Stage Clear: August 2026

Happy September, everyone! Now we're heading for the autumn, the weather here has gone full RNG. (Running total of unpleasant heatwaves: 4, running total of epic thunderstorms: 3.)

This has been an anomalously busy month, because I was pulled in by the MD at my day job to deliver a big project in a short time. That meant a lot of overtime over the past three weeks. Because the number of days I spent doing paid work was about 40% higher than in a normal month, the time I could spend doing Save State stuff was correspondingly less. I hate zero-sum games.

So, regrettably, I didn't hit all the goals I set out to at the beginning of the month. But here's everything I did manage in August, Month of Renewal:

Rebranding

The big push this month was to rebrand the YouTube channel, the Patreon, and my active social media accounts from Retrohistories to Save State. YouTube happened a few weeks ago (with an announcement video, the first video uploaded to the channel in years). I did Bluesky just now. I'm planning to do the same on Mastodon, but it seems it might be trickier. The Patreon rename will happen tomorrow, for reasons I'll get into.

Though it's at a minimum annoying to change all these accounts (and, worse, risks breaking incoming links), bringing everything together under one banner seems more intuitive to me than treating the site and the channel as separate projects; they're just different sides of the same practice. Of course I can't change the images or voiceovers in old videos, so Retrohistories will always be part of the back catalogue, but I won't be using the name again in anything I make from here on out.

Patreon is the trickiest of the bunch, because of a forced change by the site: every campaign still using per-creation charges have until November to switch to recurring monthly billing. So the task I'm faced with there is less of a rename, more of a full-blown rewrite for a very different proposition. I set a September 1st deadline for this change three months ago and that distant deadline has somehow now become tomorrow, but most of the new copy is already written and ready to go.

That change by Patreon also requires a big shift in how I work, since it puts me on a cycle where something is expected monthly, rather than my natural 'when it's done' vibe. I've been trying to adjust to that through the summer, but it's difficult to time-block creative projects when they can end up taking a different form to what was initially envisioned. I hope I'll get used to it.

Oh, and this domain is now locked in through 2029; it's not going anywhere.

Videos

Besides the announcement video, I'm working on a short video about a well-known game that included malware. The script is more or less completely finished. I'd hoped to release the video this month; however, I haven't yet had chance to get on camera and record it (the first video I'm doing this way). I don't want to oversell it; it's shorter and simpler than most of the videos I've made before, but that's how I'm getting back into the game. It'll definitely land on the channel (and here) in September.

Scanning

I took the month off from scanning, knowing I'd have my hands full, but I'll be back to it in September with more issues of MCV.

Magazine Indexing

Database stats at the end of August 2026 (delta from July):

Titles indexed: 80 (+2)
Distinct issues indexed: 7,748 (+326)
Pages indexed: 1,048,468 (+52,569)

Not the biggest month for additions—I added only GamePro and Mean Machines—but roughly eighteen months out from an initially empty database, we passed the arbitrary but psychologically significant million page mark! That's still only a fraction of the ever-growing collection (in fact I'm almost certain the percentage of the collection that's been imported is shrinking), so onward and upward... or backward, as the case may be.

(The index isn't public, but if you're a game historian—pro or amateur—and you'd like me to run off a few queries, let me know! Time permitting, I'm happy to do it.)

Morgue File wiki

Each month I'm trying to put a few spare hours into seeding a new page on the wiki. The process involves a lot of reading, extracting pages from scanned magazines, and search-engine-fu, and the resulting page—which contains helpful links and a bunch of downloadable print media excerpts—will hopefully serve as a helpful resource for anyone looking to do some research. At the end of the month, I do a hard cutoff regardless of progress, and start populating a new page the following month. (I know that seems arbitrary—I could obviously work on a single page indefinitely—but the deadline's part of the plan of trying to build out and broaden the wiki.)

August's page of the month was ToeJam & Earl, and I managed to add most of the relevant material I was able to find by searching the magazine index. Any suggestions for a page to create next month?

Now Playing

At the start of the year, I set myself a goal to finish twelve single-player games this year. In retrospect, I wasn't ambitious enough by half. I finished two more in August—the Dead Kings expansion to Assassin's Creed: Unity, and Ambrosia Sky—bringing my total for the year so far to 20! Some of those were short, single-sitting games, but even if you only count 'full-length' games (whatever that means), I'm still on 11/12.

Number 12, by that method, will assuredly be Trails in the Sky: 1st Chapter. I'm 45 hours in and have been enraptured by its charms, which probably means—oh dear—that I'm in this series for the haul.

After that, I need to throw in some older games. Only three so far this year, Metroid: Zero Mission, Star Fox 64 and Rhythm Tengoku, would qualify as retro in any way, and two of the three were post-2000. Something truly vintage next time, I think.

Acquisitions

The push for filming gear continued with some cheap LED lighting and stands. Haven't had a chance to use them yet (see above), but I'm hoping they hold up. (I tried to get a photo, but they're off-camera lights.)

But my favourite new thing this month was the birthday present from my partner:

Geeks-Line's console books are dense, technical and comprehensive while also serving as nice coffee-table books; for some reason I rarely see them mentioned. (If I were to criticise, the translations from the original French can be on the janky side.) I had six on my shelves already (which is over half of their English-language catalogue, I think), but they're expensive small-run volumes, and since I've been trying to economise, I didn't expect to get another any time soon.

But since all the volumes I have cover either Nintendo or Sony platforms, I had my eye on this one. I don't know the PC Engine well (though the few games I've played under emulation have all been bangers) but the capsule review section of this book calls out both the acclaimed classics and the hidden gems. I'm looking forward to whiling away the occasional relaxing weekend with this book, a No-Intro set, and Mednafen.

Okay, that's one thing off the to-do list, another three to write today.

Thanks for reading. See you again in the past!