2026 September Retro

Games

Clair Obscur achieved the impossible by living up to and even exceeding the ridiculous hype established for it by sweeping every gaming award in existence last year; making me very glad I didn't have to decide between it and Silksong for GOTY.

Denshattack established it as my go-to 'sneak some gaming in while wife is in the shower' game with its bite-sized but insane levels, very shonen anime aesthetic and brilliant difficulty curve.

Future Knight was a cool little throwback in both style (reminiscent of those handheld games you could buy in a supermarket for $5) and gameplay, while Battle Suit Aces left me wishing for a reason to love it but coming up short.

As if Expedition 33 consuming my life for a month wasn't enough I also bought a Switch 2 solely to play Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, and so far don't regret that decision one bit. This is despite me already being midway through a replay of Three Houses using a Switch emulator on my laptop, which I only stopped a day or two before diving into Fortune's Weave for 40+ hours so far. I've liked Fire Emblem since I first played Blazing Blade on my Gameboy Advance, but these latest entries which add Persona-like side activities are absolute crack for me.

Books

This section seems shorter than it actually is because I read the whole Roots of Chaos saga consecutively and combined them into a single review. Overall decent grand fantasy but definitely gets ham-fisted toward the end and can't answer many of the interesting questions it raises early on.

I also got my regular dose of Sir Terry from The Hogfather; I'll continue not writing reviews for the books I read from his omnibus but this was a standout and took me to 47% done according to my Kobo. Only ~83 hours left until I've read every single Discworld book!

General Life Stuff

Hong Kong

One day in August The Wife decided it was time to fulfill her long-held dream of going to Hong Kong; thus completing the "China and geopolitically inconvenient islands" trifecta for both of us. Within a few days flight were booked with accommodation soon to follow, and that's how I found myself 2 hours into a 5 hour flight at 3am, constantly nodding off then jerking back awake as my head fell.

Day 1: Sleepless in HK

My moment of hubris in thinking I could sleep on the plane (never once happened) or that I'd be fine the next day anyway (I am 31 years old) cost me dearly on the first day; as immediately upon arrival we realised the gigantic Central -> Mid-level escalator we relied on for access to our hotel wouldn't switch to upward motion until 10am. We came to this realisation at 6am, so my first physical activity of the day was lugging both our bags and my backpack up roughly 9000 flights of rather steep stairs as people calmly sailed past on a downward escalator. Would really love to meet the person who came up with this schedule so I can inform them that gravity makes going uphill more difficult at all times of the day and downhill more difficult never.

With bags safely stashed and all the water previously in my body tracing the route we took up hill, we set off back down (now making use of the damn escalator) and started the day with a seaside stroll through Sun Yat Sen Park, taking in the sights of Kowloon across the bay. After ending up at some kind of fish market/the end of the park we circled back and went on an exceptionally thorough walking tour of every notable landmark between us and our hotel. ARTLANE, Man Mo temple and Tai Kwun Precinct (where the prison, courthouse and police barracks used to be) along with many smaller attractions were dispatched in the morning before we were finally, blessedly able to check in to our fancy suite at 2pm and get some rest. Once I got over the fact we were 19 floors up and the windows looked straight over a sheer drop with no balcony that is.

After a nap the evening took us to Victoria Park, soon to host an impressively large lantern festival but currently just a nice open green space, and on a tram ride into a bus ride back to Central station. Our night ended some delicious dumplings, including cloyingly sweet fried ones The Wife couldn't eat and even I had to save part of for breakfast. This was also our first encounter with the mystifying 'tea bowl'. Along with our mandatory order of tea, delivered in a kettle as you may expect, we also received a large plastic bowl. This was... mystifying, and as no one around us seemed to be using one we assumed they'd just given the gaijin a nice safe place to fill their cups in case they spilled some tea on the table. Only after a waiter took it away did we think of googling what it was for, revealing that you're apparently meant to wash the utensils and dishes with them before eating. Seems like a waste of perfectly good tea to me, but I assume it's left over from earlier, less hygienic times.

Day 2: Avenue of Stars

Our second, much better-rested day began by taking an alarmingly steep cable car up to The Peak; (former?) home to Hong Kong's rich and famous and current home to a delicious if very sunny bakery. We spent considerably more time walking around the glass-walled shopping centre than the actual mountaintop, and abandoned a trek to The Peak's peak after getting distracted by a nice garden on the way and realsing how much further we'd need to go in the sun.

After coming down we made a brief and disappointing visit to the Golden Computer Arcade; supposedly Hong Kong's answer to Taiwan's Guanghua Digital Plaza but severely lacking in character by comparison. We stopped in at a nearby secondhand bookstore down an exceptionally dark & grimy alleyway then broke for lunch at a local-looking wonton noodle place.

The afternoon saw us taking one of Hong Kong's many scenic buses in the direction of Chi Lin Nunnery, where we saw many interestingly-shaped polished rocks and accompanying wise quotes, before taking a walk through the nearby garden and grabbing some bubble tea. Finally, we paid a visit to Jackie Chan and his Avenue of Stars in the late afternoon, where after much walking we found somewhere to sit and take in the changes which come over Hong Kong's skyline as the sun sets.

Day 3: Rollercoaster buses

By day 3 we had tired of the hustle and bustle of the big city, so we took a vacation from our vacation to Stanley Beach and Cheung Chau Island.

First up was Stanley, via one of Hong Kong's legendary scenic bus routes. Since almost every public bus is a double-decker you can sit right at the front if you're lucky, experiencing an uncanny feeling of disconnection from the road and enjoying unrestricted views of the surrounding area. On the way out we accidentally took one which started off going through a tunnel, but we were soon on the narrow cliff-side roads the internet had promised. The back side of the island really does feel different from the incredibly high density city people associate with Hong Kong; though there's still plenty of housing it's not all skyscrapers and there's a notable increase in your ability to see more than 200m as a result. Stanley itself was a nice little beachside town with a pleasant esplanade, though of course it's still part of Hong Kong so it also had a 6 storey fancy shopping centre.

The bus back was much more consistently scenic; no tunnels this time. Just hanging on for dear life as our view from the bus' top floor constantly made me think we were on the verge of going over the edge of the all-too-close cliff. Maybe it's less of a problem if you don't drive, but being at the very front of a vehicle like that from such a strange perspective really threw me off. Once back to Central we immediately boarded the express ferry for Cheung Chau, settling in for a nice 45min cruise across the bay. We'd originally planned to visit Lantau and its famous cable car to the Buddha, but it was very rudely under maintenance for our whole trip.

Cheung Chau felt more like Vietnam than anywhere we'd been in Hong Kong; a harbour packed with fishing boats and a cavalcade of noise, smells and mess greeted us on arrival. Walking along the harbourside for a while didn't reveal any local delicacies to sample so we gave in and ended up getting a small, fancy pizza each at an Italian restaurant. We then grabbed some fresh fruit juice (though The Wife's was more like an ice slurry, much to her dismay) and set off to the other side of the narrow island to take in the beach. We also found a 'Little Great Wall', named as such because... well for no apparent reason we could discern given it was a path along the cliff-side without a wall in sight, but it was still a pleasant walk.

As the sun set we came back to the original side in search of booty, having spied an old smuggler's cove on the map. It quickly became obvious why the smugglers had such success with that location as it was quite a trek even from the edge of the modern town, through some pretty hilly rainforest. Once there we didn't actually go in, because it was a narrow gap through seaside rocks and we are old, but it was still nice to take in the atmosphere from one tip of the island. Eventually we headed back on the same ferry and finished off our day with a (scarily windy) ride on the Ferris Wheel then some noodles on the way back up the Central/Mid-level escalator.

Day 4: Grab bag

Having done most of what we set out to do we took a more relaxed approach to starting the day; sleeping in a little before heading to Amo Ago, our trusty breakfast stop, for some delicious pastries. Hunger sated it was time to check the 'Monster Building' off our list, which was an education in the power of photography and angles if nothing else. In other disappointing news I realised there's not much point in trying different bubble tea stores in each country if I'm just gonna order brown sugar milk tea every time, and I found a secondhand Persona 5 artbook but it was in Japanese.

Lunch was some braised pork for me and goose for The Wife, then we took the metro to the Hong Kong Museum of History. Naturally I had high expectations for the level of 'Hong Kong is just China' propaganda, though they were still exceeded when we stumbled into a Defence-themed exhibit by accident rather than the 'Hong Kong Story' we were after. Even once we were on track there were plentiful references to Hong Kong returning to the glorious motherland and snide shots at the UK (admittedly not known for treating their colonies well and definitely not on the right side of history here either), but overall it was an interesting, varied and extremely detailed exhibit. They probably could've done with less repetition though; at least in the English translations I read the same information via infinitesimally different words multiple times within the same room.

Having read about Hong Kong's history we decided to walk through some by visiting Kowloon Walled City Park, where not a trace of said infamous Walled City remains. The Wife ordered her customary overseas chocolate Sundae and was disappointed by it as is also custom, then we walked a few laps of the park in the dark. Overjoyed to arrive at the bus stop right as our bus arrived, we didn't stop to think that we were getting on in the same direction we previously got off, meaning we were headed in completely the wrong direction. Luckily the terminus had a bus we could take across the eastern bridge to Hong Kong Island to complete the loop, but we still had to wait for ~30min plus the ride home so it left us pretty drained. And with that our last full day came to an end.

Day 5: Rain rain go away

Much to The Wife's dismay it finally rained, and heavily. After working through the existential angst this caused we decided to revisit the dumpling place we ate at on our first night for lunch, enduring another mystery tea bowl offering to scarf down some delectable dumplings. Since the rain had (mostly) stopped we headed over to Kowloon Park (non-walled variety) for a walk and some Hong Kong waffle, witnessing a truly impressive number of flamingoes and some very wet tropical birds along the way.

That didn't leave much time before we needed to be at the airport for our flight, so we picked our bags up from the hotel, took the shuttle to Central and the Airport Express to Hong Kong International. We then took another, internal airport train from security to our terminal, because of course that's a thing there. One unenventful 5 hour flight later we were back in Japan, mildly rushing to ensure we didn't miss the last connections from Haneda to Sasazuka, and that was it for our Hong Kong journey.

Miscellaneous Impressions

Some things which stuck out but weren't related to any particular day:

Tokyo Game Show

While in Hong Kong I was browsing Steam news and noticed some random Metroidvania on my wishlist (Fatal Claw) posting about their booth at the Tokyo Game Show. "Tokyo!?", I thought, "I live there! And I like games!" minutes later I had tickets to Monday, the last day of the show. A bit over a week later I also had tickets to Sunday, and without the incredibly unlikely intervention of The Wife's very non-gamer friend having heard Monday would be cancelled due to a typhoon I would've missed it entirely.

I'm glad I didn't; it was quite an experience. Said experience started right after arriving at the station, where I had the brilliant idea of using the bathrooms in a nearby shopping centre before entering the convention centre. Unfortunately many others had this same brilliant idea, and despite bathrooms on higher floors resulting in steadily less people I was stuck outside the single-cubicle, hidden 5th floor bathroom for something like 40 minutes despite 3 people ahead of me in the line. What on earth were they doing in there???

With this ordeal conquered I braced myself for the legendary wait to enter. As you'd expect from the day before a typhoon it was consistently rainy, but thanks to a combination of arriving about an hour after opening and starting from the indie pavilion I barely had to wait 30min to get in, all while enjoying recognising most of the cosplays. Truly felt like I was among my people. Unfortunately the indie pavilion was somewhat of a letdown; they jammed all the indie devs into about a quarter of the single hall allocated to them with the rest taken up by merch stalls and brands selling gaming gear.

Still played/got merch for some cool stuff like:

Light Odyssey was the first (seems like a boss rush but with a cool monochrome, unsurprisingly light & shadow focused art-style) and I was very proud of myself for finishing the demo well ahead of time. Definitely not just because I saw the guy before me solve a puzzle which might have prevented me even making it to the boss, nope not at all. I did much worse when I played Fatal Claw though, the game which prompted this trip. Got hard stuck on the first boss which multiple people before me had breezed through, possibly because it's not a game where you're meant to deal with everything by dodging and that's all I tried for a long time. Pogoing would've gone a long way in hindsight, even if you fall ridiculously fast in that game.

Next up were the main halls; starting with the 'AA'-ish halls occupied mainly by country booths and student projects from various gaming unis. Russia had a cool booth which taught me Awaken: Astral Blade was made there and made me wonder about the geopolitics of flying the obviously Russian staff out for this show. The Korean pavilion produced my unfortunate run-in with the Fatal Claw boss along with plenty of merch, and I eventually found the Denshattack booth (styled as a train carriage) criminally tucked away at the back of a larger booth. They had ROG Allys ready to go and everything, I felt so bad telling the guy manning it I'd already finished the game that I got my foldable train and got out rather than sticking around to find out if he was a dev/chat.

After that it was onto the main-main hall, serious Triple-A zone. Right away I couldn't help but notice the giant P4R and Stranger Than Heaven booths, along with the crazy number of people in/around them compared to any other booth. There was also a giant video wall on Capcom's booth, a haunted house-looking place + cool tote bag for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse and a giant section of the hall with enourmous statues and photo ops for Final Fantasy; mostly the final game of the 7 remake trilogy but also Resonance. I also stumbled upon a smaller booth for a publisher which had demos for Motorslice, Silly Polly Beast and Well Dweller, pretty unexpected combo. I went for the Well Dweller demo and greatly enjoyed my first experience with a Kyle Thompson game. I also spied Mariachi Legends in another publisher booth; seems like a cool Castlevania-like mixed with some DMC style combo combat.

I ended my day by just wandering around taking in the Triple-A of it all before lining up for a demo of Iron Bramble and beating the tutorial boss right as the 10 minute demo window ran out, then getting a bit of a head start on the rush for the trains. Didn't quite work as there was already a torrent of people linking the convention centre and station, but after a quick snack on my pre-packed onigiri I managed to snag a spot on the first train after entering the station. On the train ride a baby in its stroller tried several times to deprive me of my P4R bag by eating it, until their mum noticed and managed to make them stop. And that was it for my first ever game show. Pretty cool experience, will likely go again next year but who knows.

Oh god I'm going to be a father

Yeah so that's recently become more real. There is officially a gestational sac (I'm sadly not allowed to refer to it as a 'Baby Bean', an objectively cooler name) and proof of it in an ultrasound photo neither of us can stop looking at from time to time. Still very early of course so nothing is guaranteed, but there being a physical thing which could turn into our future child is... terrifying. Makes it considerably more real than just agreeing to have kids. The next ultrasound to confirm it developed into a foetus/check for a heartbeat is two weeks out as I write this, so fingers crossed/knock on wood all goes well.

Work

Not much this month; I had two whole weeks off between Hong Kong and Silver Week. Started looking into OIDC SSO which is interesting and should make a big difference to our drop-off numbers, or at least convince C-suite we're making a serious effort at doing so.

What Went Badly

I greatly overestimated my ability to enjoy the first day in Hong Kong after a 1am departure from Haneda, despite my well-documented inability to sleep on planes.

Action Items

Review

Ride more than 200km

Nope lol. In my defense; 35 days of consecutive rain the the Tokyo area and multiple typhoons.

2 home workouts a week

No defense for this one though, I was just lazy. I even had 9 consecutive days off and worked out maybe once that whole time.

Next Month