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' is my favourite song 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.
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