August 2025
After countless weeks (or months) of scouring best of lists for all retro games worth playing, August was finally the month where I started adding those games to my backlog. I have a long way to go, but I think this was a good start. You’ll see this reflected in the huge increase to my backlog total. My time spent actually gaming, however, really took a hit as a result.
Game Acquisitions
This is about average for how many games I get per month (for this year, anyway). What’s nice though is that I didn’t spend a dime on them! They weren’t technically all free though, I did use Google Play credit and Steam wallet credit for a couple of them, but it wasn’t money out of my pocket that could’ve been spent on something outside of games so I’ll still take it! I forgot all the NSFW games were given away this month for the protest, just ignore those 😅 There were a lot of good games acquired this month, I don’t even know how to narrow it down for highlights. Banishers and Persona 5 Royal are up there, but I’m also really looking forward to Born of Bread, Elypse, Fault, Nocturnal, Prince of Persia, and Slay the Spire. So many great picks!
# of Games: 49
Total Money Spent: $0
Price/Game: $0
Game Recaps
Once again didn’t get any single-player gaming in due to the emulation stuff. I only had two gaming sessions in August, making this the least gaming I’ve gotten in for a month so far this year. It was nice playing Stranded Deep with my other friend though. It’s a fun survival game, which is a genre I’m not super familiar with. We barely left the first island, so we’re still very early. I wish we were able to play games together more often. Then of course I got more Tales of Phantasia time in. We’ve just made it to the future so I think we’re at the beginning of the end? Not sure, there’s a whole ‘nother world to explore after all. I feel like we’re making progress though. No gameplay footage of Stranded Deep as it was just a chill catching up with each other session, but here’s my playlist of Tales of Phantasia so far:
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched last month:
· Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 2 Episodes 21-26 (completed)
· Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 12 (completed)
· My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episodes 4-6 (still watching, show ended)
· Ironheart Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (completed)
· Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (completed)
· Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld Season 1 Episodes 1-3 (still watching, show ended)
· Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society
· Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 1: Ghost Pain
· Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 2: Ghost Whispers
· Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 3: Ghost Tears
· Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 4: Ghost Stands Alone
· Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Border 5: Pyrophoric Cult
· Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie
· Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
· Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
· Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
· Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
This looks like more than I usually watch, but I think that’s just because all the Ghost in the Shell made-for-TV movies were classified as movies and separated out as movies instead of listed as episodes of a TV show. There were a lot of ups and downs in August. Ironheart and Ghost in the Shell: Arise were…not great. I’ll give the highlight to the show that surprised me with how much I enjoyed it which was Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. Every review I read said it wasn’t good and you should just skip it and rewatch Stand Alone Complex instead, but I personally loved it. The 3D animation worked way better than it had any right to, and bringing back the original voice actors from Stand Alone Complex gave the performances a high level of quality. I’m excited for the new project coming next year, I know nothing about it. Harry Potter is also here! I don’t really know what to say about that property that hasn’t already been said by now. I definitely could see myself really getting into these as a teenager, maybe not so much in my 30s.
Conclusion/Upcoming
An interesting month August turned out to be. A lot of Ghost in the Shell, a lot of Harry Potter, a lot of emulation testing, not so much actual gaming though. Not great for a gaming blog 😖 It’s OK though, I’ve got a lot of gaming coming up in a few weeks though. Why is that you might be asking? Well, I’ve been doing a lot of Bing stuff lately to rack up some Microsoft rewards points and I’m very close to redeeming another three months of PC Game Pass. Game Pass is what caused the spike in my game time in May of this year and contributed to several top 10 games of both this year and last year. I looked through my wishlist and found that there are three games from there that are part of Game Pass: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. They’re all long games so I won’t be able to beat all three of them in three months, unfortunately. I might be able to get through Indiana Jones and Metaphor though. I wasn’t planning on playing Metaphor until I got through the Persona series since it’s kind of a culmination of all their work on those games, but it’s not technically connected and is very highly rated, so I think it will be OK to go ahead and play it. Even getting through those two games will be a tall order in three months, I’ll have to manage my time more effectively. Maybe I forgo the video recording and editing for these games? Let me know what you think.
Since I’ll be focusing on playing these two games, my emulation project will be put on hold. At the current pace I’m earning rewards points, I’ll probably be starting up Indiana Jones in a couple weeks or so. That means I won’t be getting back to emulation stuff until Christmastime! That’s OK though, my blog and I could probably use the break even if I don’t want to admit it. I’m looking forward to actually playing some video games again, I hope you’re excited to read about them. Thanks for sticking with me, I’ll see you guys next week!
Backlog total: 3,505 (+173!)
