Well, I finally got around to getting a new PC. As regular visitors to FFG may know, I’ve been making do with an old AMD Duron 900 for the past six years or so, and despite several makeshift upgrades, there comes a point when you have to accept that brand new technology is the only way forward. The final straw came when we moved house and my internet provider told me that it no longer supported Windows 98. I had been using their service and Win 98 at our old place pretty successfully since 2006, but after enduring snorts of derision from customer services (“I didn’t know anyone still used that operating system, sir“) and searching frantically for some kind of workaround, it soon became apparent that the game was up.

Admittedly, I could have just bought Win XP and put it on my old PC, but one look at the old girl told me she just wouldn’t be able to take another temporary fix. So despite unsteady economic times, I got out the credit card and splashed out on the best rig I could reasonably afford. It’s not a particularly powerful machine, but it does open up the possibility of experiencing about five years’ worth of gaming that were previously inaccessible to me.

Effectively, this means two things for FFG. Firstly, it puts a stop on me ranting about how things won’t work with Windows 98 (well, at least until the whole world’s using Vista, then I’ll repeat the same trick as I keep XP on my machine until 2020). Secondly, I think we can now entertain the prospect of covering one or two slightly more modern titles on FFG. We’ve never had any strict rules about this kind of thing, but in recent years we’ve certainly tried to keep to pre-2002 titles, partly because we’re supposed to be a retro games site, and partly because I would sulk a bit if anything too new to run on my machine was suggested for review.

When we first started we weren’t so worried about such things. FFG was more of a ‘here are games that we’ve played and liked’ tribute site than anything too specifically retro-focused. The first game I ever reviewed here was Blade Runner in 2001 (the date on the review refers to a later rewrite) – only three years after it had been released. So I guess there’s an argument for saying that if it was alright then, it should be alright now.

We’re not going to go too recent though. The focus of the site has changed, and with some logical reasoning behind that change, too. But don’t be surprised if you see the odd title from 2003 cropping up on FFG in the future.

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As a footnote, it’s been a little quiet on the journal of late. Not that we’ve been too busy (or certainly I haven’t) but I seemed to have subconsciously imposed some kind of quality control on stuff that should or shouldn’t go up here. But blogs are generally fairly self-indulgent creations: and it’s not like I’m writing about what I bought from the supermarket or my Friday night down the pub. So there’ll be more of this kind of rubbish more regularly from now on. Bet you can’t wait.