Around the Network

Merry Christmas! And a preemptive Happy New Year! We’re into the final days of 2018 as I type this, so I hope you are all wrapping the year up in suitably festive fashion.

We’re almost at the end of this year’s MoeGamer Awards for 2018, with just my personal Game of the Year 2018 left to declare before the new year gets underway. You may well be able to predict what it is, but I’ll leave it as a surprise for Monday just in case anyway.

For now, though, let’s take a look at what you might have missed this week.

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MoeGamer

Sunday Driving: Timeless Classics of Video Game Music – Our grand tour of OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast continues with an exploration of Flagman’s next challenges… and a brief chat about how OutRun’s soundtrack has come to be one of the most iconic in all of gaming.

Merry Christmas! – Merry Christmas. Revolver Ocelot.

Warriors Wednesday: When You Get Around Like I Do, You Pick Up a Thing or Two – Sakon Shima gets involved in the Wu campaign and displays his strategic prowess by blowing a dirty great hole in the opposition’s walls.

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Evergreen Award – This award celebrates a game I just can’t help coming back to over and over and over and over again…

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Shutterbug Award I covered all the Project Zero games recently, but which one is “the best”… or more accurately, my favourite? This one!

New Game Plus: Between the Kimonos – Our Project Zero postgame misadventures continue with an attempt to capture one of the trickiest ghosts in the game… among other things!

The MoeGamer Awards 2018: The Old Flame Award – Which game that I covered in 2018 reignited an old, all but forgotten passion? This one, this one, this one!

Atari A to Z

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This week on Atari A to Z, we encountered an interesting shoot ’em up that emphasises accuracy rather than fast-action blasting, and an ST port of an 8-bit title we’ve already seen once on the series…

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For those who are kind enough to support my work on Patreon with a donation of $1 or more a month, you get access to my daily personal blog. Here’s what you might have missed in that regard this week. Find out more here.

Spellcasting! P-O-D– wait – Some musings on the podcasting format, the various shows I’ve appeared on and enjoyed over the years, and why I’m so happy to have a regular(ish) show here on MoeGamer.

Overtime – Some brief reflections on Atelier Rorona DX after beating both it and its “Overtime” mode. There’ll be full coverage of the Arland series in January!

Christmas Eve – Obligatory “it’s Christmas Eve” post.

Christmas Day – Obligatory “it’s Christmas Day” post.

Boxing Day Sales – What have I spent my Christmas money on this year? A fair few things, as it happens…

My Gaming/Capture/Retro Setup – For those interested in such things, here’s a full rundown of the various cables and little Chinese boxes I have under and around my TV for the purposes of playing retro games, capturing video and making it straightforward to switch between systems.

The Christmas After Christmas – Reflections on coming “home” for… well, not quite Christmas, but a little after Christmas.

Cool Stuff By People Who Aren’t Me

Just as a reminder, I’m a Patron of both Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose and Cheap Show. Digitiser’s run has come to an end for now, but Biffo and co are hoping to do a new series in the near future. Based on how well the show evolved over the course of this initial run, they’re on to a winner.

In the meantime, Biffo plans to post a bunch of short-form video content on the channel to keep it “alive”, and Cheap Show is still running along, so here are both their latest pieces of work for your enjoyment.

And as usual, here are a few fun bits and bobs from around WordPress recently… though I must confess with the Christmas break I haven’t had as much time to keep up on everyone’s work as I’d like to!

Glaive (MrGilderPixels) – My podcasting partner in crime and good buddy Chris Caskie is an incredibly talented artist. Check out one of his most impressive, detailed pieces of work to date.

Games and the Law #1: Nintendo et al. v. Soulja Boy (Everything is Bad for You) – AK, who is a lawyer who likes video games, takes a look at the recent controversies surrounding Soulja Boy and his consoles.

My 11 Most Anticipated Upcoming Vita Games for 2019 (kresnik258gaming) – Vita specialist Kresnik outlines a selection of titles for Sony’s beloved but dying handheld that he’s looking forward to in the new year. Not many of these are likely to come West, but there’s still some great games here that are worth keeping an eye on if you’re a fan of the platform like I am.

Top 5 Otaku Resolutions (I Drink and Watch Anime) – Irina outlines five things she’d like to keep in mind while enjoying her favourite media in the coming year.

The Narrative Purpose of Sword Art Online: Alicization – Episode 10 (Lethargic Ramblings) – Technically this post was from last week, but it posted after I published last week’s Around the Network, so I’m including it this week because it’s an excellent piece of (spoileriffic) analysis, and well worth reading if you want to read something thoughtful about Sword Art Online rather than “hur dur, this sucks because it’s popular”.

As always, thank you all for your support of MoeGamer and my other projects, and I hope you all had a lovely Christmas period. I’ll doubtless post an actual Happy New Year post on New Year’s Day, but I’ll say a preemptive Happy New Year now anyway.

Happy New Year!


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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