Around the Network

Happy Sunday evening everyone! One of the worst parts of the week, when you know Monday is just around the corner, thereby meaning that you can’t really justify staying up all night playing video games or something.

Still, if you want something to take your mind off the impending drudgery of the working week, I’ve got you covered as always. There’s been some really great stuff this week that I’ve been delighted and excited to cover, so I hope you enjoy them.

So, then, without further ado, let’s review! That rhymes.

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MoeGamer

Just Ignore Them: Ah, Real Monsters – The last of Stranga Games’ work for us to explore is their debut title — a point-and-click horror adventure that has a few rough edges, but which is certainly an intriguing and enjoyable experience regardless.

Coffee Talk: It’s a Brewtiful Day – Indonesian developer Toge Productions is best-known for its Infectonator strategy games, but following a game jam in 2017 they decided to make a narrative-centric game about a coffee shop in fantasy Seattle. And y’know what? It came out really well.

Waifu Wednesday: Honoka – Another relatively recent addition to the Dead or Alive ensemble cast, Honoka is a popular and likeable character who has been a helpful addition to our Warriors All-Stars team, too.

Warriors Wednesday: Wicked Lil’ Servant (Warriors All-Stars #15) – This week there’s drama afoot as Kasumi and Arnice attempt to save Setsuna from a trap… and Marie Rose starts causing her own unique brand of trouble!

Sisters Royale: Five Sisters’ Story – If you have a hankerin’ for a great new shoot ’em up, you should definitely give this one a look; it’s by the folks who made Elemental Gearbolt and Castle of Shikigami, and has a charmingly absurd premise.

Final Fantasy Marathon: Leila, Warp! (Final Fantasy II #5) – Firion and the gang set sail for the home of the Dragoons, only to discover they’re too late to seek their assistance. But all may not quite be lost just yet.

LAMUNATION!: Keeping It In the Family – We round off our look at White Powder’s chaotic comedy visual novel with an exploration of Corona’s route. I hope you’re in the mood for incest, magic and metafiction!

Atari A to Z

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This week we’ve got Turbo Basic XL-powered Christmas celebrations, one of my favourite arcade games of all time, and an unusual twist on the Breakout formula.

Patreon and SubscribeStar

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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 and Let’s Plays at the weekends! 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 to Patreon here!

I’m also in the process of getting SubscribeStar rolling for those who don’t wish to or aren’t able to use Patreon for whatever reason — I’ve had a few requests for this, so I thought I’d actually get it done. Once that’s up and running and some people have signed up, I’ll offer all the same benefits there for the same price as Patreon.

Find out more and sign up to SubscribeStar 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, fountain of retro computer gaming knowledge Rob “Hellfire64” Caporetto and blogger/YouTuber Megan Marie, all of whom you can find out a bit more about by clicking through to their profiles. (Megan isn’t officially launching her page until early February, but I’m sure she wouldn’t complain at some early Patronage to get her started!)

Here’s a selection of YouTube and podcast goodness from several of this lot:

And as always, it’s time for a trip around the WordPress Reader to wrap things up today.

Blood on the Dance Floor Retrospective: Cruel Pornography (Lethargic Ramblings) – Leth has been putting a ton of work into this retrospective on one of the most widely despised bands of all time, and it continues to be a great read.

Duct Tape & Tights: My Retro ‘Bloggers Who Stream’ Technical Rundown (Hundstrasse) – Luke gives us the lowdown on his somewhat cobbled-together but nonetheless effective setup for streaming retro games. Some good advice here for those wanting to work with older or unconventional systems!

Peter Parker: The Character That Defines The Reel Anna (Normal Happenings) – The Characters That Define Us is a year-long blogging collaboration over on Normal Happenings… and I’m part of it! Not yet, though. But in the meantime you should read this excellent piece.

Sit down, shut up (Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster) – When was the last time you just grabbed a game without thinking about it, without checking reviews, without reading walkthroughs or anything like that, and just tried to get the best experience out of it that you could? That’s what Kimimi’s been up to this week.

Final Fantasy 3 Red Mage (MrGilderPixels) – And finally, it would be remiss of me not to share this marvellous piece of physical pixel art from my good friend and podcasting partner in crime Chris Caskie.

That’s your lot. I have a headache. Time for an early night, I think. Thank you, as always, for all your support — and don’t forget to do all the usual social media things if there’s anything you particularly enjoy. I love seeing other people getting the word out about my stuff; I can self-promote until I’m blue in the face, but it carries so much more weight when someone else says “hey, this is cool” or just retweets something that I’ve worked hard on… so thank you to those of you who do that.

Have a great week, and I’ll 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.

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