2020 is behind us but covid 19 issues still remain

With 2020 behind us a lot of people all over the world myself included were looking towards 2021 as a time for things to get better.
Of course I had no illusions that a simple change in date would magically change everything wrong with the world but I did hope that with the kids going back to school my work schedule to at the very least see some sort of normality.

That quickly went out of the window when the schools in the UK were shut down after just 1 day back at school.
My personal opinion on if that was the right or wrong decision is irrelevant and this post isn't a rant or monologue on that or any other covid related measures.
This post is to set out how current issues will affect the running of the website.

Having 4 kids at home and trying to work a regular schedule is almost impossible for most people, having kids with disabilities further complicates things and with the need to home educate further absorbs vast amounts of time.

So rather than promise or claim to post multiple posts a day let's be honest here, I will attempt to make at least one post a day over the next few months but I can't commit to 5 or 6 daily updates or even 2 posts on occasions.

I wish everyone well for 2021 and hopefully we'll be back to a more regular posts and a growing of the site soon.

The majority of posts over the next few months will be press releases, if personal circumstances allow I'll continue to post the weekly charts and digital store updates.
I'm currently recording a number of video features but I can't say when they'll actually be edited or end up on the website.

Personal struggles throughout 2020 and Legacy's eBay Store.

Finally Legacy can get back on track

I think it's fair to say that 2020 has been one of the worst years a lot of people have ever experienced.
From a personal point of view it's not been the worst year of my life but it has been an incredibly difficult one.
As anyone who reads My Life My Mind will know (or will come to know) I'm brutally honest and hugely self critical.
So cards on the table and a full honest assessment of Legacy and my plans for the rest of this year.

My health has been up and down a lot this year both physically and mentally, spending months inside throughout spring and summer with 4 kids 3 of whom are on the autistic spectrum was a considerable challenge.
July saw the 21st anniversary of the love of my life Kerry being murdered and taken away from me.
2020 was supposed to be a big year for letting a lot of that go, most of which will be covered in the book in a few years time but the virus put a stop to most of that.

I tried to come back early in September but honestly I wasn't mentally ready for that time, I haven't even done that much gaming during the past few months.
I found a new therapist and that helped a little I finally began selling games again at the end of September and watching the company bank balance increase certainly helps!
And then we went away for our annual Halloween break and while that brought up it's own issues I got to walk over 10k almost everyday in largely wide open and empty spaces and take in the sea air.
I even managed to bag 7 shiny Pokémon in  Pokémon Go 10 days the rest of the family got  4 too.
I have always got at least 1 shiny Pokémon when I've gone to the coast for Halloween since the game's release so long may that streak continue!

But now here we are in November my new shiny Xbox Series X (for the record I hate the name) is arriving tomorrow.
Had a break, 3 of the kids are back at school so I get more free time to work and maybe even game a little so all is well with the world and now I can easily promise dozens of posts every day right?

Well not quite as I said cards on the table  and honesty.
I'm in England and we're now back in a national lockdown due to a completely expected Covid 19 resurgence.
My parents who are both over 60 and both in the very high risk category and my dad in particular has it quite bad right now.
Kerry's birthday is towards the end of November which always gives me issues in particular as I can't go to her grave and spend time with her.
And I've always has a natural dislike (borderline hatred for Christmas. (Even as a child)

So I'm not going to sit here and type a long list of promises I don't know if I can keep.
What I can promise is that I will try my very best to add at least one or two posts on the site each day wherever possible.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the gaming companies who continued to send me literally thousands of press releases and more than 200 review opportunities over the past couple of months.
I won't be accepting or requesting any review copies until Legacy is on a solid publishing schedule.
I'd also like to thank every visitor who continued to visit the site during the downtime.

I hope things get back to normal for both Legacy, myself and of course all of you as soon as possible.

Catching Up

Rather than list a number of things I'd like to be coming soon (I do have a big list) I'll be spending the rest of the year just trying to catch up some of the features  that have been missed over the past couple of months.
In particular My Life My Mind and The Mario Kart Time Trial Challenge series
I'll be uploading as many of them as possible over the next few weeks to try and catch up and get everything back on it's original schedule.

Legacy Store

The internal store within the website itself is providing a few issues so for now at least we'll be looking at third party options.
We'll continue to list various games on eBay for the time being and we will be posting articles on this site to link to our store when new items go up for sale including discounted buy it now prices for Legacy website visitors.
Please don't worry about the website filling up as an eBay advertising site we don't list that many new items each day and on days we do have a fair few listings we'll round them all up in one post.

A quick note on the reasons for the lack of content over the last few weeks and the plans moving forward.

Recent lack of content

Due to a mixture of personal issues and a few problems with the kids over the past 3 weeks the site news had to take a bit of a back seat.
We did have a number of features and posts scheduled to post during the down time but due to an issue with the site editor the scheduled posts either aren't posting at all or at best posting sporadically, we have are currently instigating the issue and it will hopefully be fixed soon.

We manually made sure the Mario Kart time trial series and My Life My Mind segments were posted on time because they are on a very strict time schedule.

 Regular daily updates

With all the issues now sorted and the kids finally back at school I can commit to daily site updates.
While I ease back into things and sort through my schedule I plan on posting between 3 and 5 updates a day and occasionally more where possible.

Having a lighter schedule will also give me more time to work on and record some new features we think will be quite popular.
​We'll announce them in due course once they have confirmed dates rather than trying to rush things through to a deadline. 

Contribute to Legacy and & be entered into the monthly prize draw,
 A 3 year delay to the fifa feature worms, incoming soon and a cowboy pirate issue.
​And sheep arriving before the end of the year.

The contributor monthly prize draw

The Contributor prize draw is now officially live from today.
You can find all the details up top under the contribute to Legacy tab or click here.
To summarize it in a quick sentence everybody who contributes to Legacy will be entered into our monthly prize draw on the first of each month, you can enter by contributing reviews, Hints & tips  Guides, Guest blog posts, media or even taking on and beating our challenges like our Mario Kart Time Trial Challenge.
Please take a minute to check out the page and all the terms when you have a minute.

Fifa feature delay

The original plan was to play through the entire 95/96 premier league on the game Fifa 97 for the Sega Megadrive.
The games were going to go live on YouTube on the exact day and time they took place.
That was a mini problem in the first place because the dates / days don't line up.
So for example the games that took place on a weekend back then the exact dates would be on a midweek now.
I've recorded most of the games for August but with so many games still to go I have a few health issues that mean I can't guarantee I can keep the schedule at present and I don't want to start something that will start missing rigid targets.
I'm moving this feature to August 2023 where the dates will line up exactly with the 95/96 season.

Cowboy Pirate

One of the main reasons for the Fifa delay is a problem with my eye that currently requires me to wear an eye patch most of the day on the majority of the days.
It's likely a short term issue but it could take a month or two to clear up in addition to the likelihood it will be a reoccurring issue.
With that in addition to carpal tunnel in my left hand and cubital tunnel in my right hand playing multiple games in a row while holding a Sega Megadrive controller isn't workable at present.
I'm usually wearing a cowboy hat while playing games (No I have no idea why either) so as you can imagine a cowboy hat wearing, eye patch sporting support wrist gloves equipped 40 year old dad playing a 23 year old game is something of a nightmare.

I do want to stress however that while the issues are currently affecting my gaming across the board the website will still be updated on a daily basis.

Worms feature incoming soon

Worms Armageddon was updated recently on steam to add a whole lot of new features.
It's my favourite worms game of all time and probably my most played PC game of all time too (well second only to one of the championship managers at least)

The plan currently is to create between 128 or 256 worms teams based on multiple video game characters.
Each team will probably have 4 worms per team (possibly slightly higher) and will go head to head in a knockout format until only one team is left standing.
So in summary they'll be hundreds of worms battle videos incoming once I've had a chance to to work through all the teams and get the first round of battles recorded.
This feature will be live before the end of the year.

The Sheep are coming

I received an email last week complimenting me on My Life My Mind
I was honestly quite surprised for me personally the book hasn't really got into it's grove yet and won't really for another chapter or two.
Regardless I was asked when the sheep were coming and I can now reasonably confirm the current plan is to post 1 entry every Sunday so the sheep should arrive on November 29th.
However on that week will have an entry posted early on the 25th as the only post on Legacy for the entire day.
So the sheep will arrive on November 25th with the Next entry arriving on the 29th.

A brief introduction into My Life My Min which starts on Legacy July 21st 2020

The move to an almost single page layout

The transition of moving all the old posts to the home page is going to take a little longer than expected largely because rather unusually we're being absolutely swamped with emails over the past few weeks.
July is normally a pretty dead month for gaming news but with the cancellation of E3 and things being spread further apart our inbox is receiving more than 50 emails a day almost every day hopefully all older press releases will be moved to the home page soon and until they are the home page will still link to their old versions.

Video Game Charts

I considered adding the gaming charts to the website for well over 2 years and finally decided to do so a couple of weeks ago.
We're currently covering UK, USA, Japan, France and Oceania (Australia & New Zealand) as well as charts platform holders choose to share themselves
​I'm still working through exactly how the charts will layout and exactly how much of them we'll cover so they may vary slightly over a few weeks until we settle into a set format.

My Life My Mind

My life My Mind is (or at least will be) a very controversial addition to the website.
It's not gaming related, though they'll be a lot of gaming references and memories shared.
It's dark, brutally honest and will undoubtedly damage some of the working relationships I currently have or could potentially have with developers / publishers in the future.

However I made a promise to two very important people a few years ago that not would I finish writing the book but that I would share it with the world and that's exactly what I'm going to do.

The book is split into 2 parts each chapter is a standard  autobiography recounting events and memories of years gone by, nothing is left unsaid regardless of how it makes reflects on anyone in the book including myself.
The mind segments present an alternative view on the preceding chapter a darker, twisted and occasionally just ridiculous part fictional deep delve into my mind.

The exact publishing schedule of My Life My Mind is still undetermined but it should be updated at the very least on a monthly basis.

Site silence days

With the exception of My Life My Mind Legacy will not post any posts of any kind on July 21st or November 25th.
Regardless what day that drops on or what news / events might take part on that day under no circumstances will Legacy NEVER be updated on those two days.

This will be made clear on the homepage the day before and during  the dates of silence

A few notes on changes to the website layout, what's been changed already and what will be changing or being added to the site over the second half of the year.

Almost a single page layout

As mentioned in the editorial a few days ago Legacy will be moving towards more of a every post on the homepage approach rather than just a quick summary with link to another section of the site.
There are a number of reasons for this change but the 2 main ones are visitor retention (we know from the stats visitors reading posts on a home page have more engagement than clicking a link to the full post under another tab.
And more importantly for me personally it reduces the amount of extra work required which in turn frees up a significant amount of time to add more new content to the website.
Only the checklists and database will have their own dedicated pages with home page summaries and links as they contain a lot more information a lot of which is targeted at a rather specific collectors audience.

So what's moved to the home page so far?

All our Reviews, Media and Hints tab posts have now been deleted with every entry among them having been moved over to the home page to accompany the new layout.
Some of the early press releases have also made the transition to the homepage and I expect by the end of July everything still to be moved over will have been.

Changes to the navigation bar

With much of the content moved to the home page we obviously made a lot of space on the navigation bar some of it will be filled shortly as detailed in the coming soon section.
but to try and make as many posts as easy to find as possible we've changed the entire top of the page to offer a number of links to help you get to the content you want the most as quickly as possible without endless scrolling.

New mobile view

I've been aware for a very long time the mobile view of the website was ... well lets just be honest it was utterly terrible.
The mobile view of the website has been totally transformed to offer a far better view of all the content on offer.
I'm aware that the screen might be a bit small for some people in places though I personally have managed to navigate it well enough with bad eyesight and large fingers.
We will be looking to make more adaptations in the future but our priority first and foremost was setting up the site so that all our mobile visitors could actually see everything we had on offer.

What's left to move over to the home page?

By the first of July we should have moved all the achievement tab posts over to the home page and that will only leave the press releases and the digital store updates left.
All of that content (around 300 posts) should be moved to the new home page format by the end of August at which point all of the old content will be available on the homepage with no need to visit another tab unless you're looking for checklists ect.

When will the Legacy Store Launch?

Covid messed up our launch plans over and over again to I can't give a definite answer on that at this time the hope it November 2020 but that will depend on exactly how much of the store database I have in place by then and exactly how everything out in the real world is at the time.
We certainly won't be doing any major sales launch through the actual website before April 2021 as it's going to take a lot of time to sort stock and populate the store database.

Legacy on Ebay

Legacy will begin listing items for sale on Ebay from July 1st 2020
They'll be a number of both Buy It Now and Auction style listings for a number of games past and present and across multiple platforms.
We will be posting links to these under the legacy store banner on the home page.
the majority of sales are put directly back into the Legacy project and help ensure it's advertisement free future Once the Legacy Store is fully launched we'll continue to offer a service through Ebay for as long as it's viable but we will however offer lower prices on our own store front. 

Legacy YouTube Reboot

We aren't ever going to be one of the big video game channels on YouTube that's simply a fact.
I have neither the time or desire or probably the right kind of personality to be a YouTube star.
However we will be posting a lot of video content in the coming months, from the new upcoming features to review previews and general gaming videos of whatever I happen to be playing at the time.
A million subscribers would be nice of course it would but we aren't here for a popularity contest i'm fairly confident over the years the channel and this site will find its niche and that's fine with me.
of course if anyone out there is interested in creating content specifically for our channel then please get in touch we'd be happy to talk about it.

Anything else up coming to announce?

There are a number of features planned for the future, and I have a crazy amount of ideas of things I'd like to see on the site in both the medium  and long term.
But please make no mistake Legacy has been around for a while now firstly as Nintendo Legacy before changing over to Video Game Legacy and it's had a number of reboots and false starts for a whole host of reasons but now everything is finally in place where I can say with absolute confidence our own Legacy starts now.

So nothing about the singing sheep mentioned at the top of the page then?

My Life My Mind An Autobiography will be covered in an editorial in a couple of weeks or so before the foreword is posted to the site on July 21st 2020.
There will be singing sheep but while the publishing schedule is still not 100% confirmed they are unlikely to be appearing before next year.