I've been going through old magazines — just Page 6/New Atari User to begin with, but I will expand my efforts at a later time — to determine which issues had reviews (or otherwise substantial articles) of what in them, and recording that information in a big ol' searchable, filterable, sortable table. Or, y'know, a spreadsheet. (I guess this makes me a "spreadsheet person" after years of resisting such things.)

This will (hopefully) make it much easier to track down these articles when researching something — and might also give me some ideas on what to cover, too.

One of the things I find most interesting when either revisiting old favourites or discovering new ones is taking a look at what the "professionals" had to say about them, and seeing if they treated them fairly, or if they were talking nonsense. I don't really mind either way; there is value to both confirming a critical opinion from back in the day, and having the opportunity to look at it from a more detached, modern perspective and perhaps disagreeing with what was said back then.

It's also kind of interesting to, in some cases, give these games a bit more time and attention than they might have perhaps had back in the day, particularly if the reviewer in question clearly didn't have a lot of time to spend with them, or didn't understand them completely. I mean, we're only talking a play session of maybe 20-60 minutes when it comes to most of my videos, but sometimes you do notice properly intriguing things about games after spending a bit of protracted time with them, rather than spending a few minutes on them and then moving on to something else.

Alongside the traditional "reviews", I'm also recording mentions of games in things like topic-based roundups, type-in games (which can be just as interesting and worthwhile as commercial software!) and… basically any mention of something I might want to cover, and which I might want to refer to what was being said about it Back In The Day.

It's going to take a while to compile all this information — particularly if I want to throw other magazines into the mix — but I think it's going to be a worthwhile endeavour that will be helpful for the direction I think I want to take the YouTube channel (back) in. It also gives me a good reason to look back at old computer and video games magazines, and I will always welcome any opportunity to do that. Not that I need a reason. But it is nice to have a reason to do so.

Anyway, my intent is still to hold fire on YouTube until after our holiday, then get back into the swing of things with the rebooted Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z series in mid-September, likely with my first recording session being the weekend of the 19th (meaning the first of the new videos will come out the following week). I'm sure I'll have a good chunk of this organising done by then, and I think it will be enormously helpful in adding some additional insight to my videos that will hopefully be as interesting for anyone watching them as it is for me making them.

Right this second, though, after taking care of 28 issues of Page 6 today, I think I've earned a bit of video game time. So it's back to Ys VIII for me!

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 810: Compiling information appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.