Weekly Update #28: Finally Gamed a Little

July 6-12, 2025

As the title says, I finally got to play a little more Tales of Phantasia this week. It had been over three weeks since I played anything 😭 I also had a decent acquisition week, and more emulation cataloging as usual.

Game Acquisitions

As I alluded to in my last post, I finally sprang for the July Humble Choice, mainly for Rogue Trader and Cat Quest III. Rogue Trader looks like a great XCOM-like which I’m a sucker for. I also already had the first two Cat Quest games so I figured I might as well complete the trilogy. I was able to trade a couple of the games from Choice away on Reddit for Astral Ascent and Miasma Chronicles, not a bad trade. I also ALSO bought the Fanatical Platinum Collection bundle for July. I was going to get five games for $15, but after securing Astral Ascent in the Reddit trade, I lowered it down to the three for $10 tier. Athenian Rhapsody and Terra Memoria look so good!

# of Games: 13

Total Money Spent: $10.04

Price/Game: $0.77

Game Recaps

It’s not a ton of time spent, but at least it’s something. We officially fought in the Valhalla War this time, and it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. We breezed through it pretty quick and took out the general leading the attack. There was even a couple animated cutscenes sprinkled in there! Afterwards, we made our way to Dhaos’ castle to face the big bad guy himself which is where we left off. Not bad for less than three hours! You can see my let’s play of it here: 

 

 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 1 Episodes 7-14 (still watching, show ended)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episode 1 (still watching, show ended)

·       Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Ghost in the Shell continues to be a pretty good anime. It’s not as incredible as I imagined it was going to be in my head, but I had unrealistic expectations. I just feel like it’s been a while since I watched anime, so I was really looking forward to this. It’s still good though, and I recommend it to anime fans. My friend and I also continued our My Little Pony watch. Only one episode this time, but I still enjoyed it. And I’m going to finally be watching all the Harry Potter movies over the next couple months. I’ve only seen the first three and never read any of the books so I definitely wouldn’t call myself a fan. I’m more curious than anything, especially since my sister is a huge fan herself. I’m looking forward to it!

Conclusion/Upcoming

Not a bad little week if I do say so myself. It’s been a little while since I was able to have decent game acquisition and recap sections. I’m still enjoying Tales of Phantasia quite a bit. It helps that we’re probably overleveled and steamrolling everything. I’m nervous about the Dhaos fight though, I heard it’s one of the hardest fights in the game. It’ll definitely be a test of our skills!

On the emulation front, I can officially say that I’ve now cataloged everything I plan to play on Nintendo consoles! That’s a pretty big milestone if I do say so myself. I decided I wanted to finally play real Pokémon games instead of just Pokémon Go, Snap, and Stadium. I’ve made a play order collection for those if you want to check it out. I also finished up the 3DO and TurboGrafx systems as well, and surprisingly even managed to add quite a few of those to my list. I never even really heard of these systems so I figured the whole thing would be a wash. I should’ve known better after I cataloged the N-Gage though. Now I only have Sega consoles left! Another hole in my gaming history, I’ve never even touched a Sega console. My brother had a Game Gear for a short time, but I never played anything on it.

As for my plans for this week, it’s not going to be much. There won’t be any gaming, I’m going to be going over to my friend’s house this time. I’ll be watching more Ghost in the Shell and continuing my Harry Potter “marathon” with Chamber of Secrets. Besides that, I’ll just keep plugging away at the emulation cataloging as usual. The only consoles I have left are the Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, CD, and Dreamcast. I say only, but it’s probably gonna take all month to get through them 😅 I’ll finish this eventually, I swear! Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read all of this if you did. See you next week!

Backlog total: 3,321 (+13)

Weekly Update #27: Still More Emulation Cataloging

June 29 - July 5, 2025

Slower week than I expected given the three-day weekend. My friend and I hung out this week but didn’t get around to Phantasia. I’ve been too tired from work with the beginning of the fiscal year and all to get much done afterwards so I only managed to get a couple consoles cataloged. More on that in the conclusion section below.

Game Acquisitions

A small selection right now, but I am currently eyeing the July Humble Choice mainly for Rogue Trader and Cat Quest III. I’m also currently looking at Fanatical’s Platinum Collection - Build your own Bundle (July 2025). I’m waiting for a Reddit trade confirmation before jumping in so stay tuned on that. I did pay a dollar for Kaze and the Wild Masks in another Fanatical bundle which seems like a good price for that game. The others were freebies as usual.

# of Games: 4

Total Money Spent: $1.06

Price/Game: $0.27

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Tales from the Loop Season 1 Episodes 4-8 (complete)

·       Family Guy Season 23 Episode 16 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (still watching, show ended)

·       Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

I enjoyed Tales from the Loop all the way through. A few plots throughout the season were incorporated into the finale which was nice. It never really dove into what the Loop is or does which was a bummer. I suppose that wasn’t really the point of it all though and just a maguffin for all the weird goings-on for the show. I guess that’s good enough for me. I also watched the second Ghost in the Shell movie and started diving into the show. I’m still very early in the show so I can’t really say anything there yet. The movie was very good. The visuals were even better than the first one. They really went over the top here; I think it rivals any anime that comes out today. This is high praise considering the movie is OVER 20 YEARS OLD. Crazy. It did do the establishing shot thing from the first movie again. I know it was probably just to show off how beautiful the movie is, but it just felt like padding to me. There was an air of pretentiousness with the characters quoting philosophical sayings at each other, and the main character from the first movie didn’t show up until the very end which was disappointing. Other than those minor gripes though, I still had a very good time.

Conclusion/Upcoming

So yeah, not a lot going on this week unfortunately. I was looking forward to Tales of Phantasia, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve played anything. That’s OK though, it gave me that much more time to continue the emulation cataloging. I mentioned in my last post that I had the Sega Saturn, original Game Boy, the NES, and the 3DO coming up. I managed to finish up the Saturn and it seems I was correct. There do appear to be quite a few hidden gems on that system. I finished up the Game Boy too. I added more games from there than I expected. I’m working on the NES now which I thought I was going to have finished already. Slowly but surely. Along with diving into Ghost in the Shell, cataloging will continue to be my main focus for this week. Sorry for the short update, one of these days I’ll get back to gaming for something more substantial. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,308 (+4)

Monthly Update #6: Halfway Already?

June 2025

Another month has come and gone already. And we’re halfway through 2025 already! Where is the time going? I’ve got a mix of June, Q2, and YTD stats in this one so buckle up!

Game Acquisitions

Interesting mix of acquisitions this month, from old delisted PC games to Steam family purchases to Humble Choice and everything in-between. I got all of these for next to nothing too. I’m convinced gaming is one of the cheapest hobbies you can get into. The amount of time I can get out of these versus how much I spent on them is just insane.

# of Games: 38

Total Money Spent: $4.23

Price/Game: $0.11

Game Recaps

Only played Tales of Phantasia this month so only one playlist to link to. The last of these videos from June will be going up through July 4^th as I’m finally almost caught up from my Game Pass binge back in May. No solo gaming this month but that’s OK, everything is better with friends! In the game this month, among other things, we made pacts with the Four Great Spirits and their leader, met the racist elves, and witnessed the beginning of a great war whose conclusion is no longer set in stone due to altering past events. Exciting stuff! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched last month:

·       Star Wars: Andor Season 2 Episodes 11-12 (complete)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 2 Episodes 5-7 (still watching, show ended)

·       The Last of Us Season 2 Episodes 1-7 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Family Guy Season 23 Episode 15 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 Episodes 1-9 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Tales from the Loop Season 1 Episodes 1-5 (still watching, show ended)

·       Mickey 17

·       The Boondock Saints

·       11:14

·       Ghost in the Shell

This was a solid month for TV shows. Of course, it helps that I’m a big fan of Star Wars, Marvel, The Last of Us, and sci-fi in general. I’d say the movies were a slight step down in quality from the TV shows but still enjoyable nonetheless. As much as I enjoyed season 2 of The Last of Us and am enjoying Tales from the Loop, I think I have to give my favorite to Daredevil this month. Like I mentioned in my weekly post a couple days ago, it really feels like a seamless continuation of the Netflix show. I can’t wait to see how it develops in season 2.

YTD Stats

I can’t believe we’re halfway through the year already. But that means more fun stats! At first I was just going to include quarter 2 but decided seeing year-to-date would be more interesting. Once again, since I wanted the weeks to run Sunday-Saturday, the weekly graphs will encompass 12/29/24-6/28/25.

Q2

YTD

  

  

Starting with the Q2 pie chart, I see that Tales of Phantasia makes up the biggest slice by far. This isn’t to surprising to me because I haven’t been doing a lot of single-player gaming lately. If it weren’t for my two-week Game Pass trial, it would’ve been the only thing on there. That means like 60% of my total gaming time for the quarter took place over two weeks! I really need to finish up this Playnite and emulation setup business and get back to gaming on a more regular basis. Expanding out to the whole year, Tales of Phantasia is still really big but doesn’t even come close to Final Profit. I spent A TON of time on that game, and loved it a lot. Definitely my favorite game of the year so far. Torment: Tides of Numenera, my “current” single-player game that I haven’t touched since March, still manages to hold third longest playthrough of the year. I really need to get back to that.

Moving on to the hours played graphs, I see June is my lightest month to date which is not surprising. Besides some Tales of Phantasia co-op, I didn’t get around to playing anything else. You can once again see the huge playtime bump Game Pass gave me in May which helped rocket it up to my busiest month so far. Now if only I could get back to something like February on a regular basis. You can see that same bump in the line chart too. Those really were my busiest weeks of the year by far. All the 0 hour weeks don’t feel great though.

Last but not least, my money spent to games acquired graphs. How much have I set myself back so far? Surprisingly, not that much at all. Halfway through the year and I’ve spent $114.28 on games so far. If I was buying full priced titles, this would be less than two AAA games purchased. Thanks to a combination of a ton of free games and indie bundles, I was able to get 301 games for this much. That’s a crazy amount of games, probably too much if I’m being honest. My backlog will never go down. There’s a slight correlation between how much I spend and how many games I get but it’s not that strong. You can see in week 10 that I spent very little money but got a ton of games (thanks to an itch.io charity bundle) and conversely in week 20 I spent a decent chunk of money and didn’t get as many games for it (thanks to a couple mid-tier Fanatical bundles). Very interesting! At least I think so.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Woo, that was a lot of stats. So many stats! Am I the only person who enjoys this stuff? Probably. Anyway, I don’t want to dive too deep into the emulation stuff here since I put that in the weekly posts. Just know that it’s been going slow and steady. July will hopefully see the end of all the research of games I want to play. After that, I’ll work on acquiring them and setting up all the emulators in Playnite to make sure they work. It’s sad to say that there’s once again a good chance I don’t get any solo gaming in again this month which is a shame. Maybe in August I’ll finally have everything set up? We’ll see. Expect more Tales of Phantasia though! I’ll also be dedicating almost all my watch time to Ghost in the Shell. Between the various films and anime series’, it will take more than the month to get through. Just need to finish up a couple shows first. Thanks for reading GCTuba’s stats corner 🤪 Catch you all next time!

Backlog total: 3,304 (+37)