Around the Network

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all staying home, staying safe, protecting the NHS, mixing drinks and saving lives like we’re all supposed to be doing right now.

I have, of course, been continuing to beaver away at the various things I’ve been working on, and indeed later today I’m recording some more videos for you to enjoy in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, though, let’s catch up on what you might have missed in the last week!

MoeGamer

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 37 – The Art of the Remake – With the recent release of Final Fantasy VII RemakeChris and I take some time out of our busy time schedule of hanging out at home to talk about the different approaches developers have taken to “remakes” over the years.

Kawaii Deathu Desu: The Art of Finger Dexterity – If you fancy a bit of fairly mindless, instinctive stress relief, you can do far worse than enjoy the button-mashing mayhem of Kawaii Deathu Desu as Death-chan and her compatriots battle out to see who will be lord of the underworld!

Waifu Wednesday: Jessie Rasberry – Anyone who has played Final Fantasy VII Remake will know that the considerably more substantial role Jessie has is a real highlight of the experience as a whole… so let’s celebrate this thoroughly lovely character!

Super Castlevania IV: The Quintessential SNES Game – After a bit of a break, I get back on my Castlevania bullshit and make a start on Super Castlevania IV for Super NES — only to realise that this is possibly the most representative example of “a SNES game” you could ever ask for.

Final Fantasy Marathon: Give Me My Ragnarok (Final Fantasy II #17) – We finally wrap up Final Fantasy II’s Arcane Labyrinth with its final dungeon and the second-longest stairway climb in the series after Final Fantasy VII Remake’s ascent up the Shinra building.

Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm – A Step Forward – Just a year after Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny, Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm hit the scene, showing exactly what Gust at its absolute best in the PS2 era was capable of. Unfortunately, reviews at the time did it something of a disservice, so let’s make a start on rectifying this as the Atelier MegaFeature continues!

Atari A to Z

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This week, we’ve got a widely beloved Pac-Man clone that released before Atari’s official version for 8-bit computers, a Sierra edutainment classic with a dodgy control scheme, and a basketball game for 2600 that I completely fail to understand how to play, even after reading the manual!

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.

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

And, of course, it wouldn’t be Around the Network without a brief trawl through the WordPress Reader to explore some posts from the broader community that caught my eye this week! Please do go check out these great writers, follow their sites and show them some support with likes, comments and all that other gubbins — everyone is especially grateful for even a tiny bit of human contact in these trying times.

The Lion’s Song and Symbolism: In Search of Inspiration (Virtual Visions) – This wonderfully detailed post by DeiSophia explores episodic indie adventure game The Lion’s Song and its clever use of symbolism in conjunction with its point-and-click adventure mechanics.

Persona 5 Royal: First impressions and predictions (Everything is bad for you) – Ain’t no shame in being late to the party, so go take a look at AK’s initial thoughts about the new version of Persona 5 — and see if his predictions are plausible!

Quarantine Clichés (#MILLENNIALLIFECRISIS) – V observes some of the rather strange trends that have started to appear since the whole lockdown situation started… and encourages all of us to not fall into those traps!

Life is Strange: A hella annoying game (Later Levels) – I wasn’t a big fan of Life is Strange, for many of the same reasons that Kim describes in this thoughtful post.

Beastars and Stylish Racism in Anime (Lumi Reviews Things) – Lumi explores the recent Beastars anime, how it’s an “R-rated Zootopia“, as many people have suggested — and how it tackles matters of discrimination through anthropomorphised animal characters.

And there we have it for another week. Hope you’re all keeping well; thanks, as always, for the support everyone shows for all my projects online. Throwing myself into these creative projects is really helping keep me sane during the whole lockdown thing, so they’re more important to me than ever — and I’m always glad when other people enjoy them too.

Take good care of yourselves and those important to you, and we’ll survive another week of this with no problems!


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