Stage Clear: April 2026
Hi gang! I've got a flight to catch in less than 24 hours and a very long list of things that need to be done before that, so what better time than to sit down and write the wrapup post for April?
Scanning
I scanned and uploaded two more full issues of PC Strategy Games from 2000. That'll do it for the ones I've got; there were twelve more issues published, and I'd love to pick more of them up given the opportunity. Until then, I'll move on to other things in the pile. But for now, four issues of this magazine are preserved and freely downloadable. At the start of the year, that number was zero.
I found a better workflow with the last two scans, after realising that XnConvert, which I was already using to rotate, crop and resize scans off the scanner, could also be used for the most onerous part of the process that I'd been doing manually in Affinity: the small (usually less than a degree) rotations required to straighten scans that weren't perfectly aligned on the scanner and then crop them back to their original dimensions. This was a slow process in Affinity; leaving it to the automated tool has saved hours per scan (even if it misreads the rotation of about 1% of pages). I'm pretty happy now that this Adobe-free processing method is comparable in overall speed and efficiency to what I used to do in Photoshop — not quite as fast, but close enough that doing it this way and saving the money is an easy choice.
I'm still waiting for Retromags upload rights, but the PCSGs (and future scans) should also end up there when I'm approved to do so.
I also updated the 'what we know about these magazines' page with new information gleaned from issues of Strategy Player I picked up recently; I also added links to the new scans.
Acornucopia
I'm, yup, still working on this deranged idea.
The spreadsheet now has month estimates for over 200 games from 1982, and I now have a decent idea of the first games (both printed listings and commercial releases) available for the BBC Micro. Surprisingly, it looks like these early commercial games must have been written on one of the first few hundred computers to leave the factory, and were available before there was much of a market to sustain them.
I'll repeat what I said last time: despite putting double-digit hours into this, I'll more than likely never produce this series. It's a challenging project on all levels, it'll absorb an almost unlimited amount of time, and the audience for it is practically nonexistent.
But even if I leave the series unmade, there's a chunk of it I've already started writing that could easily be turned into a standalone video: an explanation of the British home computer scene in the early-mid 1980s, and the ways in which it was significantly different to what was going on elsewhere in the world. Feels like that would be a small act of deprogramming for the US-centric version of game history that people often pick up from YouTube.
So I'm going to continue to work on this thing for as long as I'm motivated, partly because I'm finding it a deeply satisfying challenge to figure out, and partly because I've learned from years of experience that I need to harness impulses while I have them, and that there's no such thing as wasted creative effort. Even abandoned projects give ample opportunities to learn and practice, and very often from the remnants of one that didn't work out, another five ideas will sprout. And despite my better judgment, I'm still not cured of the desire to do this for real.
Magazine Indexing
Database stats at the end of April 2026 (delta from March):
Titles indexed: 62 (+2)
Distinct issues indexed: 5,506 (+64)
Pages indexed: 774,381 (+3,812)
A light month with only a couple of new additions to the index as I continue to add early 1980s UK home computer magazines: Popular Computing Weekly and MicroComputer Printout.
(The index isn't public, but if you're a game historian—pro or amateur—and you'd like me to run off a query or two, let me know! Time permitting, I'm happy to do it.)
Wiki
Security patches applied, upgraded to 1.43.8.
Playing
As of this writing, I have these games on the go:
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Escape Simulator 2
- Vampire Crawlers
- Assassin's Creed: Unity
My partner and I finished all the main rooms in Escape Simulator 2 and are going back for unlockables and the advanced puzzles; there's Steam Workshop stuff after that. I burned out on The Division 2 after finishing the campaign and realising I had no motivation to do anything else. Vampire Crawlers got its teeth into me, though I kind of wish there was more exploration and puzzle solving in the dungeons to make it a proper dungeon crawler. Or perhaps I just wish that proper dungeon crawlers had engaging combat.
And that was April. This year's really flying, huh?
I'm heading off for my main break in Norway for most of next month; I'm not expecting to accomplish anything of any real relevance while I'm out there. So the next update will be at the end of June, and it's a straight run through the summer.
Thanks for reading. See you again in the past!
