Update - smell the flowers, enjoy some consoles, VHS tapes, new music and games

 It's been just over two months since my last post. Thank you all for your patience while I am working through some health issues.

In summary, it has not been fun and still isn't. I won't bore you with the medical details. I have been in hospital for a while, had some procedures and more tests than I have ever had, and now back home, working full time from home and still recovering.  Haven't had much to smile about recently.

I am still alive and kicking though and some things are getting better.

I was finally well enough to go to Rundle Mall briefly on Friday night recently and got to enjoy a nice market I didn't know was running. 

I went there specifically to buy the new release album 'Inferno' from Boards Of Canada, their first album in 13 years.  I bought it on Vinyl record that day, and also ordered the cassette version direct from Bleep, which finally arrived this week.

I am a big fan of Boards of Canada's music and very happy to see new music from them finally in 2026. 'You Retreat from time and space' and 'Naraka' are my favourite songs from this album at the moment.

I still love Future Sound of London, Orbital, Squarepusher and Aphex Twin for this type of music in 2026, but Boards Of Canada is the undisputed king for me. It helps me to relax on long plane flights, when stuck in hospital and everytime I simply want to disconnect and relax. 

 'Dayvan Cowboy' from 2005 or 'Reach for the dead' from 2013 are great examples of what Boards of Canada are all about. Their album 'Music has the right to Children' is considered a landmark album in the genre, and 'Roygbiv' from 1998 one of the most popular songs on it.

There is also a great Youtube documentary style video by a fan about Boards of Canada made back in 2018 that explains all about the group, history and their releases - featuring all their music as well. The promo the band did ahead of the release of 2013's Tomorrow's harvest was next level - never seen this kind of promo ever for an album. Probably never will again - it was so elaborate. Link is here. Well worth a watch if you want to learn more.

My new headphones help with this too - not travelling for a number of months and being stuck at home has prompted me to get some things I wanted for a long time to help cheer me up. A decent set of quality headphones to use with my late younger brother's old stereo system being one of them. I did some more upgrades for the system too to add more functionality, but that will probably be a seperate blog post at some point.

Final Audio D8000 Pro headphones - pricey but I got them on run out for a new model - discounted almost 80% off, and for me worth every penny. Definitely would not pay the normal retail price for them - that is crazy money.  Who can afford that? Every review I saw of them was from people who didn't actually own a pair and had them on loan....I get it.

They work great on my Sony DAP also for playing my FLAC high quality audio files - I thought it might not be able to drive the headphones due to the beefier requirements, but it can do it, and they did work to cheer me up :-)

Anyway, it was a nice surprise to do this trip to the city, and a nice distraction from what I have been going through. I had to leave soon after though, as I started feeling not good.

Last weekend (which was a long weekend), I even got away to the Barossa Valley with my wife last weekend for a few days - the first time I have gone anywhere outside Adelaide in many months. 

I really needed it. As they say, sometimes you just need to go outside and smell the flowers. 

South Australia is a beautiful place in any season, but for me especially in Winter.

I sat with my wife at a lovely outdoor fireplace as the sun set looking out over the historic Seppetsfield vineyards deep in the heart of the Barossa valley and just forgot about everything crappy happening in my life. 

For me, this is why Australia is my favourite country in the world - we can escape the rat race anytime we want, and within an hour just totally detox from the world with it's work, wars, politics, scams, egomaniacs, AI bots, phones, tablets, metadata tracking, as well as the medical tests and doctors. 

Anyway, I am sure you didn't come here to read about the Barossa Valley or my issues. But hopefully you appreciate the beautiful scenery in my home state at least :-)

When I have been well enough (and not working, as I have continued to work full time), I have been mucking around with cleaning up my Console area in one of my computer rooms. This has been a mess for years with consoles messily connected and no structure, and I decided to finally do something about it. 

I moved my Checkmate monitor from the other room into here, as it is more useful with the consoles since it accepts AV, SCART, S-Video, VGA, HDMI inputs and more.

This setup has a 8 way HDMI selector I bought from Amazon so I can switch between the many HDMI consoles easily. I know the Checkmate monitor has multiple HDMI inputs too, but not that many!

I now have the Intellivision Sprint, Atari 7800+, Sega Megadrive 2, Atari Jaguar, Neo Geo X, C64 mini, A500 mini, Intellivision II, SNES Mini, NES Mini, Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii all hooked up to this one screen!

As you can imagine, this was not the work of a moment. 

I will cover the Intellivision Sprint in its own future blog post!

To be honest, I have no idea what these Ikea shelves are supposed to be used for normally, but they are stackable with screws, and perfect for 4:3 screens and the space I have available for putting my consoles on. The Atari 7800+ I covered in a previous blog post here.

For the Sega Megadrive 2, I normally use the original cartridge games as I prefer the original experience. I picked up Zero Tolerance recently - I had no idea there was a unique Wolfenstein 3d style 3D game on the Megadrive!

 

When I am trying out homebrew or demoscene titles, I use the Everdrive since there is no other option. I would like to get a 32X add-on one day, but they are going for silly money these days. If you are interested to know more, I also covered this Megadrive 2 console in more detail in a 2025 blog post here.

The Atari Jaguar is fun to muck around with - I am glad I finally got one. That said, I will not pay the ridiculous prices the CD attachment commands these days. I keep to the cartridge releases only. I covered it last year in my blog post here.

Clearing the space in front of the screen allows me to easily bring out the Intellivision II system, and to have somewhere to put controllers when I am playing the other consoles without them getting in the way.

If you are interested in the Intellivision II, I covered it in more detail in my blog post here, and also about the amazing new homebrew titles released still as professional boxed games with overlays, cartridges and manuals! 

At this time though, I was playing a sentimental old favourite game my brother and I used to play together in the 1980's - called Atlantis.

Switching from 1980's consoles to 2000's PS3 gaming is quite a leap - I took the middle ground and played Wipeout, a playstation 1 titles from the mid-1990's which blew me away when I first saw the intro and game in a Toys R Us shop back in 1995. 

Amiga gaming had moved into 3D on Playstation with many of my favourite former Amiga developers at the forefront. I had to have one, but at that time I had to rent it as I was a very poor uni student!

On the Amiga related front though, I recently acquired a VHS player again, in order to play a Boards of Canada promo video they sent me as a surprise free gift prior to the release of their latest album, called Inferno.

I didn't have a VCR anymore in 2026 - I transferred all my VHS tapes to DVD in the early 2000's and donated the lot to a local charity shop.

I decided to get another VCR to be able to play the Boards of Canada tape, and err, some other videos too because it seems silly not have something else to watch on it. Fortunately VCR's are very cheap now as no one wants them anymore. 

I initially picked some VHS music related videos, as I had no interest in buying movies or tv shows on VHS in 2026.

But then it hit me, I could track down the Amiga released VHS tapes, which I have never owned! That would be more interesting!

Soon I was scouring Ebay and found a number of Amiga Format and Amiga World VHS videos, as well as Deluxe Paint and other application tutorial videos I had never seen before.

It turned out to be a very worthwhile purchase - it was fun to explore and learn a number of features I didn't know about Deluxe Paint IV for example.

This video series about Deluxe paint was fully made using the Amiga 2000!

I look forward to watching the rest of the Deluxe paint series videos - very interesting. I suppose someone has probably converted them to YouTube videos - I didn't go looking as doing it old school was kinda fun:

Dodgy Chromakey instruction videos are funny to watch these days - at the time I remember we were impressed with it, now it is just funny how low quality it is compare to what we do these days.

Maybe I can try genlock solutions withe VCR, now that I have one in the Amiga room. 

I even found some C64 introduction to programming VHS videos locally - the guy who did these videos I found out is apparently now in his 80's. Wow, time has moved on hasn't it.

On the topic of the Commodore 64, I also picked up some new C64 boxed games from K&A to try out on the C64 ultimate system I bought recently. I plan to cover the C64 Ultimate computer in it's own dedicated blog post when I have more time:

Ooze has an Amiga and C64 version - I chose to get the cartridge and floppy versions for the C64. Same for Fizz and Gravity duck:

Not so many companies are still releasing C64 boxed games on actual floppy disks (preferring cartridges or electronic d64/crt files to load into C64 ultimate or SD2IEC solutions via SD-Card or USB. 

So, I am enjoying it while it is still available to buy the real disks with professional labels and manuals.

I found Gravity duck quite fun puzzle game and easy to get into:

The c64 demoscene has been very busy in 2026, with the recent X'2026 demo party providing yet more amazing multi-disk scene demos on the C64 to enjoy.

I remain amazed how impressive the scene demos are getting in 2026. So much attention to detail and effects. I don't know how much AI tools are to blame/help for this improvement, but I am grateful to see new scene demos still in 2026 on my Amiga and C64 systems.

I tried out some other new release C64 games on my Mega 65 too:

Sherwood and Tyrian's Towers. I found Sherwood too hard.

Tyrian's towers on the other hand is fast paced collect'em up and excellent fun - I really love it. 

My Mega65 computer is also getting some more love with native titles recently in 2026. Following the 2026 release of Roguecraft DX I covered here, we now have the Dark Reaper game released - a 3d maze to find keys to escape being caught by the dark reaper. If he catches you - game over.

Graphically this game is very impressive for the Mega65 and runs very well indeed. Would be great to see this as a full boxed commercial release in the future with more to do and explore!

Less graphically impressive, but just as fun to muck around playing is the new game MegaMage.

It is a top down adventure dungeon crawler style game, and is simple to learn how to play - no complex rules to learn or complex spells to master, etc.

I hope this was interesting. Sorry it was a bit short but it is all the time I have.

I bought some new Amiga games and upgrades too, but haven't had time to play with them yet.

I hope to work on more detailed blog posts soon as my recovery improves, especially to finish the Intellivision Sprint, C64 Ultimate and other posts I have in progress already, but it might continue to be patchy for a while as my good health varies from day to day at the moment. I am still recovering and expect to be for a while yet. I just wanted to duck my head in so you know I am still around.

I appreciate your patience.

The sad quiet death of computer and console magazines

Have you been to your local newsagent to buy a magazine recently? No?

You would be quite surprised if you went to a newsagent ten years ago, and then went to a newsagent these days (assuming it is still open for business). So many have closed in recent years.

This is the "Computer magazine section" in a local newsagent here in Australia in September 2025:

Most Newsagents I have seen in Australia in 2025 now sell loads of stationery, occasion cards, act as agents for selling Lotto tickets, and do work under contract as agents for delivery/shipping companies (eg. Australia Post, DHL, UPS and others).

The newsagent shops in Australia are often full of undelivered packages, cluttering up the remaining tiny magazine display space which is always empty of people. Birthday/occasion cards dominate the previously full magazine display stands. 

The lines of people in the newsagent you see sometimes are for the post office delivery collection and for buying Lotto tickets...

The reality is that in 2025 very few people are still buying magazines from newsagents. In Adelaide's Central Business District (CBD), all but one newsagent in Rundle Mall have already shut down. 

I visited that newsagent in the city last weekend. They have a slightly larger selection of magazines than my local, but still very small indeed, with many copies of the same magazine across multiple locations to fill it out, as below:

So where has the magazine audience gone?

These days, on the internet you can see everything you ever wanted to know about pretty much any topic. 

Any new or old computer or console, any new or old game, application, tool or device. Read or view in real time - from the comfort of your smartphone or tablet.

Just search for and watch a short video on YouTube (as below), or watch development of new games live on Twitch, or read detailed posts about newly released devices on a blog. 

Such content is created within a few hours of a product release anywhere in the world. 

We get notified on our smartphones and tablets that something has happened and we can check it out, or use an AI tool to summarise it if we are too lazy or time poor to watch 5-10 minutes of content.

I can also watch short review or full long play videos online of any game ever made that I want to play. For any platform, current or old.

If that is not enough, I can watch popular streamers live playing these games and talk directly with developers who are often present on popular streams to gauge real time feedback and suggestions. I can save the videos to my smartphone or tablet device to watch later on a plane or train trip.

Take, for example, the latest release Hollow Knight: Silksong game on console (Switch 1/2) and Steam (PC/Mac/Linux) this past week. 

This game is made by talented local Adelaide developers Team Cherry over the past 7 years. 

First, let's check out YouTube and Twitch - Hollow Knight Silksong full and quick reviews, play throughs and live streams - huge quantities of instant content for you to consume...5.6 million people watched the release trailer alone!

You can see exactly what the game looks like and plays like - you don't need to rely on the reviewer - you can see it, and hear for yourself without buying it. 

I can do a quick search on Facebook, which has plenty of videos showing the game, and feedback to read.

Using Twitch (shown below), YouTube live or Kick, you can watch many people playing the game all around the world in real time and in your local language. 

You can ask questions in chat in real time too, to make the decision to buy it or not even easier - over 8,000 people are watching just one Twitch streamer in real time playing Hollow Knight Silksong during my lunch time Adelaide time (in the screenshot below):

In addition, you can debate Hollow Knight Silksong news items, product reviews or stories in real time with your similarly minded colleagues on Discord, Facebook, WhatsApp, BlueSky, X, Telegram, Tik Tok, YouTube, Line, Web forums or other social media platforms. 

Great game by the way, and I bought it on Steam. Sadly no physical box release yet.

I am so glad to see local game dev alive and well in Adelaide in 2025.

Continuing this example, you can get feedback from developers who worked on it directly or other knowledgable game players via the official Hollow Knight Discord channel. 

Discord channels have different sections for different topics, sort of like a web forum website but much more interactive between the users and in real time. Voice channels are also setup and available for active discussion about the game in real time.

As I screenshotted the discord channel below, note at the top of the right pane that there are over 55,000 people online at lunch time on a Tuesday in the official Hollow Knight Discord channel - just for this one game! 

*This* is where all the magazine audience has gone.

Would you write an email for a future Magazine letters page asking for help to get an answer in a few months. Why bother, when you can get an instant answer in Discord, watch a long play in YouTube or watch full review and play through in realtime with all tips and tricks shown!

So why would anyone buy a magazine released at least 1-2 months afterwards with delayed and limited coverage of what they are interested in? 

They don't. And they aren't.

So the magazine companies are selling up, amalgamating multiple titles into one as readership and revenue from ad companies plummets, and then closing them down and disappearing. 

Quietly up until ten years ago, but much more rapidly in recent years. It is a generational shift.

This situation in 2025 is VERY different to what used to happen with magazines covering obsolete computer and console platforms. 

In those eras in the 1980's and 1990's, when the platforms life came to an end, the specialist magazine closed as people moved on to newer platforms, with new magazines to cover them. For example: OS/2, Amstrad, C64, Atari ST and Amiga users moved on to Windows, Mac and Linux magazines.

Web forums were in their infancy in the mid-late 1990's - mostly places like usenet - and there was no YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitch, no Steam, no Discord, no WhatsApp. No DLC, no "fremium" games, no micro-transactions in games to progress, no games dependent on online internet servers to run. Operating system patches and games were actually finished and tested fully internally before they were released to the public, back when Kickstarters, Early access, DevOps and Agile development processes didn't exist. 

Yikes, I feel much older after typing all that.

Magazines were how we found out about what was happening in the world of tech, and we trusted their reviewers to give us the scoop on whether a piece of hardware, system, game or application was worth getting or not.

Now in 2025, this is not happening with current computer and console platforms. The platforms are not obsolete yet, but the magazines are still gone - even the magazines that are available in Digital form on tablets and smartphones for many years!

Where is "Official Nintendo magazine", "Official Xbox magazine", "Official Playstation magazine", "PC Format", "Official Windows magazine", or MacWorld to cover current developments for current platforms in 2025? 

They don't exist. They are all gone. Years ago. Did you notice? Possibly not.

Young gamers were the first to move away from magazines and now almost everyone has, for the reasons I showed with Hollow knight Silksong example earlier.

Specialist platform magazines are also quietly disappearing. 

I saw Computer Music magazine, Linux Format, 3D World, Australian MacWorld and MacUser have also now closed.

Multi-format magazines are also mostly gone in the last ten years - C&VG, Electronics Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, Megazone, Games(tm), Games Master and many others. 

Specialist magazines also got the axe. None of the magazines below is still around as a physical printed magazine today (except PC Pro).

Commodore magazines are mostly long gone, but already I covered in a previous blog post about Amiga magazines from 1985 to 2022, and their amazing continued run despite the decimation of computer magazines elsewhere around the world. Please read that article for more detail on Amiga magazines!

Here are some of the older Amiga and Commodore magazines (definitely not all of them - see my blog post for more details) 

So what is left?

"Edge" magazine is one of the few multi-format magazines to still survive in 2025 - but seriously, take a look at the tiny thin size and page count of it. Other US and UK specialist magazines such as "PC Pro" and "Admin Network & Security" magazine are also still around in 2025. There are probably others that I can't get here in Australia, and I am only looking at English language magazines.

I bought Retro Gamer and PC Pro latest issues from the newsagent here in September 2025 (note we get magazines one or two months later than they are released in the UK/US. 

Ironically PC Pro magazine this month is running a feature about 30th anniversary of Windows 95 in 2025! :-)

Some Retro related magazines like Retro Gamer, recent new specialist Retro computer/console related magazines like Amiga Addict, re-started Zzap 64/Amiga, Boing, Amiga Future, Freeze64, K&A Plus, and similar have also survived. 

Amongst the negativity, it's good to see there are several Amiga and C64 magazines are still available in 2025!

This I believe is because there is still some new software and hardware released for the C64 and Amiga, and an entire generation keen to learn more about their childhood computing/console history from Retro Gamer. 

There are also other old magazines like Compute's Gazette, Crash and Sega Force that have been resurrected under new owners in 2025 with new issues being released for the Retro computing/gaming community.

Luckily there are plenty of remaining developers and company executives still around to tell those stories as exclusives to those magazines, and AmigaOS continues to be developed in 2025 with new games also! 

I am glad this type of magazine is still around as I enjoy these too, but it is generational. Buy them while you can!

The next generation sadly couldn't care less about magazines or physical box classic game content. They seem totally engrossed with digital game licensed (with DLC upsell) gaming consoles, smartphones and tablets. This is when they are not live streaming or sharing snapchat, telegram, instagram, YouTube, Kick and Twitch content to their online friends and discussing in real time via Discord, etc. 

This is not limited to the home either. IRL (In Real Life) live streaming, emojis and chat are replacing magazines, real conversations and text for a new generation. 

Next generation adults are now watching YouTube shorts and Tik Tok videos - they last 1 minute or less. Their attention span has narrowed for whatever reason, and the need for companies to adapt ads to get eyeballs onto sponsored content to make money still rolls on without magazines. 

Content quality and quantity has consequently reduced in favour of shoddy clickbait, constant pestering for subscriptions and likes, and deliberate drawing out videos to meet minimum eyeball viewing time statistics for payments from platforms like YouTube. 

You probably know the sort of thing. 

Terrible "YouTube watch party live streams", YouTube videos reviewing of other people's popular videos, Unboxing videos, AI generated artwork, AI voice overs and AI generated videos are being released for a generation too lazy or not willing to spend the time to create their own content, all to make a quick buck. 

How many AI generated videos do you watch and learn something useful from?

Detailed quality reviews (blog or video) are rapidly becoming a thing of the past - except on my Epsilon's World blog of course :-) 

All of my content is written 100% by me and all photos and screenshots taken by me - no AI generation tools, or image perfecting processing used. I bought everything myself with my own money from working full time - no patreon money, kickstarters or shady pre-order schemes. And I make no money from it - I do this because I love it. I must be crazy.

Is this change a bad thing? I think you can be the judge of that. 

Given the situation, I decided to get a selection of these closed down computer/console magazines that people are chucking out while there are some still to be had. You have already seen some of them earlier in this post.

For me, particularly sad is the death of nearly all local Australian magazine content. No one talks much about Australian magazines, so I will!

Australia used to have so many different computer/console related magazines on the shelves. Above and below is a sample - a number of US/UK "official" computer and console magazines also had dedicated Australian versions with their own local content mixed in:

Atomic PC was a great Australian PC gaming hardware and software magazine that sadly closed in 2012 - the photo of Atomic magazine with the :-( at the top of this blog post was their last issue.

Australian PC User magazine was around for years (since 1990) before being rebranded in 2012 into Tech Life magazine, which was itself finally discontinued in 2022.

Hyper magazine was a popular local multi-format gaming magazine that lasted from 1993 until it stopped 26 years later in 2019.

Official Nintendo Magazine, Official Windows magazine, Official Playstation magazine (later rebranded to Play), Game Informer, Australian Game Pro, and MacWorld Australia (1985-2018) were local licensed versions of the US/UK original magazines with local Australian content added. All are now discontinued.

 

We also had older Australian magazine titles like Your Computer (1981-1997), Megazone (1988-1995), OZ Amiga (1991-1992), Australian Commodore & Amiga Review (1996), and Professional Amiga User (1990-1992)

With a few exceptions like PC PowerPlay (magazine handbooks only - the regular magazine shutdown in 2018) and Australian Personal Computer (APC), there are basically no other locally produced Australian computer magazines left in 2025. 

Note: Silicon Chip is an electronics magazine, before someone local points it out - I know. Also, JB Hifi's Stacked "magazine" is not a magazine - just a long form advertisement for all their products dressed up as a "magazine".

If I missed any other local Australian computer/console magazines still sold as physical magazines in 2025, please let me know! 

I bought both those Australian produced magazines below in September 2025 - APC has been released every month since 1980 - it's now 45 years old! PC Powerplay magazine has been released since 1996-2018, now limited to occasional Handbooks rather than regular magazines.

I paint a bleak picture about magazines future in 2025 because it is bleak. Very.

I am glad to see that Australian government is working to preserve copies of Australian produced computer magazines so they will not be lost forever as the world moves on.

I openly wonder how will content created on Discord and other walled garden social media applications be preserved in the future after they are inevitably discontinued and their supporting servers turned off?

For now sadly, the magazine as you and I know it, is dying. Forever. I believe it will not return once it is gone.

In ten years, I predict no one will be able to buy a magazine in a newsagent - they simply won't exist. 

Your children's kids/grand kids will grow up not even knowing what a magazine is, the same way as your kids don't know what a floppy disk, DAT tape, Minidisc, cassette or Iomega zip disk is today.

Technology moves on. People move on. Not all progress is good progress, but it is what it is. 

While we older people may wipe away a tear, I assure you the next generation is losing no sleep over the quiet death of magazines in 2025.

So here on my blog I wanted to show and preserve a small piece of what are wonderful memories for me - the humble and long lasting computer and console magazine. 

You can also read more detailed videogame magazine history on the very excellent Forgotten Worlds website. Many scanned collections of these old magazines are available on archive.org and elsewhere on the internet if you want to read them without further filling your house or apartment with old magazines!

I have a special thanks to everyone who has ever worked on, or written an article for, any computer or console magazine in any era. 

Especially I want to acknowledge those still creating magazines and content in 2025 for the tiny remaining audience. I do my best within my financial means to support those who continue to produce magazine content in a format that is now considered "old fashioned and obsolete".  

Like most others, in 2025 I have embraced the new tech as well, but I love magazines still - the fact I kept so many old magazines to remind me of that era, and still buy 2025 new release magazines from overseas and occasional issues of local magazines should hopefully prove that!