My Computing History

In my birthday post a few months ago (eek!) I mentioned how I struggle to blog when things are going okay. Spoiler alert: things still are, however I feel this place has been neglected.

One of my favourite social platforms at the moment is Mastodon (follow me there) – because I enjoy the nerdy conversations there. From a toot by Jack McConnell I found a blog post by Kev Quirk called “My Computing History“, which details all the system Kev’s had over the years.

Brilliant. I’m nicking it. Here’s my computing history.

~1991: Commodore 64

The first system I owned was this beautiful Commodore 64. This version (the “Playful Intelligence” one) was a fascinating release – it was a re-hash of the ill-fated Commodore 64GS, with the keyboard stuck back on, a cartridge bundled in with 4 games (Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top o’ Fun, Flimbo’s Quest, International Soccer and Klax), and flogged in Tandy for about £65.

I bloody loved this. Although I really wanted a Commodore Amiga 500, I became a huge Commodore 64 gamer (suck it, Spectrum owners). I still have it – the header image is my machine. I still have the cartridge now, as well as 2 of the 3 budget games I got with it (American 3D Pool, Agent X II* and Rollaround) and Decembers’ Zzap! 64 Magazine I also got that year.

I got better and more powerful machines, even for Christmas from my parents, but I grew to love this beautiful machine.

~ 1995: Atari STe 520

My second computer was a hand-me-down from my uncle, which took residence at my grandparents house. The Atari STe 520. Although I craved it mainly for a game I played occasionally – Lemmings – a lot of franchises I love and still love to this day come from this machine. It had Civilization, The Secret of Monkey Island, Championship Manager, Populous, and many more. As you can tell there were a lot more cerebral and slower games – with good reason: a lot of arcade conversions were not great. More known for it’s music, ST Format did champion the computer long past it’s lifespan. Late games that haven’t got their flowers include the excellent Obsession, the “fuck me they’ve done a Doom clone on the ST” Substation and Super STario Land. All three were games I played long after the commercial lifespan of the machine had ended.

Also, fun fact – this was the first machine I dabbled with HTML in. Creating documents and putting them on disk, viewing them using the Crystal Atomic Browser. I wonder how that ended up for me?

~ 1997-1998: Olivetti PCS P/75n Pentium 75 (I think)

My first PC was a bit of a surprise. My grandad – who was probably born a generation or two too early – picked up a PC when the local Radio Rentals was closing and they were selling off stock. A great machine, I spent my mid teenage years playing some fantastic big box MS-DOS games that were a bugger to get loading. Theme Park, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Magic Carpet were all played and loved. All played for hours. Also I had a lot of fun with early Windows 95 games, particularly Shareware compilations became the order of the day, with CDs full of them and played with. Happy times with my grandparents.

It was used as a work machine though, so did used to type up my homework on it as well. It was an absolute timesaver as occasionally we had to repeat our homework, so being able to restore from a saved document rather than rewrite it saved hours. No need to rewrite in my best handwriting** the development of characters in The Mayor of Casterbridge anymore!

~ 1999: AMD (Something or other) with a Voodoo 3 2000 Graphics Card

I remember the graphics card. That’s all. What a beast this was.

Bought locally, this was the first computer at my parents house. A gorgeous machine, with an amazing graphics card, it was pretty much the PC I discovered a lot of later era FPS’ on, with Half Life, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena being the order of the day on this machine. Sadly it was an AMD machine that’s chips – for whatever reason – didn’t quite work with the motherboard so I had to have a version of Windows 95 that was cloned on it. Odd. Anyway, it kind of worked, but every so often we had to wipe the machine clean and restore it from a CD.

Online for the First Time

This was eventually the first computer I had with the internet. It was expensive at the time (1p/minute, which racked up pretty sharpish), originally I connected with Ezesurf (if you want a rabbit hole, how that company went to the wall is a read), then with Freeserve, it was just about affordable at that point before we got broadband. After having a summer or two in Yahoo! Chat Rooms (which looking back may not have been the best idea as a 16 year old kid), I did discover a couple of interests.

One was programming. I ended up messing around in Blitz Basic and making and releasing a few games. I still occasionally run in to people from that forum. Sadly all but one of the games have been lost to time, as the forum that hosted it is no longer around. Even the game that still works, can’t run on modern PC’s.

With 56k I also discovered the world of serious online gaming, I mentioned Jase a few posts back. This was where he comes onto the scene as part of me getting quite addicted (and quite good) at online Team Fortress Classic. Less action focussed games that were a game called Cosmic Consensus – a family fortunes style game that was great fun, and Acrophobia – which involved created Backronyms. Both games were precursors to what became the Jackbox Party Pack. Bring back Cosmic Consensus I say.

Sadly, something was always wrong with how it was built, as it exploded with a glorious electrical smell some point a few years later.

~ 2002: Pentium P133

A slight bit of a downstep in quality, as I went to Liverpool University to got another hand me down, this time a mid range Pentium P133. Sadly, this was pretty much a work and general browsing of the internet, but thankfully the beauty was being super connected to the internet meaning I was revisiting Doom, Quake and Command & Conquer in multiplayer when I wasn’t out causing mischief on the streets of Liverpool.

I think I did spend the three years upgrading it, so by the end of my time in university it could run Counter Strike very comfortably. Which probably explained the 2:1. I also began my first ever blog (on Blogger, yeah WordPress wasn’t a thing just yet), which at the time I think I may have blogged every day 😬. I can’t have been that interesting?

2008: Isys Elite – Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2048mb DDR2 667Mhz 250GB SATAII nVidia 8500GT 512MB PCI-E Graphics DVDRW

You will notice this is the first PC with full stats, as in the process of writing this email I found the Novatech order I made to acquire this machine. From reading between the lines I’d have been working for a couple of years at this point, so had a wage, and also noticed that it seemed to have been ordered after I failed my driving test.

It took me two more years to finally pass.

Oddly, I cannot remember much of this PC as I was well into making websites at this point so I imagine some early WordPress development was done on this machine. One game in particular I remember playing quite heavily is Team Fortress 2.

This PC was stored in the shed at my parents until fairly recently, and went in a clear out.

~ 2012: Acer Aspire 5749

I cannot find the email about this, but apparently I bought my first laptop from Tesco. Primarily used for work (this is when I became rather boring), it was the first laptop I used to drag around to places. I believe it was what I used to contribute to WordPress for the first time. Oh my fresh face so excited to be helpful. Where did that person go?

I still have it. It’s covered in stickers and in a draw in my office. But occasionally I use it if I need a Windows XP machine to do something. The last time was to try and Nike Football Scorpion Knockout running – the free game based around that classic Nike advert. It has a CD drive which is unique as no other computers I own do.

2014: Apple Macbook Pro (2.6GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5)

This was a gorgeous machine.

From being a bit vocal supporter of Windows machines, I took the plunge and got a MacBook when being a Windows user became a bit of a barrier for contributing to WordPress (and that’s a statement I expect to be tore apart on podcasts), when all the documentation was written in Mac’s in mind. I loved the power with this machine – was powerful and allowed me to do some heavy duty coding, so much so that I had to rewrite a contract to use it for work.

A great machine, it’s since become a “Zoom Calls in my Lounge” and “Ordering off of Just Eat” laptop. It’s what Steve Jobs would have wanted. I also launched Dwi’n Rhys from Frankfurt Airport there, so saw me through my first two years of freelancing.

I also used it for Twitch Streaming as well. That wasn’t so good and begun to struggle.

The most expensive computer I think I bought, but the one that paid for itself many times over.

2020: Apple Macbook Pro (1.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5)

And finally to the machine I type these words on whilst sat in the City Tavern in Chester. A bit of a fluke really. 6 years after working on a Macbook it has been my pretty much my workflow now and I couldn’t imagine working with much else. However I needed to get a bit more power – it was the pandemic, and sure enough people were going online. I was juggling projects and it was taking up so much space on my laptop.

So – cue some good fortune.

My hosting company – 34SP – was celebrating 20 years and as part of it were giving away 20 prizes of increasing perceived value. The top prize was a MacBook Pro.

Which I won.

Truth be told I missed the fact I won (it went into spam) and even when I did win I begun to spun into working class guilt that always manifests itself with good fortune (said working class exists as I got my tax refund today). Three months later when I actually began to use it I discovered it was a great machine. Rarely do I hear a fan go on it. Probably need to clean the screen, mind.

2020: ASUS ROG Strix GA15 G15DH-UK041T Gaming Desktop

I had a solid pandemic really. Which feels wrong to say. I managed with my clients and people coming online and needing web presences to muster two years worth of accounts and a deposit for a house. In October, I moved out of Manchester to Newton-le-Willows to my first home.

With that came a room I could dedicate to an office, as well as room for a proper gaming/streaming rig. I bought this machine, which I use for more high end stuff. Mainly streaming, but also for training videos for clients. I’ve discovered the wonderful world of Steam gaming with this. Many of the games from the “Video Games I Fell in Love With” series in the past 2 years have been on this machine.

Not top of the range, but good enough for what I want to do.

And Next….?

Honestly, where is next? I don’t know. Both machines I own are powerful enough for what I want to do. As such, an upgrade is not on the cards at the moment. But you never know. But by writing this I’m reminded on how much technology is linked with me. As the machines have upgraded, so have I. The memory on the machines have gotten bigger but the memories with the machines have become stronger.

I genuinely didn’t expect to write as much as I have. I hope it’s not too self indulgent!

* Fun fact: There isn’t an Agent X 1, despite the name of the game suggesting there was…
** Which – if you ever received a Christmas Card from me would know – is terrible.

Forty

Today, I turn forty.

I mentioned this to an offhand comment to Jem a few months ago on my Mastodon account a few months ago in the paradox I have with blogging. In so much that generally I blog a lot better when I’m not in the best place mentally. The worse I am, the better this blog does and the happier I am with my writing. Trust me, I’ve currently 14 Drafts that were written at lower points in my life that are just sat there with emo titles that befit the elder millennial generation that I am a member of that I just didn’t post for one reason or another. That’s one for you hackers.

But really? Now? As I write this sentence on the 5th of February and short of the stress I’m putting myself for my 40th birthday party which would have happened by the time you read this (what happens if there’s a train strike? Or nobody turns up? Or just generally things go wrong? Or there’s 2 or 3 people that don’t get on? Or those people who are coming and don’t really know people there?), things are…you know…okay? The past year has flown by and it’s been largely okay? Unspectacular, but okay.

Travel wise there was not really a huge amount. I saw Berlin (again), Athens (again) – both of it were work related trips: WordCamp Europe for Athens, and Berlin to go a wee bit outside my comfort zone and go to a dev conference (WeAreDevelopers World Congress). Not really talked about that but was fascinating hearing Sir Tim Bernes-Lee speak. I suffered proper imposter syndrome at that conference but met some wonderful folks there. There was more internal travel within the UK. London, Blackpool, Huddersfield & my first ever trip to Cornwall were my biggish trips. I felt like I did a lot, and looking back I did.

The usual geeky haunts of Play Expo, Arcade Club for the Retro Asylum meetup were on the list, however I saw a lot of cricket. 4 times to Old Trafford (including one day for the Ashes, which I made the BBC coverage clapping Zak Crawley’s knock). That was the high standard stuff. Village wise although the summer was a bit poorer I did play a lot more games, so most weekends I was watching a game at the Earlestown Oval, sometimes even playing for Earlestown Cricket Club.

Work wise things have been a bit slow and steady, and only really picked up in the last quarter. Whisper it folks, but so far this year is looking good. The spare time has seen me work on my brand, write some blogs, and a couple of side projects – I stuck a proper shop on Retro Garden which is my basic “let’s get rid of a couple of duplicate games I’ve acquired over the years” along with trying some affiliate income. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of folks I know are building WooCommerce affiliate stores. I do wonder if that’s a trend.

I also launched All Rumble Stats which is a site dedicated to tracking every Royal Rumble over time. It’s basically been a spreadsheet I’ve kept offline and stuck online.

I’ve used KadenceWP for that which I’ve talked about here – a theme I also used on the brand new Earlestown Cricket Club website. I’ve really taken to use it in my setups.

Yes, I handle that and I am sponsorship secretary for the club as well 🙂.

Twitch Streaming has continued to be sparodic unfortunately. I’ve just struggled to find time to do it with any sort of consistency, but between Liverpool at Eurovision and a random day I met with a few of my streaming palls of Jess, Kittens, Rosie, Boo & Jans. That was a lovely couple of days that I treasured.

Moments I have treasured and will continue to treasure. Being one to try and experience more I’ve started my 50 before I’m 50 list. It’s currently 35 but hope to add more to it.

Overall, I’ve been relatively happy and in a good mood. I took 6 months (late 38-mid 39) for to look after myself, which is well worth doing. 10/10 would recommend. Between that and therapy (which is now down to a fortnightly session), my last year of my 30’s was pretty good, and been a happy time for me.

It just doesn’t make a good blog post. Soz.

And now the yearly comparison!

As you all love it so much. Here’s my updated comparison with you know who.

Rhys (With a Spoon)
Rhys (With a Spoon)
Reese Witherspoon
AgeNearly 40 (Up 1)Nearly 48 (Up 1)
Oscars
(Nominated)		0 – No Change
(0 – No Change)		0 – No Change
(2 – No Change)
Books Written1 (No Change)4 (Up 1)*
Marriages0 (No Change)2 (No Change)
Children0 (No Change)3 (No Change)
WordPress Plugins Written &
On the WordPress Repository		11 (No Change)0

* I made a mistake, turns out Reese Witherspoon has been a lot more prolific than I’ve thought.

See y’all next year!

Previous Versions: 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39

Content Creation Ramblings from an Nerdy Elder Millennial

Or: Finding out how my plugins helped out a British celebrity, and yours can too.

Content creation is a weird phrase isn’t it? It can mean anything. From a well crafted blog post, to an hour video on how the Super Mario Brothers 3 record dropped over time, to those videos that crop up every 3 or 4 videos within my TikTok “For You” page that make me embarrassed to watch them in public, to those Facebook memes your racist auntie’s shares on Facebook. Every one of those things could be classed as “Content Creation”. Invariably when I see a talking head with job title of “Content Creator” mentioned in the media by I think one of these roles.

I may sneer a bit. Largely because like other things I sneer at like Formula One or Cody Rhodes’ booking strategy post Royal Rumble 2024 (NB: I wrote this sentence before Thursday 8th February, and publish it on the 9th. Holy shit it’s box office again and consider me a fully paid up member again the Cody Rhodes train again), I don’t really understand it. I yearn for a simpler time.

Rhys laments the old internet…again

Then I’m reminded how the old internet used to be. The one I’ve talked about on this site before. How as creators in any way shape or form we’re just a few steps from connecting with people. How it was a great time.

I saw a toot from Frank Goossens about how his plugin – Autoptimize – was used on Taylor Swift’s website. Taylor Swift! A content creator I have heard of! Using WordPress! There’s hope for me yet.

I remember the brush with celebrity I’ve had using my WordPress plugins. Stacey Solomon – an X-Factor contestant who has carved out a niche as a TV presenter in the UK – used WP Email Capture for a while on her (now defunct) website. Although I’m not an X-Factor or TV junkie, I did remember at the time I thought it was quite cool.

As I’ve gotten older, having somebody invest time as opposed to money into something I’ve created, fills me with a warmth that contracted work can never do. I did lament a few weeks ago (something I talk about in my 40th blog post) about the paradox of how this blog suffers when I’m mentally in a good place. However occasionally, a great read – “Why Personal Blogging Still Rules” by Mike Grindle – will provide me the inspiration to rattle off these few 100 words, such as these.

It may be harder for us to connect off the major platforms (and – if you decide not to pay Elon Musk $7 a month – on it as well). Hopefully something: be it a plugin, an article, a silly video or a meme, made by us, can light the day up and connect a bit closer. We connect, we may drift apart, but eventually remember.

Remembering Jase

I found out a few days ago that a bloke I knew online in my mid 20’s passed away in 2016. We connected through a TF2 community that had a server that was voice only. A ridiculous server with drunken Friday nights sniping on 2Fort. Never spoke to him after I moved to Manchester in 2010. There for a season and left. I knew very little of him, but what I remember sticks with me. He was Irish, and he used to sing karaoke over the server. He introduced me to The Velvet Underground and I knew his favourite song was “I’ll be Your Mirror”. I guess the above 600-odd words are for him. How somebody who entered my life for a few months, yet changed it for a lifetime.

And I guess that’s the power of blogging, or forming communities off of walled silos. Maybe in ways you’ll make something that does for somebody else. Be it a tribute singer from Ireland, or Taylor Swift. You won’t know until you try.

Header image: “IMG_0351 (Copy)” by paisleyorguk is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

New Year, New Goals (2024 Edition)

As I started this blog post, I’m reminded of a Tweet I saw from Remkus from early November.

You see, I remember my list from last year (notice the “goal”? Same as last years goal) and thought “Oh my god, I’ve failed at this, spectacularly”. Upon reflection I…haven’t? There has been a lot of success this year. Albeit not quite in the ways I expected. Nevertheless, I’ve set out to achieve most of the goals.

So I’m beginning this year by looking at these goals and how I did.

  • Improving my Personal Branding – Success (Kinda). I spent the early part of last year rebuilding Dwi’n Rhys, posting more on Instagram and I’m happy with how things are looking now. Sadly I didn’t manage to fix WP Email Capture or Winwar Media. At the time of writing, the latter I’m aiming to do this in the Crimbo Limbo. At the time of writing this sentence I didn’t, instead dedicating myself to a game of Civilization 6.
  • Side Projects to Cover the Mortgage – Dismal Failure. Sadly two ideas I wanted to push out are ideas and didn’t really succeed beyond a bit of traffic: Buy a Fucking Aircon & Dad Joke Ipsum are out there, but to be honest the first one I’m probably going to let lapse. Dad Joke Ipsum is still getting a bit of traffic and probably just need to cover it in Adsense. I have another side project I’ve launched and it’s doing okay. Will be sharing bits about that when I can.
  • Work Less – Success 🎉. Yep! Largely managed to book most of my Friday afternoons off. Only two projects from clients ate into that time, but they were fairly big projects that I wanted to get finished. One such ate the time in December, and one in May. But overall that’s 2 months in 12, so better than my 75% goal. I did occasionally do quick bits and pieces – so I wasn’t completely absent, but this was achieved!
  • Appear on a Podcast – Success 🎉. I did appear on “…and we have an office dog” podcast. You can listen to it here.
  • Score more than 23 in a match in cricket – Failure – I did well, but I was 10 short, scoring 13 in a match.
  • Play more than 8 matches in cricket – Success 🎉 – I played 9 games in the Thursday league, and 6 matches in the Saturday league. 15 games overall (and that’s not including a couple of friendlies I played).

So overall, a 66% success rate for my goals. Not too shabby!

I got thinking of this year’s goals, and what I want to achieve in 2024. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind start to 2024 already (which is exciting/terrifying). So with that headspace in mind, here’s my goals for 2024.

Professional Goals

A photo of me from WordCamp Glasgow 2020 – my last talk I did. I also need more photos of me doing public speaking as a lot of t-shirts worn at events like this would not fly now. 😬

Get back into public speaking

Now that the majority of the pandemic is behind us (COVID is still a thing folks, please look after yourself), and events are beginning to happen again. So I’d like to get speaking. The WordPress Talks page on my freelance site will be 4 years without any new content. Now that WordPress events are opening up again, hopefully there will be an opportunity for me to speak.

There is the big goal – WordCamp Europe 2024 – but I must admit looking at the dates and my life, there’s a chance I won’t be able to attend 😢. So need to keep my options open. Hopefully will get the opportunity to get up on stage again.

I realise I use the word “hope” a fair bit. But the goal is to do one public speaking event.

Diversify my income away from web development a bit

Similarly to last year’s goal where I pay off the mortgage with side projects – 2023 was a bit of a downturn for my WordPress business, in that there wasn’t quite the level of work as previous years. I was fine, more than fine, but it wasn’t quite as strong as I would have liked.

So this got me thinking – I’ve got a couple of side projects that have a decent level of traffic (think 1k a month) and often the only things on this sites is Adsense. Which is brining in a solid if unspectacular amount. It covers the costs of being there, but could be better.

I had a lot of free time when the world was going to pot during the pandemic, and I made a lot of ideas come into fruition.

My goal is to get at least 2 months income of £30 or more not from revenue streams that exist for me (Adsense, Twitch, Plugin Sales or Web Development Work).

Rebrand Winwar Media

Winwar Media’s website is looking tired man. The site has lacked content for ages and I want to use it as a place where I can sing about some of the side projects I do. It’s the name of my company but it’s very much unloved for a long time, which – similarly to the above – gets a lot of traffic so I want to be able to direct people to the right place through it, be it my freelance stuff, my plugins, or just a few side project sites I release.

I have ideas on what I want to do, and it’s a line on my Side Project Spreadsheet Trello Board (yes, make that language make sense), but I want to be able to look on the new site with pride.

Personal Goals

As well as the professional goals, I’ve some personal goals I’d like to achieve in 2024.

WordCamp Europe 2023 lanyard, because I wasn’t in many photos from the event. But it was ace. And I was there!

Reconnect with the WordPress folk I enjoy spending time with. I’ve two events – PicnicPress and WordCamp Europe 2023, that were very dear to me as I met some people I’ve not seen for a very long time: the WordPress community. The hope is that there’s more events where I can run into them again. Granted the former I put on so hopefully put on more events next year (time willing).

Take a catch at cricket and continue my batting improvements (score 23 in a game) – my last two goals in cricket are to continue improving in the field and batting. I’d like to take a catch at some point (weirdly, nothing seems to come in my direction so I think I had two half chances last year) – but definitely get better at batting and cement my place in Earlestown’s teams.

Like last year, I’ve not got as many personal goals as professional ones, and even those feel a bit weaker and not as big as last year. What do you think? I feel they are achievable though.

The Video Games I Fell in Love With in 2023

2023 in video games was brilliant wasn’t it? Seems to have been a very strong year, with a load of franchises that have had stellar returns.

Like last year, I’ve decided to use a bit of a lull as most of us wind down for Christmas to look at the video games I played in 2023. Especially as the post Crimbo Limbo will have a bunch of sales. I think every one of these is worth a bit of your time. I’d also like to highlight last year’s list, especially as the game at number 2 and number 3 (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge & Trombone Champ), I still play. Overwatch 2? I don’t touch.

Similar ground rules as last year – It must have been released in 2023. It can be a compilation or a collection or a remake, but it need to have had it’s first release within the year of 2023. Oddly the games I expected to feature didn’t, and some that I didn’t expect to see, including number one, came out of nowhere.

But let it be known, every game below here is worth your time. I occasionally list the negatives about them but often these are outweighed with the positives. I’ve played more, but those games didn’t really grab me (with the exception of one – Portal – that I finished this year but 95% completed it a while back). Here is a full comprehensive list of games I completed on my TwitchyRhys Twitter profile.

Games I Enjoyed Playing in 2023

As always, this post highlights the games released in 2023. However there are a bunch more games that I first seriously played in 2023. Here are games from previous years I played this year.

  • The first completed game for me was a gifted game from a friend of mine (Fee). Gris (PC*) was excellent. An arty platform game that with a story about loss and grief. Gris (pronounce gree) is nice and short and just beautifully animated.
  • I was intrigued with Brutal Legend (Xbox 360*), which promised the writing of Tim Schafer mixed with the comedic chops for Jack Black. A mix of action adventure and real time strategies. It starts really strongly, but gets lost half way through. A love letter to metal, the gameplay is solid but couldn’t decide as a game what it was, and the story is okay. Will make you smile though.
  • I played my first game from the Yakuza game this year. Yakuza Kiwami (Xbox One) was a cracking introduction. A great story that I got absorbed with, and Kiryu’s fighting style that felt very “Virtual Fighter” means that I’m not going to turn my nose up at this franchise anymore. Didn’t think I’d like this franchise. I was utterly wrong.
  • Maybe my game of the year, The Case of the Golden Idol (PC*) – along with the game of the year for me – scratched the “Obra Dinn” itch. A 1800’s murder mystery game where you have to piece together a story about a Golden Idol, it’s powers, and how each person who came into contact with it had their demise. Ignore the rudimentary art style, this is a fantastic deduction game. I’m already looking forward to the sequel being released next year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s my Game of the year next year.
  • Another franchise I never dabbled in, I played Shining Force CD (Sega CD) on my fantastic little Ambernic device (seriously if you’re a retro head this is the best £150 I spent all year). And it’s brilliant. No real story but a fun turn based battle system that sees you play as the entire Shining Force. It was for a couple of months my “play for 20 minutes” game, and the Ambernic helped achieve this when travelling.
  • I’m going to talk about a game later that would have been potential Game of the Year but it didn’t nail the landing. Let’s talk about a game that really did nail the landing. I’ve never gotten on board with the 3D games of popular Nintendo Franchises however I played and completed Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64) for the first time ever. I found it occasionally a bit of a slog, but holy hell the last dungeon was brilliant. If a game is remembered by how you ended it, then I really enjoyed this. I don’t however have the nostalgia trigger for me to consider this the greatest game ever that many of my peers did. Good, excellent, and you can appreciate it, but may not be for me. It’s my Taylor Swift of video games.
  • A love letter to the early 80’s arcade games – Donut Dodo (PC) has been an inspiration for a potential project I’ve been coding on my downtime 👀. A fantastic Donkey Kong/Bomb Jack high score challenge, it’s just made with love and well worth picking up for cheap. If you do, please let me know how you get on. If you don’t, my god, listen to the soundtrack at least. It’ll get into your head.
  • FAR: Lone Sails (PC) was a interesting atmospheric platformer with driving elements. You have to pilot a steampunk train across a post apocalyptic landscape. Why? Nobody knows. Beautiful looking, though.

Honourable Mentions

There were a few games that didn’t quite make the top 3, but are well worth picking up. Here’s my honourable mentions for the list.

Like Zelda, I never really gravitated to the 3D Metroid game, but when Metroid Prime: Remastered (Nintendo Switch*) came out. I thought I’d give it a go. It was okay in all fairness. However, I felt there was far too much walking around lost, and I did end up very confused. It was okay, but not Super Metroid, nor Metroid Dread.

The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog (PC) was a wonderful find! A free release from Sega on April Fools day, this gag turned out to be a fun, tongue in cheek visual novel featuring Sega’s most famous character. Just really good, with a solid murder mystery plot, and best of all – it’s free. A bog standard PC can run it and well worth playing through over the course of two hours.

En Garde! (PC*) was on my top games for 2023 for a long time, but ultimately lost out. A fun little reactive swordfighting game with a lot of interactive elements (think Batman: Arkham games for combat style), you play as Adalia de Volador, a swashbuckling hero with a tongue as sharp as her sword, as she takes down the odious Count-Duke and rids him from her town. The game has a fun style and a wonderful sense of humour. The problem? The difficulty level ramps up heavily on the last battle which left it a sour taste in my mouth. Shame, as it’s well worth exploring.

3. Super Mario Wonder (Nintendo Switch*)

This was a surprise.

I must admit, whilst I enjoy the Super Mario 2D franchise (again, another series I don’t really enjoy in 3D), the endless stream of “New” Super Mario games got a bit tiresome, without much in the way of innovation. It was always my least favourite franchise in the Mario Maker games. Over time however, friends who’s opinions I respect kept saying “you need to play Wonder! It’s the best 2D Mario game since Super Mario World” I wasn’t sold but eventually I relented.

3 levels in, I was smiling. It took familiar Mario tropes and with the Wonder Flower powerup, turn it on it’s head.

Guiding the plumber and his friends (yes including Peach & Daisy – no more damsels in distress here!) through 6 fairly open worlds to collect the Wonder Seeds and save the Flower Kingdom from Bowser, Super Mario Wonder is brave. It does innovative things time and again and then discards them never to be seen in the game. And the music? God it sticks with you. Classic Mario tunes.

My only complaint is that it’s probably slightly too easy for my liking, but you can go through the game and miss stages and paths, so there is a fair amount of replay value.

Also it must be commended in being the first Mario game that accurately depicts what happens when you eat random mushrooms (albeit with the “Wonder Flower”, which is probably cannabis).

2. F-Zero 99 (Nintendo Switch)

This was very nearly #1.

A game franchise I felt had been abandoned for too long, and I’m sure I uttered to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if F-Zero had a battle royale racing game?”. Well Nintendo delivered with F-Zero 99.

I’ll be honest, I was hoping it would have been a new iteration of the franchise (or using F-Zero X instead), hence why it’s not my game of the year. However this has had some fun experiences. Connecting with streamers, playing in races, and just having carnage. On my Twitch channel I play a lot of Wreckfest and this is similar. A fun, pick up and play racer where you can race 5 races or 5 hours of racers. The best multiplayer racing experience on the Switch since Mario Kart 8, and come just at the end of the life of the console. It’s also a testament to the game that out of all the games here, this is the one I’m still playing.

It both respects your time and tempts you with one more go, the likes of which I haven’t felt for years. And it’s free. Please Nintendo, give us a new entry in the F-Zero franchise.

1. Chants of Sennaar (PC*)

I like games that make me feel intelligent.

I often call this my “Brits in Benidorm” simulator. Chants of Sennaar sees you play as a hooded protagonist thrust into a world full of simple puzzles. The only problem? You don’t speak a word of the language. Piecing together what is being said, eventually the language opens up to you. Only for you to then discover that the Devotees (the first race you encounter) are having a bitter dispute with the Warriors. And they have their own language, and are not speaking to each other.

As you begin to figure out each language you learn what’s important and what’s special to each race. There are differences, but there are also similarities, and eventually you become a walking Duolingo between all races which leads to a satisfying conclusion.

There are stealth mechanics (my least favourite mechanic in video games) but they are quite small and easily navigable. A beautiful game with a great soundtrack, this indie title is well worth picking up and playing through. My game of the year for 2023.

Previous Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022.