Apparently, according to my notifications anyway, today is the 16th anniversary of me signing up on WordPress.com. Indeed, looking back at my very first post it does seem that I started blogging on here on July 22, 2008.
Back in those days, I posted sporadically. I wasn’t really sure what to do with a blog at the time, I just felt like I wanted one. It actually wasn’t the first blog I’d had, either, although it’s the only one that’s survived this long.
I did, at one point, post an anonymous “Tales from the Staffroom” blog on BlogSpot that recounted my experiences as a classroom teacher, but there appears to be no trace of that left on the current Internet. There is an archive of it from as recently as 2023, but Google appears to have gone on a “Blogger purge” at some point in the last year, so the address no longer works on the current Web. This is a shame, but at least archive.org caught it before it disappeared.
At the time I started this blog, I was still working at the Apple Store as a “Creative” — that is to say, I was one of the people whose job it was to provide training sessions for Mac users on the use of creative software. Technically our job was supposed to be confined to lessons on Apple software only, but we inevitably found ourselves having to deal with customers using all manner of weird and wonderful pieces of software for their very specific needs.
This was partly our own fault — one guy on the Creative team was a Photoshop expert, so him happily covering that set the expectation with customers that we should all be able to cover Photoshop, even though several of us had specialisms in other areas — but also it just felt a bit mean to have someone just turn up, ask for help (which, nine times out of ten, was pretty simple, given that most folks who signed up for the “One to One” programme were new Mac users and often elderly) and tell them “no”.
I enjoyed that job for quite a while. I had a nice group of friends and I was good at it. The pay was… all right, considering it was a retail position, and the freebies and staff discounts were excellent. Unfortunately it ended badly when the management of the store inexplicably went into something of a decline and started being unnecessarily harsh on the folks working for them. I ended up losing my job after standing up for a colleague of mine who absolutely was unfairly dismissed, but given that both management and the folks above them closed ranks, he was never going to get fair treatment. And, as it turned out, I didn’t, either. Thankfully, I resigned before they could fire me, but it left an extremely bitter taste in my mouth with regards to all things Apple.
Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on that too much because that’s probably a whole other story I can tell another day. That was the context in which I was writing those first posts, though: I was, for a time, genuinely quite happy and satisfied with the way things were going. My life perhaps wasn’t proceeding in the direction I had initially intended — after a nervous breakdown, I decided that classroom teaching really wasn’t for me — but it was proceeding, at least. And having a blog was a nice breezy way to ponder on all sorts of things without any sort of real “pressure”. I can’t even remember if I’d joined Facebook or Twitter in 2008; I think I probably had, but social media certainly wasn’t the all-encompassing force of shittiness that it is today back then.
It’s interesting to look back and see things that no longer exist, such as PMOG, the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, where you earned experience points and other RPG-style benefits for simply browsing the Web. And it’s also gratifying to see that so far as my tastes are concerned, some things never change.
You are, of course, always welcome to browse back into the archives via the dropdown in the sidebar. (I’m not sure where it is on mobile, probably at the bottom?) I’m not the same person I was back then — but every experience I’ve had, everything I’ve written about, has helped make me who I am today, for better or worse.
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.
My wife Andie and I have been married for one year today. Good going, us.
For those of you who were unable to attend our wedding last year, I thought now might be a good time to share the speech I made at said reception, as it’s still relevant now. (Apart from all the bits that refer to “today”, which you can take to mean “June 27, 2015” instead.)
Hello everyone, thanks for coming. It’s great to see so many of you together here in one place — in some cases, we haven’t seen each other for quite some time. I think there’s a relevant Lord of the Rings quote here, but my best man Tim is more suitably equipped to be able to make that reference, so I’ll leave that to him.
I wanted to start today with something that is probably the height of impropriety, and that’s to acknowledge that this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I think most of you here already know that, but it’s important to acknowledge it, I feel — not only to dispel any awkwardness that might result from that knowledge, but also because it’s relevant to why I’m standing here today.
First time around, you see, things were a whirlwind. And in all the excitement, I failed to realise some very important things: that while it absolutely is possible to make a partnership work if the two of you have disparate interests, if either or both of you find it difficult or impossible to meet the other halfway and at least respect the things that they’re into even if you don’t share those interests, things will go south pretty quickly.
Now, I don’t want to dwell on that too much, because that’s not the reason we’re here today. Suffice to say, however, that awkward situation is a thing of the past — and while my new wife and I certainly have our own interests that we’re happy to pursue independently of one another (I like Japanese video games with saucy artwork, she likes painting intricate designs on her fingernails) we also share some very important things that have become a big part of our life.
Those of you who know your video games will recognise a lot of today’s festivities as involving Final Fantasy — particularly Final Fantasy XIV, an online multiplayer installment of the long-running series that I’ve been playing since 2013, and which Andie later joined me in, much to my surprise and delight. Through that game, we’ve forged some very close friendships — as close as the friendships we have with many of you sitting here — and as such, I thought it was eminently appropriate for my proposal to Andie to be delivered as part of our in-game characters’ wedding ceremony back in January. Unusually, this means that there’s an actual video of how I proposed thanks to our guildmate recording the whole experience if you ever want to go and watch it and make me blush a bit. (It’s not hard.) [Editor’s note: I genuinely don’t know what the link is to this or if it’s still online. But it may still be out there somewhere.]
Now, unfortunately, as our guildmates are scattered across the world, most of them couldn’t join us here today, but we know that they’re here in spirit — and I did want to particularly show my gratitude to Chris, aka Reimi, healer extraordinaire, for sharing today with us. The rest of our fellow adventurers are eagerly awaiting photos and videos of our big day, so please do share any media you create today!
But back to Andie and me. I feel that our shared love of Final Fantasy XIV is actually rather symbolic of the journey we’ve taken together in many ways. We both play the game to a high level, taking on some of its toughest challenges together with our friends. Together, we’ve toppled the mighty dragon Twintania, fended off meteors and ancient pillars dropping on our heads long enough to dispatch Nael deus Darnus, and even vanquished the very angry — justifiably so — Elder Primal Bahamut himself.
And we’ve overcome our own challenges in reality, too. I shan’t go into details for now, because it really isn’t the time — suffice to say, though, both of us have dealt with our share of real life raid bosses: challenges that seem insurmountable and want nothing more than our complete annihilation, but challenges that we could overcome by working together, supporting one another and simply being there for each other. I’ll forever be grateful to my new wife for standing by me through some difficult times — and I hope she feels the same way too.
Sappy bit over. I believe it falls to me to deliver some “thank yous”, because a lot of hard work has gone on behind the scenes to make today happen.
Thanks to Andie, first of all, for doing the lion’s share of the organisation, because I’m a man and therefore useless at sorting this sort of thing out.
Thanks to our parents: Agnes, Val and John, for working together to help today be truly special.
Thanks to Rob for his generous loan of the PA system which we’re pumping music through over the course of the afternoon and evening.
Thanks to my best man Tim for his support in the weeks leading up to the wedding, and for being one of my most trusted friends who doesn’t spend most of his time pretending to be a catgirl on the Internet.
Thanks to everyone else who has contributed their time, money and effort towards today; I’m almost certain there are people I’ve forgotten or don’t know by name well enough to acknowledge you individually, but believe me, your labours are very much appreciated.
And thank you all for being here today. It means a great deal that you can share this special day with us.
Finally, Googling “who does the groom toast” reminded me that I’m supposed to toast the bridesmaids at the end of my speech. Before I do that, I’ll also thank them for their contributions today — and for both being an important part of Andie’s life. So please, if you would, raise your glasses, and join me in a toast to the bridesmaids.
A toast to Andie, too, for putting up with me while dealing with all the things she has to deal with, too. She’s stronger, more capable and more wonderful than she’d ever care to admit (and me attempting to say this to her face normally results in her wriggling off uncomfortably somewhere, so I’m saying it here instead) and I love her to bits.
Here’s to many more years ahead of us. And I say that with confidence.
The PlayStation is celebrating its 20th birthday in Europe today. What better way of celebrating than with a rather lovely picture of Hyperdimension Neptunia’s Noire, personification of the PlayStation brand and platform, dressed up to the nines and clearly in slightly awkward party spirit?
Hnng, I’m sure you will agree.
Lovely Noire aside, the PlayStation’s 20th anniversary feels like a suitable occasion to share some fond memories of my time with Sony’s platforms over the years, and what PlayStation has meant to me. I realise that by doing this I am, of course, falling into Sony’s cunning marketing trap, but since I’m not a professional games journalist any more I can say whatever the fuck I want, not to mention post pictures such as that seen above.
Anyway.
My first memory of PlayStation is much like my first memory of many consoles from the SNES and Mega Drive era onwards: a unit came home with my brother, courtesy of his work on games magazines, accompanied by a few games, and thus I had the opportunity to try it out well before any of my friends ever did — though I would find myself biting my lip and never being sure whether or not five minutes after the poor chap had arrived was too soon to go rifling through his bags in search of technology and game cases.
The first three games I ever played on PlayStation were Ridge Racer, a pre-release version of Tekken (which had a bug or two here and there) and Raiden Project. Ridge Racer was, of course, absolutely gobsmacking at the time (though I still find it amusing that it upstaged itself with its fourth installment coming bundled with a remake of the original that ran at twice the resolution and twice the framerate) and Tekken was one of the most “physical”-feeling fighting games I’d ever encountered. (That cracking sound Paul Phoenix makes when he throws someone still makes me wince.) Conversely, I was initially unimpressed by Raiden Project owing to the fact that its 2D sprite-based graphics looked like the sort of thing the SNES and Mega Drive had been offering us for years by this point. (I later realised that I was being somewhat blinded by the then-revolutionary 3D graphics of the former two games, and came to enjoy Raiden Project a whole lot.)
Ridge Racer and Tekken were both noteworthy for incorporating something that I haven’t really seen since: games to play while you waited for the main game to load. Ridge Racer offered Galaxian — and unlocked bonuses if you managed to complete it before the main game loaded — while Tekken offered Galaga. Both were impressive, arcade-perfect ports that ran flawlessly while the game loaded in the background, and I’m sad that this concept didn’t take off more, perhaps due to Namco remaining somewhat tight-fisted with the technology. These days the best we get is an interactive loading screen that lets us practice our moves or something, but these tend to only come up once the game has already loaded, not the moment you put the disc in.
Eventually, for some reason, I came into possession of that same (Japanese) PlayStation that had originally come home with my brother. I forget the exact circumstances — I imagine it was due to him getting an official local model — but I was certainly extremely grateful for it. Unfortunately, as still happens with many console games today, the PlayStation was region-locked, meaning that it would only run Japanese games straight out of the box; running European games required you to either install a mod chip (which also enabled piracy, since it effectively bypassed the console’s internal copy-and-region-protection systems) or make use of a somewhat questionable trick involving a piece of Blu-Tac, a pen lid, a Japanese game disc and the European game disc you were actually trying to play.
Oh yes, the disc swap trick: most PlayStation owners of the late ’90s at least tried it at one point or another. Essentially the trick involved allowing the console to read the copy protection and region info from a disc it would normally accept, then quickly swap this disc out for the game you were actually trying to run. It was a somewhat perilous process that required you leave the lid of the console open at all times (propped open by the pen lid, which was also pressing down the button that told the console the lid was closed) and then whip out the first disc the moment it stopped spinning quickly. It often took a few attempts to get right, but my gosh, the first time I got Final Fantasy VII running in this way was an exciting day indeed.
Ah, Final Fantasy VII. I’ve waxed lyrical about this game many times on this blog, so I won’t reiterate that here, but I will say that at the time it was hyped up to me as “a game that will actually make you cry” and it did not disappoint. It introduced me to the wonderful world of roleplaying games, and gave my friends and I many, many hours of entertainment, since we all finished it several times over. In retrospect, I have no idea how we had the time to do this, but I do know that to date, I have played Final Fantasy VII from start to finish at least ten times over.
Even in those early days, I was someone who enjoyed investigating interesting-looking and strange games, particularly those of Japanese origin. I recall spending a whole lot of time playing the wonderful dance-off game Bust-a-Groove as well as cracking RPGs such as Breath of Fire III, Star Ocean: The Second Story and, of course, subsequent installments in the Final Fantasy series. Visiting my brother over in the States also saw me picking up a number of games that, for whatever reason, never made it to the UK’s shores: titles like Brave Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, Xenogears and Lunar: Silver Star Story.
Have another Noire to break things up a bit.
I was well into university by the time I joined the PlayStation 2 generation. I wasn’t an early adopter, but I was intrigued by this new console and the supposedly immense power it had. But once again when I picked one up, it was not to grab the latest and greatest new titles — the game I chose to purchase my console with was a little-known adventure by Konami known as Shadow of Memories, to date one of the most interesting narrative-based games I think I’ve ever played.
For the uninitiated, Shadow of Memories casts you in the role of Eike, a man who keeps getting murdered and then having the opportunity to go back in time and save himself. The solutions to the situations become increasingly convoluted as you progress through the story, occasionally involving travelling back hundreds of years in order to, say, prevent a tree from being planted and, by extension, removing the place your assailant was hiding. I’d encountered strong stories in games before — particularly through the aforementioned Final Fantasy VII and adventure games on PC — but Shadow of Memories was noteworthy for me in that it was a console game that had taken the bold step of having neither attack nor jump buttons — it was simply about exploring, enjoying the story and working your way to the truth. (To date, I still haven’t seen the game’s true ending; I should probably rectify that at some point.)
Shadow of Memories aside, it took me a while to come around to the PlayStation 2, largely due to the fact that for a little while, there didn’t seem to be that many role-playing games available for it. I later discovered that this was an inaccurate assessment, of course — and in fact am still discovering great RPGs on the platform today, two hardware generations later — but it took me a little while to warm up to it.
Outside of RPGs, though, the PlayStation 2 did play host to some wonderfully memorable games. The Timesplitters series provided some of the best local multiplayer shooting since GoldenEye — largely due to being developed by the same people — while many a drunken evening was spent with my friend Sam post-Poundstretcher (the regular “everything is really, really cheap” evening at the Student Union) playing various incarnations of the Grand Theft Auto series. And some strange things from that era have remained in our collective vernacular ever since; if we’d never played State of Emergency (not Rockstar’s finest hour, but actually a surprisingly fun game) we’d never have come across the phrase “[do something] for BOOOONUS SCOOOOORE!”, which is frequently still used among our friendship group whether we’re cooking, playing a video game or gathered around the tabletop for a board game.
Have some more Noire. And yes, that brooch is supposed to look like the old Sony Computer Entertainment logo.
I’ve had an interesting relationship with the PlayStation 3. Initially, I didn’t quite see the point of it — in fact, I vividly recall doing some podcasts with my friends Edd and Woody where we were fairly merciless about that big ol’ lump of black shiny plastic, but then we were all fairly obnoxious Xbox 360 fanboys at that point, too.
I forget what caused me to pick up one in the first place. I think it was simply a pretty good deal — the console and three games for an eminently reasonable price. The games were Ghostbusters, Fight Night and something else I’ve forgotten. I played about ten minutes of Ghostbusters, booted up Fight Night once and didn’t play it, then quickly found that downloadable games like Flower were much more interesting than many of the retail titles available at the time. My Xbox 360 still got considerably more use — primarily due to the fact that multiplatform titles were often better on 360, and that my friends would typically play multiplayer on 360 — but I always held on to the PS3.
These days, the situation is a complete reversal. I haven’t turned on my Xbox 360 for a very long time now — I don’t think it’s been a whole year, but it’s certainly been a good few months — whereas my PS3 still gets regular use, largely due to the fact that, as has been the PlayStation platform’s wont ever since its inception, it’s still the best place to go for Japanese role-playing games, including titles like the Neptunia series which have since become some of my favourite games of all time. (Yes, really.)
And this isn’t even getting into Sony’s portable platforms the PSP and the Vita, both of which are criminally underrated platforms full to absolute bursting with top-quality entertainment to cater to all tastes and play styles. My Vita is getting more use than any of the other gaming platforms I own right now thanks to games like Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 and Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, and there’s plenty more queued up beyond those two titles, on both PS3 and Vita.
As for the now year-old PlayStation 4? Well, I still don’t have one yet, but frankly, with new Neptunia and Senran Kagura games both on the horizon for the new platform, it’s clearly only a matter of time before I cave and grab one, isn’t it? It just remains to be seen how long I can hold out. I’ve been doing all right so far, but it only takes one game — perhaps something unexpected — that I really have to play right now for me to take that plunge. Soon. But perhaps not just yet.
Anyway. Happy birthday, PlayStation. You — and let’s not forget the myriad developers behind all the games I’ve talked about today and more — have brought my life great joy over the years, and you continue to fill my free time with fun and frolics even now, 20 years later. Long may it continue — for another 20 years and beyond, maybe?
