Updates: Looking ahead to 2016
Happy New Year! I hope this new year finds you all in good health and good spirits! As per tradition, I wanted to take a moment to give everyone an update on the status of the blog. 2015 saw this site dominated mostly by two things, my Final Fantasy playthrough initiative and Star Wars. Yes, it has taken me a whole year to play through and discuss Final Fantasy IX-XIII, which doesn’t sound like much progress, but in reality that’s a total of eight games, one of which is an MMO with multiple expansions. Plus…. it’s MY blog so I can do what I want, according to my own timetable 😛
This year will see my big Final Fantasy push come to a close within the first few months. I’m currently playing through Lightning Returns. Once that’s finished, I’ll provide some thoughts on XIV (I game I play nearly every day). The backlog will finish out with Dissidia and Type-0. So once I’m all caught up with the series, it will be about time for XV to drop. I am looking very forward to being able to play and review XV while it’s still fresh.
Gamewise, once the Final Fantasy stuff is out of the way, I’ll resuming my regular schedule by playing through a number of PS1 titles. This will be followed by Gameboy Color, N64, the onward to some of the PC games from the turn of the century, etc. Believe it or not, I really do have a plan… it’s just as twisted an convoluted as my cluttered mind. Essentially, this site serves and both a trip down memory lane for me (in terms of gaming), as well as a great project to help me plow through the endless backlog that many of us gamers find ourselves with. At the rate I’m going, I can foresee me clearing the out the cobwebs on nearly everything I want to play within the next three to four years.
I hope those of you that read this blog regularly enjoy this journey with me. I do see site analytics and while this site is not a traffic hog, it does see a lot of regular activity. There’s a handful of what seem like steady readers. I don’t know if they are silent friends or strangers interested in what I’m doing, but they are there and I hope they like what they see. The rest of the traffic on this site is often driven from search engine results. People looking for reviews on certain games, etc.
2015 saw both the birth and hiatus of the RetroSensei Podcast. I’d really like to be able to give a return date, but that’s still up in the air. Running a podcast is pricier than you may think. It’s not break-the-bank expensive, but if you want to do it right, there are costs involved. For me, this ended up being close to $20 a month. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but as I mentioned before, due to unforeseen home repairs I found myself in a position to save every dollar I could manage. For those interested, the repairs are going well. The kitchen floor has been repaired/replaced. This leaves me with some remaining plumbing work, and the installation of a new septic system. This is a several thousand dollar job, but one I hope to complete within the coming months. My biggest obstacle right now is the weather. It has rained here for what seems like two months straight. So at this point we are waiting for the ground to dry out and toughen back up before we start digging. — In a nutshell, once the time is right to relaunch the podcast, I will make sure everyone knows.
Christmas was good in terms of gaming this year. My kids are both full-fledged gamers now. My oldest son has actually discovered the world of Steam. He’s spent the last few weeks enjoying games like Quake and Half-Life. The two of us have even played a few Deathmatch rounds together. My youngest, is still very much a junior gamer. He’s Lego and Minecraft obsessed.
That’s the status of things currently. As typical for me, I have a weeks vacation that I take every January. During that time, I plan to finish up the last FFXIII game. So I hope to have all my Final Fantasy posts out of the way by the beginning of March. Once this is done, things will begin to be a lot more diverse. So stay tuned and have a happy new year!
