Around the Network

Another week over. Hooray, I guess?

To be absolutely frank, I haven’t had an amazing week in terms of general personal and mental wellbeing, but I won’t bore you with the details here — that’s what my exclusive daily blog for Patrons is for! (Among other things, obviously, please don’t get the impression it is nothing but Pete is Sad posts.) But, as always, my various ongoing projects have helped bring me a certain degree of joy and distract me from the general bleakness of late January that everyone seems to suffer under the weight of.

That’s a nice uplifting way to start, isn’t it? Let’s check out what you might have missed this week, and maybe we’ll all feel better afterwards.

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Sunday Driving: Big Rig Boom – The Split/Second season continues as our heroic drivers do what they can to survive against all odds… with “all odds” this time around including large trucks flinging explosive barrels at them. Fun!

What’s in the Box: Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal Bountiful Beauties Edition – I love a nice limited edition, though I tend only to bite on them for Marvelous Europe and Idea Factory titles, since they tend to strike a good balance between “affordable” and “containing things I actually want. Here’s a look inside the latest from Marvelous.

Delving into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown #1 – With the latest Ace Combat finally with us, I wanted to give it (and the rest of the series) some in-depth attention here on MoeGamer. So I’m going to use the Delving Into format to explore them all over time alongside the Cover Game features. We kick off with a look at Ace Combat 7’s overall sense of style.

Warriors Wednesday: Enter Kunoichi – The Wu campaign continues with a battle of brother against brother and sister, with the addition of a charming little ninja with a penchant for Miss Piggy-esque outbursts.

Waifu Wednesday: Pamela Ibis – Who doesn’t love a good ghost girl? No-one, that’s who. Check out this recurring character from the Atelier series, and how she fits into the Arland trilogy.

Atelier Meruru: Arland Comes Together – The first Cover Game of 2019 comes to a close with a close look at the third, final, and arguably best of the three games in the Arland trilogy — Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland.

New Game Plus: Five S – Our Project Zero postgame exploration comes to an end — for now — with another crack at the battle mode. How many S-ranks do you think I managed to get…?

Delving into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown #2 – Another look at Ace Combat 7, this time with a particular focus on its spectacular VR mode, presently exclusive to PlayStation VR.

Pete Plays Dragon World: A Friday Night Well-Spent – Who remembers the BBC Micro? I do. Who remembers “classic” edutainment title Granny’s Garden? Most people by this point. Who remembers Dragon World, a follow-up to Granny’s Garden from two years later? Considerably fewer people. So I decided to play it. All of it. Here’s part one.

Pete Plays Dragon World: The Real Treasure is Love – And here’s part two. It was not at all frustrating in the slightest. (Spoiler: it absolutely, 100% was.) But at least now I have accomplished that which I was unable to do as a primary school child. Gasp! At the TRUE ENDING of Dragon World for the BBC Micro.

Atari A to Z

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A mixed bag of oddities this week, featuring an impressive first-person 3D game for the Atari 8-bit, an early Core “Tomb Raider” Design game for Atari ST that may have inadvertently kickstarted the masocore platformer genre, and Atari’s characteristically abstract arcade adaptation of Baseball from Atari Flashback Classics.

Cool Stuff By People Who Aren’t Me

As always, I’d like to take a moment to note that I’m a Patron of Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose, the Cheap Show podcast and The Game Chasers, because all of them put out great content that is worth your support. Check out some examples here:

And finally, as always, it’s time to throw some support the way of people around the WordPress community whose posts I’ve particularly enjoyed this week. Be sure to stop by the blogs of these good people, follow them, admire their layout, like their posts and leave them a comment or two!

Three high school girls, a tough-talking truck driver, and a bilingual dog (One Man in Japan) – While Brad (aka Duznot) from One Man in Japan does not advocate for the use of video games when attempting to learn a language, here he highlights a few examples that he has at least found entertaining if not useful!

Worm War I through Yars’ Revenge (Woodgrain Wonderland) – If you’re enjoying my Atari A to Z series so far, you might want to check out Woodgrain Wonderland’s blog, since he’s set himself the formidable challenge of reviewing every single Atari 2600 game ever made, including weird prototypes and homebrew titles. This post is a pretty representative example of what to expect from his comprehensive and thorough coverage.

Strategies for Into the Breach, from a Pilot Who Has Seen a Few Timelines (Adventure Rules) – “Guide content” on commercial websites these days tends to be cynical clickbait designed to answer questions no-one but the most inept players are actually asking. Robert Ian Shepard’s coverage of Into the Breach here is the exact opposite of that: written from a perspective of someone with knowledge, experience, authority and a recognition that he, himself, may still have something to learn. It’s an interesting read even if you haven’t played the game.

Resident Evil 2: Rabbit Hole Involving Windows (Hundstrasse) – Ever find yourself obsessed with something that really bugs you, but which no-one else appears to have noticed or ever cared about? Hundstrasse has. Follow one man’s slow descent into madness as he attempts to unravel what is, for him, Resident Evil 2’s most enduring mystery.

Spending Time With The New Blue Mage Class in FFXIV (Cilla vs. Games) – Cilla checks out the latest addition to Final Fantasy XIV’s lineup of available jobs — the rather peculiar and single player-centric Blue Mage.

And that’s that for another week. This week’s Sunday Driving is rendering as we speak, so it will be up a little later today, and I’ve got some great articles and videos lined up for you in the coming week. I hope you enjoy, and thank you, as always, for your support — whether it’s simply by stopping by here to read something, sharing my stuff on social media or taking that extra step and supporting me on Patreon or Ko-Fi.

Have a great week!


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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8 thoughts on “Around the Network”

  1. Thanks so much for the shoutout and the compliment! My guides are my most popular content from an analytics perspective, so it’s important to me that I create ones covering issues that folks are actually having when they play the game. At the very least, I figure if I base it on problems that I had when I first started, other people who are just starting out will be able to learn from it.

    1. Yeah, there’s a reason commercial sites use guide content as clickbait — it works! Sadly, they tend to put the minimum amount of effort in possible rather than giving actually helpful advice as you have. In many instances, stuff is literally copy-pasted from guidebook providers such as Prima.

      Unless you’re me. I spent all day writing a Bravely Default job guide for USgamer while I was there. I hope it was appreciated by someone!

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