Hello everyone! Thank you so much for being patient these past two months; I hoped to have more time to focus on getting some reviews knocked out during the hiatus, but near the end of it I decided to just double down on the whole “hey, you’re supposed to be on break” aspect, and focus more on the hyper local efforts I wanted to partake in for my elections. And as you can probably tell from the nationwide results, they went well here in Iowa too, even if the main race I was rooting for the most fell short. (More on that whole experience/my thoughts on the past 2 years of personal growth later in the year; I have a big reflection article planned, to pile onto the other opinion pieces I have a lot of plans for)
Anyhow, I figured I’d instead just cut to the chase with a simpler, post-hiatus announcement, describing all the aspects I want to focus on now that we’re back… We’re so back!
Unfinished Business
Originally, I had planned to sprinkle some shorter reviews during the hiatus to make it so the site wasn’t completely devoid of content the past two months, but as you can tell from a simple look at the SFG homepage, that didn’t happen.
The biggest reason was honestly the simple one; I didn’t feel like doing it. I still took my notes on a bunch of things, but outside of Thunder Hoop Collection and the SN Operator (which were short, easy things to knock out), I decided to abstain on writing to have more time for focusing on my IRL day activities and needed volunteering or meetings to attend. Some days I’d go from work to my meetings or whatnot, and wouldn’t even have much time to do *anything* besides those and straight to bed. It was a lot to say the least.
I also figured that, well… this was meant to be a break, after all. If I’m still diverting some time to crunch out a review on top of all that, I’m not much on a hiatus at all, and Moreno just adding extra pressure to myself that I do not need, and said efforts being more suitable for my local community stuff I did want to focus on. As a result, the queue remained basically frozen, and the only game that got added during the hiatus still on the queue, is Vixen 357. That should be done this month, and as a typical Ratalaika reissue, so I shouldn’t have much trouble getting that knocked out. So with that aside, how about catching up on the old queue?
While I’m thankful to finally wind back down and get to focusing again on my writing, I will still hesitate from giving exact ETAs or sequencing for my upcoming reviews, considering how many times I’ve burnt myself from that over and over in the past. So I’ll just note that we’ll have a mix of some queue stuff (including one very overdue game), and some non-queue, but retro reissue games (think Rainbow Islands CS) thrown in a nice mix. I aim to get at least one review a week done as I’m easing back in to not burn out, but if I can knock out another, I’d be glad to do so.
Opinion Articles on Ice, kinda
For Opinion pieces, I’m not dating any of em, outside of the fact that yes, my end of year multi day roundup is coming back (where the final four days of the year, I do Reflections, Dissapointments, Best Games, and Future Predictions, going over the year in review and my guesses on what’s coming next). I had to completely scrap an impressions on the Sept Direct due to my hiatus, but I am not icing my usual end of year countdown stuff, and I already have been taking notes for those four pieces.
I already noted the big reflection article at the top of this article, and yep, that’s a thing I really do want to get done and get right in the process; So much so I’m willing to push aside any of my overdue opinion articles in the making if it just means I ensure that would drop in November. Fingers crossed.
Yes, I am still planning a Switch 2 Backwards Compatibility article, but i’m punting that to 2027 because I do not want to crunch myself to death again like I did with LRG Part 3. I also had to massively scale back the article, since if I covered everything from Switch 2 launch to now, I’d never get it done. So the primary focus will be that first year of Switch 2 BC, with a brief look at things in the current day. I made so many notes, I might as well make something from them, even if I can no way make this “Definitive” by any means.
I also am drafting something for the Physical Gaming news that came out of Sony this summer, and honestly with each week and month that passes the more a useful datapoint comes out to bolster my arguments on the inevitability of this moment; people might not like me for this one or what I say the solution to ensure a digital future isn’t ridden in misery will be, (hint; you gotta care about local politics) but I think it’ll make for a pretty good read, coming from someone who’s seen sales numbers of Limprint companies and has gotten a bit of inside baseball about physical gaming due to well, the multi-year arc I had to endure over Limprints. What you will not get is a blind defense of corporations, sorry.
And lastly, in terms of opinion pieces in the front of my brain I want to get done soonish, I really do need to make an article ripping into a certain rising threat in the retro gaming space, and get a bit rambling about how a lot of a certain demographic of gamer sure is willing to let the worst kind of actors into the retro gaming space, and who are easily swayed by crappy bread and circus actions. Funnily enough, the post-midterms reality further made clear several points I had in a skeleton of this piece, and I feel it’ll be the article I’ll be smacking people over the head with, especially if this bad actor keeps trying to expand and prey on nostalgia to fund heinous shit. Either way, consider these outside of the end of year stuff to be all TBD, and done when they’re done.
Conclusion/Thank You
Ultimately, I genuinely just want to thank my readers, PR peers, and fellow supporters of SFG. I really don’t like taking outright breaks from the website, and have already ended up in a bad void of a huge backlog of Legacy Queue stuff before, but my upcoming piece on the whole “getting locally involved for democracy” thing should hopefully illustrate why I felt compelled to do such involvement to the point of dropping the site for two months and getting a nice break in the process. The site still did pretty decently traffic wise even with nothing on the website, and I thank my readers for making that possible.
While I can’t promise a fast ramp up to activity again, I am at least confident enough in being able to get back to covering the retro adjacent stuff I truly cherish here. Let’s get busy!