Around the Network

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably know that I have a few ongoing side projects right now.

I wanted to draw a bit of attention to them for those who primarily follow this site — and also just to take a bit of pride in my work elsewhere!

Let’s take a look at what’s been going on elsewhere on what I’m choosing to think of as “The MoeGamer Network”, then…

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This weirdly reminds me of the late Grandad Davison’s study, only with old computer tech and software rather than photography equipment and paperwork.

My wife and I have recently assembled a magnificent “retro room” that I’m extremely proud of, so much of what I’m about to describe relates to that. Also I wanted to share a few pictures, so you’ll find them scattered throughout this post.

My wife did the annoying DIY bits that I’m crap at, while I filled the shelves with goodies and arranged things in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

If you’re curious what’s in there… hooked up and with easy access to the TV (a Sony Trinitron that my family have been using in one form or another since the late ’80s… and it still works absolutely perfectly) are an Atari 520ST, an Atari 520STE (with 1MB memory expansion), an Atari 130XE, a ZX Spectrum +2, a Philips G7000 Videopac Computer, and a Nintendo Entertainment System. On the shelves you might also notice a Game Gear (whose screen is a bit dodgy and whose sound doesn’t work) and a Saturn (which I don’t have any cables, controllers or games for) as well as some gorgeous ancient Pong clone machine that runs on batteries rather than mains power.

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The shelves on the left are mostly big box DOS PC games on floppy disk and CD-ROM. I haven’t got an old PC up and running at the moment, but it’s nice to have them on display as they all have memories attached.

Atari A to Z

Most of you have probably noticed the Atari A to Z videos I’ve started posting here on the site. I grew up with Atari computers, and thus it was extremely important to me that I acknowledged and celebrated them somehow.

I initially started another site with the intention of writing an article weekly, but I didn’t get into a good “rhythm” with that and had trouble getting it noticed. So I decided to start a weekly YouTube series instead, which so far has been quite well received.

In Atari A to Z, I pick a game from the Atari 8-Bit’s library of games and play through it for about 10 minutes or so with a bit of commentary on my memories of it and any historical context I’m aware of. It’s a pretty casual, laid-back sort of affair rather than anything too formal, but the gimmick is I work through the alphabet one letter at a time. So far we’re up to “E”.

Rather than abandon that new site I set up altogether, I’ve converted it into a one-stop destination for the series and anything else I decide to post related to it. Eventually I’ll expand the series to explore ST games, too.

At present it doesn’t have its own domain name, but you can find it on WordPress at https://atariatoz.wordpress.com — please do follow it if you want easy access to the weekly videos and anything else I end up posting!

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These shelves are primarily boxed Atari ST games, with a few boxed Atari 8-Bit games on the right. The vast majority of 8-Bit games we have were pirate copies, though, which are in the disk boxes on the top right shelf.

Videopac Games

I recently took possession of a games console I grew up with: the Philips G7000 Videopac Computer, better known to Americans as the Magnavox Odyssey 2.

I absolutely love this system, and it’s one not a lot of people online seem to talk about — particularly in its European incarnation — so I decided to set up another new site to act as a resource for those interested in the games available for it. I’m gradually working on providing information for all the games available for the system — and hopefully I’ll eventually end up with a full physical collection to enjoy, too.

This one isn’t really set up as a “blog” as such, since the pages of information on the games are WordPress Pages, but there’s a news blog you can follow to find out updates and any relevant thoughts on all things Videopac. Again, no domain name yet, but I’ll look into that in the near future. Find out more at https://videopacgames.wordpress.com.

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There’s the NES happily running Castlevania and outputting an astonishingly good picture over RF. Above it you can just see the gorgeous plastic cases for the Philips Videopac games.

So that’s that! I’ll be providing updates on what’s been going on with the other sites each Saturday here on MoeGamer as well as continuing to cross-post the Atari A to Z videos here, but please do follow the other sites for specific updates on their particular subject matter. You can also find links to them over on the right sidebar (scroll right down to the bottom of the page if you’re on mobile).

I’ll be updating my Patreon to draw a bit more attention to these other projects in the near future, so please consider supporting that if you’d like to see more either of what I do here on MoeGamer or through these other projects.

Thanks as always for your support!


If you enjoyed this article and want to see more like it, please consider showing your social support with likes, shares and comments, or become a Patron. You can also buy me a coffee if you want to show some one-time support. Thank you!

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5 thoughts on “Around the Network”

  1. Wow you seriously have a lot of things going on, and are honestly working very hard. You should be very proud of yourself: mean that. Oh…and I love that retro-room, it looks amazing!😊

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