This is Australia

In recent news, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia will now be including video game for preservation, thus acknowledging nearly forty years of Australian-made contributions to video game history.

Source 

Personally this has been a long time coming. As indicated above, forty years is a long time and it is a relief that it is being acknowledged and preserved.
After all, there is more to Australian-made gaming history than Fruit Ninja.

The Galaxy is calling me

Some musings on the proposed GoG Galaxy 2.0:

So CD Projekt are preparing for the newest incarnation of their gaming platform, GoG Galaxy, with the tasty carrot that it will aim to accommodate every game the player has under one umbrella. This will include those on other gaming clients (ie Steam, Epic, PSN and XBLA).

No way around it: This is an incredibly ambitious undertaking. One wouldn't think its possible but clearly CD Projekt think otherwise. The unusual nature of this relies on the participation of other gaming clients - and it's a strange concept to collaborate with the competition.

One question: Considering that CD Projekt have built a business out of retro games, will there room to add games from defunct consoles (eg SNES, PS1)?
I know Raptr had such a thing going - and it was indeed welcome to see an entire game collection in one place - but it always seemed to me that Raptr resented people not playing current games. I know this because I sent a message regarding a fault, regarding an older game, to one of the mods and their reply definitely gave off such a vibe. And to include obsolete console games - even if, say, they were to added manually - does indeed fit with GoG's modus operandi.

Still, the idea of having one's gaming collection arranged in an accessible format is too good to resist. It's what got me interested in Raptr and, hopefully, it's something that GoG will carry onward. 

7-Up

So this dropped:

Original video located here. Accessed 13th September 2019

Not much i can say really: Lot's of fast based action, quips being sprouted and explosions. But I guess it's expected from SqueeEnix at this point.

But what I will say is Aerith looks astonishing. She is clearly the highlight of the video and firm reminder that the City of the Ancients is going to be a kick to the balls.

Hard Drive's Night

In saddening news, my game-dedicated Hard Drive retired.

Of course it shouldn't come to a surprise that I would have a hard drive dedicated solely to games. It was over a Terabyte in size, it was christened Game Chest after my old box of games, and it held all my games, all the clients, all the mods and other bits & pieces.

But like all electronics, the Game Chest had a life span and, after six years of capable service, it was retired. And in it's place comes a new Terabyte Drive - thus making it mrk 5.

It's always an annoyance when a hard drive gives out and you have to recover everything - only to reinstall it all on the successor. But hey, it's something we, as gamers, all signed up for.

Twenty years of Dream

Today is the day that the Sega Dreamcast celebrates it twentieth anniversary. 

Even now, people are saying positive words about it and, believe it or not, games are still being released for it. That’s quite an achievement given how limited the life of any gaming console tends to be.

It would appear that history has been somewhat kinder to the Dreamcast, especially when compared to Sega’s ‘consoles that aren’t the Genesis/Megadrive’. One would think that was the product of a company that had learnt from their mistakes and doing everything in their power to deliver a winner of a product. Equally likely is that the Dreamcast pioneered many of the features that are now commonplace in recent consoles. But perhaps the most likely reason is that it had a short-lived lifespan that was only ended by Sega pulling out of the hardware race. And as the saying goes, Nothing helps a cause like the blood of a martyr – one need only ask John F Kennedy, James Dean and Firefly. 

I still have my Dreamcast and I am unwilling to part with it. And it would seem that that is the consensus with people who still have their Dreamcast: It was a great console and certainly worthy of more than being reduced to a footnote in gaming history. This, coupled with the martyr status, is reason enough why people hang onto their Dreamcast, why they still use it and why some people have gone out of their way to continue to release games for it even when the console long ceased being in production. And if those factors still matter then it’s safe to say that the Dreamcast is ultimately a far cry from a failure. 

So here’s the twenty years of the Dreamcast. It may have been a last roll of the dice for Sega but what a way to go out.