Well, I think it’s time for another update, don’t you? I’ve been doing a good pace lately, even if the backlog stuff in the queue has mostly stayed untouched since last time, except for one big thing….
Steam-Free!
As of when I’m drafting this, every game in the Steam portion of the SFG review queue is caught up with. I still have two Idea Factory games in my Steam category about the Review Queue, and will have to go to dig in the emails for if I asked for them or not to review, (and I didn’t just buy em/was given them without being told I had to cover em) but as it stands now everything from before now is fully covered and caught up with. I’m pretty much more free to cover newer, smaller stuff on steam as a result and have been very picky about keymailer acceptances as a result. With Xbox pretty much caught up as well for the older stuff, (recent platformer port Jubilee got covered yesterday, unless I got sidetracked by life again) that just puts us mostly where we were last time, with Switch/PS4 being the big main focuses.
You know what though? I think I’m gonna go forth and focus more on Switch again. Sincere apologies for the PS4 delays and such, but with those games being far bigger sans Omensight, I think it’s worth my time moreso to just knock out the Switch stuff first: some of those games are pretty old now too, and a lot of them are shorter. I’m on good pace with the games I mentioned last update, and outside of two big Switch RPG related games I got in lately, (both of which I took notes on already, one of which is nearly finished for the review process, and the other I’m grinding to hit by the end of the month pre-launch) nothing is really slowing me down here.
If I go between PS4 and Switch like I tried to many times in the past, I’ll just get choice paralysis again, and I don’t want that. Not to mention to be blunt, reviews were pretty much the only time I fire up my PS4 in general, so I’m just gonna dedicate it to a small window I can sub to PS Plus for cloud storage, and then marathon away at that queue. Still, I’ve done lots more writing lately and my mental health has been way better post-birthday than it has any right to be, so I’m pretty happy and hopeful for more queue progress to be done soon, especially with two systems down. Being able to throw on a newer smaller indie/retro reissue game to the queue now and then for steam/Xbox also helps to keep me from just covering older stuff.
I also, as a way of figuring out how to order the queue and what I want to cover, decided what the final thing in my old review queue will be; the last game I’ll review before being done with all that backlog will be The House in Fata Morgana. I dabbled in this a bit at launch, and the size of the game far surpassed what I expected. This will be a long binge and with how much of a reputation it has, I want to do it justice. Thus, I feel that making it my final game in my review queue will lead to no skimping, missing out or any sort of lost details. Just me, and the game, and hopefully its engagement factor (because if it’s somehow on the tier of Shiba Inu, i’m abandoning the ship)
Enjoy the queue of old stuff while it lasts, once I’m all caught up I’ll likely go on break and just focus on smaller games as I dive into the Evercade cartridges after I return. I need a break to focus on my retro gaming backlog. There’s also the exciting aspect of….
Major Interview II?!?!
Now I can’t promise anything, but… Fans of the Shinichiro Tomie interview may want to perk their ears up and pray with me. After two years of searching, I got a lead and a contact with a certain someone I mentioned before on this site, and a chance to interview them. I still have no clue if my translator is usually available, if the person in question is open to an interview, or if they even want to talk about what I hope for them to.
But if they do and it all works out, I might have something on the same level, if a bit lesser than the Tomie interview in terms of scale. I also plan on some more smaller interviews for the year, but this big one was honestly way quicker than I expected it to have taken, so I’m hoping I can nail this. If so, I think I’ll be happy with it and it’ll make fans of a certain company (and those pondering about a certain SNES prototype’s localization plans, and no, it’s not Torneko) happy. I will not be doing a video companion to it though; the last one on Tomie was far, far too taxing hasn’t picked up speed in a way I liked yet.
Future Events…?
Also not fully confirmed, but I am aiming to go to a rather big gaming event soon. It’s one I wanted to for a while and stuff lined up so I might be able to go, so by next month I’ll know for sure. If I do, I’ll mention it in my update post, and what I plan to do about the SFG website in that regard. Maybe i’ll land interviews there or meet new people? Cons are always a good place to connect…
Well, that’s all for now. I’m off to prep for that Jubilee review (to post before this goes live hopefully) and then River City Girls 2! Once that domino is down, I should have a few more smaller things to tackle as I work on that queue. Damn, nearly five years since the loss that triggered it all. Maybe next month I should make a tribute to that friend I lost and miss so dearly, though I don’t want it to come across as an excuse or a corny post for why I’m so damn late on a lot of these things. Then again, I’ve been fine expressing grief before here.