Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.
After several relatively quiet weeks, it feels like all guns blazing this time, with multiple multi-film box sets and a couple of shiny new 4K releases — all just in time for the monthly running time update!
...except I'm actually away from home this week, as of yesterday evening, so can't get at my running time list to work that out. It appearing next week instead won't hurt anyone.
Number of titles in collection: 3,603 [up 5]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,617 [up 5]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 457 [up 2]
Number of discs in collection: 8,660 [up 17]
Number of films: 4,585 [up 20]
Number of additional cuts: 466 [up 11]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,267 [up 1]
See you next week, faithful reader.
Saturday, 6 September 2025
Friday, 5 September 2025
Games
007: Blood Stone
In the process of discovering that neither the PS3 nor Xbox 360 versions of Blood Stone play well with emulators, I also learnt they'd released it for PC — somehow I'd completely forgotten about that. Anyway, I managed to get hold of a copy, and that runs on my Steam Deck. Not natively, of course, and it seems to not have controller support, so I also learnt something about my Steam Deck via the process of remapping controls. It's still not perfect, further tweaking may nail it, but the main thing is I got the game running and some semblance of controls sorted. Hurrah!
And after all that effort, it crossed my mind that the game's old enough it would probably run fine on my Mac, where I could use the native keyboard + mouse controls it's designed for, so maybe I should play it there instead. Oh well.
In the process of discovering that neither the PS3 nor Xbox 360 versions of Blood Stone play well with emulators, I also learnt they'd released it for PC — somehow I'd completely forgotten about that. Anyway, I managed to get hold of a copy, and that runs on my Steam Deck. Not natively, of course, and it seems to not have controller support, so I also learnt something about my Steam Deck via the process of remapping controls. It's still not perfect, further tweaking may nail it, but the main thing is I got the game running and some semblance of controls sorted. Hurrah!
And after all that effort, it crossed my mind that the game's old enough it would probably run fine on my Mac, where I could use the native keyboard + mouse controls it's designed for, so maybe I should play it there instead. Oh well.
Monday, 1 September 2025
Games
GoldenEye 007: Reloaded
In what I intend to be the final bit of fiddling before I actually start playing some games on my new devices, today I tried to set up a pair of James Bond titles on my Steam Deck: the PS3 versions of GoldenEye 007 Reloaded (as the Xbox 360 one doesn't run so well) and Blood Stone (aka 007 Blood Stone, aka James Bond 007: Blood Stone, but nowhere does anyone call it Blood Stone 007, despite that being the order of the words on the cover. But I digress...)
Long story short, the latter was a bit of a disaster. I eventually learnt it doesn't run well at all, so abandoned it. It was released on PC too, although is no longer officially available, but if I can find it that would be a better bet — although my brief bit of reading suggests it doesn't run instantly either, but might be doable with some fiddling.
The fact I've logged this entry as GoldenEye should tell you I had more success there. Absolutely no crashes or freezes, everything ran smoothly and looked good. Hurrah! I ended up playing the whole first level, which probably took me a lot longer than it's meant to, even on the lowest difficulty setting; but I also didn't die, which suggests the game is pretty forgiving on said setting. Fine by me — as I've said before, I don't actually play games like this to be challenged, but to experience other aspects.
Now, whether I keep at this or immediately switch to something else (Everything or Nothing was the Bond game that I really wanted to play, and there's so many other titles I'd like to get stuck into, not to mention the games I already have on the go), time will tell.
In what I intend to be the final bit of fiddling before I actually start playing some games on my new devices, today I tried to set up a pair of James Bond titles on my Steam Deck: the PS3 versions of GoldenEye 007 Reloaded (as the Xbox 360 one doesn't run so well) and Blood Stone (aka 007 Blood Stone, aka James Bond 007: Blood Stone, but nowhere does anyone call it Blood Stone 007, despite that being the order of the words on the cover. But I digress...)
Long story short, the latter was a bit of a disaster. I eventually learnt it doesn't run well at all, so abandoned it. It was released on PC too, although is no longer officially available, but if I can find it that would be a better bet — although my brief bit of reading suggests it doesn't run instantly either, but might be doable with some fiddling.
The fact I've logged this entry as GoldenEye should tell you I had more success there. Absolutely no crashes or freezes, everything ran smoothly and looked good. Hurrah! I ended up playing the whole first level, which probably took me a lot longer than it's meant to, even on the lowest difficulty setting; but I also didn't die, which suggests the game is pretty forgiving on said setting. Fine by me — as I've said before, I don't actually play games like this to be challenged, but to experience other aspects.
Now, whether I keep at this or immediately switch to something else (Everything or Nothing was the Bond game that I really wanted to play, and there's so many other titles I'd like to get stuck into, not to mention the games I already have on the go), time will tell.
Sunday, 31 August 2025
Fiction
The Governess by Stephen Gallagher
I confess I only read this today to ensure I completed the August achievement on the GoodReads 2025 Reading Challenge. But I’m glad I did, because it was an effective little Gothic ghost story.
I’ve got several more of Gallagher’s chapbooks, though perhaps I should save them for future challenge requirements. I’m now more interested in getting hold of other of his novels, though — the Sebastian Becker series advertised at the end of this volume sounds interesting.
I confess I only read this today to ensure I completed the August achievement on the GoodReads 2025 Reading Challenge. But I’m glad I did, because it was an effective little Gothic ghost story.
I’ve got several more of Gallagher’s chapbooks, though perhaps I should save them for future challenge requirements. I’m now more interested in getting hold of other of his novels, though — the Sebastian Becker series advertised at the end of this volume sounds interesting.
Games
New Nintendo 3DS XL
So, as well as my Steam Deck, I also just got one of these. That's the full official name of the console, by the way — it's a second-hand New 3DS XL, not a new New 3DS XL, because they dont make them anymore.
Also much like the Steam Deck yesterday, I spent a hefty chunk of today hacking it and testing out the new features that gave me. Mainly that involved installing games that are no longer officially available (because Nintendo shut the eShop), as well as some games that are ridiculously expensive second-hand but, y'know, there are other ways to get them when you've got a hacked device.
And, again like the Steam Deck, I now have a ludicrous backlog of games to play. Where will I find the time? God knows.
So, as well as my Steam Deck, I also just got one of these. That's the full official name of the console, by the way — it's a second-hand New 3DS XL, not a new New 3DS XL, because they dont make them anymore.
Also much like the Steam Deck yesterday, I spent a hefty chunk of today hacking it and testing out the new features that gave me. Mainly that involved installing games that are no longer officially available (because Nintendo shut the eShop), as well as some games that are ridiculously expensive second-hand but, y'know, there are other ways to get them when you've got a hacked device.
And, again like the Steam Deck, I now have a ludicrous backlog of games to play. Where will I find the time? God knows.
Saturday, 30 August 2025
Films
Project A (1983)
[#71 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2025 #8
[#71 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2025 #8
Games
Steam Deck
This is the thing I alluded torecently* a couple of weeks ago: I won a Steam Deck! The 512GB OLED model, to be precise. And I spent most of today playing with it. Not playing on it — I played bits of various games, but nothing properly — but playing around with getting it set up and stuff.
Because, sure, my Steam library is all easily accessible and installable and whatnot (even if it doesn't all necessarily run, though there are websites to help with that), but I've got so many games from other places (mainly GOG, but others too) that I'd like to be able to play on there that I had to get some other stuff going. Those aren't much more difficult thanks to Heroic Games Launcher (which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago because it's also helped with my Mac. Also, that's how long this has been incoming!)
No, the thing that occupied most of my time was emulation. The Deck is basically just a PC in a console shell, which means it's very customisable, and that means you can run emulators on it. Considering my interest in the Switch 2 had reached a point where I was on the verge of purchasing one and had begun planning what exactly I wanted to buy (the console itself, obviously, but also which peripherals and games), plus the fact I'd already had a go at emulation on my Mac with an eye to playing more, and I was keyed up to get some classic games going — as if I don't have enough natively-playable games to be getting on with! (I do. I really, really do.)
There are various emulation solutions, the two main ones (it seems to me) being EmuDeck and RetroDeck. I'd been umming and ahhing about which to go for, eventually settled on the former, but over the course of today decided the latter was more my speed. And so I've been installing stuff and setting it up and testing out old games.
First up: James Bond adventure Everything or Nothing. Although I'd tried the GameCube version before, I read that the Xbox version was actually the best one, so I tried to get that going. Turns out, EoN doesn't play nicely with Xbox emulators — as in, it's entirely unplayable — so, after trial and error getting to that realisation (if only I'd found that link earlier and realised it was futile), I caved and went back to the 'Cube version. That runs pretty much perfectly.
In a similar vein, I tried GoldenEye 007 Reloaded, the PS3/Xbox 360 port of the GoldenEye remake originally released on Wii (which I owned on that console back in the day but don't think I even got round to starting). It runs, and while it's running it runs well, but then it will suddenly completely freeze up and the app has to be killed and restarted, and you have to pick up from wherever the last checkpoint was. Frustrating. I have tried to see if there are some fixes that can be applied (changing graphic settings, that kind of thing), but everything I turn up is related to getting an Xbox port of the N64 original to play. Grr. I've left it installed, just in case. So far I've tried the Xbox 360 version, because the controller layout matches the Deck (no silly circle/square/whatever PS BS here), but maybe the PS3 one is worth a shot if it's more stable.
Considering they always run such closed ecosystems, it's kinda ironic that the easiest of all was getting Nintendo stuff to run. Legend of Zelda games from both SNES (A Link to the Past) and GameCube (The Wind Waker) ran without a problem, as did the N64's Paper Mario. I also started up a couple of other SNES games — EarthBound and Super Castlevania IV — which also seem fine. Quite why I'm interested in Castlevania right now, I'm not sure, but I also popped on one of the most acclaimed, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night from the original PlayStation, which I got going easily enough. Finally, a couple of PS2 titles — ICO and Shadow of the Colossus — required some more fiddling (in part to set up some recommended graphics settings to ensure they ran well), but weren't too strenuous really. Well, that said, I wouldn't want to be having to faff with that all the time, but for a couple of well-regarded titles I've been on-and-off curious about for a while, I'm hoping it was worth it.
Obviously, as I said earlier, I've only touched on each of these games briefly — enough to establish they run at all, not that they won't break apart / crash / etc when playing them properly. I fully expect the Nintendo systems to all be fine, but who knows if those PlayStation ones (especially the PS2 pair) won't behave like GoldenEye Reloaded when I do more than run around the opening room for two minutes?
Anyway, I'm done with all that setup now (apart from maybe trying the PS3 GoldenEye), so maybe I'll actually get on with playing some of the games. Of course, I also ought to take the time to go back to Gray Matter and Dungeons of Hinterberg — although as the latter is scheduled to leave Luna tomorrow, it makes more sense to just quit now and start over on my Steam Deck. At least that makes it easier to know which game to start with.
* Two weeks! That's for two reasons: firstly, it took quite a while to turn up; and secondly, it came almost a week ago, but I've been too busy to sit down with it until today.
This is the thing I alluded to
Because, sure, my Steam library is all easily accessible and installable and whatnot (even if it doesn't all necessarily run, though there are websites to help with that), but I've got so many games from other places (mainly GOG, but others too) that I'd like to be able to play on there that I had to get some other stuff going. Those aren't much more difficult thanks to Heroic Games Launcher (which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago because it's also helped with my Mac. Also, that's how long this has been incoming!)
No, the thing that occupied most of my time was emulation. The Deck is basically just a PC in a console shell, which means it's very customisable, and that means you can run emulators on it. Considering my interest in the Switch 2 had reached a point where I was on the verge of purchasing one and had begun planning what exactly I wanted to buy (the console itself, obviously, but also which peripherals and games), plus the fact I'd already had a go at emulation on my Mac with an eye to playing more, and I was keyed up to get some classic games going — as if I don't have enough natively-playable games to be getting on with! (I do. I really, really do.)
There are various emulation solutions, the two main ones (it seems to me) being EmuDeck and RetroDeck. I'd been umming and ahhing about which to go for, eventually settled on the former, but over the course of today decided the latter was more my speed. And so I've been installing stuff and setting it up and testing out old games.
First up: James Bond adventure Everything or Nothing. Although I'd tried the GameCube version before, I read that the Xbox version was actually the best one, so I tried to get that going. Turns out, EoN doesn't play nicely with Xbox emulators — as in, it's entirely unplayable — so, after trial and error getting to that realisation (if only I'd found that link earlier and realised it was futile), I caved and went back to the 'Cube version. That runs pretty much perfectly.
In a similar vein, I tried GoldenEye 007 Reloaded, the PS3/Xbox 360 port of the GoldenEye remake originally released on Wii (which I owned on that console back in the day but don't think I even got round to starting). It runs, and while it's running it runs well, but then it will suddenly completely freeze up and the app has to be killed and restarted, and you have to pick up from wherever the last checkpoint was. Frustrating. I have tried to see if there are some fixes that can be applied (changing graphic settings, that kind of thing), but everything I turn up is related to getting an Xbox port of the N64 original to play. Grr. I've left it installed, just in case. So far I've tried the Xbox 360 version, because the controller layout matches the Deck (no silly circle/square/whatever PS BS here), but maybe the PS3 one is worth a shot if it's more stable.
Considering they always run such closed ecosystems, it's kinda ironic that the easiest of all was getting Nintendo stuff to run. Legend of Zelda games from both SNES (A Link to the Past) and GameCube (The Wind Waker) ran without a problem, as did the N64's Paper Mario. I also started up a couple of other SNES games — EarthBound and Super Castlevania IV — which also seem fine. Quite why I'm interested in Castlevania right now, I'm not sure, but I also popped on one of the most acclaimed, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night from the original PlayStation, which I got going easily enough. Finally, a couple of PS2 titles — ICO and Shadow of the Colossus — required some more fiddling (in part to set up some recommended graphics settings to ensure they ran well), but weren't too strenuous really. Well, that said, I wouldn't want to be having to faff with that all the time, but for a couple of well-regarded titles I've been on-and-off curious about for a while, I'm hoping it was worth it.
Obviously, as I said earlier, I've only touched on each of these games briefly — enough to establish they run at all, not that they won't break apart / crash / etc when playing them properly. I fully expect the Nintendo systems to all be fine, but who knows if those PlayStation ones (especially the PS2 pair) won't behave like GoldenEye Reloaded when I do more than run around the opening room for two minutes?
Anyway, I'm done with all that setup now (apart from maybe trying the PS3 GoldenEye), so maybe I'll actually get on with playing some of the games. Of course, I also ought to take the time to go back to Gray Matter and Dungeons of Hinterberg — although as the latter is scheduled to leave Luna tomorrow, it makes more sense to just quit now and start over on my Steam Deck. At least that makes it easier to know which game to start with.
* Two weeks! That's for two reasons: firstly, it took quite a while to turn up; and secondly, it came almost a week ago, but I've been too busy to sit down with it until today.
Collection Count
Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.
The tiniest of additions this week, with just one new single-film single-disc arrival...
Number of titles in collection: 3,598 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,612 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 455 [no change]
Number of discs in collection: 8,643 [up 1]
Number of films: 4,565 [up 1]
Number of additional cuts: 455 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,266 [no change]
...but I did just spend several hundred pounds (seriously) on preorders for next month, across both multi-film box sets and indulgent single-film sets. It's a drain on my bank balance, for sure, but it won't necessarily result in huge increases here. Ho hum.
See you next week for the start of that, faithful reader.
The tiniest of additions this week, with just one new single-film single-disc arrival...
Number of titles in collection: 3,598 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,612 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 455 [no change]
Number of discs in collection: 8,643 [up 1]
Number of films: 4,565 [up 1]
Number of additional cuts: 455 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,266 [no change]
...but I did just spend several hundred pounds (seriously) on preorders for next month, across both multi-film box sets and indulgent single-film sets. It's a drain on my bank balance, for sure, but it won't necessarily result in huge increases here. Ho hum.
See you next week for the start of that, faithful reader.
Friday, 29 August 2025
Thursday, 28 August 2025
Films
The Thursday Murder Club (2025)
[#70 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
Can't believe it's been two years since I read the novel. Where does time go?!
[#70 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
Can't believe it's been two years since I read the novel. Where does time go?!
Wednesday, 27 August 2025
TV
Friends
9x20 The One with the Soap Opera Party [6th or so watch]
Only Murders in the Building
4x09 Escape from Planet Klongo
4x10 My Best Friend's Wedding [season finale]
9x20 The One with the Soap Opera Party [6th or so watch]
Only Murders in the Building
4x09 Escape from Planet Klongo
4x10 My Best Friend's Wedding [season finale]
Tuesday, 26 August 2025
Games
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game
Just finishing the game we started yesterday.
Just finishing the game we started yesterday.
Monday, 25 August 2025
Games
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
Game 4 (of 7)
Enjoying this, but the games (much like the books) get long the further you progress. And so we also returned to...
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game
Game 4 (of 7)
Enjoying this, but the games (much like the books) get long the further you progress. And so we also returned to...
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game
Sunday, 24 August 2025
TV
Friends
9x15 The One with the Mugging [6th or so watch]
Only Murders in the Building
4x04 The Stunt Man
4x05 Adaptation
Richard Osman's House of Games
8x40 Week 8: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]
9x15 The One with the Mugging [6th or so watch]
Only Murders in the Building
4x04 The Stunt Man
4x05 Adaptation
Richard Osman's House of Games
8x40 Week 8: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]
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