Wonderful timeline, thanks ! I almost cried when seeing all those images. Mugsy 😀 And now, the best part i.e. binge-reading all this...

And that's it for 2025! I've put together a proper index of all of my posts so far, so you can check that out and see if anything else catches your interest too: www.superchartisland.com/timeline My next post will be on 5 January. Does anyone remember the sci-fi TV show V?

This year, across 45 posts about the history of 45 different UK chart #1 games, my blog has gone from June 1983 to March 1986. A thread of some highlights...

From the exp. archive, we consider the beautiful, utopian ideals of the BBC Micro and then have to play a ropey, barely festive Christmas cash-in. It's Sleighbells (Cartlidge, 1983):

Just a reminder that the charity stream in honour of Nick's birthday will be taken place later today, by one of his friends. www.justgiving.com/page/trashpa... www.twitch.tv/trashpandaja...

Got an end-of-year recommendation list here for people with a refined gaming palate: www.pcgamer.com/games/i-play...

This year, across 45 posts about the history of 45 different UK chart #1 games, my blog has gone from June 1983 to March 1986. A thread of some highlights...

Happy holidays! In December's post, I was inspired to debunk some supposed mistranslations from Final Fantasy XIII. I've only ever played in English, so this was an amazing opportunity to see the wonderful translation work behind this beautiful game. annacairistiona.wordpress.com/2025/12/22/d...

Safe to say from the stats for each year my new approach to my blog this year has worked out

It was terrible. Two-player only, and crashed every five minutes. Ocean sent me a new tape which they claimed fixed the crashing bugs, but it didn’t.

Four songs in to listening and everything so far is both new to me and good! Even the one by Addison Rae who I haven't really got previously

Ocean's official game of the 1986 Super Bowl had you controlling tiny squares, and if you scored 100 points it would tick over to zero and make you lose. It was still a #1 in the UK charts though. My final new blog post of the year: www.superchartisland.com/super-bowl-xx

This game was so easy single player, you could get the whole defense chasing you by circling the pitch. Popularity of this might have been boosted by the first American Bowl at Wembley that year. That was the first American Football I watched, by the next year I was playing for a local team!

Ocean's official game of the 1986 Super Bowl had you controlling tiny squares, and if you scored 100 points it would tick over to zero and make you lose. It was still a #1 in the UK charts though. My final new blog post of the year: www.superchartisland.com/super-bowl-xx

CorgiSpace was just the retro-inspired treat I needed for my gaming time last night ☺️ If you liked UFO 50 and are down for something a little bit lighter on the challenge and a bit smaller in scope, it's absolutely worth your time!

I've published 113 articles (and counting!) on my site this year, totalling a good book's worth of text and covering everything from brand new releases to old doujin demo discs. Let me take you on a tour! 🧵 kimimithegameeatingshemonster.com

How often should one plug their Patreon? I still don't know the answer. I know times are tough, and I've lost a lot of patrons b/c of it. So supporting my research would really help me out if you are in a position to do so. www.patreon.com/acriticalhit

I keep getting a meal kit advert that starts off with the founders introducing themselves as a husband and wife team and seconds later has a shot of this bus going past

Sword Princess Amaltea – The Visual Novel is based on a Swedish manga set in a fantasy world where gender roles are reversed: theswedishgames.wordpress.com/2025/12/20/s...

Quantic Foundry does legit trustworthy analysis of gamer behaviour, and these survey results are shockingly negative toward genAI, to the point where I’m more hopeful that data driven mobile and AAA backpedals on their uses.

#PeoplesPop25 This is the NOMINATIONS THREAD for the WORLD CUP OF 2025 Pick 3 favourite tracks of 2025 (in order of preference!) Spreadsheet here (with the 48 already qualified tracks) docs.google.com/spreadsheets... Guidelines here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Is there another single from 2025 you wish we hadn't missed out on? Let us know and we will cover some of them in January! Details here if you want to write something to go with your choice: thesinglesjukebox.com/readers-week... You can also reply here with your song suggestions!

This was my pick for @singlesjukebox.bsky.social's annual Amnesty Week where writers pick songs we missed as a site. Glad I chose something which made for such an enjoyable post!

Some fantastic internet archaeology, superbly presented

Who coined "Metroidvania"? It wasn't @jparish.bsky.social, and he'll be the first to tell you. Besides, there are far more interesting questions, like: How did it spread? Evolve? And what's it got to do with rickrolling? Watch til the end for a post-credits sting. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8set...

Very good video about Persona 3 Portable and how unusual its approach to choosing your character's gender is: youtu.be/Ge3oTIyn2sQ?... The only way I have played Persona 3 is as Kotone in P3P so it was fascinating to learn about the differences in the male MC experience

ICYMI my post this week was on The Way of the Tiger, a UK #1 in March 1986. Read about: - the "ninjas meets Lord of the Rings" game book series - how Gremlin Graphics turned it into a fighting game with a difference - the players "infuriated" by its difficulty level

ICYMI my post this week was on The Way of the Tiger, a UK #1 in March 1986. Read about: - the "ninjas meets Lord of the Rings" game book series - how Gremlin Graphics turned it into a fighting game with a difference - the players "infuriated" by its difficulty level

presenting: 40 of my favorite pop songs of 2025, from big hits to rising artists to a wildcard or two

Today on All the Adventures, interconnected histories including: Jet Set Willy, excessive parties, police violence, business scandals, and an extremely difficult text adventure by a 14-year old written in BASIC. bluerenga.blog/2025/12/16/o...

Everyone is more or less okay with it” dude you make people emigrate to work there because you don’t do remote work, they risk having to change countries if they disagree with it

My favourite albums of 2025

Just so I'm clear on this, computer memory has tripled in price because a bunch of it that hasn't been produced yet has been ordered to populate GPUs that aren't installed in data centers that aren't built yet in order to service a demand that doesn't exist to make profits that don't happen.

Samus Aran doesn't say a word in Metroid Prime 4, an unintentionally funny design choice that makes her seem less stoic than rude, @midimyers.com writes. www.avclub.com/metroid-prim...

In 1986, Gremlin Graphics entered the crowded home computer fighting games arena with a supergroup of successful developers and a ninja gamebook tie-in. Could the thrill of their fight rise up to the challenge of their rivals? It's The Way of the Tiger: www.superchartisland.com/the-way-of-the-tiger

These are great, very well researched pieces, a bit like Stereogum's "The Number Ones" for old computer games. Excellent reading.

In 1986, Gremlin Graphics entered the crowded home computer fighting games arena with a supergroup of successful developers and a ninja gamebook tie-in. Could the thrill of their fight rise up to the challenge of their rivals? It's The Way of the Tiger: www.superchartisland.com/the-way-of-the-tiger

This week: 25 new-and-interesting selections on the western construction of the JRPG, Chris Roberts, Hades II, and Keoff Geighley: critical-distance.com/2025/12/15/d...

We did it!

ICYMI, my post this week was on Uridium. Including discussion of the state of over-commercialisation of award ceremonies for games, circa 1988

"WUUUUUUUUURGH!" #Discourse2000 is back and rending its garments over the death of beloved #2000AD hero M.A.C.H.1! But wait - his replacement M.A.C.H. Zero is here! Aliens, tramps, and thie- sorry, homages - abound. freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2025/1...

"Gribbly Grobbly from the planet Blabgor" - absent context I would absolutely have believed this was some manner of "Scrimblo Bimblo the Loveable Scrunko" variant

In 1986, Andrew Braybrook made one of the UK's most acclaimed arcade-style home computer games of the mid-'80s. And he made it working to a 37-hour-a-week schedule. New post on Uridium: www.superchartisland.com/uridium

I loved Uridium on the C64, the sense of speed coupled with the feel of weight thanks to the slight inertia of turning the ship was fantastic. This article is great too, touching on the deep roots of game dev crunch culture and also the commercialisation of the games industry.

U2 on the Amiga is a tour-de-force too. One of the few (imo) games that really applies the new hardware capability to the game in hand, rather than just upping the gfx and sound compared to it's 8bit siblings.

A good read. Loved the Uridium port on Spectrum at the time, and really enjoy the Uridium remake Hyper Sentinel on Switch

Thinking about this more there's a parallel to how Hikaru Utada working with Floating Points in 2022 succeeded widely with Western critics in a way that Namie Amuro working with Sophie in 2015 did not

In 1986, Andrew Braybrook made one of the UK's most acclaimed arcade-style home computer games of the mid-'80s. And he made it working to a 37-hour-a-week schedule. New post on Uridium: www.superchartisland.com/uridium

This cheese flavour 雞蛋仔 was really good - kind of a combined egg waffle and cheese toastie taste