Weekly Update #40: Trading in Phantasia

September 28-October 4, 2025

No, no, not trading in the game, trading IN the game. Glad I could clear that up for you.

Game Acquisitions

Another big purchase here with Star Wars: Outlaws as mentioned in my September monthly post. I know it didn’t have a very warm reception, but I’m a diehard Star Wars fan and it looks fun to me. Very light week otherwise for acquisitions.

# of Games: 4

Total Money Spent: $17.82

Price/Game: $4.46

I might be the only person who looked at Rygar: The Legendary Adventure for the PS2 and went “that looks cool, but I’ll have to play the original game for the NES first.” My series completion mindset knows no bounds it seems. It actually seemed like it wasn’t a bad game, just notoriously difficult as games tended to be back then. It’s OK, I have save states and rewind to help me through it. I’ve also got the entirety of the Shadow Hearts and Valkyrie Profile games tested and ready to go. I’ve never heard of Shadow Hearts before, but Valkyrie Profile has a solid reputation. I also got all the Pokémon games downloaded for the upcoming testing for that series. I’m planning on playing all the games from my play order collection for that one, and it’ll be a doozy for sure. I’ve never actually played a mainline Pokémon game before. I only dabbled in Stadium minigames and am still an avid Pokémon Go player. I’m excited to see what the actual series is all about.

It's official, I had to stitch two pictures from Playnite to get them all to fit. That marks over 200 games tested so far! And I'm only just getting started it seems 😅 

Game Recaps

I actually got two Phantasia sessions in, one co-op and one solo. This won’t be a habit though; I just wanted to clean up some shopping stuff without my co-op partner sitting there doing nothing. Despite the increased play time, we didn’t accomplish too much. It was mostly exploring the couple of towns we hadn’t been to yet (namely Early, the Twilit Town) that we probably weren’t supposed to go to. We also got lost in the Treant Forest for a while, but at least now we know where we’re supposed to go next after we finish up the volcano area. Check out the playthrough! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Marvel Zombies Season 1 Episodes 3-4 (complete)

·       Alien: Earth Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (still watching, show ongoing)

·       Happy Gilmore 2

A light week for acquisitions and a light week for TV too it seems. What did I even do last week? Anyway, shows and movies were just OK this week, not bad but not great. Zombies ended on a cliffhanger which may never be resolved, Alien: Earth seems alright so far but nothing outstanding (how dare they kill a cat though, that’s always unforgivable), and Happy Gilmore 2 was so filled with references that it didn’t feel like it wanted to be its own movie. Hopefully this week is better.

Conclusion/Upcoming

As I feared, Game Pass and Microsoft Rewards went through a total revamp last week. Now you can’t redeem for Game Pass directly and the exchange rate is way worse because not only did the price go up but now you can only redeem for Xbox gift cards which has a way worse exchange rate. I don’t think it’s possible to earn enough points to keep the subscription going indefinitely anymore, it seems they closed as many loopholes as they possibly could. I did manage to redeem four months’ worth before the switch though. Still haven’t gotten around to redeeming it though, just continuing the emulation testing in the meantime. I was at 369 lines left in my file last week and am sitting at 361 now. Next up is the Pokémon collection though which is only one line and will likely take over a week to test on its own, so it won’t look like I’ve made any progress. I am planning on toiling around in the background though.

This week will consist of finishing up Alien: Earth and at least starting Futurama. If I manage to finish both of those, I’ll move on to one of my obscure anime I’ve had sitting on my PC for a while. The next movie coming up is Pitch Black, the start of the Chronicles of Riddick franchise. I watched it like a decade ago, but it’ll be nice to get a refresher before diving into the series proper. Dunno if I’m getting more Tales of Phantasia time in, I certainly hope so. If not this week, then definitely next week while I’m off for the holiday. That’s all for now, thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,629 (+23)

Monthly Update #9: Three-Fourths of the Way Done

September 2025

I can’t believe we’re already 3/4^ths of the way through the year already. That means I’ve kept this weekly blog thing going for nine whole months! It also means I’ve got some more quarterly stats for you all. Fun times!

Game Acquisitions

About the average number of acquisitions for me, with my highest monthly spend as you’ll see in my YTD graphs below. This is also my first month where the amount of money spent exceeded the number of games acquired. I hope that doesn’t become a trend. My Steam family picked up quite a few games as well that I can now play for free. Alan Wake II and Star Wars Outlaws were the big purchases, but I’m super excited for Hades as well. Those are my highlights for September.

# of Games: 41

Total Money Spent: $59.71

Price/Game: $1.46

The emulation testing continues to churn. A lot of progress made here, but there are still hundreds more games to get through. If it weren’t for my co-op partner and my upcoming Game Pass subscription, I wouldn’t be getting any game time in. Still, there’s a ton of awesome games here, and I will finish up the testing eventually. I just might need a break from this for a while. Expedition 33 is calling my name.

Game Recaps

Only one game played in September with Tales of Phantasia. I haven’t played a single-player game since May. Hopefully I will fix that soon with Game Pass. We put several hours into Phantasia and made tons of progress. We finally made it out of the past and into the future, meeting up with our old companion from the beginning of the game along the way. We also now have flying machines that let us travel anywhere in the world and have managed to defeat the Fenrir Beast to get the first piece we need to unlock the final dungeon. Check out the playlist of our playthrough! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched last month:

·       Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld Season 1 Episodes 4-6 (complete)

·       Raised by Wolves Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 8 (complete)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 4 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Pokémon Concierge Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete)

·       LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy Season 2 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Marvel’s Zombies Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

·       Jurassic World Rebirth

·       Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

·       Happy Gilmore

A lot of shows completed last month, and I didn’t dislike any of them. Going purely by enjoyment, Pokémon Concierge was absolutely my favorite watch. It was just so adorable! I haven’t watched a Pokémon show since I was a kid, and it was nice seeing them in a relaxing setting instead of battling. Just a nice slice-of-life anime, highly recommend. I can’t believe the Harry Potter finale was in September, it feels like forever ago.

YTD Stats

Back again with my year-to-date stats now that we’ve finished up the third quarter. Please note that the weekly graphs reflect the time period 12/29/24-09/27/25. Let’s start with the hours played per week and month graphs.

As you can see, I’m still having weeks where I don’t play anything (isn’t adulting fun!?), but at least my gaming in September was higher than the past few months. I’m up to 157 hours and 25 minutes of gaming this year, which is definitely on the low side if you check my HLTB completions. Next up are the money spent vs. games acquired graphs. Please note that my emulated games are not reflected here so the actual number of backlog additions is much higher.

September was another “big” spend month for me, with Alan Wake II Deluxe and Star Wars Outlaws making up 60% of that total. Still a paltry amount of money to spend on a hobby in my opinion. So far this year, I’ve now spent $194.79 on games and gotten 430 total games out of it. Crazy value there. I’m glad I’m able to see these stats now and convince myself that I’m not overspending on games. That was one of my primary goals of starting this blog and now I know! Now I can work on not sweating my game purchases too much.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Three quarters down, only one more to go to finish up the year. This blog has been quite a journey so far, and it is way more work than I was expecting. I’m not sure if I’m getting enough fulfillment and engagement to keep it going after my annual top 10 post at the end of the year, it’s just taking up a lot of time that could be spent gaming. Maybe I could reduce the frequency to just once a month and/or cutting back on some sections. Let me know what you think.

Coming up in October, I’m planning on watching Alien: Earth, Futurama, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, and Gen V for TV shows. That should get me through the month. If not, I’ve got a couple shows on the backburner I can get to. I really hope Splinter Cell: Deathwatch leads to a new game at some point; it’s been 12 years since the last one. Get on it Ubisoft! For movies, I’ve got Happy Gilmore 2 and the Chronicles of Riddick series. I might sneak in a horror movie for Halloween too, we’ll see. Gaming wise, more Tales of Phantasia is coming up. We probably won’t beat the game in October so I’m not looking further ahead than that. If I decide to redeem Game Pass, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be my next single-player game. I want to play it so badly! That’s all for now, thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,612 (+107) <- That’s the emulation testing kicking in right there.

Weekly Update #39: Just Emulating

September 21-27, 2025

Didn’t get to Tales of Phantasia this week but made a decent amount of progress with emulation testing. This will be a shorter update as a result.

Game Acquisitions

I made another purchase this week, it was Fanatical’s cheapest bundle offering of 5/$3. I technically got six games since one of them was a dual pack so a really good value overall. Little Witch in the Woods was yet another Steam family purchase along with Arcade Spirits (they’ve been buying a lot lately!) and it looks super cute. The rest were giveaways as usual.

# of Games: 10

Total Money Spent: $3

Price/Game: $0.30

I had a very productive testing weekend. A lot of JRPG series here. Before my emulation research I had never heard of any of these except Dark Cloud and Parasite Eve and now I’m really looking forward to games like Arc the Lad and Jeanne d’Arc. I was enjoying Jade Cocoon 2 also while testing, may have gotten carried away by putting over an hour into it 😅

This is officially the furthest zoom level in Playnite. I may need to start stitching pictures together soon. Almost at 200 games tested! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Pokémon Concierge Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episodes 3-4 (complete)

·       LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy Season 2 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Marvel’s Zombies Season 1 Episode 1 (still watching, show ended)

·       Happy Gilmore

A lot of short series this week, and a movie rewatch with Happy Gilmore. I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since I was a teenager though, so it’s been quite a while. Pokémon Concierge was absolutely adorable, and I encourage any Pokémon fan to go out and watch it. LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy Season 2 was basically more “Fun Cameos: The Show” which was fine but not a lot of substance there. Still funny at times so a mild recommendation for Star Wars fans. My Little Pony: Make Your Mark officially marks (😜) the end of the 3D portion of the show, now I only have the 2D portion Tell Your Tale left. It was abruptly canceled but the fans dug up the rest of the episodes ranging from mostly done to animatics only, so it’ll be a weird ending. The “finale” (episode 3) was alright, although it still doesn’t hold a candle to Friendship is Magic. The “Christmas special” (episode 4) introduced a new setting and villain which I happen to know will be a reoccurring character in Tell Your Tale. We’ll see if she ends up being more compelling than an evil alicorn.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Another slow week this week, just slowly whittling away at this emulation thing. I was at 382 lines and am sitting at 369 now. I did end up redeeming four months of PC Game Pass, but they came as codes that don’t expire until a year from now or later so no rush there. There are rumors that the ability to redeem Game Pass directly with Microsoft Rewards points is going away at the end of the month in favor of just buying Xbox gift cards which will make everything more expensive. As a result, I decided to cash in the points I accumulated just in case. Hopefully this doesn’t derail my plans just as I started getting in the groove of earning points. I think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be my first game on the platform; I really don’t want to miss that before it leaves the service.

Plans for next week will include more short shows and the Happy Gilmore sequel. I’ve got Alien: Earth, Futurama, and Marvel’s Zombies coming up next which will probably take more than a week to get through. On the gaming front, it’s probably going to be the usual with possible Phantasia and more emulation stuff. Now that I’ve got the Game Pass codes ready to go, it is making me want to actually start playing games again. I might bite the bullet sometime soon. Anyway, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,606 (+32)

Weekly Update #38: A Cold Day in Phantasia

September 14-20, 2025

Another pretty slow week for me. I got some more Tales of Phantasia time in, but minimal emulation testing due to discovering texture packs. More on that below.

Game Acquisitions

This is the least number of new games I’ve gotten in quite a while. No purchases and only a few giveaways. It’s nice that I have the whole FATE series through Prime freebies now. Hades is obviously the big standout here, I’m super excited to try that game out. I was thinking about buying it myself, but a Steam family member bought it instead.

# of Games: 5

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

Like I said, not a lot of testing got done this week. I discovered that there are passionate communities filled with people who mod games that run through emulators. I already knew ROM hacks were a thing, but I didn’t know that you could improve the graphics of emulated games through the use of texture packs. I spent several hours researching which emulators support them and downloaded a few. They take up so much space, I had to move some of my other files to an external drive. I finished retesting all the games I already tested after applying these packs, then started on new games where I’ll be able to test both them and their mod/texture packs simultaneously. As you can see, I didn’t make a ton of progress on that front. I decided to make testing any game I found a texture pack for a priority. I find it interesting how some console emulators support texture packs while others don’t. Why can the NES and N64 use them but not the SNES? Why can the Xbox 360 emulator support mods while the OG Xbox emulator can’t? So many questions. 

Game Recaps

Another week, another Tales of Phantasia session in. It was shorter than the last one, but we still got a lot done. We made it to the end of the ice cave and fought the Fenrir Beast. A super tough fight and the only one so far to take us three attempts. We did it though, then managed to make our way to the Ninja Village to recruit the last party member Suzu. This involved going back to Euclid to fight in the arena again until we met Suzu’s parents and took them out since they’re being mind controlled by Dhaos. Check out our playthrough! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Raised by Wolves Season 2 Episodes 2-8 (complete)

·       Ghostbusters Frozen Empire

A slow week on the TV front too. Raised by Wolves was an interesting sci-fi show. VERY heavy religious undertones in the second season to complement the battle between the atheists and Sol worshippers. I think this is a show worth watching if you don’t mind the smaller scope and minimal worldbuilding. I feel like it could have benefitted from having its ideas fleshed out more, but I still enjoyed it. It felt like things were leading up to a third season and many questions were left unanswered, but the show was canceled so there’s minimal resolution unfortunately. Ghostbusters Frozen Empire was much better than the reviews led me to believe. I really liked it, even though it feels like Bill Murray really doesn’t want to be doing it anymore. The design for the big bad ghost was cool too, and I liked how one of the characters was a ghost that was just a normal person who conversed with one of the main cast. It was a refreshing change of pace from the over-the-top cartoony design of most of the ghosts.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Still no news on the Game Pass front. I’m still accumulating points daily and am very slowly assembling a spreadsheet of all the games I’m interested in from the catalog. After that’s done, I’m not sure how I want to tackle the list. Maybe I’ll go for third-party games in my wishlist first, then go from highest rated to lowest (the opposite of my usual approach) since there’s a chance the games will leave before I get to them. Microsoft published games are permanent on the service though so no rush there. That means Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is on the far back burner. I really want to play Expedition 33 so I may move that to the top of the list, who knows. So many possibilities!

For this week, I’m gonna watch a couple of new shows after finishing Raised by Wolves. Pokémon Concierge, Lego Star Wars Rebuild the Galaxy Season 2, and Futurama season 10 are on my shortlist which are all fairly quick watches. Alien: Earth is wrapping up this week as well so maybe it will finally be time to jump into that. On the gaming front, no plans other than Tales of Phantasia and emulation stuff. I had 399 lines left in my emulation text file and am at 382 now. I think we’re getting close to the end of Phantasia. We’re collecting the pieces needed to unlock the final dungeon, although there is still a ton of side content we haven’t done. Anyway, that’s enough for now. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,574 (+12)

Weekly Update #37: The Future Sucks

September 7-13, 2025

The title is a reference to Tales of Phantasia; I’m not trying to make some profound statement about the state of the world or anything. ANYWAY, typical week this week. I bought some more games, played a little Tales, and did some more emulation testing. Let’s get into it!

Game Acquisitions

Discounty Digimon World were Steam family purchases, Picklock and Reverse Crawl were Reddit trades, Subterrain was an Amazon freebie, and Fallout Equestria: Remains was a Steam freebie. The other 10 games were part of the Build Your Own Killer Bundle on Fanatical. Only $1 each, not bad! I’m especially looking forward to Chernobylite finally hitting this price point, but Aura of Worlds, Everholm, Soda Crisis, The Black Grimoire, and The Signifier could be hidden gems as well. The Black Grimoire is advertised as being like a single-player RuneScape, which is dangerous for someone who lost six years of their life to that game as a kid.

# of Games: 16

Total Money Spent: $9.99

Price/Game: $0.62

Like I mentioned last week, some of these are part of the Sega Genesis Classics Collection which has been delisted from sale. A pleasant surprise as that means I didn’t have to download and test them individually. I’m not sure how I’m feeling about Sin and Punishment. It’s a rail shooter which is not a genre I’m super familiar with, and the N64 game frankly controls like ass. I played through the tutorial and immediately set it to easy afterward when testing the first level. Here’s hoping that’ll be enough to get through it. Besides those, there’s a lot of classic RPGs here which I’m really looking forward to.

Game Recaps

Another almost three-hour Phantasia session! We spent over half of it just talking to people in Alvanista and Freezekiel much to the dismay of my co-op partner. Look, sometimes RPGs have a lot of talking instead of a lot of combat, alright? We spent the other part of the session in the ice caves below Fenrir Church. We decided to do it the hard way by forgoing fire charms and just having Minty heal us every few seconds. We finally made it to a save point, which is hopefully near the end but man, this has been a rough dungeon so far. The enemies aren’t even that hard, it’s just the winding layout and cold damage. I’m not sure if we’re going to go to the volcanic place next or knock out some side stuff. We’ll see! I really want to get the secret party member in the ninja village. Check out our playthrough! 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Raised by Wolves Season 1 Episode 5-Season 2 Episode 1 (still watching, show ended)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 4 Episodes 1-2 (still watching, show ended)

·       Jurassic World Rebirth

Raised by Wolves is pretty good, although I’m not totally loving the multitude of flashbacks and the direction some of the characters are going. The premise is cool, but everything seems so small in scale, and everything takes place in one little area. It opened up in season 2 so we’ll see if that improves it. I accidentally screwed up the My Little Pony viewing order last week. Generation 5 consisted of the movie which acts as the pilot, the 3D show Make Your Mark, and the 2D show Tell Your Tale. It’s all the same continuity and sometimes both shows play off of each other (more specifically Tell Your Tale seems to reference Make Your Mark at times). I accidentally watched the Tell Your Tale episode that recaps the Make Your Mark finale which I haven’t seen yet. Oh well, not like the show is too deep anyway. It’s a shame it got canceled so abruptly while they were still producing and airing the episodes. This didn’t get nearly the love Friendship is Magic got. Hopefully the generation premiering next year is more cohesive. I thought Jurassic World was done, but I guess they make too much money no matter how bad they are. I’ve seen all of them, so I felt obligated to watch this one. It was definitely one of the movies of all time. Entirely skippable, but not the worst thing in the world if you love dinosaurs.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Another update on the Game Pass front. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m earning enough points to keep the subscription going indefinitely assuming they don’t raise the redemption price again or reduce the number of points you can earn daily. As a result, I’m feeling more confident about getting to play everything in the catalog that I’m interested in unless it leaves the service. I’m very slowly cataloging all the games I’m interested in playing there, then will perhaps attempt redeeming when I’ve finished with that. Could be a couple weeks, could be a couple months. In the meantime, I’ll continue plugging away at the emulation project. Speaking of, I was at 399 lines left in my text file at my last update and am sitting at 388 now.

For this week, the plan is business as usual. I likely won’t finish Raised by Wolves so that will be my main TV focus. After the “masterpiece” that was Jurassic World Rebirth, I’m planning on watching another poorly reviewed sequel with Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. Another example of a series where I’ve watched all the other movies, so I feel obligated to watch this one. Wish me luck! On the gaming front, there might be more Tales of Phantasia but other than that, just more emulation testing. I’m getting close to the Pokémon series 👀 Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,562 (+31)