Gaming History 101

A warm hello to my readers, this post and ideally those that follow each week is an opportunity to connect about my personal life, upcoming plans, and best yet to interact with you on a regular basis. These posts will be candid and honest because without that, there’s really no purpose for me to keep this blog going. Anyway, with the formals out of the way, let’s kick it off.

Personal Updates
I want to re-address the elephant in the room: why did I leave the VGP podcast? I decided that in 2025, I would begin to simplify my life because I was struggling with my current state. This included removing many things that I didn’t feel I could consistently participate in, which sadly included the podcast. There was no animosity between Rob and myself – and if there had been we are the type of hosts that would openly tell the audience – but I didn’t want to keep up with the tasks required to keep the podcast going. I also largely stepped away from social media, specifically Twitter (it will never be X to me), because there was a lot of base negativity going on there and I felt it was a toxic environment. I moved over to BlueSky, but at the risk of a mild political comment – and I will always strive to be apolitical – it has become somewhat of an echo chamber for the far left. I’ve been open with my feelings that I do not want politics in my gaming social media, so I left one extreme for the other and it’s been deflating. I think I’ll continue to use both platforms for alerting of posts (currently working on an automated Twitter solution), but I wouldn’t expect much participation beyond that. Discord is probably the best platform for me, but I didn’t think the GH101 server had enough members to feel “social,” if that makes sense. That Discord server, and it’s current state, were solely my fault, so I did purge it to the dismay of the great and loyal folks that still frequented it.

I also quit drinking alcohol, which is a big change in my life. I had no personal or legal reasons for doing this – I didn’t lose a job, get in trouble, have health issues, or even get asked by someone in my life to stop – I did this because I kept finding reasons not to drink and couldn’t find good reasons to continue to drink. If your midlife crisis alarm is going off, that’s because it’s working correctly. That said, I always liked the feeling of the relaxing buzz that a few drinks brought me just before settling into a movie, game session, or wrapping up a long day. I’m finding other ways to relax, all of which are proving effective, but it’s a shift to meditate, exercise more regularly, or eat comfort food instead of a few drinks.

Gaming History 101
Then there’s this blog. Traffic is all over the place and I have no idea why. My initial Cyberpunk, Sonic, and Resident Evil 4 Remake posts did way more traffic than expected, hundreds to over a thousand views, but then my news post and Phantom Liberty posts barely got to 10 views. It also takes me a long time to write these posts, at least an hour in addition to editing, and I sometimes feel I don’t get all the points across that I want. Dare I say, but perhaps an hour long weekly solo podcast may be better suited? While that may have triggered some readers, I’m not kidding, I am having these thoughts. The type of discussions I want to have about games didn’t really seem to vibe well with the formula of VGP. Despite the posts you’ve been seeing, I’m primarily into bouncing all over the place, mostly with older games, and I don’t want to discuss live games, new games, or my personal life much. I’m not ready to commit to anything, but if I were to switch gears and start a new solo show for this purpose, it’ll be in the RetroActive podcast feed since it’s right there and ready to receive new shows. I’m not ready to jump to that, but I do think it’s an option worth considering and I’m open to feedback.

On that same note, what about the Gaming History 101 podcast getting a feed for those who want to listen to the archive? I have the eps on the Internet Archive, but that format isn’t really “feed” ready to plug into a podcast player. Perhaps moving the show to a feed on Spotify (since it’s free) would be worthwhile? Let me know if you’re interested and I can look into that move, but if I don’t hear anything back I will assume everyone who cares has preferred ways to extract and play these already.

I’ve also got posts planned to talk about a myriad of items I’ve been playing with in the last month and haven’t had the time to post about (hence the interest in maybe speeding this process through a weekly solo show). I’ve been playing with the PS5 PSP emulator and games long forgotten like Resistance: Retribution and Killzone: Liberation, and I’d like to discuss my thoughts on both the emulator and those titles. I’ve been replaying Castlevania X: Rondo of Blood after finishing Season 2 of the Castlevania: Nocturne anime on Netflix. I dove into Ninja Gaiden: Black via back compat on the Series X and have some thoughts about it, difficulty, and hopefully eventually getting into the recently released Ninja Gaiden II: Black. I’m stepping away from Magic the Gathering: Arena for reasons everyone’s heard before. I’m dabbling in more PC Engine CD games, continuing the work of ChonCD, but only for personal interest as opposed to making YouTube videos. I’ve also started testing out multiple versions of games – think of the “Version” video series I’ve done – but these days focusing on gameplay and feel over aesthetics and content. Finally I’ve been playing around with new retro hardware toys like the Ninten-Drawer for the NES, the Summer Cart 64 flash cart for N64, the newest updates to the Saroo flash cart on Saturn and MemCardPro 2 on PS2, and of course some Mister enhancements. If I sat down and wrote all these posts, it would be at least 10 of them, each taking an hour, and at my current cadence over a month’s work. On the other hand, I think I could catch up within a few hour long podcast episodes and maintain my interests weekly from then on. I genuinely thought writing this blog would be the fastest and most effective method, but I’m now seeing that for my eclectic interests coupled with jumping games on a whim, I was mistaken.

As I wrap this update, I want to make one final courteous request based on something that has been happening for a while now. Please do not be hurtful or malicious when reaching out to anyone who makes content on the Internet. I know that when people like me, who begin a habit of regular content, suddenly change their mind or end things that it is frustrating. The world is in a negative and frustrating place right now and the last thing anyone needs is a disruption of the things we enjoy. That said, no one has any right to demand or attack a content creator for any decisions they make, especially when the content is completely free. I go to massive efforts to make shows, videos, and posts only to have someone out of the blue attack me for it and that feeling sucks. To be clear, I’m not talking about a thumbs down or a negative comment, I feel both of those are necessary parts of the discussion between creator and audience. I’m talking about viscous inappropriate statements, hammering comment areas, endless emails, and overall harassment. Thankfully I employed methods to handle and largely ignore these items long ago, so when they began happening recently, I didn’t even notice because my automated processes handled them without my involvement. I did decide to look into the behavior and it just sucked. Whatever reasoning these actor(s) have is not justified, despite what they may think. I’m sure the feelings are valid, but the reaction is not. After more than 15 years doing this, I’m used to it and it honestly doesn’t bother me much, aside from regularly wondering if I should just fade away from an Internet presence altogether. I’m more concerned about younger or less confident content creators who do excellent work and then leave because of what ultimately amounts to people acting like entitled brats. The enjoyment for the many is wiped out by the actions of the few. Again, this has nothing to do with why I stopped doing VGP or my recent decisions, but it is something I noticed that was both disheartening and frustrating.