Around the Network

Happy new year! It’s time for the first weekly roundup of 2020. Truly, we are living in the future. Except now it’s the present. And we don’t have flying cars and everything is shit. Except for video games and visual novels, of course!

Anyway, that aside, it’s nice to have made it through the turbulence to everyone’s routine that is the holiday season and get back to relative normality… even if that does mean getting back to the grindstone of the day job. There’s some exciting stuff coming up on MoeGamer, though, as I’ve talked about elsewhere, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to some seriously meaty projects.

For now, though, let’s check out what you might have missed in the last week!

MoeGamer

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 33 – The End of the Year Show – With a whole decade coming to an end, Chris and I take some time to contemplate what we’re looking forward to tackling in 2019.

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: Developer of the Decade – We round off another December of completely made-up awards by celebrating my personal Developer of the Decade — a wonderful example of what dedication and a constant effort to improve can do for you.

Warriors Wednesday: Dramatic Battle (Warriors All-Stars #11) – Three amnesiac young ladies try their best to track down their missing memories the only way they know how: by beating the shit out of everyone who gets in their way!

Happy New Year! (2020 Edition) – In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a new year. Here’s a look forward to what’s coming up.

Saboteur!: Full Spectrum Ninja – And what better way to kick off the new year than with a look at an authentic-to-a-fault remake of a classic ZX Spectrum game?

Final Fantasy Marathon: Wild Rose (Final Fantasy II #1) – Having beaten the first Final Fantasy just in time for the new year, it’s time to get started on the next one!

Fairune: It’s Not What It Looks Like – If you’re looking for an intriguing puzzle adventure that you can clear in a couple of hours and which frequently subverts your expectations, Skipmore’s excellent Fairune is well worth a look.

Atari A to Z

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This week, we’ve got one of the earliest ever computer role-playing games, a questionable adaptation of a popular Australian soap opera and a follow-up to one of the 2600’s launch titles.

Patreon

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Don’t forget that over on Patreon I post a daily behind-the scenes personal blog that is, effectively, a resurrection of my old #oneaday blog I used to host over at angryjedi.wordpress.com. At the present time, this also includes exclusive patrons-only weekly vlogs and Let’s Plays on Saturdays! If you’d like to get to know me a bit better, be sure to sign up; just $1 a month (about 80p) can get you in the club, and it also provides you with access to the MoeGamer Discord as well as helping to fund and support the things I do here on the site.

Find out more and sign up here!

Cool Stuff By People Who Aren’t Me

First up, Patreon goodness! Right now, I’m supporting chaotic “old men attempt to talk about games, usually fail” collective Digitiser 2000, the ever-grumpy (and always hilarious) Cheap Show Podcast, gaming and gaming culture commentator Liana Kerzner, independent games writing collective The Well-Red Mage and fountain of retro computer gaming knowledge Rob “Hellfire64” Caporetto, all of whom you can find out a bit more about by clicking through to their profiles.

Here’s a selection of YouTube and podcast goodness from several of this lot:

And as usual, let’s wrap up the first roundup of the new year with a look around the WordPress Reader for posts that have caught my eye!

Before we get into specific posts, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Cactus Matt’s new blog Anime Positive, a site where, in Matt’s words, he can celebrate the things he enjoys without having to worry about getting nit-picky or overly critical. You’ll find episodic anime reviews and all sorts of other stuff there as time goes on, so be sure to give it a follow if you enjoyed his old Anime Q&A blog.

Into the specific posts themselves!

Nightmare fuel for nightmare fuel (Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster) – Kimimi gets the year off to a terrifying and fascinating start with a look at Shadow Tower, an oft-forgotten PS1 title by FromSoftware.

#BloggerTalk: A weekly community event (Later Levels) – Kim has done a huge amount for the WordPress community already, and in 2020 she’s doing even more with her new “#BloggerTalk” community discussion events on Twitter. Find out more in this post.

Rainbow episode review: The Crying Game (World of Crap) – World of Crap is a recent addition to my Reader, but so far it appears to be essential reading if you grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. This post is a prime example.

Why I’m Rebranding My Channel (A Geeky Gal) – Megan’s relaunching her YouTube channel in the new year; here’s her thinking behind all that!

Steins;Gate Episodes 1-13: Waiting for the Feds (Shallow Dives in Anime) – Having recently “discovered” visual novels, Dewbond decided to give Steins;Gate a go but had a bit of trouble getting started. So he decided to watch the anime first.

I Think We Should Revive This Tag in 2020 – Blogger Recognition Award (I drink and watch anime) – Irina finally responds to a tag from 2018 and decides it’s about time everyone resurrected this one. I’m for it!

That’s your lot for this week. As always, thanks so much for all your support, whether it’s through likes, comments, shares and all that gubbins, or more concrete support via Patreon, Ko-Fi or PayPal.

Happy new year!


The MoeGamer Compendium, Volume 1 is now available! Grab a copy today for a beautiful physical edition of the Cover Game features originally published in 2016.

Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed this article. I’ve been writing about games in one form or another since the days of the old Atari computers, with work published in Page 6/New Atari User, PC Zone, the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, GamePro, IGN, USgamer, Glixel and more over the years, and I love what I do.

If you’d like to support the site and my work on it, please consider becoming a Patron — click here or on the button below to find out more about how to do so. From just $1 a month, you can get access to daily personal blog updates and exclusive members’ wallpapers featuring the MoeGamer mascots.

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