Also finished (for now): Oblivion Remastered After doing the main quest of The Shivering Isles, Albertus the mage has retired from adventuring. He didn't feel like helping (or killing) more residents of The Realm of Madness and couldn't wait to get out of there and go back to Cyrodill. Once there,…

Finished Space Quest I: Hero of Xenon I did it! I finished Space Quest I without having to go back to the beginning to pick something up again. After the last session where I had to go back and pick up the knife to open the grate, I progressed through the enemy spaceship until the end. I loved…

More random addition: big box Shannara, Wacky Wheels cd-rom, Towers of Midnight & Witches Abroad Shannara is a fantasy book series that I've never read. I've also never played the point-and-click-adventure game they made about it. But it's a Legend game and seeing as I have a couple of other games…

Moved my MiSTer from Mini-ITX to Amiga 1200 I keep changing my mind about what to do with my Amiga 1200 case. Now I've gone and put my MiSTer in. After I bought an Atlantis board to put it in a Mini-ITX case, I tried to make a clean solution to put a Raspberry Pi in the case. But even with the…

Space Quest frustrations: “I forgot to pick it up” In my second session playing Space Quest 1 I was a lot less enthusiastic about the game than when I started out. Even though the constant deaths makes me feel like I'm playing Dragon's Lair, or better yet Space Ace (although I've never played that…

Random additions: Commandos, Windows 98, The Stand on VHS and Cd’s Some random additions. Amongst them Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty. I see this game being offered every so often and I knew that I would buy it someday, and now was the time. I loved the original Commandos game and I've never…

Playing Pjusk on the Amiga 500 The awesome IndieRetroNews posted about a game that's right up my alley: Pjusk, a puzzle game from Zooperdan for the Amiga. I quickly bought it to have an excuse to power up my Amiga 500. It reminds me a bit of Worthy, a game that together with Shadow Switcher for…

Starting out with Space Quest I Wandering around The Shivering Isles got a bit boring and also the living room tv with the PS5 wasn't available, so I decided to start an entirely different game: Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter. A game first released 40 years ago in 1986 and thus twice as old…

Reached the Horizon Just a short message to remind my future self that my son and I finished the World Tour of Horizon Chase 2. We've only completed 40% of the game, but I don't think we'll do much more. We found the first game more enjoyable. We both agreed that the game felt a bit unfair. The…

A flat Oblivion to accompany the small Oblivion because there’s no big box Oblivion The Elder Scrolls is a nice series to collect for. There are all sorts of different variants of the games. Arena has a regular and a Deluxe Edition, Daggerfall has at least 10 editions (see them at…

Wel, it’s Groundhog Day… again So for this year I bought the VHS tape to watch it properly on my new old VHS player on the Sony Trinitron. Groundhog Day is one of the greatest movies ever. Everyday for the last ten years or so I wake up with the same song that Phil wakes up with. Unlike in the…

Oblivion Remastered bugging me out is driving me insane Continuing on from my last adventures in Oblivion Remastered led me through a number of quests for the mages guild, a Daedric quest and the main quest. One of the mages guild quests nicely tied in with advancing through the ranks because it…

Adding a little bit of horror to the big box games collection with Amber: Journeys Beyond Amber: Journeys Beyond is a game from 1996, the era where big box pc games were largely empty and Amber is no exception. There's only the jewel case with the little square manual that fits inside that. The…

Where's the Manual? From the July 1996 issue of PC GAMES.

Chasing the horizon again Two years ago, I played Horizon Chase Turbo together with my son. Over the past two years, he has continued to play it periodically with his friend. The sequel Horizon Chase II has been out for a while now. And while I read the reviews stating that it's not the better…

Reading those in-game Oblivion books on actual paper Playing video games is great and it's my favorite hobby. I cannot spend enough time playing games.* But it does involve an awful lot of time staring at a screen and that's not something my ageing eyes can always appreciate. It's good to take…

Oblivion might be Remastered but it’s still delightfully weird I'm having fun in Oblivion Remastered and haven't noticed many bugs or glitches so far. Only one person who was sleeping in mid air three meters from has bed and halfway through his door. And falling leaves that leave weird graphical…

Chip’s Challenge Although I already have a loose copy of Chip's Challenge for the Atari Lynx, as well as the game in the Atari Lynx Collection for Evercade, I also bought a complete in box copy. Because it's one of the few Atari Lynx games that I enjoy playing, albeit more on the Evercade than on…

Comfort food with Oblivion Remastered Oblivion Remastered sure does look beautiful at times. Seeing the Imperial City through the trees remains exciting. Just wandering around and listening to the sublime music makes me feel at ease. Almost everything looks so much better and the gameplay…

Finished Foolish Mortals! With fireworks of course After my last post about playing Foolish Mortals it took two more sessions to finish the game. I wanted to write about my progress in between, but I rather continued playing than write about it. I needed to do two major things to complete the…

A lot of re-reading for 2026 A few books I intent to re-read the coming months: The Gathering Storm, which almost completes the Wheel of Time series. Three more hardcover Discworld novels and the third book in the Dune series. That's a lot of reading still to do. I'll start with Children of Dune.…

Doing fun stuff in Foolish Mortals, like belowsing a chicken Sixteen hours into Foolish Mortals and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. I've progressed to the point where I need to discover the fate of the Bellmore Brothers and the game opens up more and more rooms and spaces. What makes me enjoy the…

Less was more in 2025 Another year has almost gone. In 2025, my games collection grew less than in the previous years and that's a good thing because space is getting really tight in the gamesroom. And looking back at them, I haven't even played maybe a quarter of them. Also there were a lot of…

It’s a point-and-click and it has a mansion, Foolish Mortals must be good After playing an rpg and an action-adventure it's high-time for a point-and-click adventure game. And that game is Foolish Mortals. Browsing through all the goodies of the gorgeous big box edition, I was totally hyped to…

That’s it for Tears of the Kingdom I finished Tears of the Kingdom last night and loved the ending. I had to try the final fight for five times before I got to the second round. The fight became easier the further I got and that's a good thing. The last part was glorious and just the thing to end…

PoE II CE: The second part of my Christmas gift arrived Pillars of Eternity I was only the first part of my Christmas gift, because I also got Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire in the same purchase from the same seller. I knew it wasn't combined shipping as that would be too convenient for buyers…

It’s already 2026 with the Zzap! Annual 2026 Another year, another Zzap! Annual. And because of the success of the campaign, I also got a Crash Annual and two other lovely little books. Enough to read in my vacation. A look back at C64 gaming in 2025. So why is it the annual 2026?

Pillars of Eternity under the Christmas tree Every year at Christmas I treat myself with a tech present or some other nerdy thing. We do give each other gifts with the family, but they're not gamers or techies and the gifts we give each other are usually not as niche as I like to treat myself…

Let’s test that muscle memory with the latest addition: Rick Dangerous Rick Dangerous is a game that I have fond memories of from my teens. I played it on my Amiga and remember completing it just like it's sequel Rick Dangerous II. Although it's not among my favorite platformers from that era,…

Adding 3 trillion tracks to my racing games collection with Lotus III My racing games collection is already quite complete with bangers like Super Cars, Super Hang-On, Stunt Car Racer and Pitstop amongst many others. One of my absolute favorite series is Lotus, especially the first two games. I've…

Scanned al my boxed Atari Lynx games Been busy scanning in my games collection. Took some time to add all my boxed Atari Lynx games: link. There are ten of them. Makes me want to play them, which is good! Also makes me want to buy more, which is bad! Want to add Blue Lightening and California…

The Witness Every once in a while, I like to add another Infocom game to my collection. I'm still missing quite a few so searching for a deal is quite doable. This time Ebay showed me a reasonable priced version of The Witness. Sadly most games are sold in the US and shipping prices are way higher…

A mural from Grim Fandango The Tapestry of Ages from Ultima IX and Alduin's Wall from Skyrim both look so great in my gameroom. Now I've added a mural from Grim Fandango underneath. There are lots of little details in these banners. I like to look at them from time to time to take my mind of…

It’s time to upgrade There are a lot of big box PC games in my collection, but none of these can actually run without an operating system. So those also deserve a place in my collection. Enter Windows 95. The first operating system for the IBM PC that actually made me feel that I upgraded from the…

What if Link takes just one wheel from each supply? Link thinks it's odd that there are sets of cart bottoms and four wheels everywhere. Why? Why must these carts be in pieces? Why must Link be the one to assemble each of them? And why aren't there enough materials to build even a simple shed.…

Using the scanner for a new project

Enjoying Tears of the Kingdom This weekend, I spend quite a lot of time with Tears of the Kingdom. I solved the situation with the birds and now I just dived into the mountain. I do miss the old Zelda dungeons a bit, but can see how that gameplay mechanic wouldn't fit in an open world game.…

Zelda deserved less cramped hands So after about ten hours into Tears of the Kingdom I noticed my hands cramping up with the Joy-Con controllers. I've only played Mario Kart World and Mario Odyssey on the Switch 2, but those were mostly shorter play sessions, especially because I played Odyssey…

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered < Deluxe Edition > I remember going to the local Dixons on March 21 2006 on my bicycle only to find out that they hadn't received any supply of Oblivion yet. That was a bummer. I cursed the whole way back. But all that was forgotten the next day when I…

Stickerwall Problem 1: A blank piece of wall in my gameroom. Problem 2: I need another excuse to go through all the games in my collection. Solution: Put up stickers. Serendipitous outcome: My gameroom looks even more chaotic.Question: Can you guess which one is not a sticker?

I love looking up at the sky (and going there) I love RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity, but what I don't like about those games is that you can't look around and see the sky. And spending 80 hours looking at the ground depresses me. That's why I love the…

Two new big box adventure games Having a new big box adventure game waiting for you when you come home is a marvelous thing. And having two is, like say maybe two times as marvelous! I was notified that a package had arrived at my doorstep and I figured it would be Foolish Mortals, but little did…

No retro games pickups in Paris While visiting Paris with my son I to see all the beautiful sights, I also had time to stop by a couple of retro gameshops. They have a whole street with them! I first went to Trader Games. Not a small shop and packed from floor ro ceiling with stacks and stacks of…

What kind of pirate do you want to be? An X-rated pirate? Do you want to be a seafaring pirate? A wimpy pirate? An x-rated pirate? An ass-kicking pirate? A gold pirate? A pirate who goes Wii? Or a limited edition pirate? The choice is now mine with the arrival of the third edition of Pirates!…

Beat Odyssey’s Bowser and got Simon closer to home Once again Bowser is defeated. This time in Mario Odyssey. It was very cool to play a Mario game again. The last time was years ago when I played Mario 3D World (which I'm currently also re-playing btw.) It's incredible how much new and exciting…

I just backed Our Fusion Retro Books 2026 Annuals - 4 in total! on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/zza...

Discworld reading snob Every now and again I like picking up a Discworld pocket to recollect the whole series as I had when they came out (although I had the first twelve books up until Witches Abroad bundled in four omnibusses). I love the artwork on the covers and they have nostalgic value for…