#oneaday Day 704: Vana'diel progress report

I am pleased to report that I have reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XI. This is not the level cap, but it is a significant milestone, as it was, I believe, the original level cap when the game first released. As time went on and various expansions released, players got the opportunity to increase their personal level cap in increments of 5 levels at a time, though each one of these milestones requires you to complete a tricky and/or time-consuming quest. I'm in the middle of one of those now, which will allow me to level up to 55 when I'm done.

I'm enjoying the game a lot, though my desire to attempt it without a guide was a foolhardy endeavour. Final Fantasy XI was always designed with "community" in mind, and built on the assumption that said community would share information with one another and help each other out, and as such there are a lot of things it just doesn't tell you. It's a lot better in this regard than it used to be, primarily thanks to the "Records of Eminence" feature, which gives you a series of objectives to accomplish that can guide your progression, but you'll still often be given a mission that tells you to go to a particular zone and find something in that zone, with absolutely no indication whatsoever of exactly whereabouts in that zone the thing is to be found. There is no minimap and no quest marker feature in Final Fantasy XI, so you're either off to find a needle in a haystack yourself, or consult the community (which now, of course, also includes comprehensive wikis) and be able to focus your efforts a bit more.

There are still one or two roadblocks that require actual interaction with a human being. One of the missions for Windurst requires that you get through a door called the "Sealed Portal", which is colloquially known by the community as "Three Mage Gate". The reason for this is that the originally intended method of opening this door was to gather a party containing a white mage, a black mage and a red mage and get them to stand on the appropriate marks on the floor, which would open the door. This was subsequently updated to only require someone with the "Portal Charm" key item — which, naturally, you get just after the mission in which you would first need it — to make things marginally easier and less dependent on wrangling an entire group.

These aspects aside, though, the game has been eminently soloable so far, thanks to the Trust system. You're given some decent Trusts right from the get-go, and more are unlockable quite easily. There are some borderline overpowered ones available without too much difficulty, too, but with the number you get to add to your arsenal very quickly, you can pretty much build a party however you like to play, and use the characters you find most appealing. My only slight beef with the system is a narrative one; many of the Trusts you get early on are characters that you probably won't have met yet, and this makes it tricky to feel a sense of attachment to them. Because, in the context of Final Fantasy XI's story, Trust magic is dependent on you having a strong bond with a particular person, this feels a bit dissonant, but you soon learn to deal with it — and after a while, you'll be able to get together a party that feels like it consists entirely of "story" characters anyway.

It's definitely a very different sort of game to Final Fantasy XIV. It's not actually turn-based, but with its pacing it might as well be. It's not a game where you attacking requires you to be constantly pressing buttons to unleash combos, unlike its follow-up; instead, it's more about equipping your character well, ensuring they have good training in the skills they need to succeed at the challenges ahead of them, and approaching combat encounters carefully and thoughtfully. Sure, you "do less" on a moment-to-moment basis, but it's a different kind of satisfying to successfully clearing difficult encounters in Final Fantasy XIV; it's less about skill with the buttons and more about traditional RPG-style number crunching. I'm not saying either way is "better" — both games are very good at what they do — but it is interesting to note quite how different they are from one another now I'm deeper into XI than I've ever been.

My next big milestones for Final Fantasy XI will be breaking a couple of level cap barriers, and then completing the base story from the original game, which culminates in a big fight against the dreaded Shadow Lord. There's still a lot to do after that, though, and most folks seem to agree that things start getting really good story-wise after you've got through the base game's material. I'm looking forward to it — and at the rate I'm going, I should be getting through it at a decent pace, too.

I'm glad I finally decided to do this. Final Fantasy XI has kind of been a "white whale" for me in terms of completion, so I knew I just had to make the time to play it and do it properly. Now that I'm doing that, I'm having a really good time. I doubt I'll get too hardcore into its "endgame" stuff — my main priority is to beat the story, and after that I will probably return to XIV — but there is plenty to do just on the journey from 1 to 99. And that's absolutely fine with 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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#oneaday Day 699: Final Fantasy XI and the art of patience

As… promised? threatened? recently, I've started playing Final Fantasy XI again. And I am reminded, once again, for the umpteenth time, that I really like this game, particularly in its current form. I'm sure there are plenty out there who will bemoan how "dumbed down" its 2026 incarnation is compared to what it was like 20 years ago, but man, c'mon. You can play most stuff solo now; some might say that misses the point of an MMO, but there's still a markedly different vibe existing in a world knowing there are other players around. You see other people going about their business; you participate in the economy; you contribute to asynchronous team activities.

I am also reminded that Final Fantasy XI is not a game for everyone. Specifically, it is not a game for the impatient, because there is a lot to do, and it takes quite a long time to do pretty much anything… except level up, now, which goes at a significantly more brisk pace than it did the first time I played it all those years ago.

But we're talking about a game where the ability to run slightly faster than normal is dependent on someone completing a long and difficult quest, it rolling a random chance of the "Swift Shoes" effect coming up, and then you healing to full and having a nice sit down for a couple of minutes to "charge" the slightly-faster-than-normal movement speed — which, of course, immediately fades away the moment you either attack something or get attacked.

We're also talking about a game whose original implementation of "fast travel" required you to fight your way to a huge "crag" two zones away from your starting city and collect a crystal from it, all for the privilege of being able to teleport an inconveniently long distance away from any of the game's towns.

We're talking about a game where, when you want to cross the sea, you have to physically stand and wait for a ship, and when you're on the ship, you have to wait for the voyage to complete. (Sometimes monsters attack. A lot of the time you just have to enjoy the ride.)

If those descriptions make you smile, even a little bit, you are probably someone who will enjoy Final Fantasy XI.

The fact the game demands so much patience makes it feel very rewarding, though. When you achieve something, you feel like you've bloody well earned it. This is not a game where you are a super-special Warrior of Light pretty much from the get-go; this is a game where you are a relatively normal person — albeit one with, arguably, extraordinary combat abilities compared to your "peers" among the NPCs — just trying to make their way in the world. Make a bit of cash, get a bit of training in, visit some new places.

It's this rather open-ended feel that I really like about Final Fantasy XI. In many ways, it feels like a very pure reflection of what I call the old "world RPG" formula exemplified by titles like the early Ultima games. There is a long-term goal to go and complete, but the vast majority of your playtime will be spent doing rather freeform activities to build up your character in a way that you see fit.

Some of the best things that have been added to Final Fantasy XI since its original release are designed to make it more than just grinding monsters for hours at a time. The "Records of Eminence" quests do a great job of giving you things to do and acting as a sort of guide to what it is possible to do in the game, without having to spend half your playtime looking at a wiki. The "Field Guide" and "Grounds Tome" books at the entrances to field and dungeon areas respectively provide you with focused sets of monster targets to down in exchange for generous experience bonuses. And of course there's plenty of quests, the main storyline missions and, once you get later into the game, lots and lots of side activities. I don't yet know how "important" some of these things are — or indeed what 90% of them are at this point — but I'm intrigued to find out.

Thus far I'm up to level 25 on the job I started with — Warrior this time around — and I'm levelling Monk as a subjob for now. I'm on the "rank 2" missions for my home nation, and making good progress. I've also kicked off the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline that was added much later than the other main stories, and acts as another kind of "guide" through what the game offers, with its own narrative to follow — and plenty of extremely helpful benefits as rewards along the way.

I'm enjoying myself a lot. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get through the various storylines, but levelling has been going at a brisk pace, and I'm feeling good about how things are going so far. I'm looking forward to finally doing things like taking down the Shadow Lord, which I've never done before, and particularly getting into the well-regarded Chains of Promathia expansion storyline, which longstanding FFXI players have been banging on about the quality of for years.

So yeah. It's a good time. You just need patience. And if there's one thing I have developed over the years, it is a very strong sense of patience.

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#oneaday Day 698: Star Fox is back... again!

Nintendo surprised everyone with an out-of-the-blue Star Fox Direct earlier today, announcing a reboot of Star Fox for Switch 2. This is, I think, the third time they've "redone" the original Star Fox at this point, as it went Star Fox/Starwing (SNES), Star Fox 64/Lylat Wars (N64), Star Fox Zero (Wii U) and now this, which, in the tradition of all good reboots, is just called the name of the original thing it's rebooting. Star Fox. At least it won't be confusing in Europe.

I love Star Fox. It's probably one of my favourite Nintendo series. Specifically, I love the Super NES original, because while it's perhaps not the most technically impressive game when looking back on it retrospectively, it's still a great game that I enjoy a lot — and it has an amazing soundtrack. I rate the original Star Fox's soundtrack light years ahead of its 64-bit counterpart, because Star Fox 64 hailed from that age where Nintendo games had music that was beautifully composed, but played back on one of the worst MIDI synths a console has ever had. The new one takes what sounds like the music from Star Fox 64 and fully orchestrates it, which is just lovely.

The new game looks like it's going to be mostly keeping to Star Fox's roots as an arcade-style game with a level-based structure, and branching paths through the complete sequence of levels depending on the things you do and your overall performance. I'm interested to see how this will be received in the modern age, since the vast majority of big-budget games that come out today are designed to be huge, sprawling timesinks that take hundreds of hours for a single playthrough. Making a game that is short but highly replayable feels like it's a ballsy thing to do these days — and it really shouldn't, but it does.

It does look like the new Star Fox will be highly replayable, too. As well as the main story mode with its branching paths, it looks like there's a "Challenge" mode where you play a single level and attempt to complete specific objectives in it. This could either be great fun or extremely annoying, but I think it's the right decision to separate it out into its own mode rather than integrate it into the main story.

There's also what looks like a really fun multiplayer mode, too, with 4v4 battles between Star Fox and Star Wolf. It doesn't look like any of the three modes on offer are a simple deathmatch, either; there are different objectives to complete on each one, which will reward fancy flying as well as keeping the enemy off your back.

All in all, I'm excited and pleased to see Star Fox get yet another chance. Part of me wishes they'd let the story, such as it is, move on a bit instead of continually remaking the same one over and over again, but ultimately this is a gameplay-centric experience — at least previous installments have been — and so the reason you're blasting everything out of the sky doesn't matter too much. It does look like the whole thing is much more "cinematic" now thanks to the advances in technology we've seen over the last few console generations. It's nice to see Fox and company be able to chat with one another as fully modelled characters rather than just avatars chattering away during gameplay.

So I guess that's a Switch 2 game I'll be adding to my library when it arrives, although if it's on a Game Key Card, we are going to have words, Nintendo.

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#oneaday Day 696: The missing day

I apparently missed yesterday! Whoops. Oh well. It was a bank holiday. Let's just say I was having the day off. Better yet, let me point you in the direction of something I did write yesterday, which was a thorough write-up of Capcom's Pragmata.

And then indulge me while I write two things today, because I feel like I "should". I'm just like that. Also I have just reinstalled Final Fantasy XI and it has to go through its whole many-hours patching process, so I may as well do something to fill the time.

I've decided to give Final Fantasy XI another honest go because I've always enjoyed it when I've played it in the past, I have been wanting to play through its story for more than 20 years (and there's a lot more of it now than when I first wanted to play it!) and I'm sort of "between games" right now. This time around, I want to make a proper effort to get through the main scenario. I know there's a lot of other stuff in Final Fantasy XI, but we'll see if I feel the need to jump into any of that as I work my way through; my priority is just seeing what the main storylines are.

The reason I say this is because I've pretty much made a decision: I'm going to head back into Final Fantasy XIV at some point before the new expansion drops — likely when the new "Beastmaster" job is added in the next main "part" of the Dawntrail finale patch, which is looking like July. Before that happens, I'd like to have had a good crack at Final Fantasy XI, so I'm going to treat it as my "main" game for the immediate future. I think it's going to be interesting — particularly as, for several years now, the game has been in a state where much of it is eminently soloable thanks to the fact you can bring recruitable NPC "Trusts" along with you for pretty much everything in the game, not just instanced dungeons like in Final Fantasy XIV.

As I say, I don't know how much into the weeds I'm going to get, because my main priorities are 1) getting to the level cap of 99 and 2) getting through the main storylines of the base game and all the expansions. The two will likely intertwine somewhat, and gearing up, particularly once at level 99, will likely involve dipping into some of the activities outside of the main story, but we'll see. I'm going to try and minimise guide usage as much as possible, too, because I think that will be much more interesting. I'm also curious to see if it's even possible to play that way — and if it isn't, well, there are 20+ years worth of FAQs, wikis and all manner of other resources out there to follow along with.

I'm excited! I'm also aware that I've fallen off Final Fantasy XI multiple times in the past, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but because something else came along that occupied my attention. Hopefully that won't happen this time around — because I'm increasingly conscious that, because of the game's age, there is likely only so much more time I have to be able to actually do this quest.

So Vana'Diel awaits! In about two hours' time, according to the PlayOnline Viewer, anyway. So how should I occupy myself in the meantime… hmmm?

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#oneaday Day 693: Another one bites the dust

It seems another gaming outlet has bitten the dust — in this case, the gaming part of The A.V. Club, which at various points has been part of Paste Magazine, a standalone site called Endless Mode and perhaps some other incarnations before that. (And no, I will never call them a "vertical"; we all took the piss out of Polygon being called a "vertical" when it was first announced and I have no intention of stopping now.)

At this point, I'm not even surprised any more. The broad concept that is "the video games media" is almost completely gutted at this point, with only a few sites still holding on. IGN and Gamespot still exist; Polygon still (kind of) exists; smaller, platform-centric sites like Push Square and NintendoLife still exist; and Kotaku has come back from the "dead" more times than I can count at this point.

I find myself pondering a few things about the whole situation. First of all, given that gaming is bigger than ever, how on Earth are we unable to sustain a specialist media sector focusing on it? Someone on Bluesky suggested it was because a significant number of the people who "play games" are little more than "content consumers", just "consuming" the latest thing that comes along and then banishing it from their mind; not taking the medium seriously as an art form, in other words. There's certainly an element of that, but I don't buy that it's a satisfactory explanation for what has been going on with the media over the course of the last few years.

Perhaps it's some sites discovering that certain "types" of games journalism just don't work? Those of you of a certain age will probably remember discussions over "New Games Journalism" and the question of whether we would ever have a "Lester Bangs of Games Journalism". These discussions were happening back in the late '00s, and centred around the idea of games journalism and criticism in particular moving away from the bog-standard news, preview, review, guide format in favour of something that was more… experiential, I guess you'd call it. Treating games more akin to how literary and artistic criticism treats other, more well-established art forms. "Telling the stories of the people behind the games", all that sort of thing. Things that look like they might be admirable when you look at them as part of a mission statement.

Thing is, I'm not sure that's what the readers want. The one thing you might notice about all the sites that have managed to survive for decades at this point is that they are, for the most part, still beholden to the same old news, preview, review, guide cycle that has been in place since the days of print. And my theory is that this is, as stale as it might be, what people still want from games journalism. "The stories of the people behind your favourite games" can be interesting, but when all a lot of people want to know is whether or not Pragmata is any good, I feel like those articles — which often take a hell of a lot of research, networking and general access to their subjects — may not be entirely sustainable, particularly on a site that needs to keep the lights on through ad revenue.

I'm not saying this is a particularly desirable situation. The overreliance on ads has lead to the "guideslop" era we're in at the moment, where every game that looks even vaguely likely to attract a few clicks gets three thousand pieces of "guide content", each one focusing on a single hyper-specific thing about the game in question, rather than a single, quality, well-crafted walkthrough. This is a load of old shit; there are a lot of writers who could be doing much more interesting work stuck on the guides beat, and I'm very much willing to bet they are some of the hardest working but lowest paid people in the business.

But I think back to old games magazines and why I enjoy reading them, and it's because each of them captures a moment in time. Times when we were excited for games that we knew the name of, but very little else about besides a couple of tiny, fuzzy screenshots; I think some mags got pretty much a full year of news stories out of two "Zelda 64" screenshots back in the day. Times when we were excited for the new possibilities that seemingly mind-blowing new platforms would offer us — and then the crushing disappointment when they turned out to not be that good after all. (Philips CD-i and 3DO say hello.) Times when an amazing new game would be the cover star of a magazine and turn out to be even better than we had ever hoped for — or in some cases, catastrophically bad.

I'm not sure sites writing about labour conditions in the industry, unions and quarterly financial results are really what gaming enthusiasts want from the press that supposedly represents them. I know it's certainly not what I'm particularly interested in.

I don't really read any gaming sites any more, and I often ask myself why that is. There are still quite a few out there doing good work, and there's a decent amount of diversity in the types of coverage out there, still… at the moment, anyway. I'm just not sure some of it is sustainable in the long term, and I wonder if a desire to focus on that unsustainable stuff just because it seems like "the right thing to do" — which it very much is in many cases — is what has got the games media as a whole into the messy position it's in today.

So what's the answer? I have no idea, really. In my ideal world, we'd go back to reading magazines every month, but despite the fact some magazines do still exist in print — I recently resubscribed to Retro Gamer, for one — it seems that is perceived as even more unsustainable than everything I've described above.

As someone who, as a young 'un, wanted nothing more than to follow his brother's footsteps into video games media, it's extremely sad to see all this happen. But I'm also kind of glad that I'm no longer directly in that space, because it seems like a hell of a bad time to be a video game specialist writer right now.

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#oneaday Day 689: Do I return...?

I won't lie, after pretty much falling off Final Fantasy XIV post-Dawntrail, I haven't really felt in any great hurry to return. Not because I didn't enjoy Dawntrail, mind — in fact, I enjoyed it very much! — but rather because I felt like it was getting increasingly difficult to juggle Final Fantasy XIV and the ability to play anything else at the same time.

However, the recent news that has come out about the upcoming expansion, Evercold, has me thinking that I might return. There are a few reasons for this.

First and foremost is the social angle. I like the people that I used to play with. It would be fun to be able to hang out with them again. There are also people I know who are vaguely interested in giving Final Fantasy XIV a go, and shortly the legendary Free Trial will be adding everything up to and including the Shadowbringers expansion, commonly agreed to be one of The Best Bits, which may make it easier to convince people to join in.

Secondly, I do miss the game a bit. I have had some special times in Final Fantasy XIV over the years, and I will always, always love the soundtrack. Soken has worked miracles with that game, and I feel almost like I'm letting him down to not be playing. He has no idea who I am, of course, but still. He is a wonderful person and a brilliant composer, and enjoying his stuff in context is great.

Thirdly, the changes that are coming to Evercold sound really interesting. I'm particularly intrigued by the "Evolved" battle system, which promises to reduce the number of actions you'll have to assign to your hotbars by having more of the dynamically changing buttons that were introduced with Dawntrail's new jobs. Supposedly most jobs will be able to function perfectly well with 16 action bar slots in Evolved mode, which means a lot less in the way of remembering some obtuse button combinations, particularly when returning to the game from a long break. (Of course, it means learning some new button combinations, but they will, at least, be simpler.)

I'm also interested in the move away from "endgame currency" as a progression system. I don't think we've really had it explained in much depth how exactly the new "seasons" system is going to work, but Yoshi-P seemed determined to emphasise the point that it's not a Battle Pass or free-to-play type "pay to win" situation. What it looks like is a flexible system where you earn points for doing… stuff. And rather than being forced into grinding the same old Roulettes and high-level stuff, it looks like you might have the opportunity to do a broader range of activities, which will be nice.

Perhaps I will hop back in once the new patch arrives tomorrow. There's the new Beastmaster job to explore, plus I didn't do much with Blue Mage, and of course I have plenty of other jobs still to level too — as well as just re-learning the game after so long away.

I think I probably will go back. I'm just not sure quite when yet, or how it will fit into my life more broadly. But we'll see. We'll see.

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#oneaday Day 688: Cave dweller

Today was our trip to The Cave and Arcade Archive, part of the Retro Collective organisation. As I've explained a few times previously, and for the benefit of those who might have missed those posts, The Cave is an interactive, hands-on computer and video game museum, while the Arcade Archive is a similarly interactive, hands-on free play arcade museum. The Retro Collective as a whole encompasses these two museums, the company Heber Electronics, who make the MiSTer Multisystem 2 console, and the Retro Collective YouTube channel, fronted by retro tech enthusiast and historian Neil Thomas.

I will be peppering today's post with photos from today's trip.

Demoscene veteran, ace retro coder and composer Ian "h0ffman" Ford getting to grips with a Sinclair C5.

The event today centred around a talk by Ian "h0ffman" Ford, a veteran of the Amiga demoscene who returned to coding and composing on classic computer hardware back in 2010, and has been spending much of his time since COVID fiddling around with disassembling and porting classic games from one platform to another. To date, he has ported the MSX2 version of Metal Gear to Amiga, the MSX game Knightmare (no relation to the TV show) to Amiga also, plus Shinobi and Golden Axe from Sega's System 16 arcade board to NEOGEO, plus the modern Unity game Cecconoid to Amiga. His talk explored how most of these projects came about because of repeatedly falling down rabbit holes while satisfying his own curiosity.

True to form, it didn't take long before the C5 broke.

Outside of h0ffman's talk, which happened after lunch, all of us in attendance were free to explore The Cave, the Arcade Archive, and the organisation's newly renovated workshop space, known as the Pump House. (The entire operation is in an old mill, and the Pump House used to be part of the site's earlier purpose; it's not just a funny name they gave it.)

The Cave is up on the top floor of the mill, and is a large, open-plan room filled with old computers and consoles of various descriptions, including some fairly exotic machines from outside of the UK, Europe and North America, such as the beautiful Sharp X68000 from Japan. This is an absolutely gorgeous machine that, if money were no object, I would very much have in my collection. If you've never come across one, it's a 16-bit computer that has the audio-visual capabilities of its console contemporaries, meaning it plays host to a lot of excellent games, including some near-perfect arcade ports.

There's also lots of interesting console obscurities, too, such as NEC's ill-fated PC Engine spinoff, the Supergrafx, a console noteworthy for, outside of backwards compatibility with the aforementioned PC Engine, only having five titles in its library. And you thought the Wii U was a flop. Despite this, it's an exceedingly cool little system worth having a play with in an environment like The Cave!

I didn't contribute to the Duck Hunt high scores.

Another nice thing about The Cave is that it acknowledges well-known, popular hardware in unusual configurations, such as this kiosk multi-game version of the NES that you would have found in electronics stores back in the '80s. All the stuff at the Cave is hooked up to great quality screens, too, with many of them being professional video or broadcast monitors, Sony Trinitrons and the like.

Yes, that is a Casio Loopy lurking in the background there.

Here's another one: Sega's Mega-Tech arcade system, which was basically a Mega Drive you bought time on back in the day. Here, as with all the other arcade machines in The Cave and the Arcade Archive, it's set to free play, so you can enjoy a selection of 16-bit classics in the arcade form factor.

Well, that's one way of proving your ports are "arcade perfect"

Nintendo had done something similar with the PlayChoice-10 machine, which provides you with a selection of NES games to play using arcade controls. It's a very strange feeling to play the original Super Mario Bros. with a stick and arcade buttons, but it works pretty well! Not surprising, really, since so many games from that era were at least inspired by arcade games if they weren't direct ports.

Here's a selection of obscure Japanese computers, including one from Sega. I don't know much about these, but they all look lovely, and it would be fun to have a fiddle around with them one day.

Here's some more obscure Japanese computers, just because. That Sharp X1 is a lovely looking thing. I actually didn't give the keys a clack, but it looks like they would feel nice to type on.

A little closer to home, here's a selection of lesser-known home computers, including the Oric-1, Tatung Einstein, Dragon 64 and Sam Coupé. A lot of these are lovely looking machines; they just failed to make the same impact as the bigger hitters of the era like the Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Here's a thing that I really wanted as a kid, but never managed to get hold of (i.e. convince my parents to get for me). It's an LCD game adaptation of Sega's After Burner, but with an elaborate control panel that makes the game feel a lot cooler than it actually is. The joystick is satisfying to grapple with the throttle control makes a pleasing "clunk" when you move it between speed settings, and a cool thing I've not seen before is that the LCD screen has an LED behind it so when you destroy enemy planes, there's a red "flash" where they're exploding. It's a pretty neat toy, but, given that we had computers at home that could play much more interesting and complex games, I'm not surprised that my parents never bought me one of these — and I'm not mad about that, I hasten to add!

There are lots of things to play at The Cave. This lovely setup has a selection of consoles hooked up and ready to play multiplayer just like we used to back in the day. The Gamecube and N64 were most readily accessible today, and they looked great on the Sony monitor.

One of my favourite parts of The Cave is the fake "software shop", set up to look like an old WHSmith upstairs. For any non-Brits reading, WHSmith was a shop that was mostly known as a newsagents where you'd buy magazines and newspapers, but also tended to carry stuff like stationery, art and craft supplies and, in the 1980s, computer and video games. There were a lot of shops like this in the '80s that performed what I would argue was their "primary function" downstairs, then they'd do computery stuff upstairs — one of my favourite examples in this regard is Boots, which is a pharmacy. Why would a pharmacy sell ZX Spectrum games on cassette? Same reason they'd process your photographs or sell you picture frames, presumably — to make a bit of extra cash from jumping in on popular hobbies and pastimes.

It's tricky to get good shots of them by the very nature of the environment, but on the ground floor of the mill is the Arcade Archive, a noisy room full of classic arcade machines, many of which have been lovingly restored to fully working condition by the Retro Collective folks, and some of which make use of modern solutions such as the MiSTer. These cabs — from left to right, Bubble Bobble, Galaga '88, BurgerTime and Double Dragon, all in the sort of generic cabinets you'd see in a fish and chip shop in a town centre circa 1989 — are, as far as I'm aware, restored originals.

Conversely, there's a NEOGEO MVS cabinet that I forgot to take a photo of that is running off the new MiSTer Multisystem 2's JAMMA arcade cabinet incarnation, which allows you to use plastic NFC cards to switch games as if you're swapping out cartridges. You get the enjoyment of playing with "four bright buttons and two joysticks" on a CRT, along with the modern conveniences of the MiSTer such as the ability to easily swap games, or play the console versions of games on the arcade cabinet.

Here's a lovely thing, showing up much better thanks to its position near the door to the outside: Atari's Star Wars arcade game. This is still a supremely playable 3D shoot 'em up with beautiful vector graphics and a wonderfully immersive, involving analogue yoke control system. Great fun to play — just a pity there's no sit-down version in the Archive, though I don't think there'd be room for one at the moment anyway!

Here's a few more machines in the Archive, including OutRun on the right, then Silkworm, Robotron 2084, Ghosts 'n' Goblins and, back in the corner, the original Space Invaders. I realised I'd never actually played Robotron in its original twin-stick arcade incarnation, so I took the opportunity to rectify this. It's a lot of fun!

More interesting and unusual things with this Tetris arcade machine. I'm not sure of the origin of this, but it was a nice looking machine, and Tetris' gameplay is, of course, a great fit for the arcade.

And that's pretty much that for now. It was a thoroughly lovely day that I enjoyed a lot. h0ffman's talk was interesting — even if some of the more techie stuff went over my head a bit! — and it was nice to see some people I haven't seen for a while. I even met someone who actually watches my YouTube videos! I guess I better make some more then, huh.

Right, on that note, I'm knackered, so I'm going to go and collapse into a puddle of goo for the remainder of the evening. Visit The Cave if you get the chance — it's a truly lovely day out that I can highly recommend.

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#oneaday Day 685: Very tired

I've been absolutely exhausted all day. I feel like I got a decent night's sleep, particularly after the tiring day I had at work followed by the long drive home, but also feel like I could have done with approximately 12 hours more sleep. I actually managed to get a fair amount done today, but right now I just feel like I could shut my eyes and fall asleep right here on the sofa.

With that in mind, I'm probably going to have an early night tonight. I'd like to get back into Pragmata, which I'm enjoying a lot, but I'm also not sure my brain is up to playing anything too complex this evening. Perhaps this would be a good evening to do a bit of retro gaming, with an emphasis on something that isn't too challenging or complex to deal with.

I actually have the next two Evercade cartridges that haven't been released yet, which I'm kind of dying to talk about but can't because although I have them in my hands, we haven't even announced them yet. That will be happening soon, however, and when it does I will have plenty to enthuse about, believe me. They're not the biggest releases of the year, by any means, but they are some of my favourites.

No; I'm thinking this evening might be a good opportunity to settle down with something comfortably familiar, but which I perhaps haven't played for a while. I'm hoping in the process of typing this, something will come to mind that feels like it might be fun to spend my evening playing. Maybe Starwing? I haven't played that for a while. Last time I tried it, the MiSTer SNES core was having issues with the SuperFX chip, but I believe that's been resolved at this point, so that might be a good shout. I do love a bit of Starwing, and it is actually quite a long time since I've played it.

I'm going to get back into doing some videos soon, for those who have been wondering why it's been all quiet on that front for a while. I just haven't really felt an urge to do that for a little while, and forcing yourself to do something you're not really feeling is a sure-fire way to get yourself feeling burnt out. I won't have time to do any this coming weekend, as we're taking a trip to The Cave, but I have a few days off for my birthday at the start of next week, so I might take a day or two to record a few things over that period. Exactly what, I have no idea just yet; I have a few things in mind that I might like to explore, but haven't decided firmly on when or how to tackle them. This upcoming bit of free time might be the ideal opportunity to jump into them.

Anyway, I think I might have made a decision on what to do with my evening — although at the rate I'm going, I may well be asleep before I've got anywhere. If that's the way it goes, though, that's the way it goes!

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#oneaday Day 681: Pragmatic

I started playing Pragmata yesterday, because some people whose opinions I trust had been saying very appealing things about it, and I thought it might be nice to play something "current" for was.

Pragmata is very, very good.

I'll go into more detail about this over on MoeGamer once I've beaten it (because I most certainly am going to beat this) but I thought I'd post a few initial thoughts over here for now.

For the unfamiliar, Pragmata is a game that Capcom has apparently been working on for a very long time indeed, which might account for why so many people have been saying that it sounds like a game somewhat "out of time"; depending on who you talk to, you will almost certainly hear the opinion that it is "like a PS2 game" or "like an Xbox 360 game". (Of the two, I think the latter is probably more accurate, for what it's worth.)

The reason for this is that it thumbs its nose at a lot of today's gameplay conventions. It's not open world. It's not an RPG in disguise. Its controls are extremely simple and straightforward (move, aim, shoot, interact, plus moving the little cursor thingy during the hacking minigame). It's not belabouring how emotionally resonant it is through overwrought, manipulative writing. It's not trying to be all things to all people. It's just trying to be one thing, and to do that thing really, really well.

And it succeeds! If I had to pigeonhole it I'd say it's a third-person shooter, but it's not a constant, all-out action sort of affair. There's a lot of exploration, with plenty of hidden rewards for those willing to get curious — but those "hidden" areas are always possible to stumble across without relying on a guide. There's an element of survival horror, in that all weapons but your standard sidearm have severely limited ammo, and you only have limited healing opportunities per expedition.

Mostly it's just an extraordinarily well-designed game. You have a companion character who is actually useful — both in terms of her mechanical function, and in that her "barks" during combat are actually helpful audible cues for things like dodging attacks. The levels are beautifully designed to have a grandiose sense of scale at times, but never overwhelm you with possible ways you can go. It controls well. It looks great. It runs great. It's just great. Really, really great.

I think that's probably all I want to say about it for now, because honestly I'm just eager to get back to it. I've completely cleared out the first two levels (aside from two hidden chests in the second level that I will need to come back with a new ability for) and am just going into the third. I also suspect it's not going to be an obscenely long game, which, honestly, I'm 100% fine with.

Anyway. It's time to hop back into the Cradle and see what new horrors await me and Diana…

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#oneaday Day 678: Chillin' with my Tomodachi

On something of a whim — and after seeing a number of people whose opinions I generally trust enthusing about it — I decided to pick up the new Tomodachi Life game for Switch. I didn't really know much about it going into it, and I bounced hard off the two separate attempts I've made to get into Animal Crossing, so it's not a decision I took lightly. But I'm pleased to report after a brief play at lunchtime — and a much, much longer play this evening — I'm well and truly charmed.

This is Nintendo at its most "software toy" I think I've ever seen them — although I say this with the caveat that I never played the 3DS version of Tomodachi Life. It's a delight. It's like playing The Sims without having to do the boring and annoying bits. It's like playing a citybuilder without having to worry about complicated management things. It's what mobile and social games might have been if they had never been corrupted by greed and predatory monetisation strategies.

Above all, though, it's a medium through which you can express and play with your creativity and imagination, and I love that. While the first couple of hours or so are deliberately constrained to introduce you to the basic features of the game and its interface, it doesn't take long to get to a point where you've unlocked most of the main "mechanics", such as they are, and can start using them to play with your creations in the little world you gradually build for them.

It's possibly the best use of the "Miis" that Nintendo have had on their consoles since the Wii days, and the delightfully lo-fi synthesised speech they talk in — no AI-generated voices here — is a pleasant reminder of a more innocent age.

That can be said about the whole experience, really. It's a reminder of when we all had the capacity to play imaginatively, only now our imaginations can be supported by interactivity. No longer do you have to pretend your dolls are talking to one another, because now they actually do talk to one another — although you're not always privy to the details of all their conversations. (Rather charmingly, you can catch the odd word here and there, and most of these are things that you've previously entered into the game as subjects for them to talk about with one another, meaning my little collection of Miis likes talking about flatulence, eating sausages, cats and F-15 Strike Eagles.

I'll have some more to say about this delightful little game over on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with it. But for now I can say confidently that I'm glad I decided to take a punt on this silly little game. The kind of silliness it offers is precisely what the world needs right now — much as Animal Crossing came along at the exact right time when the pandemic hit. (Even if I didn't get along with Animal Crossing personally, I at least appreciate what it represented.)

Anyway, I've peppered this article with a few screenshots from this evening's session. As I say, I'll have much more to say in the near future, but for now, I should probably go to bed rather than checking in on everyone one last time this evening…

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