Around the Network

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve had a pleasant weekend. Mine has been filled with gaming, cats and meat products, which I would say is a pretty optimal combination of things for my personal preferences.

I’ve spent some time recording some videos today so Atari ST A to Z will be back on Thursday (sorry I didn’t have time for an episode this week!) along with all the usual bits and pieces you can expect from my various projects.

For now, let’s check out what you might have missed this week…

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MoeGamer

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 23 – Drop, Connect, Erase – This is one of our favourite episodes to date! After the usual discussion of the latest gaming news and what we’ve been playing, we launch into a lengthy, enthusiastic discussion of puzzle games. We’ll be revisiting this topic for sure!

Delving into Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest #1 – I’ve never played Castlevania II before, so I was very interested to give it a shot — particularly knowing how mixed a reception it tends to have these days. I’ve been enjoying it so far!

Warriors Wednesday: One-Woman Army – Zhurong and Meng Huo decide to sneak off for a bit of independent investigation into Liu Bei’s whereabouts. Carnage, naturally, ensues.

Waifu Wednesday: Yuno Hayase – One of the most interesting characters in Our World is Ended, Yuno’s personal storyline examines the idea of someone who feels obliged to be a “good girl”, but who beneath the surface is struggling with all manner of painful trauma. Heavy stuff ahead!

Puzzler Essentials: Money Puzzle Exchanger – One of the many games we talked about on the podcast, Money Puzzle Exchanger is an absolute delight from the Neo Geo era.

Our World is Ended: The Harmony of Chaos – The main narrative of Our World is Ended ultimately ends up being a series of “trials” for its core cast. What, if anything, do they all learn from their experiences?

New Game Plus: The Essence of Alchemy – Closing in on the end of Atelier Rorona DX, the eponymous heroine is faced with an enigmatic challenge: prove exactly what she’s learned in the last three years.

Atari A to Z

As noted above, I unfortunately didn’t have time to prepare an Atari ST A to Z video this week so we’ve just got a Flashback Classic and an 8-bit title to explore this time around. There’s some great ST titles coming up very soon, though; watch out for them starting this Thursday!

Cool Stuff By People Who Aren’t Me

I am a proud 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. The Game Chasers are working on a movie, too; be sure to check out their Kickstarter if you’re a fan.

Check out some examples of what these fine folks have been up to here:

I also became a Patron of Normal Happenings this week, since Matthew over there has been a consistently supportive and positive voice in the blogging community and I wanted to show him some appreciation.

Be sure to stop by if you’re interested in creativity, positivity and some really interesting collaborative projects, one of which I’ll be participating in later in the year!

A particular highlight of Normal Happenings is the “Daily Inkling” series of writing prompts; if you’re looking for something to just get you putting pen to paper, you could do far worse than sticking your head into these archives.

Anyway. Here’s some cool stuff from around WordPress in general. A bumper crop this week!

Welcome. To. Ecchi. Hunter! (Ecchi Hunter) – If you enjoy life on the more ecchi side of life, you’ll want to add this great new site to your Reader. Offering thoughtful rundowns of a variety of ecchi shows both new and old, Lynn and Yomu have a great thing going here, and I’m looking forward to seeing more.

Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Call that Cute Person Who’s Being Mean to You a Tsundere (The Lily Garden) – Common sense, really, but don’t refer to people using tropes from fiction. Remy has some thoughts on the subject!

Anime adaptations go both ways (I drink and watch anime) – Irina considers that while anime-to-live-action adaptations are often met with scorn and derision, live-action-to-anime adaptations don’t seem to meet the same fate… or happen nearly as often. Why is that?

Physical popularity and my lack of experience (The Gaming Diaries) – The Gaming Diaries contemplates the top-selling physical games in the UK and how it’s a rather predictable list… but how this can actually be quite reassuring in some ways, too.

What came first: the female gamer or the problem? (Later Levels) – Kim looks at some provocative headlines regarding the problems that women and girls who play games supposedly face, and examines whether there’s any truth behind them.

Reboots and reimaginings (Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster) – A new Kimimi article is always a treat, but this was a particularly enjoyable read, taking a closer look at both DmC and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, two particularly contentious installments in their respective franchises.

Friday Funsies: Platonic Friendships, Anyone? [Remastered?] (Lumi Reviews Things) – Lumi takes on a past blog post and re-examines it from the perspective of his current viewpoints. The results are interesting!

That’s that for another week then! Since I’m going on holiday in the last week in June, I’m not going to start a new Cover Game feature until I get back. There might be one more Our World is Ended article once I’ve seen some of the other endings, but in the meantime it’ll be bits and pieces until then.

Hope you’ve all had a lovely weekend. See you soon!


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.

If you want to show one-off support, you can also buy me a coffee using Ko-Fi. Click here or on the button below to find out more.

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2 thoughts on “Around the Network”

  1. The appearance of Ecchi Hunter is the most delightful surprise of the week. Definitely going to be reading that blog frequently!

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