Toomanywires

Just one more game of Rematch before bed.  Kick off! I pass the ball back to our keeper. I'm not sure if that pass is automatic or if my pressing X is having any effect. Sometimes I get the points for a completed pass, sometimes I don't. Regardless, it's the best thing I do all game. It is also the last. Having rid myself of the ball, I run into space. My generic-looking footballer - tanned, styled hair, moustache; thighs like hams - works little circles around the halfway line, occasionally making an exploratory sprint into the opposition's half, before retreating back because the ball isn't coming our way. It's entirely performative. I'm not sure if I actually want the ball, but I certainly want to appear like I want the ball, and might do something useful if I do get it. Our keeper is far from convinced. His legs are unnaturally long, or at least his shorts are pulled up too high. He has big hair and a tartan hat. He's not a newbie and he's clea...

I have a nasty habit of watching the clock when I play games. I'll check my playtime at the end of each session, either in game or on the console dashboard, and start to calculate how many more days, weeks or months it'll likely take for me to finish, with a bit of help from How Long to Beat. I'm hyper aware of how much time I put into games, but this awareness doesn't usually hamper my enjoyment of them. As I near what I believe to be the end, my mind starts to wander and I consider what I'll play next. I'll peruse my digital library and get something downloaded, or grab a physical copy off the shelf and prop it up somewhere near the TV, where I can see it. Now my mind and my eyes can wander. My attention is split between present and future. I start to wish the hours away, even as I enjoy the game at hand. Not with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, though. I stopped checking the clock after just a few hours and didn't bother to line up my next game. I had no des...

We're getting new versions of two GOATs later this summer. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is due late August, followed by Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater  at the end of September. Lucky us! Lucky me. That's two of the greatest of all time - number one (Snake Eater) and number five (Tactics) on my list - and while I'm certainly looking forward to both, the wait won't kill me. Probably. I'm excited but I'm not bursting at the seams. August and September will be here in the blink of an eye, as time doesn't make sense anymore, so there's no need to count down the days. I don't have the time or the energy to work myself up the way I used to. It's different when you're young(er). Your enthusiasm is through the roof, and waits are agonising. You count down the months, weeks and days until the object of your obsession is in your possession and you have full confidence that, once it is in your grubby little mitts, it'll be exce...

It finally happened. And it happened while I was looking away. Years and years of asking for Final Fantasy Tactics. "Final Fantasy Tactics remake?", or something to that effect, posted on social media before every major showcase. That was my bit. Press send. A new entry seemed unlikely, but a remaster or remake was plausible. I'd heard whispers, online and off, and the release of the sublime Tactics Ogre Reborn in 2022 further convinced me that Tactics was on the cards. However, with each new Tactics-less showcase, I became less sure. Each time Square Enix announced a new remaster of some back catalogue, 6/10-RPG that only four people liked, I became increasingly convinced that Tactics' turn would never come. Passed over, time and time again, for lesser games. And then it happened. At the 16:38 mark of the June 5th State of Play , a little after 6:00 AM Japan time. And I missed it. I was on the school run. There's no time for State of Plays when the day's just...

Everyone is going on about RPGs.  IGN recently posted their list of the 25 Best JRPGs and we all had an opinion about it, because it was very wrong.  Over the last few weeks, it has been impossible to avoid Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 online discourse and the praise has been effusive. I'm told it is the best thing since Lost Odyssey, a seven-out-of-ten that no one played, or perhaps Final Fantasy XIII, a game that got good in the amount of time it takes to finish Uncharted 2 - a great game - twice.  I've also noticed an increase in social media users attempting to define what exactly makes an RPG an RPG. Even our greatest thinkers - people on Bluesky - have failed to capture the true essence of the genre. It is a thankless task and one that I will now attempt! Here is my criteria. RPGs are spread over multiple discs The Legend of Dragoon (4 discs) is an RPG. Madden '99 (1 disc) is not. Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox 360 (3 discs) is an RPG while the PS3 version isn't (1 di...

The rosters in NBA Street Vol. 2 are based on the 2002-2003 NBA season. That year, Derrick Coleman, nearing the end of his career, averaged 9.4 points per game. He was a serviceable role player on an above-average Philadelphia 76ers team that was built around the dynamic Allen Iverson.  That same Allen Iverson stars for the 76ers in NBA Street and he has the skill-set to shine on the asphalt: speed, agility, explosiveness, a killer crossover and a nice headband. Yet it has been his older, slower, less dexterous teammate who has been making my life miserable in perhaps the greatest NBA game ever made. An ankle-shattering crossover, then a step-back 3-pointer. A between-the-legs, 360 windmill dunk on my entire team. A block at one end followed by a tomahawk jam at the other, where his knees grazed the top of the backboard. Time and time again, Derrick Coleman has delivered well above reasonable expectation and foiled my attempts to beat the Sixers. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ag...

I love a proper console reveal and all the shared excitement it brings. Games, hardware features and specs, a price, and at last a launch date for all of us to look forward to. A new console made real. Last night's excitement was almost too much for me, and I was thoroughly knackered by the end of the Direct. I was mentally exhausted from attempting to parse all the new details while also balancing multiple online conversations with different groups of friends, as well as hosting the dialogue in my head that sometimes spills out here. Two hours after the Direct had finished and I was still squinting at my phone, tucked up in bed but unable to sleep, trying to digest all the news and gather my thoughts. I had hoped to blog about the Direct as it happened, but I quickly abandoned that idea. However, I did leave some notes, which survive here as mini-headlines that I fleshed out this morning. Switch 2, June 5th. Let's have it. There's a cow on a scooter!  Mario Kart World will...

We had a mid-week public holiday last week. They're nice, mid-week holidays, but they're also a bit useless. You're not going to get up to anything too exciting, or travel too far afield, with just 24 hours sandwiched between regular workdays. I think they're best spent at home. Go to bed a little later than usual the evening before - an extra 30 minutes of Dragon Age: The Veilguard - tackle a few chores on the day to slightly free up the weekend, bake something; go for a daytime jog. Or, as I decided to do, get the PlayStation 2 out.  A week later, and I have yet to put it back away. I've bought a handful of PS1 and PS2 games the last couple of months but have been putting off trying them. I just didn't fancy going through the whole rigmarole of unpacking the PS2 and getting it hooked up to the monitor, especially as I didn't know whether it would still work or not. I'd plugged it in a couple of times last year and found it to be increasingly unreliable...

I keep a record of the games I play. It lives on my phone in the Notes app.  It's nothing fancy. No pictures, no sentences; not even scores. Just a plain text note, littered with spelling errors as well as abbreviations that'll only make sense to me.  I love to add a new entry and spend time scrolling through it, mumbling things to myself like "Oh yeah, I played that", "I liked that", "I didn't like that" and "Is that how you spell Veilguard?" It's a simple yet effective solution to tracking my games-played and seeing how my year is shaping up. Despite only being a month and a half into 2025, my list for this year is already looking pretty good. It's got a bit of this, a bit of that. With no big new release to focus on, I've been switching between multiple games, some old and some new, getting through backlogs and revisiting favourites. I've felt very productive, pressing my buttons and rolling credits.  The next fortn...

I needed to focus.  The final stage of Gitaroo Man Lives required my full and undivided attention. Without it, I had no chance of seeing the final credits. A dozen previous attempts had been thwarted by a variety of maladies including, but not limited to: thumb cramp, screen glare, itchy face, an unresponsive circle button, a general lack of rhythm, and people trying to talk to me. I needed to be left alone so that I could focus. So I grabbed my headphones, mumbled something to my family about needing to do a thing upstairs, and retreated to a quiet corner of the spare room. I closed the door, drew the curtains, rolled up my sleeves and decided that I would not emerge until I was victorious.  Twenty minutes, and another dozen or so attempts later, and the credits rolled. I had done it! I had beaten Gitaroo Man Lives, a game that I both loved and loathed, depending on my performance. Just in case you don't know: Gitaroo Man Lives!, or Gitaroo Man Live! in Japan, is a 2006 PSP p...

If I could travel back to 2006, I'd buy the full set of Bit Generations games on the Game Boy Advance. Twice. I'd also grab that Sega Wondermega that sat in Akihabara Trader's cabinet for ages. I'd probably try to prevent some wars or whatever too. The Bit Generations series was once far more reasonably priced than it is now. Accessible for even the most cash-strapped of GBA owner. You'd spot them straight away when you entered any well-stocked store, with their distinctive form factor and simplistic but eye-catching cover art. I remember them well, but knew them by sight only.  As I'm writing this post, it dawns on me that I'm likely describing new copies, or at the very least newly-used. They were launched exclusively in Japan in July 2006, which was my first summer living here. I am remembering, or misremembering, old games before they were old, otherwise known as new games. Oddly, it feels like they were always "retro"; a throwback at launch. E...