It is 2020 and there is time for…

Klax!

Hopefully barring any unexpected mishaps there’s time for this blog too – this post exists to try and help me clear away the last year’s cobwebs, underline things like I know what I’m doing, cross t’s, dot i’s, have a go at roughly planning out the year ahead, and let you know what you’re in for as well. It’s either a promise, an apology, or a warning, depending on how excited you get about weird old videogames.

By and large it’s going to be business as usual on here: I’ll write about some weird old games you’ve probably not played, take off-kilter looks at titles you already have, and try and find a flimsy excuse to spend an entire post enthusing over Resident Evil or Devil May Cry 5 again (although with Resident Evil 3‘s remake… R3make? – due next year I shouldn’t have to spend too much effort on that front), and I’ll do my best to keep to the same four posts a month minimum target I set myself and very nearly stuck to last year too. Article’s will tend to be a little longer and hopefully read a little better than last year, although there’s no doubt the odd quick update (like this one) and inexplicable typo will still manage to sneak in every now and then.

As it stands the only major change I want to make is to hopefully cover more old Japanese, Chinese, and Korean computer games in the coming year – I miss playing them and I miss sharing what I learn about them (or at the very least, some decent screenshots) with everyone. The only problem is they tend to be a huge time sink even when everything goes perfectly so that’s more of a “We’ll keep our fingers crossed and see how it goes” than a firm promise – I do want to write about them and I hope you want to read about them, but it might be a struggle to squeeze them in here without sacrificing too much of everything else.

I have also finally bitten the bullet and set up a basic Ko-fi account, same as everyone else: https://ko-fi.com/kimimi. There are two reasons for this – one personal, one practical: I thought it was past time I started sincerely valuing my own work rather than constantly apologise for it (or imagining people only read it to be polite) – to that end how much money ends up in my virtual jar is irrelevant, I am simply trying to tell myself I deserve one at all. On the practical side of things a little extra money to help the site look a touch better (I would dearly love to get rid of those adverts) and go towards obtaining ever more strange and interesting things more often is a win for all of us, no? As much as retro game prices have inflated over the past decade there are still plenty of bargains to be had when you’re on the hunt for oddball PC Engine titles and unusual DS games, so it doesn’t take a lot of money to make an enormous difference to what I can put up on here.

As much as saying “Leave a comment!” sets my teeth on edge (at least I’m not yet at the “Like, comment, and subscribe” stage) this is one instance where I’d really like you to take a moment to let me know how you feel about my not-so-radical plans for the year ahead – good or bad. If everyone’s itching to see me to finally cover a Super Famicom game or Sensible Soccer instead of rabbiting on about Saturn games or arcade brawlers then I’d rather know now when I’ve got a whole year ahead to do something about it!