#i like having that sense of incentive and deadline. like: you genuinely need to finish this right now.

[kitchenism]

self care

this is just a little something i made for my own future reference and for anyone else who wants to read it and consider the points i have mentioned. this is not professional help, this is just me sharing my personal tips and ideas to actually make yourself feel better about yourself/life or be more productive.

the general

this is a general, broad category of things that i have observed works for almost everyone and really helps to free up mental space.

-have some kind of outlet. i honestly cannot emphasise how important this is. an outlet does not necessarily have to mean a journal where you pen your thoughts or a person you confide in. an outlet is any activity that helps you get a clearer understanding of situation, anything you do to make yourself feel more at peace with the world. it could be a creative outlet like a pastime, a hobby or any pursuit you really enjoy or it could simply be taking a walk down your favourite streets. everybody is different, not only in who they are but also in what stimulates their intellect/how they perceive a situation. always know that no matter what, you can only free yourself by doing you.

if you don’t know what your outlet is, then keep doing the things you enjoy and try new things. something eventually will click, and sometimes a comfort zone can be found outside the regular one you live within.

-take breaks. sometimes the world gets too fast paced for us to keep up with it. at these points, when life feels overwhelming, it is important to realise your strength and to take some time off to recuperate. it’s basically just releasing the tightly held reins and letting yourself relax. whether it’s school, college or work, just take a few days off and treat yourself. read books, watch movies, cook the food you love to eat. if social media is getting toxic and it very often does get extremely toxic, just leave for a couple of days. unfollow people you don’t want to keep up with, clear out your profile of things you don’t like to see and do not feel obligated to the tedious social life if it is hampering your mental wellness. your health comes before any instagram caption or tumblr edit.

-plan your day out either in the morning or the night before. okay, so this may seem really random but it is something that really helps me to be more productive. i love to elaborately journal out my to-do lists and my daily schedule in my bullet journal. but that is just what works for me. if it isn’t your cup of tea or you simply don’t have the time, take ten minutes out before going to bed or wake up ten minutes early to just plan out your priorities and tasks for the day and a rough idea of when you have the time to get them done. it honestly saves you from that last minute rush, panic and anxiety of unfulfilled deadlines or that late night realisation of the homework you forgot to do. it leaves a lot more time to do the things you enjoy without having a guilty conscience.

-do the things you enjoy. okay, this could honestly be anything from taking long, pampering baths to working out to writing a novel. just do what releases your pent up mental energy. it is extremely important to release your energy in the form of something productive or satisfying before it gets converted to negative mental space which attracts either depressive thoughts or anxiety.

the personal

this is just a list of things that personally work for me. like i said, this is for my future reference as well and if anyone would like to try any of this, feel free.

-looking good. this may sound extremely narcissistic but it isn’t what it sounds like. wearing the clothes i feel i look good in, doing my makeup just to look pretty for myself really boosts my self confidence. i love doing my own photoshoots and having a good time. it doesn’t have to be for social media or for anyone else, it just makes me feel better about my body and features.

-bullet journaling. i absolutely adore making my daily schedule look pretty enough to motivate me to do the things written down on it even if it means doing a chapter of chemistry in two hours. it gives me a sense of self-accomplishment that is extremely satisfying and actually gives me the motivation to do more things just to know that i have been productive.

-completing unfinished work. that one half finished sketch lying at the back of my file, that unwritten idea for an essay buzzing in my head, the research on greek mythology i started but never really progressed with- when i actually try to finish doing some of these things in my free time, i feel so good about actually getting something personal done?? i don’t know if this is just me but finishing work really gives me a boost.

-doing new things. just as much as finishing previously set tasks, starting to do something new and setting myself goals to try and master it gives me a really strong sense of motivation. it could be anything, learning to play an instrument, learning a language, mastering computer technology, whatever floats your boat works here. you just need to have the drive to actually get it done.

-detoxing. this is really important to me personally. very often, i just go through all my social media accounts and delete everything negative or associated with a negative memory from them. it could be changing an instagram caption to deleting entire pinterest boards. not continuously being reminded of unhappiness helps the goal of being genuinely happy. i block people i don’t like even if it means losing followers, unfollow pages/blogs/boards that have negative vibes and try to keep myself and everything associated with me positive.

-talking opening up to someone i trust really helps me. i am lucky enough to have understanding people in my life who either remind me to keep hope in the future or give me the encouragement to drive myself out of any negative space i get into. that push is often necessary and helps me to actually come back on track and work.

-working and achieving the goal i worked towards. even if i don’t achieve the goal, i will invariably learn something important along the way or achieve an entirely different goal that is equally satisfying. but this is valid if only i have genuinely worked hard. it keeps me productive and busy enough to not involve myself in anything unnecessary.

-cheat days. this is silly but so important! some days are just meant for lazing around, eating good food, painting your nails, watching television or reading books and sleeping. these days are as important as the days you work really hard to get something done. they let me feel relaxed and rejuvenated and give me the incentive to work harder.

this list is by no means complete. i’m still discovering what helps me to be a better, happier person and i’m sure there’s lot more than just this. i’ll probably keep editing this, helping myself to grow and become the best of who i am. this is important for not just me but also my surrounding space and this holds true for every individual.

i am not a professional and if anyone is suffering from crippling mental disorder or serious disability, you should first see someone who knows the subject and can help. but if you’re set on recovering, if you have the motivation to get better, i’m reaching out to you. i’m still learning, stumbling and getting back up myself. i want to recover and i’m trying my best to figure out how. i don’t know everything, nor do i claim to. but i’m trying to know who i am.

this post is just me trying to help anyone on the other end of the screen who wants to have a starting point. humanity is a community and we all deserve help and should consider it a duty to help others.

i love you all.

[antiques-for-geeks]

Game Review : Space Harrier

Elite Systems / 1987 / Originally £9.99 / Commodore 64

In Space Harrier, save the ‘Fantasy Zone’ from certain destruction by flying into the screen and blasting stuff until you meet a bigger thing to blast at the end of the level. Then blast more stuff while looking at a differently coloured background!

The rate at which graphics and sound advanced in the arcades in the early 1980’s was genuinely astounding. As a kid I only made contact with this exciting world a few times a year, and I would be greeted with something new and potentially jaw dropping on nearly every occasion. A case in point: try comparing SEGA’s 1981 driving game Turbo with their 1985 fantastical 3D shooter Space Harrier. Turbo was a really impressive game for ‘81, but it was made to look colourless, jerky and ridiculously limited within just a few short years. 

Space Harrier was a notable early entry in SEGA’s ‘super scaler’ series of arcade games, which used hardware sprite scaling effects to provide a convincing into-the-screen 3D effect without the need to render a real 3D space.

In the arcade. Fast, smooth and colourful!

The effect of movement is amplified here by a smoothly animated checkerboard ground pattern. It’s a very simple game at heart; you view your flying character from behind as they weave in and out of columns and trees, trading shots with enemies that dance in front of them. At the end of each level you come to a dead stop and face off against a larger boss; basically a mobile bullet sponge who guards the way to the next level. 

Every few stages you get to ride a dragon and smash into trees to earn points. The battle is played out to a memorable theme tune, and has a few scattered speech samples thrown in for good measure (‘welcome to the fantasy zone!’).

From the very beginning, reproducing a game like Space Harrier on the C64 was a bit of a non-starter. Where 8-bit home computers could often produce a reasonable facsimile of arcade games at the beginning of their life-span, they were soon completely out-paced by the sounds and visuals offered in the arcade.

Despite this fact, arcade licenses remained sure sellers on home systems which could never do them justice.

You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky as we walk in fields of brown.  

The impossible job of converting such a technically advanced game to the C64 was handled by Chris Butler, whose efforts on the beige box I generally have a lot of time for. He produced very playable (if truncated) versions of Commando and ‘Ghosts and Goblins’. He also went on to make several other madly ambitious C64 conversions of SEGA’s super scaler arcade games, with some degree of success. His games though, had a definite tendency to look plain and functional. If you take a candy coloured fantasy like Space Harrier and replace 90% of the colour with turd-brown and battleship grey it’s hard to hand out plaudits for what’s left.

And yet, if you squint… and approach it with a lot of charity… this *is* a half decent effort for the time. It’s nice and fast and contains all the essential gameplay elements of dodging and shooting in a 3D space. It’s a shorter game, with much less variety in enemies, no dragon riding bonus sections and no character speech, but the graphical effect that renders the enemies and obstacles as they get closer until nearly filling the screen has been done fairly effectively.

It’s certainly much better than the laughably feeble Amstrad CPC effort, which rendered all the enemies and obstacles with vector graphics to keep the speed up. It’s also much less likely to give you a seizure than the Spectrum port, throwing its shaded monochrome sprites and horrible colour clash right into your retinas. 

The conversion is obviously a rush job; apparently Chris was given a stupidly short deadline and it would have been much better if he’d been allowed the time to finish. This is evidenced by the later US release which added a raster bar effect on the ground and tidied up the sprite work. 

U.S. Space Harrier. A slap in the face to British gamers!

Ultimately, what sinks this game on the C64 is that fact that in the arcade it was more of an attempt at sensory overload than a deep and engaging game. The deluxe cabinet even threw the player about courtesy of a hydraulic chair! It was about as imaginatively made a sensory overload as you were going to get back then, and I still retain a lot of fondness for it, but strip it of its theme park ride trappings and there isn’t really a whole lot left to keep you entertained.

Buying it today

This was a successful mainstream release, and there are plentiful cassette copies available for a few pounds.

Commentariat

Tim: The odd thing is, for years I never saw an actual Space Harrier arcade machine. Our local leisure centre was the point of reference for such things and while it was fine for Double Dragon, Thunderblade, Xenophobe, Outrun and Operation Wolf, they never seemed to ever get Space Harrier. So in my mind, this game has always really been a mish-mash of low res graphics and turgid colours. Oddly, it’s the arcade that feels wrong. Messed up, I know. 

The C64’s version is alright; it whips along at a decent pace and the music, what there is of it, is nicely done. True it’s nowhere near arcade accurate and at times makes little sense, but it’s a solid attempt even if it quickly bounces against the limitations of the hardware it’s running on. Compare it to some other versions and the arcade and sadly, it’s nothing to write home about.

Pop: When I think of Space Harrier, I’m always transported back to a specific moment in my childhood. Some of my friends were keen mountain bikers, and since I’d just been given a cheap imitation of a mountain bike I decided to join them on one of their weekend trips. This quickly resulted in me travelling at speed down a gravelly hill on my arse. Luckily Tim lived nearby; his mum was a nurse and with her expert help I survived. I remember coming home that evening battered and bruised and playing my new copy of Space Harrier for the first time. I can’t remember enjoying it that much, but it was certainly a surreal experience, still vivid in my mind.

In retrospect, this wasn’t much cop. The C64 was plagued by over-ambitious arcade conversions. There’s just not enough gameplay here, and it’s all quite unattractive to look at.

Meat: The graphics are ugly, the main character runs like he’s shat himself, there’s minimal gameplay, half the levels are missing, the bonus stages are missing, the synthesized speech is missing. Other than that it’s fine.

Score card

Presentation  5/10

A standard cassette jewel case with inlay instructions. The cover artwork is attractive courtesy of the original arcade game. There’s very little that’s special about the in-game presentation, with a very bare title screen. This has all the hall-marks of a rush job.

Originality 6/10

From a graphical design standpoint the arcade game was very original. The gameplay itself was only an iteration on what had come before. There weren’t too many games attempting this into-the-screen viewpoint on the C64 at the time, given how difficult it was to pull off successfully.

Graphics 5/10

They’re fast, but much more jerky than in the arcade thanks to the lack of any custom sprite scaling hardware in the humble ‘64. The effect just about works, but the lack of any ground animation is a let down. Everything is splotchy and ugly, and there’s far too much brown! 

Hookability 6/10

Very easy to get into, and nothing much to explain. There’s a certain appeal to seeing what comes next, for a while at least.

Sound 7/10

A well made rendition of the arcade Space Harrier theme plays on every level, with a separate end-of-level boss tune. The spot effects are pitiful, however. The C64 surely could have handled the synthesized speech, though this may have been cut due to memory constraints and to avoid having to make the game a tape multi-load.

Lastability 3/10

Space Harrier is not a deep game. There isn’t even as much incentive to see later levels as in the arcade, because the background and enemy variety has been cut right back.

Value for Money 3/10

1987 was something of a vintage year for the C64, with the release of original titles such as Wizball, IK+ and The Last Ninja. There really isn’t enough here to make this a worthy purchase at full price.

Overall 4/10

While this was a brave attempt at home conversion of Space Harrier, it was a minor disappointment at the time. It may have been the best on an 8-bit computer, but that’s clearing a pretty low bar. It also rankles that we got something half finished where the U.S. saw a significantly more polished release.

If you really feel the need to play an 8-bit conversion today, we would recommend the efforts on the Master System or PC Engine. There’s also a highly impressive modern homebrew for Atari computers.

[jaythecatdog-blog]

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