Around the Network

Hello everyone! Hope you’re all having as pleasant a weekend as can be expected under the current circumstances.

It’s gone warm and summery here, but to be honest this is my least favourite kind of weather because I do not deal well with being too hot. It’s time to get all the windows open and get the fans blowing, I guess.

Anyway, enough of that very British babbling on about the weather; let’s take a look at what you might have missed in the last week.

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The Characters That Define Us

A while back, Matthew from Normal Happenings invited a bunch of us WordPressers to contribute to an ambitious collaborative project he had in mind: The Characters That Define Us. The pieces are now being published over on Normal Happenings and there are some great reads to enjoy.

This week, my article on Nepgear went up. It’s a long and personal read that is about more than just Nepgear, but it meant a lot to write and to have the opportunity to share it with the community thanks to Matthew’s hard work.

Click here to check it out.

MoeGamer

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 38 – ATTACK MAGIC ITEM BURST – Chris and I settle down to talk about some of our favourite battle systems from over the years, taking in everything from Valkyrie Profile to, of course, Atelier Iris.

Evercade: The Cast for Curated Retro Gaming – At the time of writing, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Evercade handheld — a new device from Blaze that plays specially curated, officially licensed cartridges that are full of classic games from the 8- and 16-bit eras. Here’s a primer for those who are unfamiliar.

short;Play – Lonely Mountains: Downhill – After my enthusiastic writeup recently, I thought I’d share a video tour of what to expect from this rather lovely game.

Waifu Wednesday: Blaze Fielding – As I’ve been playing a fair bit of Streets of Rage recently, I thought it only fitting to spend a bit of time giving some love to the wonderful Blaze Fielding, an early ass-kicking heroine.

A Hat in Time: Hat the Nipper – A Hat in Time is a joyful exploration of childishness — and a loving homage to the classic N64 era of collectathon platformers. A true delight.

Final Fantasy Marathon: High-Intensity Stat Training (Final Fantasy II #21) – Our Soul of Rebirth party sucks. So there’s only one thing for it: grind. And how.

The Music of Atelier, Vol. 3: Atelier Iris 3 – Grand Phantasm – Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm marked a turning point for Ken Nakagawa, Gust’s sound team and the overall “sound of Atelier” as a whole. Pump up the volume and let’s listen!

Atari A to Z

This week we’ve got a port of the first arcade game where you could score more than a billion points, the most infuriating platform game I think I’ve ever played, and a sports game that I actually don’t hate despite it being… rather aged.

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, alternative fountain of retro computer gaming knowledge Kim Justice, 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 with that, it’s time to dive into the depths of the WordPress Reader and pick out some things that have caught my eye this week! As always, if you know of any cool blogs you think I should be following, be sure to let me know!

Star Trek: The Adventure – London, UK 2002 (Comfortably Adventurous) – charlesfwh shares some great photos and memories of this impressive-looking exhibition from the turn of the century. If we can’t go out right now, we may as well enjoy stuff like this vicariously, huh?

Translation is Hard: 5 Obstacles to a Good Translation (The Moyatorium) – moyatori shares some insights from the world of translating — and some classic “TN” memes.

Reflecting On My First Livestream: The Value of Overwhelming Support (Adventure Rules) – Robert Ian Shepard took his first steps into livestreaming this week, and was surprised to discover how much he enjoyed the experience thanks to the warm support of others.

Blogging in Quarantine Times (I drink and watch anime) – Irina reflects on how her blog has helped her remember to have a life during these strange, working-from-home times.

Using Discord – Without Being Overwhelmed (Time to Loot) – Naithin takes some time out from looting to offer some helpful tips on how to get the best out of Discord; it can be a valuable tool for staying in touch with people, but it can also feel very much like it’s trying to take over if you don’t take control of your experience.

And that’s your lot for this week. I’m off to go and play some Mana Khemia now; first article on this will be up in the next week — and all being well my Evercade will arrive some time soon, too, so expect some detailed thoughts on that and its games when that comes along!

Have a good week and take care of yourselves in these difficult times.


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3 thoughts on “Around the Network”

  1. Hey Moegamer, just wondering if you’d had a chance to check out Wild Guns on the Switch Online app yet? I found it a real gem.

    It’s a shoot em up with a unique perspective and control scheme I’d never encountered before: you control the reticule and the character simultaneously, only the character stops moving when you hold down shoot. You can jump or roll to evade, dependent on whether you’re shooting. The faux-3D perspective (sort of like a Contra boss) gives you time to assess incoming threats, leading to a fairly evolved ballet of defence and offence.

    It’s also got a unique theme in a sort of future-tech wild west. You shoot cowboy and robots and cowboy robots! The characters are called Clint and Annie (of course) and have real charm in their design and animation. There’s a gunfight in a saloon and naturally you can shoot up every bottle behind the bar! The destructible environments add a lot of texture to the game world, and have some tactical consideration (taking out enemy cover or explosive barrels takes time but confers benefits, etc).

    For a game that seemed to be doing a lot new, it also gets a lot right. It has three difficulty modes and an unlimited score/level-reset continue system that lets you practice levels until you master them, rather than just muddling through (I’m not telling anyone the ‘right’ way to play, but simply brute forcing a game with infinite lives never felt satisfying to me.) It would be a fun game to try and 1CC, although the final boss would make that REALLY tough – he’s an absolute cad.

    The special weapons have really nice balance – the machine gun has raw offensive power, the shotgun is weaker but excels at shooting down enemy bullets, and the grenade launcher does both but fires slowly. You have a few screen-clearing bombs that give vital frames of invulnerability, so you need to be strategic with them. It would be nice if you also had a way to save special ammo until you needed it, but maybe they didn’t want to encourage hoarding. As a Mega Man player I know what it is to have a bristling arsenal and never use anything but the default gun!

    The story is extremely light but the game hardly misses it. All things considered I highly recommended it, and I’m even planning to buy the remastered edition now so I can play online with friends!

    1. Ah yes, I’m well familiar — specifically with the remastered edition, which is a lot of fun, especially with the new characters. Some people actually claim to prefer the SNES original for various reasons, but they’re both really enjoyable, distinctive games that we don’t tend to see a lot of. (The official “genre” definition of this kind of thing is supposedly “Cabal shooter”, after Taito’s 1988 Cabal.)

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