Played quite a bit this month, as well as falling down a rabbit hole of older games too. I had a couple of weeks to myself before starting a new job in the middle of August so there was plenty of time for games. I also realised I could backdate my account on How long to beat? with records of games I played prior to creating it, using my Xbox achievements and PlayStation trophies. It now has a fairly accurate picture of everything I finished since 2007. Probably not the most productive use of an afternoon, but I do enjoy me some stats.

Games completed this month

Open Roads – Xbox Series X

This was next Xbox title up to tick along the achievements for the Xbox rewards. A fun little story, I love GamePass for stuff like this that I probably wouldn’t have bought otherwise.

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Dredge: The Pale Reach – Xbox Series X

This DLC had a nice sale so I picked it up and played through the story. I do still want to go back and mop up side quests etc. I think they’ve sneaked out some more DLC as well though.

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SEGA Fighting Games – Xbox 360 / Series X

Apologies for lifting someone’s video thumbnail for this image, but it very nicely covered the three games I played. In my visit to my Xbox back catalogue, I realised I’d bought all these games, and barely played any of them. I put that to rights, hooked up the fight stick and spent a couple of hours playing all three of Virtua Fighter 2, Sonic the Fighters and Fighting Vipers, and getting all the achievements on each. Sonic is a bit of a novelty but the other two hold up really well.

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NeoGeo Battle Coliseum – Xbox 360 / Series X

Didn’t even remember buying this, but while I was playing the fighting games I clocked this too. Didn’t go after all the achievements though, they were a bit more involved and also included some online stuff.

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Who Shot Johnny Rock? – Arcade / Pi4

As planned last month, I set up my spare Raspberry Pi4 with the “Barebones” Batocera image for my Sinden lightguns. It was all as straightforward as I’d hoped, and I was soon playing even more games on my modern tv. I used to love Who Shot Johnny Rock? on the CDi, but even better I now have the HD version of the arcade game. Highly entertaining to play through, Mad Dog McCree next then!

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Games played during August

Returnal – PS5

Last month’s pick up, I’ve made a bit of a start with this. Really love how it feels to play, and it looks incredible. Very difficult though with the roguelike elements so we’ll see how much progress I actually make with it. I’ve managed to defeat one boss and get to the second so far.

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Tatsunoko vs Capcom Ultimate All-Stars – Wii / SteamDeck

Dabbling with emulation on my SteamDeck, I can now play this Nintendo Wii exclusive without having to set up the Wii itself. It’s a really fun versus fighter, even if I don’t really know the Tatsunoko characters very well. I’d love to see more of these things or just a new Marvel or SNK vs Capcom would be nice. Also playing on the Deck meant I could play it with a proper fight stick, as I discovered the one I bought for the Switch works perfectly on there. I even printed new art for it and got my Cricut machine to cut it out for me.

It seems to be getting harder to get hold of, but this is the stick I have*. It doesn’t really say much about connecting to anything other than a Switch, but it just showed up on my SteamDeck as a bluetooth controller and worked perfectly.

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Tekken 7 – Xbox Series X

This month we apparently played fighting games. I dabbled a bit with the single player content in Tekken 7, it’s good fun but a bit late to be getting into it really. I’ll probably pick up 8 but may wait for a decent discount or some kind of bundle with DLC characters.

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Raiden V – Xbox Series X

While the stick was hooked up it seemed like a good idea to play a shmup too. I know Raiden V isn’t very well regarded but I enjoy it for what it is.

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Forza Motorsport – Xbox Series X

I also gave this another try. I played through a couple more of the cups, racing remains great fun but the career mode is so dull. I’ll probably drop back into it on occasion, thanks to my new purchase below I’ve got the space to keep it installed anyway.

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CYGNI – PC

I heard good things about this prior to release, and it was free on the Epic Game Store at launch so I was looking forward to getting stuck in. Sadly I really didn’t enjoy it. I was expecting something a bit more traditionally arcade, but it’s something else. The controls are a bit erratic and the systems seem designed around you being expected to crash so there are loads of shields. That’s not really my bag. A pity.

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Geometry Wars 3 – Vita & PS4/5

Fortunately, conversations with a friend involved us digging out our PlayStation Vita systems and tinkering with those. I spent 20 minutes faffing through the things I had installed on there, then 2 hours playing Geometry Wars 3. Annoyingly the leaderboards and trophies are separate on the PS4/5 version, and I wanted to play on the big screen so I moved over to that one. I did complete the campaign mode a while back but there are achievements and high scores to chase so I’ve been doing a bit of that.

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What’s been on the arcade?

Thanks again to the purchase below, I freed up the external SSD drive I was using for backwards compatible games on my Xbox Series X. I swapped this with the slower drive in my arcade. The startup time and loading on the bigger games is much improved. Some individual games may need tweaks to their controls but I pretty much have it all configured how I want it. There are now video clips for all games on there which makes for a nice random attract mode when it is idling. I’ve also set up a few systems I didn’t have access to before.

It’s taken me far too long to properly get into RetroAchievements, but now I have, they’re set up on my arcade machine, my SteamDeck emulators and my lightgun build. Nice to have even more stats and goals to chase when playing classic games. This is my profile for it, I should add it to the gaming page on here too.

For the first time in ages, I also got back to the Ten Pence Arcade monthly game, they are playing Yie Ar Kung Fu, which was my favourite game on the Commodore 16 when I was about 5 years old.

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Games purchased this month

2TB Storage Expansion for Xbox

Not a game as such, but I finally upgraded the storage for my Series X. This is mostly inspired by me changing internet provider. My download speed is dramatically slower than it was, so I wanted to go back to having everything I might want to play installed, so I don’t have a day to wait when I decide to play something new.

These* seem to have had a bit of a price drop recently, still pricey though.

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Games retired in August

World of Warcraft – PC

Well I did it, about two weeks before the two months of game time expired, I got bored of WoW again. Very much enjoyed myself while I was playing it though. At least not wanting to carry on playing has saved me from buying another expansion and renewing the subscription.

*As usual, these links are affiliate ones (if I’ve actually included any), which may earn me a small commission if you buy something.