Hello and welcome to “It’s My Life“. This ain’t a blog for the broken-hearted.

Back in the early 1980s my parents entered into, and won, a competition. To this day the only time this happened that I’m aware of, despite many more competition attempts being submitted.

The prize? The newly rebranded Atari 2600 (previously the Atari Video Computer System). A chronically and often seriously unwell child (a story for another time), I spent a great deal of my early years in hospital, a hospital which as luck would have it, had been donated an older model Atari VCS, later upgraded to the more slimline ‘Atari 2600 Jr’ though by that point I no longer required hospital treatment and could play my very own Atari 2600!

Anyone familiar with the Glasgow of the 80’s and 90’s will be familiar with ‘The Barras’ an hybrid open air/ under cover market situated on the eastern side of the city centre. A unique blend of 100% legal market traders, actual shops, antique dealers, cafes and of course, everything illegal you could possibly think of, if you knew where to look and/ or who to ask. Every few months my dad would take me to the Barras Market, both so he could stock up on tobacco and so that we could look for Atari 2600 cartridges. I don’t think he knew how much it meant to me that we did this. Given that he’s no longer with us, he never will. RIP Dad.

I still have *an* Atari 2600. It’s not the original I had back then, that’s long gone, I also still have a load of cartridges. I also still have *a* Commodore C64 and many more cassettes for it than cartridges for the Atari. Both power up and have loaded anything I’ve tried to load however given their age, both are one less than perfect power up away from silicon heaven. I’ll retain that degree of plausible ignorance. I’d like to say it was because I had an epiphany and meticulously collected and kept in pristine condition all the retro gaming things in order to have a video game collection worth millions but the less exciting truth is that my grandparents were big car boot fans and at least once per visit, of which there could be several in any given year, in the late 80s/ early 90s, we would end up going to at least one car boot sale where Atari cartridges and/ or Commodore 64 cassettes could be picked up in large quantities for very little cost, so long you didn’t mind the lack of original packaging. Luckily the same car boot sales also had a similarly large quantity of music cassettes cases and what I believe were 8 track album storage boxes which were surprisingly good for keeping otherwise unprotected video game cartridges safe and secure.

With patience, eBay is (or can be) a decent source of the same and you’ll, increasingly less often, find that bulk lots of cartridges/ cassettes can be gathered for surprisingly little cost, if you are willing to accept that you may end up with only a few working titles and zero packaging/ manuals/ etc.

The next obvious solution is emulation. We could argue back and forth over the legalities of emulation but my philosophy is simply IF I own the original title, in its original physical format, I see no compelling argument why I should not be able to play that same title in a digital format via emulation if that’s more convenient.

One absolute boon is the fact that many of these titles are now legitimately available through platforms such as Steam meaning there’s no legal argument whatsoever, I own* a legal version of the game in its release format, which I can play on my computer with no need for emulation or moral quandary.

A few years ago I formed a gaming group called “Gamers Without Shoes”, if you look hard enough, remnants of this group can still be found online. Whether I opt to do the same in future is not yet decided. What I do plan on though, is to play and hopefully capture video of said play, even more hopefully with others.

I’m a retro gamer, and proud of it.

If you made it this far, consider leaving a comment. Constructive feedback is always welcome and it needn’t be positive. Don’t like something? Let me know. If you’re looking for more of my ramblings, a more in depth argument, or just want to berate me in a more public setting, consider joining the Infinite Realities Discord server where you can engage with members of the community and follow the general happenings. Alternatively, engage with the community on the subreddit.

With 100% complete sincerity, I don’t care what you think of me, I can’t do a damn thing about that. None of us are getting out of this alive and, like Frankie says, I’m doing it my way.

See you tomorrow?
Chris

Hello and welcome to “It’s My Life“. This ain’t a blog for the broken-hearted.

For many years I would start a project and then another, and another, and another, and… you get the idea. Each project was started with the best of intentions and sincere belief that this was the trigger point where I’d actively maintain the latest project AND retroactively flash out the old projects, bringing them up to standard. To a small degree this did work as described. Virtually ALL the projects have received some form of update or polish. Unfortunately most did not receive enough attention that this was immediately apparent.

For the first time in many, many years, I have the majority of my fragmented documents, files, and random scribblings, together in one (well, a handful of) place(s). The level of duplication is unpleasing but it’s manageable, and it’s coming down in scale. Which brings me on to the point.

I will endeavour to update at least one of the projects daily. Whether this is a blog post or some additional content being added, or really anything which is verifiable. A major edit to a previously published piece of content which increases the quality being a good example. Honestly, my reader count is so low, this will be a total insignificance. It will however be a recorded insignificance.

If you made it this far, consider leaving a comment. Constructive feedback is always welcome and it needn’t be positive. Don’t like something? Let me know. If you’re looking for more of my ramblings, a more in depth argument, or just want to berate me in a more public setting, consider joining the Infinite Realities Discord server where you can engage with members of the community and follow the general happenings. Alternatively, engage with the community on the subreddit.

With 100% complete sincerity, I don’t care what you think of me, I can’t do a damn thing about that. None of us are getting out of this alive and, like Frankie says, I’m doing it my way.

See you tomorrow?
Chris

Hello and welcome to “It’s My Life“. This ain’t a blog for the broken-hearted.

Oh, the weather outside was frightful, but the Wii is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go, let’s play Mario Kart!

This child remembered there is a Wii sat under the living room TV, which is the only use for the living room TV these days. Following the discovery that the second Wii controller no longer actually functions, a series of single player Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games attempts were made. The child insisted we watch every last second of gameplay and cutscene while she played but couldn’t skip through my World Record breaking (and headache inducing) triumph at the 100M fast enough.

After becoming bored with the virtual Olympics, though at one point she seemed to develop a genuine hatred for Bowser and wondered if her Épée would eventually break if she ‘just kept hitting him with it’, her attention turned to the only other game which was available, Mario Kart. Other games are in an unremembered box in a barely remembered cupboard and were not being looked for so early into the newly found Wii-interest.

After deciding that Donkey Kong (whom she called King Kong and would not be corrected) was the only viable racer and that I should simply watch her play she;

– Decided that every penguin on an Arctic track was called “Steve” and that she hated “Steve”, going out of her way to run into them any chance she got.
– Questioned why Toad’s name is “Toad” rather than “Mushroom Boy” because “he’s not a frog”.
– Would come to a dead stop after every power up collection until she determined what it was and then immediately use it regardless.
– Turned left for no good reason when the track either went straight or to the right.
– Drove into the water (or a hole) with an amazing frequency.
– Stopped mid race challenging the other drivers to a fight as they drove passed.
– Insisted that driving the wrong way would confuse the other drivers and cause them to eventually follow her lead, allowing her to ‘win easily’.
– Refused to accept that I knew what ‘SNES Ghost Valley 2’ was and that I had driven the same track more than 30 years ago because ‘Mario wasn’t a thing that long ago’.
– Demanded to know why she had no points when she was ‘obviously the best driver’. She actually had 6 but those 6 were accumulated through perhaps 12 unrelated races.

I may have missed a couple but still, a bit of screen time never did me any harm…

If you made it this far, consider leaving a comment. Constructive feedback is always welcome and it needn’t be positive. Don’t like something? Let me know. If you’re looking for more of my ramblings, a more in depth argument, or just want to berate me in a more public setting, consider joining the Infinite Realities Discord server where you can engage with members of the community and follow the general happenings. Alternatively, engage with the community on the subreddit.

With 100% complete sincerity, I don’t care what you think of me, I can’t do a damn thing about that. None of us are getting out of this alive and, like Frankie says, Let It Snow, but also, I’m doing it my way.

See you tomorrow?
Chris

Hello and welcome to “It’s My Life“. This ain’t a blog for the broken-hearted.

It was officially NOT a white Christmas, it was also officially NOT a white Hogmanay. It WAS however a white weekend. As promised I took the child to a local park and, may have impressed myself with my consistent aim with a series of snowballs at a relative small target, a consistency which I am happy to confirm remained even as she was actively running away.

If you made it this far, consider leaving a comment. Constructive feedback is always welcome and it needn’t be positive. Don’t like something? Let me know. If you’re looking for more of my ramblings, a more in depth argument, or just want to berate me in a more public setting, consider joining the Infinite Realities Discord server where you can engage with members of the community and follow the general happenings. Alternatively, engage with the community on the subreddit.

With 100% complete sincerity, I don’t care what you think of me, I can’t do a damn thing about that. None of us are getting out of this alive and, like Frankie says, I’m doing it my way.

See you tomorrow?
Chris

Hello and welcome to the debut of “It’s My Life“. This ain’t a blog for the broken-hearted.

An irregular blog series where I journal my thoughts, document my encounters, and generally vent, with a gentle smattering of pop culture references. Real names of others will be obfuscated to protect the innocent, locations will be generalised, there will be no body count*.

This initial post post is likely to be considerably longer than the norm, firstly to allow me to set expectations and secondly, simply so that I do not burn myself out and/ or apply undue pressure to perform.

It was late-2019, I made a passing comment about 2020 being synonymous with ‘perfect vision’ and vowed to end the bad habits, embrace clean healthy living and do my bit to ensure I was around to witness my child, hereafter known as ‘the child’ grow up. Then, well then 2020 hit and wasn’t that a pretty awful year for us all? Almost 4 years on and I for one, am not yet back on an even footing.

A few days ago, a childhood friend replied to a post on social media, a post which was not directed to me, about me, or which he would have any expectations I would see. His name is not important, nor is the content of the post, and neither will be shared. His profile picture though, contained text which read “I am who I am. Your approval isn’t needed”. For whatever reason that resonated with me and, long story short, here we are.

“What are the 300 reasons?!” I hear you cry. Well, I recently hit an unfortunate milestone, am starting to feel the effects of said milestone, and don’t like it. Change is required.

If you made it this far, consider leaving a comment. Constructive feedback is always welcome and it needn’t be positive. Don’t like something? Let me know. If you’re looking for more of my ramblings, a more in depth argument, or just want to berate me in a more public setting, consider joining the Infinite Realities Discord server where you can engage with members of the community and follow the general happenings.

If you made it this far, consider leaving a comment. Constructive feedback is always welcome and it needn’t be positive. Don’t like something? Let me know. If you’re looking for more of my ramblings, a more in depth argument, or just want to berate me in a more public setting, consider joining the Infinite Realities Discord server where you can engage with members of the community and follow the general happenings. Alternatively, engage with the community on the subreddit.

With 100% complete sincerity, I don’t care what you think of me, I can’t do a damn thing about that. None of us are getting out of this alive and, like Frankie says, I’m doing it my way.

See you tomorrow?
Chris