#oneaday Day 281: Bedmods and Boomsticks

I saw an interesting bit of discussion over on Bluesky earlier, and thought it might make for a blog post worth pondering, so here we are. The subject is video game modding, a matter for which I have feelings that are probably best described as "complicated" and "somewhat nuanced". I appreciate that these descriptors are generally best avoided on the Internet at large, but this is my blog, so I do what I want with it.

Anyway, the discussion stemmed from this post by John Linneman of Digital Foundry, quoting another user with whom he had been having a discussion about the raytraced modified version of Half-Life 2 which has been doing the rounds recently.

"Fumseck"'s argument was that RTX-ifying Half-Life 2 was compromising the creators' original artistic vision for the game by adding technology to it that wasn't possible on its original release, and adding in things like lighting effects that weren't present in the game's original incarnation.

Half-Life 2 is actually a rather complicated situation to ponder with regard to mods, because the game (or at least the Source engine) was built very much with modding in mind, and Half-Life 2 developer Valve have themselves gone back multiple times over the years to completely rebuild Half-Life 2 with more up-to-date features and tech. So surely RTX-ifying it is just a natural progression from this?

Thing is, I see Fumseck's argument. Not necessarily for Half-Life 2, which was already a game whose visuals were taking aim for something approaching "realism", and thus raytracing is a natural inclusion. But definitely for other games.

For example, a little while back, this video did the rounds:

It's about a modified version of Doom II which has raytracing. Now this, I'd argue, is a step too far for my personal tastes, because while the raytraced version of Doom II does indeed look very lovely and atmospheric and all that… it doesn't look like Doom II any more. It looks like a modern game that is inspired by Doom II and deliberately using features such as sprite-based enemies and items as a means of paying homage to Doom II. But it doesn't look or feel like Doom II.

In adding the raytracing, the modders have made it look nicer, but I feel they've compromised the distinctive look and feel of Doom II. Doom II was built with the technological limitations of the era in mind, and as such, everything it does, it does for a valid artistic reason. If you eliminate some of those limitations, you fundamentally change the way the game's aesthetic is designed, and that's when you're stepping into "compromising the artistic vision" territory, so far as I'm concerned. Half-Life 2, meanwhile, already had dynamic lighting and HDR; adding raytracing atop that is a natural fit because it doesn't fundamentally change the way Half-Life 2 looks.

Same with Minecraft. I actually rather like the way raytraced Minecraft looks, but I also feel playing it like that is compromising the artistic style of the game. Minecraft was very deliberately designed to look like an old game, but combine those aged aesthetics with things that wouldn't have been possible on older tech, such as its vast world, its completely destructible landscape and the player's ability to build anything, anywhere.

So I think when it comes to visual mods, my attitude is "if visual mods are enhancing what the game is already clearly trying to do, they're maybe fine, so long as they don't overdo it; if visual mods are fundamentally altering the core aesthetic and stylistic choices of the game, I don't like them."

So that's one aspect of modding covered. But modding is much more complicated than that. And, as a result, so are my feelings towards it.

As I've already noted, I'm fine with games that are built with modding in mind from the outset. My earliest contact with these was way back in the Atari 8-bit era, when numerous games shipped with a "Construction Set" or similar on disk, or sometimes available as a separate purchase. Mr Robot and His Robot Factory. Dandy. Boulder Dash. All these games, and numerous others, were designed in a way that they could be modular: the artistry was mostly in the combination of the game's aesthetics and the way its mechanics worked — though of course, some praise should be given to the built-in level designs, too. Just because you have access to the Boulder Dash Construction Set doesn't mean you can immediately make a good Boulder Dash level, after all.

A game that is built in this way can, in theory, be enjoyed indefinitely, because once you've mastered the built-in levels, you can make some new ones, or you can swap your creations with friends. With games like this, I do find myself thinking "well, I don't really want to be playing this game forever", but that's entirely a "me" problem; the way I play games is that I like to focus on one "big project" at a time, and if that "big project" turns out to be something that just has no end, I often end up not even starting it in the first place.

Looking further forward, games with modding support have always been a thing. It was easy to replace the map and graphics files in Wolfenstein 3-D, for example, though I don't think id Software themselves necessarily expected the modding scene to take off for that as much as they did. Hell, even I made two hundred dollars by making Wolfenstein levels!

They paid attention, though, and both Doom and Quake (and their numerous spinoffs and sequels) were very much built with modding in mind. Quake even gave direct access to the game's core mechanics and logic through its "Quake C" programming language, allowing you to completely change the fundamental way the game worked — see mods like Quake Rally, Quess and AirQuake.

The explicit, developer-approved "Construction Set" being a thing is somewhat rarer these days, but it still exists. Bethesda games often ship with creator tools of some description, for example, and the Neverwinter Nights series set the benchmark for role-playing games with user-generated material, so far as I'm concerned. Then of course there's games where "creation" is a core part of the overall package right from the outset, like the TrackMania series.

Of course, all these things are very much a PC thing for the most part; while I'm not sure I'd go as far as Linneman's point that they are a foundational aspect of gaming on PC, it's rare to see console players have the opportunity to tinker with their favourite games. Modding does happen, of course, but it's a much more niche interest thing when it comes to console games. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Because here's what I think my fundamental feelings about modding are: Not every game needs to have mod support. Not every game needs to be modded. And if a game "needs" mods to be worth playing, it probably wasn't very good in the first place.

I'm fine with folks making new levels for Doom, Quake and their successors (and rereleases!). I'm fine with folks making new quests, characters, monsters, dungeons and whatnot for Bethesda games. I'm definitely fine with people making TrackMania tracks, Neverwinter Nights campaigns and Mr. Robot and His Robot Factory levels. (Although my digital Atari 8-bit library wishes some groups would maybe cool it a bit on the Boulder Dash levels.)

What I'm not fine with is people booting up something like UFO 50 and immediately thinking "wow, this needs mods", which I saw in the discussion pages around its launch. No. Absolutely not. That is an example of a game that has a very specific reason for existence, and that is as an interactive, creative work of art. Not only does modding it show the height of ungrateful entitlement — it implies it "doesn't have enough content", when it has 50 full games in it — it also completely compromises the whole reason for its existence. Modding something like UFO 50 is defacing it, vandalising it, so far as I'm concerned, and not something I'm okay with, regardless of what platform it's on.

Likewise, I'm not really OK with things like character mods for games. Sure, it can sometimes be funny to see a different character running around in a game they're not supposed to be in, or see a character running around with no clothes on or whatever, but for me, again, that's compromising the artistic vision of the work, defacing and vandalising it, for no real good reason other than "because I can" and "this is mine now, I can do what I want with it".

And sure, you can do whatever you want with the games you have. There are bajillions of excellent custom levels for Doom and Quake out there, amazing new cars and circuits for BeamNG.drive, wonderful new aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator, lots of amazing things. And if you want to make all the characters in a game you like naked, there's nothing I can do to stop you.

There's plenty of really interesting things being done in the fan translation and ROM hacking communities, too. But those are a bit different, I think. Fan translation in particular isn't about defacing someone else's work; it's about making it more accessible. ROM hacking is not an area I'm particularly interested in, but in most cases those projects are presented as their own self-contained things — whole new games built on the core of something that exists, rather than "hehe, I modded Super Mario World so his willy is out all the time". They're creative projects perhaps best looked on as something akin to using an off-the-shelf engine to build your game.

But I'm pretty steadfast in the beliefs I outlined above: not every game needs to have mod support, not every game needs to be modded, and if you recommend I install 300 mods before even starting to play a certain game, I'm probably… not going to play that game.

While PC is the platform on which modding is easiest and most widespread, I don't think modding is (or should be) a fundamental aspect of PC gaming for everyone.

For some, it is, and that's great; for many, a passion for modding has led to a career in game design and development.

But there are plenty of us with bulging Steam libraries that we have no intention of fucking with the contents of, and I think that's also a perfectly valid, acceptable viewpoint to have. I also think that certain games are sacrosanct, for which modding is simply defacement and vandalism; that's the part I suspect to get the most pushback on, but it's the core of my beliefs on this subject.

It's a topic for which you have to take things on a case-by-case basis, and for which I suspect most people will have their own nuanced viewpoints. To be clear, if you're someone who enjoys nude mods and breaking things like UFO 50, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that; I'm simply saying I don't like it personally, and I won't get involved with it. Ultimately I don't give a shit what you are doing with the games you've purchased, so long as you're not fucking with the games I've purchased, or telling me that I'm "wrong" or "missing out" for enjoying them as the creators originally designed them.

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 278: I've been Expelled!

I saw some reviews for a new game from Inkle called Expelled! earlier today and was immediately intrigued. I'm a sucker for a game with a school setting and I'd never played one of Inkle's games before, though I knew several of them were rather well regarded. And, indeed, having spent most of the evening playing Expelled! I can understand why. This game is great.

The game is set in a posh British boarding school in 1922, and you play a girl named Verity, who is from the North and is attending the school as a result of the school's charitable scholarship programme. Almost immediately, you are presented with the core mystery at the heart of everything: the school's Head Girl and hockey team captain Louisa has fallen (or been thrown) through a valuable 500 year old stained glass window in the library tower, and is now seriously injured. For reasons that aren't immediately apparent, Verity is immediately blamed for this and, on your first playthrough, expelled almost straight away.

The game is then framed as Verity attempting to retell the story to her sympathetic father, but continually getting details wrong and/or lying about things that happened. Thus, the game has a sort of "time loop" structure, whereby a single playthrough only takes about 30-45 minutes or so, but you have the opportunity to learn new things each time around. Indeed, a crucial moment in the game comes when you discover how to recover Verity's "notes" and memories of previous things she's learned, allowing you to carry information and knowledge from one playthrough to another without having to repeat the same actions over and over.

One of the interesting things about the game is that, early on, the school's headmistress encourages Verity to stand up for herself rather than being a meek, feeble and pathetic young woman who will always be servile to others. This is tacit approval for the player to go on and make all the obviously "nasty" or "bad" choices in order to build up a meter that reflects Verity's overall nastiness. Sometimes these choices are just mean, but on many occasions they represent her demonstrating strength of personality and determination — things that she will need if she hopes to get to the bottom of what really occurred.

The game uses a time-based mechanic, whereby Verity taking actions and moving around the campus takes varying amounts of time. Various things happen at set times throughout the day, including Verity's classes (which she can opt whether or not to attend) and characters moving around the campus for various reasons. Improving your knowledge of the situation involves getting a feel for who is going to be where (and doing what) when, and being able to take advantage of that fact, even if doing so makes Verity even more "naughty" than she already has been.

Thus far, I've played for about three and a half hours and uncovered several interesting pieces of information and am now trying to determine how best to use that information to ensure Verity comes out on top. I've had a couple of situations where Verity has successfully been able to survive to the next term without being expelled, but there's plenty more to explore and discover after that: the next item on the "checklist" you get at the end of each playthrough is to remove her rivals, which appears to involve "proving" (or framing?) one of the other characters for pushing Louisa out of the window.

There are lots of interesting decisions to make along the way. The game is very much a text adventure (albeit parser-free) rather than a visual novel, and you have a great sense of agency throughout, particularly once you've got Verity nice and comfortable with doing things that she "shouldn't". I'm intrigued to see where the plot goes now I've found out various potentially helpful pieces of information, and since there are no guides or walkthroughs available just yet (the game only came out today!) everyone is in the same "discovery" process right now, attempting to figure the game out for themselves.

If you enjoy text adventures, Expelled! is a great time. There's a lot of reading, sure, but there's also some lovely visuals and some exceedingly limited but very good voice acting. Pro-tip: be sure to turn the "Profanity" setting on (it's off by default), because hearing Verity going "oh, fucking hell" after a failed run will never get old.

I'll doubtless have more to say about this when I've seen things through to their conclusion. For now, though, this seems like a safe recommendation to me: grab it today and bring out your inner naughty 1920s girl!

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#oneaday Day 273: On the Spectrum

One of the things I've been keen to do with my YouTube channel for a while is branch out into areas that are less familiar to me. I've done a lot of championing Atari stuff, and while I don't see that going away any time soon, the fact it's so easy to play with all manner of different platforms today through emulation and suchlike means that I really don't have an excuse for not educating myself on things like the Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga libraries. (Especially since I have modern recreations of all of them!)

I've already covered a couple of Spectrum games previously on my channel, but the one I published today is one that I had been oddly worried about spending some time with. Here's the video if you fancy following my journey:

Ant Attack is an all-time classic for the Spectrum, frequently appearing in "Best of Spectrum" lists and suchlike. But Lordy is it hard to get started with. Keyboard controls which were clearly designed by a madman. Mechanics that are baffling and unpredictable. An engine that often struggles to keep up with what you're doing. I honestly would not blame anyone for trying it out for five minutes, going "fuck this" and booting up a NES emulator to play Super Mario Bros. 3 for the umpteenth time.

I've never been about that on my channel, though. My philosophy is always to "find the fun" — an idea that, if I remember rightly, I borrowed from Mark "Classic Game Room" Bussler, an influential early gaming YouTuber who, among others, was a big inspiration on me getting into YouTube in the first place.

Finding the fun isn't always easy, but I always make a point of giving a game a bit more of a chance than most people might. I'm aware that in a lot of cases, old games are all well and good if you grew up with them, but if they're brand new to you, they can take a bit of effort before they show their true charms. And, indeed, this is very much the case with Ant Attack.

My first couple of attempts went badly. I didn't know what I was doing wrong, it was frustrating and I was a little tempted to give up. But I didn't; I kept going, I kept exploring, I kept an open mind. And while I won't say I came away from the game loving it, I can at least say with honestly that I appreciate and quite like it now.

Possibly more than any other vaguely popular retro platform, I think the Spectrum library rewards this kind of persistence. If the Spectrum was all you had growing up, doubtless you learned to live with QAOP control schemes and all the other little idiosyncrasies the system had to offer — but I bet even for some folks who were hardcore Speccy fans back in the day, it's difficult to go back to some of these games. It's even harder if you have no nostalgia for these games; you're coming at them blind from a modern perspective, and so there are a lot of things "against" the experience from the outset: garish colours, the notorious "colour clash", screechy beeper music, sluggish controls and game design from an era where people hadn't quite figured out "good" game design yet.

Honestly, though, for me, all that is what makes it so interesting. The early days of computer games were a wild and experimental time, and no, not everything worked. But you have to make mistakes in order to make progress, and the popularity of the Spectrum means that it was absolutely instrumental in shaping modern game development for a significant portion of the world.

That's why I stuck with Ant Attack for nearly an hour. I wanted to "get" it. And, by the end, I think I did. And I'm looking forward to exploring other parts of the system's library over the long term.

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#oneaday Day 272: A productive day!

One of the troubles I am sure anyone with any sort of "online presence" will be familiar with is the feeling that you "should" be doing something "productive" with any free time you happen to have. Such is the case with me; I've been on holiday all week, and I've had the lingering sensation that I should make some videos for my YouTube channel, since it's something I enjoy doing, and having a bunch of free time available is, surely, the ideal time to do such a thing.

And yet. And yet. There's always a part of your brain at times like this that says "no, fuck that, you booked time off so you don't have to work, so just relax and enjoy yourself". Of course, making YouTube videos is a relaxing and enjoyable activity, but it also requires effort, so you can see the quandary.

Anyway, I made some time to get some stuff done today. I'd already scripted the intro sections for several vids yesterday, so all I had to do was set aside a few hours to record the intros and gameplay sections, and there we were.

I'd been meaning to do several of these videos for a while, but had put up a bit of a mental block towards a couple of them, because they involved games and a platform that are unfamiliar to me: specifically, two Spectrum games that had the potential to be rather challenging to cover.

And they were challenging to cover, but I found a solution. Mostly dogged determination, to be honest, though in the case of one of them, copious use of save states and rewind functions. And the result is, I hope, some videos where I demonstrate how a lot of Spectrum games can be something of a "slow burn", particularly if you didn't grow up with them, but if you are willing to put in the time and effort, there are potentially rewarding experiences that await you.

All in all, I got five videos done altogether today: three Spectrum vids and two Atari games as a palate-cleanser. Want specifics? Oh, all right then; on the Spectrum front, the two I was worried about were Ant Attack and Army Moves, the latter of which is where the majority of the save state/rewind "cheating" took place, because fuck that game's first four levels, plus Auf Wiedersehen Monty, which I knew probably wouldn't be an issue and, sure enough, wasn't. The two Atari games were Lode Runner's Rescue (which is a really interesting game I'd never heard of until very recently!) and Frogger II (which I just like).

That's pretty danged productive, so I should be pleased with myself. So I am! I'm looking forward to sharing these videos with you, as I think they're all a lot of fun. Watch out for them over the course of the next couple of weeks.

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#oneaday Day 269: It was my bloody SNES

In retrospect, when I had two game cartridges fail in the exact same way as one another, I should have probably considered the possibility that it was, in fact, the game console itself that was at fault rather than the cartridges. But, well, I was going to get an FX Pak Pro anyway, so all that's really happened is I spent £40 more than I thought I was going to, traded in the few loose N64 carts I had lying around (and which were now redundant thanks to the Everdrive 64 X7 I have) and now have two SNESes: one with (presumably) a fried chip that means anything involving "Mode 7" scaling and rotation (and adjacent graphical techniques) is borked, and my new acquisition which, so far, appears to work just fine.

I'm a little sad at the apparent death of my old SNES; that thing had followed me since childhood and has always been a treasured part of my collection, even at the times it wasn't getting much use. I suspect it probably is possible to fix somehow, but that would involve getting stuck into some electronics that I'm not confident enough to explore just yet, and my wife Andie, who is quite happy to get the soldering gun out, is in the middle of numerous other projects, so I don't want to bother her.

So anyway. Yes. CEX did not, in fact, sell me two consecutive faulty copies of Desert Strike, it was my bloody SNES after all. At least that's all resolved now, and with the FX Pak Pro safely in place, I can now just enjoy the thing without worrying about dead batteries, corroded connections and all that other good stuff that we never even thought would be a consideration back when these things were new.

I am looking forward to spending some quality time with the SNES library. As I've alluded to a few times in the past, despite owning that SNES since… probably '92 or so? I didn't have all that many games for it. I had Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario All-Stars, Starwing, SimCity and American copies of Street Fighter II and Chuck Rock. Plus two of those converter thingies that allowed you to play games from another region by plugging a "native" game into the back and the game you wanted to play into the top.

I played a few other SNES games through borrowing them from friends. I borrowed Super Star Wars from my friend Andrew on multiple occasions and liked that a lot; these days people seem to remember that as a ludicrously difficult game, but I don't remember it striking me as being unusually hard back in the day. Definitely one to revisit, and I was always curious to try Super Empire Strikes Back and Super Return of the Jedi, because I never even saw those running.

I'm also going to make some time to play through Soul Blazer, Illusion of Time (better known as Illusion of Gaia) and Terranigma, because I like Quintet's work (and their subsequent work as Shade) but have never settled down to spend a good amount of time with any of these games. I've played the start of all of them multiple times and enjoyed what I saw in all instances, but I definitely want to play them properly.

Then there's just the odd stuff. While loading up a flashcart or emulator with a bunch of ROMs is often a ticket to Analysis Paralysisville, one of the things I like about retro gaming is that you can pick something pretty much at random and probably be able to figure things out without too much difficulty. Sometimes when you do this you make wonderful discoveries of things you never would have thought to try otherwise; at others, you realise why these games aren't better known.

Earlier today, I tried the Infogrames Asterix game. I was a big fan of Asterix as a kid and am still rather fond of it; I still have all my old Asterix books, and the Konami arcade game is, I maintain, one of their best belt-scrollers. I was always frustrated that there was no home version of that arcade game, though, and for one reason or another never came into contact with any of the console games. This particular one isn't anything particularly remarkable, but it does have some of the Asterix wit and charm about it, and Roman soldiers go "PAF!" when you punch them, which is nice.

Another nice thing about the FX Pak Pro is that it functions as a Super Game Boy 2, meaning you can load up Game Boy ROMs as well as SNES ROMs. I found a couple of games that don't seem to work with it — The Smurfs, sadly, which is a shame, as the soundtrack for that game is way better than you would think it would be — but Rod Land does, which is all that really matters.

So mixed feelings today, then. Sadness at the apparent death of my childhood SNES, but joy at the world the FX Pak Pro is about to open up to me. And when the Mega Everdrive Pro gets here in a few days… well, I'll be in 16-bit heaven for quite some time, I feel.

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#oneaday Day 264: Flashcarts: a retro essential?

I can't remember if I mentioned it on here before, but even if I did, I'm going to mention it again anyway: I recently ordered an FXPak Pro for my Super NES, to add to my collection alongside the Everdrive 64 X7 I got a while back for my Nintendo 64, and long-term I intend to also get Everdrives for the Mega Drive, Master System, NES and possibly Game Boy Advance.

For the unfamiliar, an Everdrive is a cartridge for a retro gaming system that allows you to pop in an SD card full of game ROMs, then play them on original hardware. The FXPak Pro is a similar device, but it's distinguished from Everdrives primarily due to its origin, but also because it is capable of emulating the custom chips that many SNES cartridges had in them, such as the famous Super FX chip that powered Starwing.

Most of these devices also have additional benefits such as being able to back up save data and even make use of emulator-style save states in some circumstances — one model of the Mega Drive one can even full-on emulate a Mega CD without having to have an actual Mega CD attached — but their main appeal element is the ability to play any games you want on original hardware without having to use original cartridges. Of course, this generally involves piracy, but at this point, none of the original makers of games on old games consoles are making any money from you buying an original cartridge anyway, which means the often exorbitant prices they go for are pretty much pure profit for the individuals or organisations involved.

A while back, I was all about building a curated collection of games for vintage systems, and there's part of me that would still like to do that. But I have had a few considerations arise over the last couple of years: the first being the available space I have, which is rapidly running out (although I've reclaimed some by banishing some items to the loft and rearranging some of the other shelves) and the second being that I had a run of bad luck with buying second-hand cartridges.

To give specifics, I attempted to buy the game Desert Strike for SNES, a game I never actually owned back in the day, but always enjoyed any time I borrowed it from a friend or played it at their house. I paid £8 for a copy from CEX, and was a little put out to discover when it arrived that it didn't work. Well, it sort of worked; the Electronic Arts logo on startup was garbled, in-game graphics occasionally corrupted and it would just randomly reboot sometimes. This problem persisted even after several sessions with the contact cleaner and cotton buds. The cart was just fucked.

No matter, I thought, it's only £8, I'll buy another copy and return this one if I can be arsed — though I knew from experience that if I attempted to return it to CEX, they'd almost certainly test it, find it didn't appear to work, then refuse me a refund, despite them selling it to me in a faulty state in the first place. So I bought another copy. And the same thing happened.

Couple that with several experiences I've had where I bought games where the save batteries had failed, and, y'know, I just can't be bothered with all the faffing around with aging, failing media when there's a better option just sitting there. Playing on original hardware definitely has its own distinct appeal from playing on emulation or even official rereleases on modern systems, so going the Everdrive or FX Pak Pro route just makes a lot of sense when my priority is not "investing" in a collection, but instead just enjoying the games.

I will add to the above that, if a game I'm particularly fond of or always wanted to play should suddenly become available commercially, I will happily pay up money for it, and have done on numerous occasions, even if I'd already played and beaten the game via "unofficial" means. It's the right thing to do. But there are myriad games out there that are never getting a rerelease for all manner of stupid reasons, and that doesn't mean no-one should be able to play them any more.

So, long-term, I'm intending that all my retro systems will be equipped with Everdrives or equivalents so they can be used and enjoyed without having to roll the dice on whether aged media is still in working order. And once that's all sorted out, I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with some classic games — both ones I loved back in the day, and hopefully some new discoveries, too.

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#oneaday Day 261: Two for one

Two for the price of one today! Aren't I generous? Of course, I could have probably put what I'm going to say in this post into the previous post, but then I wouldn't have "caught up" having missed a day, and I (and, let's face it, no-one else) would feel bad.

So with that in mind, I'll do my best to try and talk about something completely different in this post.

I've spent my evening playing some Midnight Resistance on Evercade. I do like that game a great deal, and there is, in fact, a reason I've been playing it outside of just "because I want to", but I also just wanted to.

With the general size of modern-day games, it's easy to forget about the appeal of classic arcade-style games from earlier generations of hardware. It's easy to think of these games as being somehow "lesser" thanks to them not having in-depth storylines, not having hours upon hours of gameplay (assuming you can make it through them) and not having in-depth secrets and lore for theorycrafters to post six-hour video essays on YouTube about.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. When I sit down to play a game in the evening, I'm usually prioritising whatever my "big game" is at the moment — Xenoblade Chronicles at present, for example. But sometimes, as I alluded to the other day, I'm in the mood for something different. And that's generally when I bust out something that doesn't take as long to play, but which I often find is still incredibly rewarding, relaxing and enjoyable.

Take The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, which I played and wrote about recently. I decided to play this pretty much on a whim, but almost as soon as I started I knew that I would be devouring this game within a day or two. And, rather than coming away from the experience feeling like I hadn't had value for money from the game because it only lasted for 6 hours, I came away not only immensely satisfied with the experience I'd just had, but also inspired to write nearly 3,000 words about it.

It's the same any time I jump into something a bit shorter. I need to stop thinking of these as "filler" games, as it's easy to do, and actually settle down and spend some proper time with shorter experiences. Because there's a lot to appreciate in them, and it's valuable to consider the various different ways that interactive entertainment can engage our brain, excite us and distract us from the misery that is generally existing in 2025.

I'm feeling increasingly attracted to 16-bit games specifically, and with that in mind I've ordered an FX Pak Pro for my Super NES. This is a flash cart from the Everdrive maker Krikzz, based on an open source project known as SD2SNES, and it supports pretty much every SNES game you can think of, including the ones with the funny custom chips like the Super FX chip or DSP chips — and supposedly it even runs Game Boy games via the Super Game Boy 2 setup. I'm looking forward to loading it up with European SNES ROMs — the TV I run my SNES on doesn't like doing 60Hz — and spending some quality time with some excellent 16-bit games in the very near future.

And, once my wallet has recovered from the not-inconsiderable amount that the FX Pak Pro costs, I'm going to do the same for the Mega Drive and have an absolutely delightful selection of games to spend some time with when I just feel like kicking back and playing things that aren't too demanding of my time.

I do like collecting retro games, but realistically speaking, I have a few considerations: firstly, I don't have a lot of space for more games, and the priority on the remaining space is for current stuff; secondly, retro is getting very expensive, and not always worth the amount you need to pay to get stuff in reasonable condition; and thirdly, retro is also getting a bit unreliable at times. I bought the game Desert Strike three times from CEX and all three cartridges have an issue in the same way. It's not my SNES because that runs absolutely everything else just fine. Combine that with the fact that batteries in carts with save game functions are starting to fail and it's just easier to go the flash cart route. It's not as if buying a second-hand copy of a game from CEX is sending any money back to the original devs, after all — and as a general rule, if something I enjoy gets an official rerelease on a modern system, I will happily pay up for a physical copy of it. (Even better, often with Evercade I get to be part of making those physical releases!)

So yeah. 16-bit is where it's at for me at the moment. And with that in mind, I think a few more attempts at Midnight Resistance before bedtime.

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#oneaday Day 258: Mix it up

One thing I find myself having a bit of trouble with these days is feeling like I'm able to "mix things up" with regard to the things that are entertaining me. I feel a peculiar sense of "guilt" if I start on a new game, TV series or any other form of media before finishing one that I have already been working on for a while. And while in some respects that's not necessarily a bad thing — I estimate I finish more games and TV series than probably 95% of the average game-playing public out there — it's also a bit different from how I used to live.

When I think back to, say, the PS2 era, I had absolutely no problem chopping and changing between what games I was playing. Sure, if I found myself particularly compelled by an RPG or other narrative-based game, I'd probably make that a priority, but I also wouldn't feel any sort of "guilt" if I decided that no, that evening I really wanted to play Grand Theft Auto III. And I'm trying to figure out what, exactly, changed in my mind to create this, frankly, irrational feeling.

My initial reaction was that it might stem from the time where I was doing "Cover Game" features on MoeGamer, where I committed to playing a (usually long) game through from start to finish, penning at least four articles about it along the way. But then I remember while that was at its peak, I was also putting out pretty much daily articles about all manner of other games that I was playing. Granted, a lot of that came down to the fact that I was desperately bored at my day job and thus spent a lot of "work" time actually writing new articles for MoeGamer, but I still had to actually play the games in order to be able to write about them.

So whatever it is, it's happened since that time, so I estimate probably within the last 5 years or so.

Perhaps it's just generally feeling pretty run-down, and not wanting to have to think about too many things at once. That's a plausible suggestion, but inevitably I tend to find when I do have an evening where I just say "fuck it", put my current "big game" to one side and play something else for a bit, I have a good time. So it's not necessarily that I don't want to engage with something else; it's that I'm putting up a weird mental roadblock preventing me from doing so.

Part of it also may well be a false, completely unreal sense of "urgency" that is all in my own head. "I have all these games," I think, "so I have to get through all of them as soon as possible!" And this is nonsense. When I think back to that PS2 era and even earlier, I thought nothing of going back and replaying a favourite game multiple times, just because I enjoyed doing so. I thought nothing of playing a game with multiple endings repeatedly from start to finish without skipping anything. And those were good times!

I'd like to try and get back into that vibe I had when I was writing daily posts on MoeGamer. A while back, I experimented with the idea of "Gaming on a Schedule", and chronicled my thoughts on the process. I came away thinking that it was kind of a good idea, but that it was also possible to be too rigid about such things. The optimal balance is one where you still make time for your "big game" so you actually finish it, but also feel free to have an evening or two or three a week where you just… do something else instead.

So I think I just need to have a bit of a word with myself. If I have an evening such as I am having tonight, where I feel like "I don't really feel like playing Xenoblade Chronicles," there is no reason that I should feel guilt about that. I've already spent nearly 100 hours on that game, and I'll be spending at least that amount of time again on Xenoblade Chronicles X starting this time next month. So what does it matter if I have an evening "off" and play something else instead? It doesn't mean that I'm never going to finish Xenoblade Chronicles, which I think is where this whole roadblock stems from. Leaving aside the fact that I'm already very near the end, I have, after all, already beaten it once in my life, albeit on a different console.

So y'know what? This evening I'm going to play something else. Exactly what, I haven't quite got as far as deciding just yet. But I'm going to go with my gut rather than agonising over it for hours and then getting to bedtime having not actually done anything fun at all this evening.

So there. That's that. Here we go.

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#oneaday Day 256: I'm tired of collective hateboners

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that probably 75-80% of the games I've bought in the last… maybe 5 years or so, possibly more, have come from limited-press companies. My reasoning for this? I like owning physical copies of games, and most of the limited-press companies wait to put out a physical version of a game until it has all its updates applied and usually (though not always, these days) all its DLC.

Taking this approach to buying games has a few effects. Firstly, it makes me consider whether or not I really want something, or if, as often happens with digital releases, I'm likely to download it, play it maybe once or twice and then never think of it ever again.

I value physical releases more. I just do. This isn't a slight against those who can't afford to, don't want to or aren't able to do physical releases, it's just a fact about how I approach my video game collection. If it's not on a cart or a disc, I am very likely to forget about it.

One thing I'm growing increasingly tired of is the collective whingeing that goes on any time a limited-press company announces its involvement in a physical print run of something. It happened just today with Digital Eclipse's long-awaited announcement that it will be publishing physical versions of its "Gold Master" interactive documentary series on Karateka, the back catalogue of Jeff Minter and Tetris. Because Limited Run Games are involved, some people have already written the release off completely. One person in a Discord I frequent described it as the "worst birthday present ever".

And… I just don't see it. Limited Run used to have big problems back when they opened pre-orders for five minutes and then promptly had them all swallowed up by scalpers, but they don't do that any more; instead, they have an open preorder window, during which they establish who actually wants a copy, then they print those copies. Sometimes it takes a good few months from ordering a game to actually getting it, but the company has always been up-front about that being a thing, at least partly for the reasons I described above — wanting to ensure that the game is "complete on cart/disc" with all updates applied — and partly to give them the time needed to take all those preorders, pass those orders on to their manufacturing partners and then sort the whole shebang out.

The same is true for other limited-press houses. Probably the "worst" of the batch in terms of being kept waiting is Strictly Limited Games, who has been sitting on preorders for some games for (checks) three years at this point, but when their eminently affordable special editions do arrive, they are absolutely lovely in terms of quality, with tons of extras and just plain gorgeous packaging.

I guess I just… don't mind waiting. I am under no illusions as to when I will be getting a game when I order from one of these companies; more often than not, it's a nice surprise several months (or even years, in the case of Strictly Limited) down the line when I get a dispatch notification for something I'd all but forgotten I ordered.

To an extent, I get why this pisses people off. We live in an age where if you order from Amazon at the right time, you can get something on the same day you ordered it. We live in an age where you can click a button online and get food delivered to your door within half an hour or so. We live in an age of digital convenience, where if you want to watch something you just click the thing to watch it rather than having to search for somewhere that has it in stock, order it and wait for it to arrive.

To anyone who is used to those modern conveniences, paying up for something you won't get for months is unthinkable. But it's not that unusual. Many online shopping sites that aren't Amazon take a while to ship things. eBay sellers can be relied upon to not even think about shipping your item until a week after you paid. Things go out of stock and sometimes aren't back in stock for months. Granted, most of these situations doesn't see you waiting as long as you do for a limited-press video game, but after several years of hearing people constantly whining out non-specific complaints about Limited Run and its ilk, I just have to say… I don't care. Shut up.

In seven years of ordering from Limited Run, I've had precisely one mishap, and that was down to the courier in this country making a mess of things rather than anything Limited Run did — I ended up with a slightly crushed Switch case for the Contra collection from Konami. So y'know what I did? I got a new Switch case and replaced the damaged one. Job done.

In multiple years of ordering from other limited-press companies, I've had no issues. Yes, I have the aforementioned outstanding Strictly Limited orders, but I have faith that those are going to arrive. It doesn't really matter when they arrive, because I have over a thousand other games on my shelves all around me, and even more in my Steam library and downloaded to various consoles. It'll be nice to finally have those, but I'm not mad about them not being here yet, because there's really no point in being mad about it. I paid my money knowing that I'd be waiting for a while, and so that's exactly what I will continue to do.

I will also be ordering the Digital Eclipse Gold Master games when preorders open on February 25 — although as it happens, Digital Eclipse have sensibly partnered with a European distributor (Clear River Games, who also distributed their excellent remake of the first Wizardry game) as well as Limited Run for North America, which makes life quite a bit easier.

I'm tired of not feeling like I can be excited or pleased that something I hoped would get a physical release is actually getting a physical release, because The Internet can't get over its collective hateboners. And I can almost guarantee that a significant proportion of the people whingeing about it being Limited Run don't have any specific complaints other than they don't like them, or because someone involved in the company said something dumb on Twitter.

If you don't like them, you have no obligation to give them money. You have no obligation to buy anything if, for whatever reason, you don't want to give the people making it any money. I happen to like what they do, and I'm getting real tired of people pissing over my excitement for things like the Digital Eclipse releases because they can't get over the publishing partner.

Anyway, that was a useless rant. No-one's reading this anyway. But I feel a bit better. Time to go watch Angel in bed.

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#oneaday Day 240: Fair and Balanced Critique

Hello! First of all, here:

That's the first of the two videos I recorded this weekend. Please enjoy a full playthrough of King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne on Atari ST.

Part of the reason I'd felt inspired to play this (and Space Quest) this weekend is because I've been watching the videos of a channel called Space Quest Historian. This is a chap who absolutely loves adventure games, but had little experience with the King's Quest series prior to a donation drive on his Patreon, where he said he would play through each and every King's Quest game for reaching various donation milestones. He also doesn't really like "fantasy" as a genre.

I have been absolutely loving his entertainingly scathing teardowns of the King's Quest games, and I adore those games for the most part. And I've been racking my brains trying to think why I'm enjoying these vids so much when sometimes I feel oddly upset and defensive when someone is negative about something I love.

And it all comes down to intent. Space Quest Historian isn't malicious about these games at all, even when ripping them a new one for their more absurd elements. Instead, he's inviting us to be in on the joke; inviting those unfamiliar and existing fans alike to come along on a ride where he entertainingly points out all the ridiculous things in these games. And, to be clear, as a fan of King's Quest, I can quite happily admit that there are a lot of ridiculous things in those games.

Where this differs from, say, reviews of Japanese stuff that have upset me in the past, is that Space Quest Historian is not being mean about these games, nor is he being mean about the people who like them. He's not suggesting that you are a bad person for liking the games, nor is he suggesting that you are wrong for liking the games; instead, he is simply providing some light-hearted commentary in a series of videos that it should be abundantly clear from the very opening seconds should not be considered serious critique or analysis. And he's often the first to say as much.

Compare and contrast that approach with, say, reviews of Japanese games that outright call people who like them paedophiles, or suggest that people who enjoy a particular series are sex pests, or that they only like anime women because no real woman would ever want to touch them. That crosses a line. That's mean, and uncalled for. All of the games I'm thinking of with those examples have plenty about them that can be poked fun at, but without it being at the expense of those who genuinely love them and have found meaning in them.

It can be a fine line, of course, between being hyperbolically nitpicky about something and the audience feeling like you're attacking it. And indeed, some commenters on Space Quest Historian's channel feel he veers too far in the "bad" direction. But as someone who is normally quite sensitive to this sort of thing, I've been really enjoying his work, and I'm looking forward to seeing more. It doesn't stop me from enjoying the King's Quest games; in fact, I probably find these videos funnier precisely because I recognise all the things that he's discussing.

Anyway, just fancied saying all that — and sharing my King's Quest II playthrough above. Please enjoy!

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