On Pokémon Day, I started a Wool and Wings run of Pokémon Shield over on Twitch, with that continuing on until completion throughout this month. The day before that was the Pokémon Presents, which ticked off news for one of my three cores during February. With March being the month where news of Sonic the Hedgehog usually happens, along with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga being pencilled for a Spring release, I’m expecting news of those two this month.
 
As ever, the anniversary of the Switch this month brings with it my experiences of this fourth year. There’s been a lot that I’ve played within what some consider a dry year for the console, with almost double the games over previous years. Sure, Nintendo have been releasing less over the course of the last year, but things look to be picking up again – at least for next year.

Even after saying how 2020 was the best year for me with this label and wanting to grow it further, you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d lost interest. Oh, I’ve still been streaming, but no videos and hardly any articles. Well, that’s just how it’s been for the previous two months as well. I’ve been keeping myself inside as infection rates grow once again, and it hadn’t done me any good at all.
 
I’m getting back to my walks on my regular routes, so this month should see more of everything. More videos, more enthusiasm in streams, and more articles. One in particular has to do with Power Rangers, as I’ve just recently come across an article on The Hollywood Reporter that has unveiled a bit in regards to the future of the franchise. I’m going to look at the future of the franchise too, taking into account this latest bit of news.

A Happy New Year to all. The last year hasn’t been the best, with the negative seeping into every positive event owing to the major pandemic holding the world in its grip. The power it holds will hopefully be lessened, and we can finally feel free once again. It’s been tough for everyone to some extent. My motivation has been all over the place this year, as noted by delayed articles and the website as a whole still needing a few additions and fixes, but it’s still been a great success.
 
Last year saw a lot of success for the site, with me pushing more articles to it then any previous year – and considering the two largest events I regularly cover were unable to take place, that’s an achievement. I’m not sure I trust the analytics to give an accurate idea of how successful the split from Blogger has been, so this is the year where I will see such.

As ever, a few delays, main one being… I’d delayed The Force Awakens book vs film to last month to make sure all three could be posted in the same month, and then only got that article out next month instead of the entire trilogy. The other two will arrive this month. The Red Dead Redemption 2 experiences article was also delayed, which will also arrive this month.
 
December is always a lax time. It is the holiday, after all. One thing that shouldn’t be slowing down is the livestreams on Twitch. The week of streams on the last month of November failed in that I didn’t do a week of streams. It was just one more than I normally do. The full playthrough of Starlink: Battle For Atlas has been completed in this month, which at least gives me a bit of breathing room to feature plenty of other games.

There were a few opportunities for videos that I failed to capitalise on. While I had started cutting streams down to highlights for videos, the new Pokémon Shield expansion, Watch Dogs Legion, and even the second Farming Simulator stream could have seen videos created. Yet no videos arose. Video creation is pretty tough when you can’t use headphones and are in a busy place.
 
Those who have tuned into streams might have heard me mention wax build up within my ears in relation to this, and such is true. It makes wearing any type of headphones for any amount of time an uncomfortable experience, and the laptop I use to create videos isn’t the same as I stream with. For as much as I would like to create videos, then, there’s little chance that such will happen. As things feel better, I’ll do my best to make some more.

Now that October is here, there’s a bit more content coming to the site than last month. First impressions for Star Wars Squadrons and Watch Dogs Legion (DiRT 5 having been delayed to November), along with an experiences article talking of the Roller Coaster Tycoon series. But I’m not just going to focus on the games this month, as I’ve got another book to talk about. And a comic.
 
Last month I streamed Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, playing through the story that retold the major event that had been Shattered Grid. Throughout 2018, Shattered Grid was huge, bringing together the entire history of Rangers to face off against an alternate universe Tommy who had remained evil and continued to grow in power. The rightful celebration for the 25th anniversary of the franchise.

If you’ve seen the video of Splatoon 2 or a few of my posts on Twitter, you will know that I’ve started streaming on Twitch. It’s taken me an age to feel confident enough in my voice to start, but I feel I’ve gotten over that. I’m still getting used to everything, and my current microphone isn’t the best (but then, when has an internal microphone ever been the best?), so the quality of my voice is still questionable when watching them back.
 
On each stream I am gaining a bit more confidence to be on air, which brings a bit more confidence in projecting my voice. I am having fun with it, and it allows a direct connection between myself and those who come and watch me playing the things I like. Already I’ve been enjoying races on GTA V, the aforementioned Splatoon 2 during the latest Splatfest, and indeed – Star Wars Battlefront.

After a Racing Month full of articles and videos, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that things will slow down a bit. And you’d be right. But there’s every possibility that this month could be as full as the last owing to a few things.
 
First off, there will be a video showing off the latest of GTA races that I talked about in the creation article. From there will be a minimum of two other videos. One of those will be near the end of the month, as I jump onto Star Wars Battlefront 2 in Celebration of Star Wars. Yes, the convention had been cancelled a few months back, but I remain hopeful that news will come.

The month is July, which means another Racing Month is upon us, and this time there will be more than four games featured. There won’t be any personal stories being the main point of those featured, but some will still be featured - mostly with the experiences articles. And one of those is set to be coming with Wreckfest.
 
There’s other articles coming, with a return to a concept of mine from two years ago. Zincite Storm Cup was a story I’d written back in 2012 that wasn’t much of an engaging tale. But when crafting this concept, I borrowed plenty from it for the foundations of the idea. One which was to combine the racing and RPG genres.
 
That concept focused a bit too much on the racing side of that balance, so I’m returning to it to balance the scales and bring a bit more RPG to this combination of the two. Most of the core will stay the same, but I’ll be bringing some changes that allow more elements of an RPG to be visible within it.

With June, there’s usually a big event lasting a week that brings a lot to talk about. This year is different, though. The current pandemic owing to COVID-19 has put a lot of events on hold. With E3 being one of those events, plenty of smaller digital events have sprung up to give such announcements. So many have started appearing that it feels impossible to keep track of them all, and not all of them are within June.
 
There’s an event in a few days revealing more about the PS5 and the games that will be coming to it, which should provide a decent look at some multi-platform third party offerings to go with those Playstation exclusives. There’s EA’s event, keeping close to when E3 would have been, and a Ubisoft event in July. Microsoft should be revealing more with their next 20/20 event, and Nintendo are more than likely just going to drop announcements when they need to.