And so, another week draws to a close — and with it, the January of what will hopefully be a better year for everyone.

My 2021’s got off to a thoroughly nice start with a new job that is full of lovely people and work that I enjoy, though the wife and I are still going a little stir crazy at being stuck in the house all the time. It’d be nice to see friends, but then it is also nice to be able to breathe and not die, so there’s that.

Anyway, all that aside, it’s that time again — let’s see what you might have missed in the last week!

MoeGamer

Wiz ‘n’ Liz: Hunting Wabbits for Fun and Profit – Fatal Rewind: A Bizarre Creations Retrospective continues with a look at their final 16-bit game — a thoroughly unusual platformer!

Alice in Wonderland: Curiously Entertaining – Digital Eclipse may be best-known for their sterling work in emulation and preservation today, but they also made some pretty neat licensed games for Game Boy Colour. Here’s one of them!

short;Play: Dungeons and Dragons Heroes – Brenda Romero, of Wizardry fame, made a cracking hack-and-slash action RPG based on D&D Third Edition for original Xbox. Let’s take a look!

Aquaventure: The Game That Deserved a Release – Initiatives such as Atari Flashback Classics and the Evercade allow us to resurrect games that never saw a proper release back in the day — and a great example of that is the excellent Aquaventure for Atari 2600.

Evercade A to Z: Desert Falcon – Much more than just “Zaxxon with sand”, as some people refer to it, Desert Falcon for Atari 7800 is an intriguing isometric-perspective shooter with some creative ideas.

Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk – Bonds of People – The Atelier MegaFeature continues with a look at Atelier Ayesha’s narrative, themes and characterisation.

Rice Digital

Anime’s 5 absolute best boys – Conor provides us with a comprehensive rundown of the finest gentlemen in all of anime.

The wonderful world of Kortia’s isekai romance – Lilia explores the free-to-play visual novel Kortia, which provides a highly inclusive experience for everyone to enjoy.

Anime’s 5 absolute best girls – Conor gives us his thoughts on the very finest specimens of femininity that the anime medium has to offer.

Enjoying the Olympic Games that might never happen with Sega – With significant questions being raised over whether the “2020” games will ever happen at all, now’s a great time to check out the official video game adaptation!

More VTubers join the millionaires’ club – Several more VTubers have hit the big-time by crossing the million subscriber mark on YouTube — and one little shaaaaaark is continuing to be a runaway success.

10 reasons you should be playing Inertial Drift right now – Inertial Drift is a super-fun and highly creative take on the arcade racer. Here’s a look at why you should be giving it some love.

The case for Mr. Satan – Trent explores one of Dragon Ball’s most underappreciated characters.

5 of the best yuri visual novels – I think this is fairly self-explanatory! Girls kissing!

The top 10 reasons to get excited for Root Film – Root Film is shaping up to be an amazing adventure game, so here’s a look at some of the reasons you might want to check it out.

Celebrating Gal*Gun’s 10th birthday with the man who brought it west – An exclusive interview with the thoroughly lovely Matt Papa from Inti Creates, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of one of the company’s most beloved franchises.

Hump Day Husbandos: Heath (Luminous Arc) – Lilia provides us with an enthusiastic explanation of why Heath from Luminous Arc is her pick for husbando of the week.

Waifu Wednesday: Shinobu (Gal*Gun Double Peace) – As part of our Gal*Gun birthday celebrations, Trent provides us with a comprehensive rundown of why Shinobu is Best Girl.

4 of the very best JRock picks for January – Need some listening material? Trent has some top picks for you — plus a Spotify playlist so you don’t even have to go looking for them.

Why is there an official cat version of the Evangelion theme? – Well?

TheDawn’s 30 minutes of fun – If you’re 1) cheap and 2) pressed for time, you should check out TheDawn on Steam. It’s 1) free 2) short and 3) good.

The History of Lewd: The Rance Series – With MangaGamer opening preorders for Rance Quest Magnum at last, I thought it high time we took a high-level look at the history of the series, what with it being as old as Final Fantasy and all.

The Returner: Rediscovering Final Fantasy XIV – I may have made a terrible mistake.

We’ve got physical versions of Kowloon High-School Chronicle – here’s 10 reasons to preorder now – Rice’s store is selling lovely limited editions of Kowloon High-School Chronicle, a Nintendo Switch port of a cult PS2 classic that has never previously come west. I look into why this is such a big deal.

The top 5 anime power-ups – Conor explores his favourite power-ups in the anime medium — and they’re not just transformations!

Enjoy first-person Castlevania in this amazing Doom mod – If you only check out one Doom mod this week, make it this one.

Atari A to Z

This week, we have a public domain title that seems to have got around a bit, a genre-defining classic in arguably its best-ever format for Atari ST, and some hot tennis action!

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. If you’d like to get to know me a bit better, be sure to sign up; just £1 a month (about $1.50) 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. S-Rank (£5+ a month) Patrons also get to play a part in the monthly Q&A video!

Find out more and sign up to Patreon 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 Digitiser YouTube channel, the ever-grumpy (and always hilarious) Cheap Show Podcast, gaming and gaming culture commentator Liana Kerzner, fountain of retro computer gaming knowledge Rob “Hellfire64” Caporetto, blogger/YouTuber meggsngrits and TangoPunk, the newest zine on the block, 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, we wrap up with a look around the WordPress Reader to see what the rest of the community has been up to.

Listening to Japanese Music: Monthly Recommendation Roundup (Leap250’s Blog) – Leap250 has a bunch of cool music recommendations for you to enjoy, so your Sunday (and beyond) doesn’t have to be silent!

Cleavage: Seins Magnifiques (Shallow Dives in Anime) – Dewbond’s back on the hentai again, providing some genuinely thoughtful exploration of what appeals about specific shows. And it’s more than just what it does to your downstairs area.

EXP Share: Anthem is Awesome (Ace Asunder) – Solarayo’s opinions rarely align with the masses, and that’s what makes them worth reading. Here’s a pleasantly positive look at BioWare’s disastrous Anthem.

Top 5 Sports Anime with Mostly Female Casts (I drink and watch anime) – Irina explores the relatively niche interest of sports anime, and celebrates how many more we’re starting to see with female leads.

Sega Game Gear top five (Doug M) – Mr Blogtastic brings us five top picks from Sega’s woefully underappreciated handheld — a system well worth exploring if you never have!

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And that’ll do ya for now. Hope you’ve all had a pleasant week! I’m off to record some videos — including the monthly Q&A! Don’t forget you can be part of that by signing up to become an S-Rank patron over at Patreon.

I sincerely hope that January of 2021 has been good to you so far — here’s hoping the rest of the year will only continue to improve. Fingers crossed! In the meantime… keep playing those games, especially the overlooked and underappreciated ones!

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