#oneaday Day 497: Not exactly Shakespeare

You know sometimes you find yourself on the Web, idly browsing through nonsense, pointedly avoiding social media, and you occasionally stumble across something that is not exactly important, but which you nonetheless feel like talking about? That's me with the website Wikitubia, a website which is, as the name suggests, a wiki about YouTubers and streamers.

In particular, I'm exceedingly fond of the "Quotes" section many pages sport, which quote the subjects of their page saying things that are regarded as somehow "noteworthy". Except I don't believe Wikitubia has any sort of "notability" criteria for these quotes, which means you end up with a list of complete non-sequiturs, devoid of context, that, more often than not, do not paint a particularly rosy picture of the YouTuber or streamer in question.

As an example, here's the list for the YouTuber "Jerma985", someone I have never watched and do not particularly care to watch, especially after reading this list of quotes — which, as the red scrollbar on the right suggests, is not the entire list:

Quotes
"You know... don't... say... sw... swears..."
"Okay, if I... if I chop you up in a meat grinder, and the only thing that comes out, that's left of you, is your eyeball, you'r- you're PROBABLY DEAD!"
"LIFE IS PAIN! I HATE-"
"OH LOOK IT'S A SHPEE!"
"And take care, everybody."
"Game sucks."
"IT'S OVER."
" What the F*CK is that thing?! "
"I'm not tiny, I'm compact."
"Check out this unprecedented grassroots movement from my boy Bern over here. Thanks guys. Can we get a BerniePog in the chat? BerniePog. BerniePog."
"Brush your teeth if you wanna not go to f*cking jail kids"
"HEY, how about you suck a fart out of my a**!?"
"Coffeeee, cheetooos, chickeeen..."
"Let's go, JERMA VS.STAR JERMA VS.STAR, EVERYBODY WANTS TO SEE THIS HAPPEN!"
"That joke's getting edited out of the video"
"Oh my god, I'm gonna squeeze an orange in my own mouth, and f*cking that's how I'm gonna drink orange juice tomorrow morning."
" I don't want you to ship me a Original Xbox. ".
"Merry Christmas, motherf*cker!"

Not exactly Shakespeare, is it? But then I'm not expecting a YouTuber to be Shakespeare. I just find it endlessly amusing that these specific quotes are picked out as being somehow "iconic" of the person in question. Of this list, I feel like Jerma comes off particularly well with "HEY, how about you suck a fart out of my ass?" and "Merry Christmas, motherfucker!" Truly one of the great philosophers of our time.

Let's do another one! Here's a selection from Videogamedunkey, a YouTuber I specifically dislike for a litany of reasons:

Quotes
I'm Hitman! (Hitman)
I'm Megaman!
I'm Sneakman!
I'm outta here!
I'm going back in!
GOTCHA!
What the b*tch?
Singed Flip!
Let's go to the ocean. (GTA 4)
Kindle? Nook? More like Josh Cook!
Good Job Dunkey.
Good Bye Dunkey.
YOU B*TCH.
Oh no... these people must have beat this whole boring a** game.
What the hell is going on, what is this, WHAT THE F*CK IS GOIN ON?!
It'll be YEEEEEEEEEEEEEARS before you can face me, Soraka!
No, not the Captcha!
Aww, sh*t...

This one is a particularly good example of what I'm talking about here, containing such pearls of wisdom as "GOTCHA!", "YOU BITCH" and "Aww, shit". As I'm sure you are aware, Videogamedunkey not only popularised these iconic phrases through saying them often enough to be quoted on Wikitubia, he actually invented all of them. Yes he did. He really did. (No he didn't.)

Another! In the interests of fairness, let's do someone I like. But that means I have to find someone I like who is listed on Wikitubia and who has a Quotes section. Bear with me a moment (grawr)… nothing for LGR, nowt for Classic Game Room, nada for Good Mythical Morning, I bet Game Grumps has something, though… nope, nothing for them either… Ah, here we go. ProJared!

Quotes
"Hey! It's me, ProJared!" - Jared at the beginning of almost every video he makes
"I'm playing X." - Jared's cold open intro
"Jim the knight. Killed by bees." - Jared in his first Hydelide video
"Yes, I cheated, and I'm okay with that." - Jared on cheating in Two Worlds
"OH MY GOD, IT'S MONSTER HUNTER! I LOVE IT, IT'S SO MUCH FUN!" - Jared in his Monster Hunter One Minute Review
"I rate this an X out of 10." - Jared at the end of almost every video he makes
"Hello ladies. And dudes."
"'Ey girl, what's up? You wanna f*ck?"
"Ready, go!" - Jared in his One Minute Reviews
"X gets a X out of 10 from me." - Jared in his One Minute Reviews
"Don't be that guy! Nobody likes that guy!" - Jared in a DnDecember video
"I have the receipts." - Jared in his "YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO" video
"The next time you see someone being cancelled with a mob attacking them and going after them, ask 'What's the other side's story?' 'Is there more to this?' How do you know that they deserve to be bullied and shamed? Through evidence? Or through public opinion? Nobody likes cancel culture, until they get an opportunity to cancel someone." - Jared at the end of his "YOU'VE BEEN LIED TO" video
"Ever wonder WHY a game is good? Or why it's bad? I'm ProJared, and I'll tell you why. Emphasis on RPGs and retro games most people have never heard of!"

If you're wondering where that random epic rant about "cancel culture" in the middle came from, it was from his extremely well-measured response to some exceedingly nasty allegations that were made against him in 2019 — allegations which he later comprehensively disproved, leading to one of the most impressive redemption arcs I've seen in the online space.

While I know some folks have an issue with the term "cancel culture" due to it often being abused by the worst people on the Internet today, 2019 was a time when the term "cancelling someone" was at its height, particularly among those who were doing their best to destroy someone's reputation. It was often paired with the "crab rave" GIF and coupled with hashtags along the lines of #[name]isoverparty, celebrating the "death" of someone's career online.

Aside from that… again, not a particularly solid list of quotes, is it? I mean, "I'm playing X" and "'Ey girl, what's up? You wanna fuck?" are hardly the sort of thing great literature is made from, are they?

Anyway, Wikitubia is kind of stupid and its Quotes section is even more stupid. But it is, at least, a little bit amusing. And no, I'm not on there. I'm not nearly noteworthy enough, even for Wikitubia — although I must say, I am kind of surprised that some of the particularly annoying people my wife occasionally watches (several of whom have millions of subscribers) are nowhere to be seen, either. I guess it's because the vast majority of Wikitubia seems to be gaming-related YouTubers and streamers, perhaps unsurprisingly. Gaming enthusiasts are exactly the sort of nerds who would compile a list of stupid quotes from people they watch online, after all.

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 472: Goodbye and thank you to Billy Chaser

I've made a YouTube video about this (above), but I thought I may as well type something up also. I will likely repeat myself.

Today I learned that a few days ago, Billy Hudson, better known as Billy Chaser and one half of The Game Chasers on YouTube, lost his battle with a brain tumour and passed away. I was deeply saddened by this news, because Billy was a wonderful part of the retro gaming community, and someone who had entertained and inspired me ever since I first stumbled across his channel about ten years ago.

At that time, I was working a boring, dead-end office job. I wasn't having a terrible time or anything, but I was bored and creatively unfulfilled. I was fortunate enough to have a desk with its back to the wall and in a corner, so I could watch YouTube videos without anyone noticing.

As it happened, prior to that job I had never really taken the time to explore YouTube at all, so I didn't really know where to start. I forget exactly how I found my way to The Game Chasers, but it was via a deep and branching rabbit hole that included channels such as Classic Gaming Quarterly, Classic Game Room, LGR, ProJared, Game Grumps, Game Sack and all manner of other folks, many of whom are still making great videos to this day.

The Game Chasers was really striking, though. This was a YouTube channel that had the production values of a TV show. Each The Game Chasers video could have easily been a broadcast TV show. Billy, one half of the core pair of Billy and "Shady" Jay, was a trained filmmaker, and it showed in his fantastic editing for each and every episode of the show.

The Game Chasers' concept was simple. It was like those reality shows where people rummage through storage lockers in search of treasure, but with a focus on video games. Billy and Jay would visit flea markets, antique stores, storage lockers and all manner of other places in search of retro classics — and often find some real wonders. This was in the years before "graded" collecting pushed the price of retro games up into ridiculously unattainable territory for most of us, so their stories were inspiring; indeed, watching The Game Chasers was pretty much the direct cause for me expanding my own collection so massively.

Billy was a wonderful character. He was funny and silly, but smart and knowledgeable. Part of the beauty of The Game Chasers is it made the viewer feel included. It made the viewer feel like they were part of the excitement of taking these trips, and part of the joy of discovering hidden treasures in dusty old lofts. It made the viewer feel like a valued friend.

And that was important to me! I have tried, and I have tried, and I have tried to get across to the people I know "in real life" how important retro gaming and computing is to me, but with each passing year, I grew more and more lonely as it became very clear that people not only don't care, they are, at times, actively hostile.

This was heartbreaking, because a hobby is so much more fun if you can share it with people. And as time went on, it was starting to feel I just… didn't really have anyone like that. As unhealthy as parasocial relationships are, watching shows like The Game Chasers made me feel less alone. It made me feel like there were other people out there as passionate about this as me. It made me feel like I wasn't the only one who still enjoyed all this stuff that I grew up with — and for more than just nostalgia. I enjoy collecting, playing and exploring retro games in the here and now — including both revisiting titles from my past, and discovering brand new favourites. That's entirely what my YouTube channel is about.

And that's why it's so sad that the retro gaming community has lost as wonderful a friend as Billy was. Most of us didn't know him personally, but I suspect if we found ourselves at a convention, he would have made the time to shake each of us by the hand and make us feel as welcome as we do watching his videos. And those out there who were fortunate enough to know Billy in real life had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. He would play up the joker aspect for the camera, but in private he would be an incredibly supportive friend.

The world is a worse place without Billy in it. And I hope wherever he is now, he finds eternal happiness amid endless aisles of every video game one might ever want — and endless friends to enjoy them with.

Rest in peace, you magnificent chode. You will be missed, not just by your close friends, but by the entire retro gaming community.

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#oneaday Day 458: A salute to Maru

It's a shame to start my holiday by responding to some bad news, but I couldn't let the passing of such a beloved figure pass without acknowledgement.

I am, of course, referring to the very sad departure of Maru, the Scottish Fold cat who has been a YouTube star since 2008, making him one of the original sources of "cat videos", that ever-reliable activity of those who can't think of anything better to do on the Internet. His owner announced the sad news yesterday, and I have to confess, it made me very sad indeed.

I know first-hand how hard it is to lose a pet. It is like losing a family member. Hell, it is losing a family member. It may be a family member who cannot speak in the same way as we can, it may be a family member who doesn't go out and get a job in the same way we can (although I bet in his own way Maru "earned his keep" in monetary terms!) but it doesn't make them any less important or meaningful to our existences.

Maru's passing is so sad because he was not only clearly a truly beloved pet for his owner, he was effectively a pet of the entire Internet. While I feel the number of people who know who you are referring to when you say "Maru" these days has declined somewhat compared to, say, ten years ago, he has still, without a doubt, touched hundreds of thousands of lives, possibly even millions. In some cases, he may have touched people's lives without them knowing who he was, but the joy he would have brought them in that brief encounter is something truly remarkable.

Maru was a cat with personality. He had a distinct attitude about him, and he clearly behaved in ways that he enjoyed. Granted, I suspect his owner would have "encouraged" him to engage in behaviours that made good videos, but I suspect those behaviours initially emerged completely organically. Our own cats both do silly and hilarious things, completely unprompted by us, so I have little to no doubt that one day, Maru would have just spontaneously leapt into a cardboard box, or belly-slid his way into a beer bottle multipack casing.

He also loved to fit himself into things that were not cat-shaped, such as boxes that were too small for him, and even glass bowls. Again, I suspect this is something that almost certainly happened naturally one day, and then he may well have been "encouraged" to do this a little more often for the sake of some videos. But I certainly don't begrudge Maru's owner — still mysterious and perpetually off-screen to this day, without even their gender being widespread knowledge — any of the fame their beloved cat attained during his long and very clearly happy lifetime.

Maru enjoyed 18 joyful years on this planet, and during this time he must have been one of the most loved pets in the entire world. Because, like I say, not only did he have the love of his owner — who clearly adored him — but he also had the love of pretty much the entire world, too. There aren't many individuals in this world who can truly say that; there aren't many people who can truly claim to be universally beloved, regardless of nationality, language, background, socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, sexuality or any of the other things you might care to mention that act as ways of dividing ourselves from one another.

Maru was a universal. Maru felt like he would be a constant. Sadly, he has gone to a better place now, but I suspect he will continue to be remembered and loved for many years to come. We love you, Maru, and I hope that one day we will have the chance to see you again.

I'll leave you with the tearjerking words of his owner, posted today, and I'm sure we all join them in saluting our dear, departed, beloved cat and the wonderful life he head.

"I'm lonely, so be sure to be born again soon!" I said to him insistently, but he is by nature a laid-back cat, and I wonder if he is relaxing in the sky now. But he loves to surprise us, so I'll wait patiently, hoping for a surprise from him.

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#oneaday Day 394: Motivation located

I finally got together the motivation and energy to make some videos, which you'll be seeing over the course of the next little while over on YouTube. I made four in total, which I'm pleased with, as that means I don't need to be in a rush to make any more for a little while. Not that I ever "need" to be in a rush, but I've felt in a bit of a rut with the channel recently, and have really struggled with motivation.

Not so today, though! I think it helped that it's rained a fair bit over the last few days, and that's cooled things down a bit, meaning it's not quite so unbearable to just exist. It's amazing quite how much energy a bit of heat can sap from you; I'm sure I could have probably mustered up some energy to do something vaguely productive if I really cared that much, but I think the "break" also did me a bit of good and revitalised my enthusiasm for some of the things I want to cover.

Today's videos see me returning to the Atari 8-bit for the first time in a while. Every time I come back to the humble 8-bit after spending a bit of time away, I'm reminded how much I love that system. Seeing its fonts is like coming home; it's a comforting, warm blanket that makes me feel thoroughly pleasant. I'm sure part of this is nostalgia talking, but I do genuinely mean it when I say I find it a comfort. I got to know the Atari 8-bit and its capabilities so well when I was a child fiddling around with Atari BASIC that just the sight of half-height, double-width Graphics 1 characters is enough to make me smile today. Throw in the games I grew up playing, and, well, that's a happy place I feel like I should probably spend some more time in, judging by how much I enjoyed today's recording session.

The games I covered today are Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Mountain King and Stealth. There was no particular reason for picking these, aside from knowing that Donkey Kong Bananza is on the way for Nintendo Switch, so I thought it would be fun to look at the "Nintendo on Atari" games; Mountain King I chose because I happened to rewatch Classic Game Room's review of the 2600 version the other day, and Stealth… I can't quite remember what brought that to mind recently, but it's a game I've always loved. Or, perhaps more accurately, I always loved its prototype version, Landscape, which we had on one of our Big Box of Pirated Disks that everyone had back in the 8-bit era.

I haven't published any of the videos yet, but make sure you're subscribed over on YouTube if you want to see them when they go up. I'll likely put one up tomorrow, and the rest over the course of the next little while. I have my monthly trip to the office on Tuesday night to Wednesday this coming week, so that will be… fun, probably? I don't relish the long drive every time I have to do this visit, but it is always nice to see everyone. Unfortunately I don't get to stay in a hotel this time because the usual place I book was full up this time around, and the local Travelodge wanted £120. I'm not paying over a hundred quid to stay in a fucking Travelodge, particularly with how they've repeatedly fucked up bookings I've tried to make with them in recent months. So anyway. I will be staying with my parents and delivering my Dad his belated Father's Day gift, which I inadvertently delivered to myself instead. Whoops.

Anyway, videos are uploaded, eyelids are drooping and it's a school night so I guess I better get to bed. Enjoy the vids once they're up!

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#oneaday Day 351: Mission accomplished

I did what I set out to do today, which was to record the voiceover for my MotorStorm video (I'd already taken the footage) and edit it together, plus record a Let's Play for The Sword of Hope. I actually ended up liking The Sword of Hope enough to record three episodes, and I'm going to play it through to completion, so some more recording of that is on the agenda for tomorrow.

This is good. This was fun. Sometimes what you need to do is just do something a bit different from the norm to get you reinvigorated and reinspired to work on things that are important to you. The fact I've just made a video on a PS3 game and a Game Boy game doesn't mean I'm abandoning the home computer stuff on my channel — it just means that I felt like doing something else for a bit, so I'm doing that. It is, after all, my channel, and while I'm creeping close to 4,000 subscribers now, none of my audience is so entitled that they've ever complained when I felt like taking a hard turn into something completely different for a while.

I've also decided to attend the RetroFest 2025 event in Swindon next weekend. My blog post a little while back about The Cave got me thinking that it's been a long time since I actually got out of the house to see some of the equally nerdy old men who also make YouTube videos about old computers from various different perspectives, and it would be nice to actually be sociable for once. Yes, I may have a cripplingly low sense of self-esteem due to my physical appearance repulsing me, but these folks are all nice people, and I had a nice time the last time I spent the day with them, so all good.

I also grabbed Roadcraft on PC yesterday, which seems to be a pleasantly relaxing sim about driving big Tonka trucks through the mud, laying roads and establishing infrastructure. I liked the developer's previous game Snowrunner, and this is a similar sort of affair, only with a bit of a different focus. The controls are simpler than Snowrunner, too, which has made some particularly hardcore simheads a bit sniffy about the new games, but honestly it's a change for the better. I still don't really know what "differential lock" does, but at least I can remember what button turns it on and off now.

Anyway. My MotorStorm and The Sword of Hope videos are all rendered now, so I'll be posting those over the course of the next little while. And I'll be recording some more The Sword of Hope — and maybe some other bits and pieces, too — tomorrow. So I should probably go get some sleep now, because, as ever, I have left this to the last minute. One day I will get into the habit of writing this at a time well before my brain starts entering its shutdown mode, but today is not that day. So, dear reader, I will bid you farewell before IT'S NOW SAFE TO TURN OFF YOUR PETE

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#oneaday Day 350: What I'm doing this weekend

I think I pinned down what I want to do for some videos. As I've noted a couple of times recently, I've been feeling a bit short on inspiration and motivation of late, and I've been wondering how I might shake things up a bit for myself.

The answer is to do something a bit different to usual! So I'm going to do just that. Specifically, I've set myself the goal of doing two main things this weekend: one, a pre-scripted video on the subject of PS3 racer MotorStorm, which I've only just played for the first time and really like, and secondly, an "Exploring Together" Let's Play-type video on one of the Game Boy games that has just been added to Nintendo Switch Online: a Kemco title called The Sword of Hope.

I'm really interested in the latter. I've never heard of it before — although I must confess that's not hard with me and Game Boy games, since I only had a limited library when I was younger — but I saw someone describe it earlier as a cross between a conventional RPG and the Icom Simulations adventure games. You know, Deja Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate.

I really like those games! And I really like the NES and Game Boy ports of them, even if they lack a fair old chunk of the text found in the computer originals. So the idea of playing something that appears to be inspired by them, but which adds some additional mechanics over the top rather than just killing you every five seconds, sounds very appealing to me indeed.

I'm going in as blind as possible because I want to include my immediate reactions to the game in the video. And I think, long-term, I'd like to cover some more Game Boy stuff — not just the stuff on Nintendo Switch Online, but in general, too. The Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance each have vast libraries, and there are some thoroughly interesting titles among them. Presumably because development for these platforms was so cheap — and because they didn't have nearly as much critical scrutiny on them as the TV-connected consoles — developers were, seemingly, quite keen to be very creative with their work on the system. So there's some wonderfully experimental Game Boy (Color/Advance) games out there, and I think there's plenty of scope to explore those through both Nintendo Switch Online and the MiSTer Multisystem 2.

So that's my plan for this weekend. Some of it, anyway. It's a long weekend here in the UK, so I can take my time and enjoy it, then it's back to the ol' grindstone from Tuesday. We've been enduring a particularly busy and stressful period at work for quite some time now, so it's nice to have an extra day off to decompress a bit. It'll all be worth it in the end, though.

Before that, though, bed. Sleep! Sleep is good.

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#oneaday Day 346: In need of inspiration

I haven't made any videos for a little while. I haven't been feeling super-inspired of late for some reason. So I'm going to use this evening's post to brainstorm a few things that I might want to shape into some sort of structure.

First up, I have been mulling over some sort of "Games of Summer" ongoing feature, where I talk about games that I find particularly appealing to play when the weather is nice outside. It being nice outside does not necessarily equate to wanting to go outside, however, with how hot the summers have become here, so the thinking behind this is games that provide a pleasant feeling of "going on holiday" or "doing things outside" without having to deal with things like sunburn and heatstroke. Games that I would probably cover include Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 for Xbox 360 (I still like that one better than the third one, because jetskis), TrackMania (there's something about the stadium courses with watery sections that feels very summery to me), maybe Senran Kagura Peach Beach Splash and Kandagawa Jet Girls, and, of course, some classic Sega Blue Skies titles like OutRun and its follow-ups, and spiritual successors.

Secondly, I am once again mulling over my usual "format" of videos. I really like doing what I call the "Exploring Together" videos, where I provide a brief introduction to camera, then effectively do a Let's Play with a bit of foreknowledge (or prior experience) of what I'm playing. While this is a format that has somewhat declined in overall popularity on YouTube, there's still very much a place for it, and with the newly independent Giant Bomb getting its Quick Look series back underway after quite some time, I feel like it's sort of "timely" to get into doing this sort of thing.

The bit that's a little tricky is that I feel like I might want to cover some slightly more recent stuff. Stuff that's still a few years old at this point, but which is a bit more modern than early '80s home computer games. I'm talking Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3-era stuff. There are Considerations when doing this, however, not least of which is the number of games I might be interested in covering which have licensed soundtracks. I'd like to take a first look on camera at the MotorStorm series, for example — and the first two of these could probably also fit into the "summer games" theme, too — but the musical accompaniments to the action might be an issue. I guess I could upload some "test footage" and see if that gets dinged for copyright. In fact, I might do that.

Another thing that I kind of wish I could make happen but don't really see how I can do is getting someone else involved, so I have someone to talk to and riff off while I play. I've been watching the Giant Bomb guys since their big announcement, and it's a lot of fun to be included in their sessions of "hanging out" together, playing something and shooting the breeze while doing so. I've always made an effort with my videos to come across as if I'm a friend playing the game along with you, but, y'know, sometimes it'd be nice to have someone to talk to.

A third thing I've been pondering is doing a playthrough of the Ultima games. I'm fascinated by these, but have never really gotten deep into them. I've played a fair chunk of the first one and understand how that works, but I understand the second one in particular is a bit… obtuse. I think it would be an interesting and worthwhile pursuit to finally give those a go, though.

Then finally, of course, there are still myriad games left for me to cover on the classic microcomputer systems. There's all the built-in games on the C64, A500 Mini and Spectrum, for starters, plus the USB sticks full of other stuff I have for each of them. And, alongside that, there's still a ton of Atari 8-bit and Atari ST games I haven't covered yet, either.

That's plenty to be getting on with, surely. I just need to actually get my brain into a motivated space and actually crack on with one or more of these projects, I guess. The weather isn't helping, but I think I will do my best to make a start on at least one of the things I've outlined above this week, even if it's just falling back on my usual Let's Plays of microcomputer games.

On that note, I am at least feeling motivated to go to the gym this evening. So that's next on the agenda!

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#oneaday Day 296: Hefty project

I put together a new video this weekend. Just the one, because it turned out being quite a beefy one to put together, but hopefully you will appreciate the effort once it's live, which will probably be tomorrow.

Inspired by the recent launch of the Fun Factor Podcast, I thought it was high time I got back to my retrospective look back over the issues of Page 6/New Atari User magazine that I started a while back, but only got around to doing two issues of. The reason I've been putting off doing any more may well already be self-evident: each "episode" of this takes quite a bit of time and effort to put together!

I mean, to my satisfaction, anyway. I could just turn the camera on, rabbit on about what's in the magazine and leave it at that. But one thing I like about doing these videos — and the bit that's particularly time-consuming — is that I can supplement the magazine's contents with actual footage of the things that are being discussed, whether those are programming techniques or the latest games. Getting together all that footage as well as recording the actual run-through of the magazine takes quite a bit of time all together — but the end result is worth it. I like these videos.

If you haven't seen the previous ones, by the way, may I present them below. Here's a look at the very first issue of Page 6, including the back story of where it came from and what it means to me:

And here's a look at the second issue, in which we observe the rise of a mostly forgotten piece of '80s slang: the adjective "keen" to mean "cheap" or "eminently reasonable", which I had never come across before. Well, I mean, I had, because I'd read this issue before, but somehow it had never struck me as odd:

As I note in the videos, these old magazines are of tremendous importance to me, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to be able to share them with everyone through the medium of video. The ability to splice in footage of the stuff being talked about allows you to get some context that you might not have had just reading the magazine back in the day, and this is a part of retro gaming culture that I'm always happy to celebrate in one form or another.

The new episode is uploading and processing right now, so it should be live on YouTube tomorrow as soon as I've done a thumbnail and all the other gubbins for it. Watch out for it then — stop by my channel and subscribe if you haven't already. Go on. You know you want to.

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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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