Checking In (Sunday 9 August 2026)

Happy Sunday, how's your weekend been? I'm pleased to report that I'm much better than I was last weekend, when I felt as if I was one twitch away from coughing up my remaining lifespan haha. It wasn't just terrible, it sucked. Having a runny nose should be punishment enough. I still have a lingering cough and the old nose hasn't completely stopped leaking yet but other than that, I'm doing fine and should be active again next week after the extended (political) holiday weekend. 

As of a couple of weeks ago, you can find me on Substack as well now. Just like with Ko-fi it's another way for people to support me and the content since I've stepped away from Patreon. It'll also serve as another place where you can watch, listen to or even read (if I decide to start publishing walkthroughs there too) what I post there.  

Many thanks to you and all who have been checking out Gaming History (Extended Mix), especially those who enjoyed the #MonarchyGamingHistory segments on Morning Monarchy. I hope that there have been some people who were curious enough to give James' show a listen and become regular fans of Media Monarchy after seeing Gaming History. You never know, maybe it'll turn out that Morning Monarchy is the kind of radio that they've been looking for. I just wish that the idea for Gaming History had come even a few years earlier, like in 2022 or 2023, because it would've been great to go back in time and see the start of video games as we know them from the early 1980's then fast-forward into the early 1990's, 2000's, 2010's and 2020's. But I only began posting in the Tech Tuesday channel of Monarchy's Discord some time in 2024, with the first post being about Final Fantasy 6's 30th anniversary. It hadn't crossed my mind to do a video series until a couple of months ago. But better late than never, at least the series is there now and I'd say the reception for it has been positive. The fun for me has come from learning a bit more about the games and consoles which I've highlighted so far. Finding old commercials and trailers for them has been cool but also hearing from people who were part of the creation and development processes is great too. With a lot of the review and retrospective videos that you tend to find on YouTube though, one annoying pattern that I've noticed among them is of the content creators putting themselves in front of the subject matter. It's why I try to have variety in the clips that are featured in an episode so that it's not just YouTuber after YouTuber after YouTuber all having the same style of video basically, it'll get very boring. The format from #MonarchyGamingHistory will still be there: first week of the month (1980's), Week 2 (1990's), Week 3 (2000's), Week 4 (2010's) and if there's a Week 5 then we'll go back to 5 years ago. Since Gaming History has two episodes each week that will allow for some flexibility, with the main episode covering that week's main anniversary and the second episode covering another anniversary either from the same year or one of the other decades.

Shout out and congrats to Vytron for the recently released demo of his next game Pokémon Sors 2. I've written walkthroughs for a couple of his previous projects Pokémon Saiph 2 and Pokémon Sors so I'm looking forward to writing one for Sors 2 down the road. His games are examples of cool story-driven ROM hacks that don't need to break the bank in the features department, they just include enough of them to make the game fun to play. One feature however which a lot of hacks and fangames still don't have even now in 2026 is the Pocket PC and to me it doesn't make any sense not to have one when many of these games are happy to feature hundreds of Pokémon from multiple generations. With all those Pokémon in your game, why would you not give your players access to their Storage Boxes? That's been a thing since Gen 7's Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee and yet you still find many hacks and fangames missing that key feature, which leads to people like me having to continue relying on very old cheat codes to make up for it. But those codes won't work on every game though, especially hacks which are developed through the disassemby process instead of the binary process and it's the former process which many would-be creators and developers are going to be using more and more. Many of these people still play the official games and make use of the Pocket PC feature there without a problem, but for whatever reason when it comes to adding a functioning version of the Pocket PC into ROM hacks and fangames in general they don't. You're likely to find Pocket PCs in feature-heavy games such as enhancement hacks and difficulty hacks. It continues to be one of those issues within the so-called ROM hack and fangame "community" that sticks out and there's no indication of things changing because, well, there isn't an actual community. It's just a collection of groups and individuals who make games and those who play them. So there's not much room in the middle for discussions about such issues and people collaborating to get things done.

I make such a big deal about the Pocket PC because I make use of it during my walkthrough playthroughs where I catch lots of Pokémon. Those of you who follow Weekend Bonus Stage on Saturdays for Pokémon Adventure Red Chapter you might have noticed that I can access my PC Storage Boxes whenever possible, that's thanks to the Pocket PC cheat codes because the game did not have a Pocket PC despite the 1000+ Pokémon which are in the game. Lead developer Aethestode is working on a pair of remakes for the game but what are the chances that either of these remakes will include a Pocket PC among the Quality of Life features which he's planning to add to them? I'd be surprised if one is made available. 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and all the best for the week ahead. Take care.