in the series so far.

Disney Villains Cursed Café

I quite like the concept of this, as the "make drinks for patrons who have their own stories to tell" thing has been done well previously by VA-11 HALL-A and Coffee Talk. I just wonder if the Disney Villains thing won't end up holding it back rather than making it interesting. After all, I suspect there's fairly strict writers' guidelines in place on what these characters are and are not allowed to "do" in narrative terms.

Witchbrook

Well this looks adorable! I have a lot of time for school-themed games, and throw in a bit of magic that isn't the work of a raging transphobe and you have a winner, so far as I'm concerned. Will it beat Mana Khemia? It'll probably be a rather different experience, but I'm very much up for this, particularly with its lush pixel art.

The Eternal Life of Goldman

I must confess, I couldn't remember what this was just from the title as I think I tuned it out a bit when I was watching the show (no shade on the game, I was working at the time) but looking back at it now, it looks kind of neat. The animation on the characters is lovely, but the backdrops look a bit drab. If this has a decent story or some more varied environments, I might give it a look.

Gradius Origins

Yes please. The other Konami collections are excellent, so I will be happy to add this one to the mix.

Rift of the Necrodancer

I like Crypt of the Necrodancer, but my first impression of this is that it loses a bit of its charm by being a more conventional rhythm game rather than a combination of rhythm game and RPG. The visuals are nice, though, and it looks like it plays well enough. I was a bit concerned about the number of times they mentioned DLC, though. Perhaps one to wait for a "Complete" physical release of.

Tamagotchi Plaza

Do not care. Never had a Tamagotchi, have no attachment to them whatsoever, and the dentistry bit looked like one of those spam mobile games. No thank you.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A

I've never been a big Pokémon fan, though I moderately enjoyed Sword/Shield a while back. Another one I'll keep a bit of an eye on, but probably won't rush out to buy.

Rhythm Paradise Groove

I feel the exact opposite about this as I do about Pokémon. A new Rhythm Paradise/Rhythm Heaven/whatever you call it in your neck of the woods is an insta-purchase for me after loving the DS and Wii versions.

Virtual Game Cards

Seems like a decent solution to sharing digital games. A little more cumbersome than it perhaps needs to be, but that's Nintendo for you. I do like that you can "lend" digital games to family members, though; I've been hoping for a way to do that so my wife can play the Atelier Arland series for a very long time.

SaGa Frontier 2 Remastered

I bounced off this hard on PS1 but I'm much more open to it these days. The art is kind of weird though; the heavily pixelated characters on the upscaled backdrops just look a bit odd. Not "ew, I'm never buying this" odd, just a bit odd. Which would be firmly in keeping with SaGa in general.

Monument Valley

Hooray! A mobile game breaking free of its mobile prison! I was always curious about this but had absolutely no desire to play it on a mobile device. Now I don't have to!

Everybody's Golf: Hot Shots

Yes please! Arcadey golf games are very much my jam, and while the Mario sports games are insistent on getting a bit too experimental with their more recent installments, this looks like it will be a good old-fashioned silly golf game. I am definitely there for this.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion

I have zero stakes in the Marvel race, but Tribute Games is always a good time. As someone else pointed out earlier, I hope they don't just get stuck doing licensed stuff until the end of time, though.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

I had zero contact with (and, really, interest in) the original Tomodachi Life, but I know it's responsible for some funny moments. I also remember having some funny times with… what was it called, Miitomo? So I'll have a look and see what this is, but not one I'll be rushing out to buy or anything

Nintendo Today

Sure, Nintendo. Another app just for your news. I'm fine with this.

On the whole, I think it was a pretty good presentation! As some folks pointed out, this can be looked on as the Switch's last desperate gasp before Switch 2 shows up, and thus there's a lot of "niche interest" stuff here. But that's good! I like niche interest! I am the niche! So I say bring it on.

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