Good morning! Apologies this is a little later than usual — the majority of my weekend was taken up with podcast recording and editing. We’ve got a beast of an episode coming up for you later today.

Christmas is coming! Hopefully for plenty of you that means plenty of games (or gift cards with which games can be acquired) beneath the Christmas tree, or perhaps even some nice new hardware on which to play them. I recommend a Switch if you don’t already have one.

But before we get there, of course, let’s have a look at what you might have missed over the course of the last week!

MoeGamer

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Vanishing Point Award – I celebrate an old-school “vanishing point” racer which particularly caught my attention in the last year… and which I like a lot more now than I did when I first encountered it!

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Best Dicking Around Award – Sometimes it’s nice to have a game where you don’t really have any objectives and you can just dick around as you see fit. This award celebrates my favourite game I played in the last year where you can do just that.

Warriors Wednesday: Oi’m William, So I Am – We add another ally to our lineup in Warriors All-Stars. This time it’s William from Nioh!

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Most “Retro” Modern Game – As a counterpart to the Least “Retro” Retro Game Award, here we celebrate a modern game that authentically captures the appeal of old-school titles in a variety of different ways.

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Second Chance Award – This time around, the Second Chance Award celebrates a game from the past that got a second chance at success through a more recent — and long-awaited — rerelease.

Final Fantasy Marathon: Pack a Lunch – In our longest episode to date, the Warriors of Light clear out the remaining 30 floors of Whisperwind Cove and take down Death Gaze.

Pokémon Sword and Shield: Living a Trainer’s Life – In the third part of the Pokémon Sword and Shield Cover Game feature, we look at the various mechanics of the new games and examine how they all contribute to making a really solid game where you can very much “role-play” as a Pokémon Trainer.

Atari A to Z

A few brainbenders this week! We’ve got classic isometric jumpy-jumpy action, a full playthrough of a landmark moment in adventure gaming history, and an Atari 2600 game proven to have genuine therapeutic value.

Patreon

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 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 always, we conclude with a quick trip around the WordPress Reader to admire some posts I’ve enjoyed in the last week.

A history of Vita games – Developer Spotlight: Media.Vision (kresnik258gaming) – Kresnik takes us on a trip through Media.Vision’s back catalogue of titles for Sony’s underappreciated handheld.

A story about an Atari computer club (The Late Night Session) – The Night Owl reminisces about a side of home computing that the Internet has made largely obsolete: in-person computer clubs and user groups.

Connection and Blogging (I drink and watch anime) – Irina brings us another thought-provoking post, this time on the subject of how blogging helps you think about how you communicate and connect with others.

Dear Teacher (KimchiSama) – KimchiSama writes an admirably heartfelt and honest post about the poison that is gossip, and how it can be incredibly demoralising.

Umaru-chan Cosplay (Wretched and Divine) – Rose has done some great cosplaying over the lifetime of her blog, and this latest “gremlin Umaru” outfit is a fine (and very comfy-looking) example!

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All right. That’s yer lot for this week. Watch out for the new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast later today, and make sure to be good so Santa empties his sack of joy all over you come Christmas morning.

As always, thanks for all your support, be it through likes, comments and social media shares, or direct support via Patreon, Ko-Fi or PayPal. If y’all feel like dropping me a Christmas present I certainly won’t complain, but no obligation, of course!

Have a good week and just keep thinking of that nice time off you (hopefully) have over the festive period!

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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.

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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 or PayPal.