Monthly Update #8: Finally Beginning Emulation Testing

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!)

Weekly Update #35: The Origins of Metroidvania

August 24-30, 2025

As you may be able to tell from the title, I tested out a bunch of Castlevania and Metroid games this week. I’ll get into that in the emulation section of game acquisitions.

Game Acquisitions

Mostly giveaways and Steam Family purchases as usual, but I did decide to spend some Steam wallet funds on Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. I already own Max Payne 1-3, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, and Control (with Alan Wake II in my wishlist), so I figured I might as well complete the set. It was only 96 cents after tax, and I have over $30 of Steam credit from selling trading cards, so I figured it was probably worth it. Afterplace looks like an interesting experience as well, I’m curious to see how that one plays.

# of Games: 8

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

I’ve played a few metroidvania games over the years, and I’ve enjoyed most of them. I came to the realization that I’ve never actually played the origin of the genre, that being Metroid and Castlevania. I was already planning on playing the Metroid Prime trilogy, and Epic gave away the Castlevania Anniversary Collection a while back. I decided to broaden my horizons and add all the major games from both franchises to my list to really experience them. I’m really excited about the Metroid games, but I’m more hesitant about Castlevania. The 3D games I tested out seemed fine, but the 2D ones were proving to be quite challenging. The Dracula X Chronicles in particular was proving to be a hassle. There are a couple games included in this package, and I found out that you have to play through a couple stages of Rondo of Blood and do a specific thing in Stage 2 to unlock a special Stage 3, then get a certain powerup in that stage to find a secret collectible to unlock Symphony of the Night. I was having a hell of a time getting through Stage 2 and 3’ to unlock the other game and made liberal use of save states to do so. I imagine this will be a common experience for me as I make my way through this series.

Apart from exploring the origins of metroidvanias, you can see that I also added the Breath of Fire JRPG quintology. I went back and forth on which ones from this series I should include. A lot of people say to skip 1, 2, and Dragon Quarter, remarking that 3 and 4 are the only ones worth playing. I was also debating if I should add Breath of Fire IV since it’s technically available on PC and my general rule is to not emulate anything where the best version can be purchased and played natively on PC. I decided to add 1 and II since I found some fan-made QOL improvements which should allow me to experience the origins of the series for myself. I ended up adding IV when I found out that the version available on GOG is censored, so I wouldn’t get the full experience if I purchased it through there. Dragon Quarter has a mixed reception, but some people love it, and the roguelike nature of the game seems like it could be interesting. As a result, I decided to add the whole series.

I’ve got a couple other random standalone games tested and added to my backlog as well. I’ve heard great things about 13 Sentinels and was surprised to hear it never got a PC release. Conversely, I’ve literally never heard of Heavenly Sword before, but it looks like an OK PS3 launch title if nothing else.

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Ironheart Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (completed)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episode 6 (still watching, show ended)

·       Eyes of Wakanda Season 1 Episodes 1-2 (still watching, show ended)

·       Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Not much to say about this week. Ironheart was a mediocre Marvel TV show, an increasingly common occurrence unfortunately. My Little Pony was alright, but this episode was just setup for the final season. Eyes of Wakanda seems like a neat miniseries that I’ll probably forget about shortly after finishing it. Harry Potter, as the name implies, was only part one of a two-part finale. Was this the movie that kickstarted a bunch of franchises splitting their final part in two for no reason? I hate it when companies do that nowadays. The movie itself was fine, but it very much felt like half a story.

Conclusion/Upcoming

This was a bit of an odd week. I was hoping to get some Tales of Phantasia in, but no dice. That’s two hangouts in a row without playing ☹ We were just too busy with other stuff I guess. For some reason, I feel like I didn’t get a lot of emulation testing in either, but that might be because most of it was spent on just three franchises. There’s a lot of games in those franchises though, so I still got a lot done. Metroid: Other M in particular took forever to get working, since I had to figure out how to emulate a bunch of motion controls with my Xbox controller. That’s always a pain to pull off. The emulation list is very slowly going down. I was at 418 with my previous update and am sitting at 413 now. Like I mentioned in the last update, it didn’t go down much since a lot of series were being tested instead of individual games. That might change this week though. I have quite a few individual games or short series to get through before my next big series, that being the colossal Pokémon franchise. That will probably take at least a whole week just on its own, I have 26 games in my play order collection for that one 😅

My plan for this week will be similar to most recent weeks. I’ve got the other two episodes of Eyes of Wakanda to watch, which will likely be done the day I post this. After that, I can finally get to Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld which will be another quick watch at six third-length episodes. After that will be Raised by Wolves while I wait for Alien: Earth and Futurama Season 10 to finish airing next month. Once Eyes of Wakanda is done, I don’t really have any pressing shows I’m looking forward to in the near term. Raised by Wolves will get me through the week though, so I’ll cross that bridge in the next update maybe. I’ll also be watching the final Harry Potter movie on Friday so that I can finally cross that franchise off my list. Will I get to any Tales of Phantasia this week? Only time will tell. I do have an exciting update for gaming though that I haven’t alluded to yet. I’ll bring it up in my monthly post for August which should be up tomorrow. Have I piqued your interest 👀? See you all tomorrow!

Backlog total: 3,501 (+27)