Happy Sunday evening, everyone! Hope you’ve all had a good weekend.
Our home renovations are almost complete, it was our fifth wedding anniversary this weekend and there’s a new episode of the MoeGamer Podcast ready to fire into your ears tomorrow, so I’ve had a pretty decent weekend!
In the meantime, let’s round off the week as always with a look at what you might have missed over the last seven days.
MoeGamer
Burnin’ Rubber: Let’s Bump ‘n’ Jump – Data East’s classic top-down racer comes to Evercade with its original title rather than one of the many others it’s had over the years.
Incantation: Having a Wizard Time – Taking a look at what is, in its original incarnation, one of the SNES’ rarest games: Titus’ Incantation.
short;Play: Ion Fury – The Build engine is back after twenty years, and how! Here’s a quick look at the opening stages of Ion Fury, a fantastic new “modern retro” shooter from 3D Realms and Voidpoint.
Dark Chambers: What a Dandy Dungeon This Is – Before Gauntlet came Dandy. And after Gauntlet came Dandy in a rather different form: Dark Chambers for Atari 2600 and 7800. Here’s a look at the 2600 version.
Dig Dug II: Bring Out the Drill – Did you know Dig Dug had a sequel? A lot of people don’t. You should check it out, though, because it’s a lot of fun!
Final Fantasy Marathon: Climb Every Mountain (Final Fantasy III #3) – The freshly minted Warriors of Light begin their journey in earnest as they take on a big rock, a mountain full of monsters and, most terrifying of all, a tearful, lovesick young woman.
The Music of Atelier, Vol. 4: Mana Khemia – Alchemists of Al-Revis – The Atelier MegaFeature continues with a look over the soundtrack for Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, and how it helps to define the “Atelier sound”.
Atari A to Z
This week we’ve got a recent port of a ZX Spectrum classic, an example of what it was possible to achieve with the programming language STOS, and further evidence that in 1978, developers were still trying to figure out what a “video game” was.
Patreon and SubscribeStar
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 Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose’s creative endeavours on the Biffovision YouTube channel, incorporating Digitiser, 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:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0PICw6dc5pUIlTsvj3GWzf
And as always, we wrap up with a quick look around the WordPress Reader for some funtimes from the past week. Rub-rub!
Anime vs. Reality: The Childhood Friend (Umai Yomu Anime Blog) – Yomu offers some insight as to whether or not one of the most commonly used tropes in Japanese popular media has any truth to it or not.
Why You Should Start Streaming Today (In Third Person) – I’ve resisted getting into streaming largely because MoeGamer and YouTube already keep me pretty busy, but Jett here makes a compelling argument for anyone to give it a go if they think they might have fun doing it!
Toy soldiers and chips (Kimimi the Game-Eating She-Monster) – I include this post primarily because I talk about it on tomorrow’s podcast, but it’s also an interesting look at Sacnoth’s Neo Geo Pocket Color strategy RPG Faselei! (with an exclamation mark).
Starmancer (Indiecator) – MagiWasTaken gives us a first look at Starmancer, a base-building game in which you play as an AI. Getting some strong early 2000s PC game vibes from this one — StarTopia anyone?
Bits from my personal collection – Automated Simulations (Retro365) – Ernst Krogtoft shares some of his impressive collection of Automated Simulations (later Epyx) games, along with some historical insight about one of the earliest computer game developer-publishers.
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And that’s your lot for now. I’m off to go play some Star Luster in bed, because I frigging love that game. Take care of yourself — and thanks, as always, for all your support!
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