#oneaday Day 444: The 60Hz Squish

The MiSTer is nearly completely set up! It's just copying over a shitload of PlayStation and Saturn games, and then it will be ready to go. I got a replacement SCART cable today, and I'm delighted to report I can now get an absolutely lovely picture on my beloved old CRT, which means the MiSTer can be used to enjoy a retro gaming experience as "authentic" as it's possible to get without using real hardware.

I've elected to load the system up with primarily PAL-format ROMs. I know some folks will get sniffy about this, but I have three reasons for doing so.

Firstly, I live in the UK. PAL gaming is what I grew up with, and part of getting the MiSTer set up and working is about recreating that classic experience of using computers and consoles on this Sony Trinitron TV — which is the same one we used to run the Atari ST through back at my parents' house, and which is the same one I took with me to university and played PlayStation games on, right up until I bought an absolute monster of a CRT from a local second-hand shop in my second year at university. That TV, sadly, died after probably one too many house moves (it moved to three different houses in Southampton, then another in Winchester before finally giving up) but the CRT I'm using now is still going almost as strong as it ever was.

Secondly, this TV has a peculiar idiosyncrasy where it is capable of displaying a 60Hz signal, but rather than switching "modes" to do so, it instead just takes the reduced number of lines from a 60Hz/NTSC signal (480 vs 576 for PAL) and plonks them in the middle of the screen as-is. This means that, in stark contrast to slightly later TVs with marginally better 60Hz compatibility, where switching to 60Hz ensures you get a screen-filling picture and slightly better frame rate with more prominent scanlines, running 60Hz systems and games on my particular TV results in varying degrees of picture squish, ranging from "a bit" to "I never knew the ColecoVision had a 16:9 mode". As such, since I'll be primarily using the MiSTer on this CRT, the optimal experience for me is actually to use 50Hz versions of games.

Thirdly, I feel like to a certain extent, PAL gaming history gets a bit forgotten about. It was quite a challenge to track down EU/PAL-specific ROMsets for each console that I want to run on the MiSTer, but I took the time to do so, and I think it will have been a worthwhile use of my time to do so. A lot of complete ROMsets archived online these days are US-centric, and, sure, the 60Hz NTSC versions of games may, in most cases, be the "best" way to experience these games, but that doesn't mean the PAL experience should be erased from history. In fact, there are several cases where PAL versions of games were substantially different from their North American counterparts, with a great example being the Gex games on PlayStation; the voice of the titular character was completely different between the US and Europe, giving each version a very different feel. Several Gran Turismo titles, too, also had markedly different soundtracks between regions.

So yeah. Outside of a few NTSC-specific things I'm loading on where there was no PAL equivalent (we missed out on a lot of RPGs until the PS2-3 era!) this MiSTer is primarily going to be a celebration of the PAL experience. And I'm really looking forward to this danged copy job being over and done with so I can actually sit down and play with the thing!

Still, this is what I signed up for. I knew it was going to take a while to get everything up and running. It's going to be well worth it when it's done.

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 442: Munchings and crunchings

After listening to Danny from Game Grumps play Sierra's The Black Cauldron game while falling asleep the other evening, I decided that it was high time to do something I've been meaning to do for… probably several decades at this point, which is to actually read Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, the books The Black Cauldron is based on. (I've still never seen the Disney movie either, for that matter, but I did collect several of the plastic figures you got free in boxes of Corn Flakes back in the day! The Horned King made a great Chaos Sorcerer for Advanced Heroquest.)

Thus far I'm about 75% through The Book of Three, the first in the series, and I am really enjoying it. Really enjoying it. Like, "wish I'd read this much earlier in my life" enjoying it. I'm finding it kind of fascinating quite how differently it is unfolding from The Black Cauldron game — which I'm sure was partly out of technological limitations necessitating a simpler narrative, and partly out of the Disney movie almost certainly diverging from the source material somewhat — but yeah. Really enjoying it.

As someone with a major soft spot for spunky princess characters (see: Mandra from Blade of the Poisoner, Ce'Nedra from The Belgariad/The Malloreon) I am absolutely a thousand per cent in love with Eilonwy, who has some of the most formidable sass I think I've ever seen committed to paper. The fact that she consistently delivers some truly wonderful withering lines at the expense of our protagonist, Taran, while being incredibly well-spoken the whole time is just… ah, man. I live for it. Absolutely live for it.

But anyway, it's entirely possible that you, dear reader, are unfamiliar with either The Black Cauldron of The Chronicles of Prydain in general, so here's the gist.

We join the story in Caer Dallben, a peaceful little farm seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where nothing ever happens — but with a slight air of mystery around it due to the fact its master is a man of nearly four hundred years in age who is in possession of a magical tome known as The Book of Three.

Taran, an orphan boy on the cusp on manhood who helps out around Caer Dallben, is discontent with this simple life, and wishes to know more of the world. After successfully being granted the rank of Assistant Pig-Keeper to the oracular pig Hen Wen — and after having burnt his fingers attempting to consult the magical Book of Three against Dallben's wishes — finds himself forced to set out on a journey when the aforementioned Hen Wen escapes following some grim omens.

The Book of Three follows Taran's journey to track down Hen Wen, during which he encounters several thoroughly interesting companions — including the warrior-prince Gwydion, the subservient and obsequious man-beast Gurgi, the bard-king Fflewdur Fflam and the aforementioned Eilonwy — and learns a lot more of the peril facing the world. The setting's great evil is positioned as Arawn, lord of the lands of the dead, but the more immediate threat is the Horned King, a frightening figure who roams the land in search of conquest — and, it seems, Hen Wen.

For context, The Black Cauldron game has none of this — at least, not in the exact same form. The game opens with Taran feeding Hen Wen, then her having a vision of the Horned King, then Taran being tasked with taking her to a safe haven with the Fair Folk to keep her safe from harm. Along the way, he encounters several of the characters introduced in The Book of Three, but in somewhat different contexts. This doesn't make the game a bad adaptation — as I say, for all I know, it's entirely possible that the Disney movie also played this fast and loose with the narrative, since I haven't seen it — but it is interesting to have all this additional context.

So anyway, yes. I am really enjoying The Chronicles of Prydain so far, and I will be moving straigh on to the other four books in the series once I've finished The Book of Three. Which will be pretty soon at the rate I'm going!

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#oneaday Day 441: Is it actually impossible to recommend things to anyone any more?

I can't remember the last time I successfully recommended something to someone. Be it TV show, movie (not that I really watch movies any more), music or video game, it seems inordinately difficult to get anyone to give a shit about something you might feel quite passionately about — even if you're close with the person you're attempting to recommend something to.

I say this in the light of online Discourse™ right now being taken up almost entirely by breathless ejaculations in the direction of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which apparently now has a release date and everybody (except me) is enormously excited about to the exclusion of pretty much anything else in existence.

I've talked before, I think, about the phenomenon of "inverse hype", where the more something is talked up and talked up and talked up, the less I give a shit about it. It's happened with numerous things over the years for me: Star Wars, Mass Effect (I've still never even touched the third one despite quite enjoying the first two), Undertale (which I have since played and enjoyed) and now — and for the last seven years — Hollow Knight: Silksong.

It's the Internet's fault, of course. The seven-year long "joke" of responding to literally every video game announcement or livestream with "silksong when" quickly wore out its welcome and then proceeded to continue for nearly a decade. It's been so long now that I feel active antipathy towards Hollow Knight as a whole, despite it being a type of game I would typically rather enjoy. I don't want anything to do with Hollow Knight precisely because people will not shut the fuck up about it.

And part of that not shutting the fuck up also includes closing one's ears to any alternative possibilities. Already other developers are (perhaps wisely) moving their release dates so they don't "overlap" with Silksong when it eventually releases in early September.

The problem exemplified by Silksong, I think, is that apparently "The Community", whatever that actually means, is only capable of Giving A Shit about one Thing at a time. That Thing changes from moment to moment, but it's always something that has, for one reason or another, had both a lot of blanket coverage and a lot of speculation about it. And while that Thing is the Thing Of The Moment, no-one has any time whatsoever to even contemplate that other Things might exist, because if you're not "part of the conversation" while Thing is Thing Of The Moment, you might as well just kill yourself, you stupid, pointless, irrelevance, you.

It's probably a personal failing to be frustrated and resentful of this, but I've never really operated that way. There's the occasional thing that I enjoy jumping on board with to enjoy at the same time as everyone else — the last two were Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza — but other than that, I typically enjoy things at my own pace, sometimes a very long time after they were initially released. This often means that I "discover" something when it's outside of the mainstream public consciousness — if it was ever there in the first place, which in many cases for the things I personally enjoy, it wasn't.

Unfortunately, that lack of blanket coverage and generally mainstream "approval" is seemingly crucial for a lot of people, so if you recommend something that the person you're making the recommendation to hasn't heard of, typically, I find, you'll be dismissed or even ignored.

I suspect this ties in with the "well, why would I waste my time with a 65/100 game when I could be playing nothing but 95/100 games?" I'm sure many of you know my answer to this already — it's because the 65/100 games are, in many cases, more interesting and creative than the 95/100 games, and also because slapping numerical ratings on something unquantifiable is stupid. But too many times I've encountered the "well I read a review once that didn't like it" response to a personal recommendation — which I made because I knew the thing I was recommending would particularly appeal to the person I was recommending it to, if they'd give it a chance — and, at this point, it's just getting far too annoying to even attempt recommending anything any more.

The real problem at the heart of all this is doubtless that there are too many Things. The implication behind the "why should I waste my time with a 65/100 game" question is that an individual has a finite amount of time, and that time is somehow "wasted" if it is not spent "optimally", even if that time is being spent engaging with something that is entertaining, artistic, enriching. And "optimal" to a lot of people today means the mistaken assumption of the "objectively best" thing — a concept which doesn't actually exist.

Right now, while polishing off Donkey Kong Bananza, I'm also playing through Mystery Detective Archives: Rain Code, a game which came out in 2023. I'm willing to bet that I'm probably the only person playing that game right now, because two years ago might as well be the Dark Ages for some people.

Sigh. This really isn't worth getting worked up over, I know. It's just frustrating when you try and start a conversation and you feel like you're continually confronted with a blank wall with "silksong when" scrawled on it in crayon.

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#oneaday Day 426: Dear me, I was...

Having finished No Sleep for Kaname Date, which I will try and make some time to do a proper write-up of soon, I decided, this evening, to play through Dear me, I was… from Arc System Works, a Switch 2 wordless visual novel type thing that is less than an hour long, and which I was pretty certain was going to be an emotional gutpunch. Sometimes you need a good one of those, and Dear me, I was… certainly delivers on that front.

I shan't say too much about the details of the game because, as I say, it's very short, and it's the sort of thing best experienced for yourself — so long as you're open to the idea of what is basically a short animated film with occasional very minor (but nonetheless meaningful in the context of the story) interactions.

The concept is simple: the game follows the life of an unnamed woman, from her earliest childhood memories up to her old age. Each chapter represents a particular part of her life, with each opening with one of the few interactive sequences in the game: her eating breakfast. It's surprising quite how much meaning is layered into these simple sequences, whether it's the way her breakfast evolves as she ages, or little things like how her child self leaves the tomatoes on the side of her plate.

Dear me, I was… is one of those games that is probably going to mean different things to different people, but at its core it's a story about the protagonist's relationship with art, and how she uses it to help process her emotions, connect with other people and reflect on her past. A number of things happen to our leading lady over the course of her life, many of which are rather mundane, but nonetheless meaningful to her as an individual. Some things are left a little ambiguous and open to interpretation, which will doubtless help each individual player to connect with the complete work in their own way, and other things are obvious, indisputable truths, but aren't dwelled on.

I feel like part of the point of the game as a whole is to reflect on the idea that life passes you by before you know it; while, when you're young, you might feel like an eternity stretches ahead of you, as you get older, things definitely feel like they start to accelerate in some ways. Sometimes this makes difficult events from the past easier to let go of or at least reflect on; at others, it makes it all the harder to process things.

The game definitely got me feeling things, and absolutely tearing up at numerous points throughout. I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what was making me feel the various emotions I felt over the course of the game, but it's testament to the game's excellent use of visuals and music to tell its wordless story that I felt those things at all. Of particular note is its use of colour; events unfold in three distinct "styles" as a reflection of the emotion of what is happening at any given moment — or perhaps the protagonist's mental state and feelings — and it hits surprisingly hard when, say, the colour fades from the world, and everything starts to be represented in shades of grey, or even just line art. Likewise, it's almost a relief when you see the beautiful watercolours return; a reflection of how everyone's life is full of ups and downs, and the only person who can truly understand one's own feelings is oneself.

To say too much more would probably be getting into spoiler territory, so I'll leave that there for now. Suffice to say that if you're the slightest bit open to video games as a storytelling medium — don't expect any sort of "mechanics", puzzles or challenge here — this is an essential play. Absolutely one of the most beautiful things I've experienced for quite some time, and highly recommended to those who like this sort of thing.

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#oneaday Day 408: Don't spoil yourself

One thing that I've become quite frustrated with in the last 10 years or so is the prevalence of "guide content" on video game websites. Guides and walkthroughs have always been a thing, of course, and I completely understand why sites feel the need to get guides up day-one when a big new video game comes out: they are freshly-squeezed, ready-mixed SEO juice just waiting to be taken advantage of, and if you're a site that makes the majority of its money from ad impressions, you would probably be foolish not to take advantage of the immediate thirst for knowledge that comes with the release of a new game.

Now, I won't be hypocritical and say I've never looked at a guide for a game. Some games, one feels, were designed in such a way that looking at a guide — particularly the Official Strategy Guide, back when those were still a thing — is near-essential if you want to see everything that the game has to offer. Take something like Final Fantasy VII's chocobo breeding, for example; while you probably could work all that out yourself, it would take a very long time to do so, and it would be hard not to end up resenting the time you'd spent on failed experiments.

But I feel like the deliberate, immediate posting of Guide Content the second a new game releases is destroying the sense of wonderment and discovery we should have with a brand new game. Hell, game developers themselves are absolutely spoiling their own games — one can't help but feel that Pauline's reveal in Donkey Kong Bananza would be a thousand times more impactful if we hadn't had it completely spoiled weeks in advance by Nintendo's own trailers — but all Guide Content does, for me, is instil a sense of FOMO, and that one should be playing the game as "efficiently" as possible. Consume content until next product, then get excited for new product, or whatever the quote was.

I've been deliberately trying to avoid looking at guides for Donkey Kong Bananza while I'm playing it, and I'm having a good time doing so. Of course, the game featuring a "checklist" of all the things you have and haven't found also instils that same sense of FOMO, even though you absolutely do not need to "find everything" in order to 1) have a good time with or 2) beat Donkey Kong Bananza. As such, I've found it very hard to resist just sneaking a peek at a guide or two just to fill in the few frustrating spaces I have left in my list. But that stops here and now! I'm going to get through the rest of the game at my own pace, and then use the game's own built-in features — you can buy maps with the in-game gold to show you where the collectibles are, but you still have to determine how to get there yourself — to finish the game to my own satisfaction.

Games shouldn't feel like work, and the risk you run when having a guide by your side at all times is turning them into a chore. Games like Donkey Kong Bananza, Zelda and suchlike are made to be enjoyed, savoured, experienced at the player's own pace; you absolutely lose something if all you do is immediately look up where everything is.

I will add at this point that none of this is to take away from the sterling work good guide creators do. IGN's guides are particularly impressive, featuring interactive maps and checklists so those who do want to play the game in that way can not only read the guide, but also mark off their progress. I just wish there weren't so many of them, and that looking up information for a game around launch didn't immediately bombard you with the temptation to spoil the shit out of it for yourself.

I guess it's all about self-control. GameFAQs has been a thing almost as long as the Internet has, after all; all that's happened now is that commercial sites are using guides to juice their own SEO. Which makes commercial sense, but also, speaking as someone who was laid off from a publication and immediately plonked on "Guide Content" duty to keep him out of trouble during his notice period, is immensely demoralising and frustrating to see.

There are amazing writers out there crying out for opportunities to do good criticism and analysis. And yet it feels like nine opportunities out of every ten posted online in the games biz these days are to be a "guides editor" — a job that, in most cases, is underpaid, utterly thankless and easy to blame if the site's traffic figures aren't where they should be.

Anyway, back to Donkey Kong Bananza. Without a guide.

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#oneaday Day 406: Kong for me

My copy of Donkey Kong Bananza arrived today, and I've spent most of the evening playing it. It's really good! As with most things video game-related, I'll likely do a full write-up on MoeGamer once I've beaten it, but for now I wanted to give a few immediate impressions based on a few hours' play this evening.

The first thing I'll note is that in exploratory games, I am almost certainly absolutely insufferable to watch, because I will never go straight for where I'm "supposed" to go. You drop me into a discrete level, the first thing I will do will be turn around and see if there's anything behind the starting point. I will deliberately run off in the opposite direction to any objective markers, and in many cases find myself running into obstacles well before the game considers that I'm "supposed" to encounter them, often resulting in me having to work out how to use controls that haven't been explained to me yet — or in some cases, finding creative exploits to overcome obstacles without the player's full toolset available.

The reason I note this is because Super Mario Odyssey, the spiritual precursor to Donkey Kong Bananza (they're by the same people), was absolutely built for me. At every point I went climbing around the levels into places I wasn't "supposed" to be going, I'd find a Moon waiting for me, rewarding my curiosity. It felt like the game's designers had anticipated players like me exploring the game to the fullest, and they had ensured that there were plenty of rewarding things available if you did choose to play that way.

Donkey Kong Bananza is, it will doubtless not surprise you to learn, exactly the same. Only this time, you have the option of pummelling a significant portion of the level geometry into oblivion while hunting for hidden secrets. While bashing a tunnel through a mountain often isn't the best way to get somewhere — and the game does have enough "indestructible" materials to mean you can't just dig your way around the whole map — it is often an option. If you have a general idea of where to go but are struggling to find the route you're "supposed" to take… just make your own. Nine times out of ten, you can do that.

Another Nintendo series that I'm very fond of due to it catering to my very worst, most obsessive tendencies in this regard, is Splatoon. While the various single-player campaigns in the Splatoon games and their DLC were all discrete, relatively small levels, they again rewarded player curiosity and willingness to diverge considerably from the critical path. There's some of that DNA in Donkey Kong Bananza, too, because as well as the large, quasi-open world "layers" you explore for the majority of the game, there are also a variety of special challenge missions that you access through special doorways and hatches around the place.

While the combat-centric challenges are usually pretty straightforward — and there's usually a "trick" to each one to complete it efficiently — the more "platformy" challenges typically have three Banandium Gems, the game's main doohickey, to find. Two of these will usually be straightforward: there's usually one at about the halfway point of the challenge and one at the end, the other one is typically concealed a little more deviously. You'll need to peer over the edge of levels, look under things and get creative with your exploration, just like tracking down the optional objectives in Splatoon campaign levels. And it's great.

So yeah. I'm having a lovely time so far. Down to the second "layer" now — didn't quite get all the bananas in the Lagoon layer, but I think I was only missing about four or five in total, so I'll go back for them at some point. That's my weekend sorted, I guess!

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#oneaday Day 405: No Kong for me

I was hoping to have been playing Donkey Kong Bananza for several hours by this point in my life, but sadly, it seems the Royal Mail have let me down. Despite my copy having been shipped from Nintendo HQ on Monday, it is currently milling around the North West Midlands mail centre, and has been since yesterday. Joy!

Still, no biggie. As my wife said earlier, at no point will I look back on my life and wish I'd had the chance to play Donkey Kong Bananza a day earlier than I actually got to. Assuming I don't die or lose the use of my hands tomorrow, obviously.

Anyway, I spent much of the evening playing Scar-Lead Salvation, a third-person shooter roguelike-esque thing from Compile Heart. This arrived along with Death end re;Quest Code Z a few weeks back and I gave it a quick go one evening when I fancied playing something a bit different. Honestly I wasn't super taken with it from that first session, but playing it this evening feels like it's "clicked" somewhat.

I'll write in more depth about it over on MoeGamer when I've beaten the main story mode — it looks as if that involves two runs through the game, but since there are only three main "areas" to progress through, that shouldn't be too bad, assuming the difficulty level doesn't ramp up too drastically. Which it's entirely possible that it might, what with this being a game with somewhat vaguely roguelike tendencies.

What Scar-Lead Salvation is at heart is a game about spotting enemy patterns and then successfully dealing with them, sometimes with several going off at the same time. Each enemy type has a very distinctive silhouette that you will come to associate with its distinctive attack pattern, and success in the game involves knowing what each enemy is going to do — and how to handle it. This involves a bit of target prioritisation, a bit of careful aiming and a bit of nimble dodging. It's not a particularly out-of-the-ordinary combination of elements, but it works well, the controls are tight and responsive and the encounters are satisfying.

Where the game falls down a tad is in its environments, which are drab and boring, albeit thematically appropriate for the narrative, which I won't get into right now. This isn't a game where "exploring" is particularly fun — largely because, so far, each level has been a completely linear path, and I don't yet know if that changes — but, to be fair to it, it sets expectations pretty clearly up front that the main focus here is going to be the combat and the progression, and both of those aspects are pretty good.

Anyway, like I say, I'll have more to say on that once I've actually beaten it — though if Donkey Kong Bananza arrives tomorrow, that will delay any completion efforts significantly — so please look forward to that. In the meantime, if you like third-person shooting with shoot 'em up-style bullet patterns to deal with, consider giving Scar-Lead Salvation a look. It won't knock your socks off or anything — it is a Compile Heart game, after all — but it is pretty solid at its core.

Now, since I spent much longer than I intended playing it this evening — told you it "clicked" — I should probably go to bed. I will almost certainly feel like death in the morning, given that it's nearly 1am, but I feel like death every morning, so I guess it doesn't matter all that much. Either way, I'm off to bed now, so there.

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#oneaday Day 401: Kountdown to Kong

I'm looking forward to playing Donkey Kong Bananza. I say this as someone who has always found Donkey Kong himself to be one of Nintendo's least appealing characters, and who has never played any Donkey Kong games past Donkey Kong 3. Yes, that's right; I am a bad enough person to have never played any Donkey Kong Country games, nor did I ever play Donkey Kong 64 back in the day — although there are, I'm sure, some who would say that, DK Rap notwithstanding, I dodged a bullet on that one.

But I'm finding a lot appealing about Donkey Kong Bananza. Chief among this is the fact that it's the Super Mario Odyssey team working on it, and Super Mario Odyssey was superb. Not only was it simply an excellent Super Mario game, but it also remains one of the most technically impressive, visually stunning Switch games. Given how good that game looked on the original Switch's underpowered hardware, I'm confident that Donkey Kong Bananza is going to be particularly pleasant to look at.

It also looks like it's going to be really fun. The super-destructive nature of the gameplay and the fact that you can seemingly smash the absolute shit out of each level is very appealing to me, but it seems like there's going to be plenty of depth and exploration, too. With the various special abilities and collectibles on offer, the game looks almost like it's going to hew closer to a Zelda than a Super Mario game — or perhaps it will be its own distinct thing, which I'm suspecting will be the most likely outcome.

The trailers so far have been pretty spectacular, too, and it sounds as if the music is going to be outstanding. Since the game features a teenage Pauline, whose song Jump Up Super Star! from Super Mario Odyssey was a real highlight of that game's soundtrack, I'm anticipating that there will be at least a few vocal numbers, and indeed the trailers would appear to back that up. In fact, and this feels like a very strange thing to say about Donkey Kong, it looks like this game might actually be quite emotionally engaging.

To be clear, Nintendo is absolutely capable of making a game that can grab you in the feels and make you cry. It's just the absolute last place I would expect to encounter such a game would be in the Donkey Kong series — but you watch the most recent trailers and listen to the soundtrack revealed so far and you tell me that there won't be at least a couple of tearjerker moments throughout.

On top of all that, if the Nintendo eShop is to be believed, the whole thing fits into just 10GB, which is dinky wee tiny by modern game standards, particularly on a 4K-capable console. (For context, Super Mario Odyssey is 5.7GB, so if Donkey Kong Bananza is a project on a similar scale, being roughly twice the file size would track considering the jump in hardware generations. For further comparison's sake, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is about 15GB, as is Xenoblade Chronicles X.)

Given modern triple-A games typically break the 70-100GB boundary these days — and even smaller-scale affairs such as the Tony Hawk remakes are pushing 40GB — it's impressive to see what Nintendo is apparently capable of with a fraction of that file size. Because I'm willing to bet that 10GB will have plenty of substance to it.

Having finished the Switch version of Link's Awakening today, I now have a few days to burn prior to Donkey Kong Bananza arriving. Perhaps it's high time I actually tried some of those older Kong games…?

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#oneaday Day 398: I just want to buy the game

Yesterday, I happened to watch the Giant Bomb folks playing through the new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, and thought it looked like fun, so I thought I might actually buy it.

So I looked on Amazon to track down physical copies, and every single version available was marked with a bit "INTERNET REQUIRED. CONTENT DOWNLOAD NEEDED". The Nintendo Switch 2 version didn't even have a game cartridge — yes, they eschewed even the odious Game-Key Card system in favour of the even more pointless Code in a Box format.

This is frustrating, because we're seeing this happening more and more, and it concerns me greatly. While I've bought a fair amount of digital stuff on PC largely because it's the only option to buy pretty much anything now, I'm still very wary of consoles going digital-only or at least digital-centric, because it, of course, raises the question of how long those games are actually going to last.

I'm not talking about online servers remaining up so people can play multiplayer or check their rankings on leaderboards. I'm talking about the game just being straight-up playable. Like, if I were to buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 on PS5 or Switch 2 digitally, sure, I could keep it on my storage device theoretically indefinitely, but at some point with the size of today's games, I'd likely need to uninstall it to make room for something else. If, then, I decide maybe 10 or 20 years down the line that I'd actually quite like to play it again… will I still be able to download it and reinstall it?

You may think that sounds silly, but considering that there are 40+ year old games that I still play on a regular basis, I don't think that's especially ridiculous.

Thus far, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have kept digital downloads available for "dead" platforms, even when they've closed the actual storefronts. You can still download things you bought on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii, Wii U, 3DS and Xbox 360 — you just can't buy things any more. (Though there is a kind of sort of loophole with PS3 and Vita — if you add credit via the Web, you can actually still buy things; you just can't pay on your console any more.)

This is vaguely encouraging, but how long will it really last? At some point, presumably, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are going to want to turn off the servers that maybe double- or triple-digit numbers of people are using each year, and that'll be that; those games will just be gone. At that point, one would hope, the pirates will have likely "preserved" them in an unofficial capacity, but when it comes to that, you start getting into a territory where games aren't exactly "plug and play" any more. I can still pop in anything from the Atari 2600 to PlayStation 2 era and, assuming the media itself is still in working order, play the game contained therein. For the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era onwards, things start to get a little more dicey; from the PS4/Xbox One era they get a lot dicey.

I guess there comes a point where one has to consider whether they are buying games to enjoy now — in which case whether or not they're still playable in 10, 20 or more years doesn't really matter all that much — or if they're building a library that can continue to be enjoyed for many years to come. I have, up until now, very much fallen into the latter category, and old habits die hard. But from the moment I preordered the Switch 2 I found myself wondering if I'm going to be forced into changing the way I think about things.

I don't know if I'm going to buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 as yet. If I do, it'll be a digital version, because there's absolutely no point purchasing a physical version which doesn't actually contain the game. I guess the only question I need to reconcile in my head is if I care enough about this to take a principled stand and "vote with my wallet", as it were, or just to suck it up and enjoy the game while I can.

Oh well, Donkey Kong Bananza is out in a week, and that is on a proper physical cart, so that's something, at least.

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#oneaday Day 396: The purity of early gaming

I consider myself quite fortunate in that I'm able to enjoy a full spectrum of video gaming, ranging from the very earliest titles up to the most modern releases. The only part of gaming that really leaves me cold is multiplayer-centric titles — I just find they don't hold my interest in the long term.

I feel particularly blessed to be able to enjoy stuff from the early '80s, because I know the primitive presentation of stuff from this era can be a turnoff to some. But I absolutely love it; settle me down in front of a bunch of Atari 2600 or Intellivision games — or, indeed, home computer games from the era — and I can quite happily fill an evening just as well as I could playing a modern, complex title.

As I've grown older and spent a significant portion of my life writing about and making videos about games, particularly those from this early era, I feel like I have a solid appreciation for simple but solid design, and games that are inherently designed to be highly replayable. Sure, you can't "finish" a lot of these games in the same way as modern titles, and to some that's inherently less satisfying, but you have to look at them a bit differently.

Take one of my favourite games of all time, River Raid, for example. River Raid is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up that, in theory, goes on forever. You can't "beat" River Raid. But you can develop a sense of satisfaction from attaining a high score, or reaching a particular level when starting from the beginning, or overcoming a specific challenge that has given you grief for a while.

But it's not even about making progress sometimes. Sometimes it's just about engaging with an inherently pleasing experience. The best early '80s games feel good to play. They achieve this through good handling, effective presentation, a feeling of fairness, and plenty of other elements besides. I enjoy playing Night Stalker on Intellivision not in pursuit of high scores, but simply because it feels nice to play it.

So with that in mind, for this trip down to the office and the accompanying overnight stay — this time at my parents' house because my usual hotel was fully booked — I've brought nothing but early '80s fun to occupy myself. And before I head off to sleep, I think I'll enjoy a round or two of some all-time favourites. Maybe some Cloudy Mountain to start off…?