The Scanlines' Journal Article Graveyard

A personal message, thanking you all for 100 subscribers, laying out a roadmap and exploring a few of the article ideas that never made it

On the 1st of January 2025 after a couple of months of debate, I started this Substack and began to write my first article. Within a month I had gained… barely any subscribers or reads. My background is not one of marketing or social media or anything like that: I’m probably the most reclusive person you could meet.

To be candid? I’m probably what you would describe as a hikikomori: I have no real friends to speak of and it’s been a long time since I really had a public life. In the chaos of the pandemic and other global events as of late: a couple of which had a direct and devastating effect on what was to be my desired career, I really felt sapped of energy and desire; I’ve always been quite an ambitious, hard-working person but for a couple of years now, that same vigour seems to have been missing, coupled with a persistent and unexpected downturn in my health it almost feels like we left lockdown but lockdown never left me.

But why mention any of this?

This Substack and by extension you: my readers and subscribers have done a lot for me. I started Scanlines’ Journal ostensibly to write about Nintendo 64 shooters and retro gaming more generally, with a few articles here and there about other gaming topics but really, a big part of this always was finding something to do that felt worthwhile, that gave some structure and left some kind of mark, or built some kind of community or connection and I’m happy to say that’s what has happened.

There were no hacks, there was no secret sauce to drive engagement or get people to subscribe by the hundreds, I just show up twice a week, every week and write what I truly think and feel, which I’m glad resonates with my audience. I feel privileged to be in a position on Substack that I don’t think most publications have reached. Yes there are some out there with thousands or even millions of subscribers but these are the 1%, 100 people is a lot to me and the idea of enough people to fill several coaches being subscribed to read what I have to say is not something I take lightly.

So, thank you very much to all 101 (as of writing) subscribers and I’m happy to write things people are interested in reading. We’re not stopping here.

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An Eye to the Future

One thing I’ve been meaning to do for a while now is put together a bit of a roadmap: an outline of what I plan to write and when; there is no team behind Scanlines’ Journal and there is no planning process, I just sit and I write and edit as I go along and read the article a couple of times to spot any obvious blunders.

That’s right, I’m one of the psychopaths who writes directly into the Substack editor!

My head is full of ideas. Expect some spontaneity and the occasional one-off, reactionary post if an announcement or topic pops up that I have something to say about but otherwise? These are my rough plans for some of the major articles and series for the Journal coming in the next couple of months.

July:

• The Xbox Legacy Continued

• Donkey Kong Bananza Review

• Switch 2 Pro-Controller Review

• Console Evolved: A Halo Retrospective (New Series)

• 007 First Light Speculation and Expectation

August:

• Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Review

• Console Evolved Continued

• Drag X Drive Review

• Gradius Origins + Shmups Retrospective

September:

• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Review? (My God, Nintendo, give us a release date)

• Possibly a Silent Hill F Review

• 007 Games Retrospective Series

October:

• Massive Resident Evil and Horror Game Marathon

• Horror Films Special

These plans are very rough and may happen out of line but these are my ideas for the upcoming months, I really hope some of those excite you.

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The Graveyard

I’ve been racking my brains for a few weeks now about what to put in a post like this. I had written most of a 50 subscriber special but by the time it was ready, I’d had a surge in subscribers making the post feel outdated, so I decided to scrap it.

And then it hit me, why don’t I make a post about cancelled posts?

Over my close to 7 months on this platform I’ve probably binned a good half dozen articles either because I lost interest in the topic, somebody else published something very similar and I didn’t want to look like I was cashing in on bigger publications or I just felt another idea I had was better.

Here is a look at the cutting room floor: a collection of articles that were abandoned at various points in production.

The 50 Subscriber Special

I had this grubby PS3 controller in need of a good clean, internally and externally. I rarely use my console and I wasn’t the original owner of it so I thought it might be cool (and gross) to see what kind of mess was inside the gamepad and to show it some love.

Well, I completely botched the whole thing.

I’ve got some experience with hardware repair and restoration: I’ve restored a Wii-U gamepad that was completely full of gunky spilled drink, I’ve fixed a Gamecube pad full of mushy buttons, I’ve disassembled a Gamecube console to clean out the CPU heat sink, fixed up an N64-pad analogue stick and I’ve replaced the entire disc drive on my Dreamcast with a new one; I thought the PS3 controller would be an easy job, run of the mill stuff… and it wasn’t. What I learned while taking the gamepad apart and cleaning it is that the PS3 controller is put together in a really strange way, where the bumpers and triggers are almost free-floating and bunched up really close in their own little area, it was so fiddly and difficult to reattach them that…

I decided to throw it all in a plastic wallet and deal with it later, on the once in a blue moon occasion when I feel like playing the worst PlayStation.

Britain and Video Games

I’ve had a few ideas floating around for a long time about ‘British’ video-games but every time I’ve sat down to write the article my talking points and wider perspective have always gone a bit all over the place.

I’ve tried tackling it from the point of view of highlighting iconic British developers and videogames before running into a wall because I personally am not in love with a lot of these games. That didn’t work.

I’ve tried framing the topic as a wider look at Britain’s cultural relevance and popularity as a whole, highlighting things like the British Invasion phenomenon and 2012 as a high point for being British: we had Skyfall (the song and the film) the Olympics and more while of course taking a look at the many video games we’ve had that are actually set in Britain but again the topic would change erratically and it’s very hard to talk about the decline of Britain’s cultural impact without talking about politics and I make it a policy not to talk about politics; I’m sick of hearing about US Politics, nobody wants to hear about our problems too.

I even made an attempt to ponder the future of British game dev. and take a look at where we stand in the industry but to be completely honest, I find it a giant effort to not fall asleep when I write about statistics and market data.

My overall reason for not making this idea a reality is that it’s too broad and I have too much to say on it, while at the same time I don’t think anyone is interested in reading 2-3 articles about dull Britain.

When Ubisoft Were Good/Prince of Persia Trilogy

I’m a bit of a contrarian at heart: if everyone loves a video game or franchise, I tend to avoid it until I stop hearing about it, then decide if it looks good to me and on the other hand, I’m more inclined to be somewhat sympathetic (within reason) if a company or series seems to get railed on constantly and this article was a big example of that.

I think Ubisoft in their prime put out some really excellent stuff and I have a great love for the Sands of Time Trilogy, so I wanted to write something different from what everyone else was at the time and highlight how it would actually be a shame if Ubislop went under. What stopped this article coming to fruition was the fact that I haven’t played most of Ubisoft’s pre-2000 output and I’ve never finished a Rayman game, so about halfway through I thought the whole article was a bit too disingenuous and binned it.

Total War Retrospective/Medieval II Review

I am a massive strategy game fan: it’s 90% of what I play on PC and I had the idea to take a look back at Total War’s mid-2000’s golden era with a particular focus on Medieval II and to chart the gradual downfall of the series.

So why didn’t this one release?

Well, I’m more of a casual Total War fan. I own almost all of them but have maybe 20-40 hours in each and apart from the general feeling of “This is crap.” I get from playing modern Total War games, I find it hard to pinpoint what the actual problem is, on top of this I’m rarely motivated to play very long; I’ve never finished a Total War campaign. I have a couple of battles then I’ve had my fill for a few months.

Another reason I declined to finish this one is that I just don’t think people care about this series anymore. To my knowledge, the only people left are bitter fans that can’t find anything else that scratches the same itch and newer fans who just love Warhammer Fantasy.

Turbulent Times at Paradox Interactive

As shown in my review of Victoria 3, I have literally thousands of hours in Paradox’s grand strategy games and in the past I taught a group of online friends how to play them too; since the early 2020’s, this company has made a series of major fumbles that bothered me and destroyed a lot of community good will. This article was going to be a break down of the current situation at Paradox, what’s going wrong, what’s going right and how they can turn things around.

I had Steam Charts screenshots, forum posts, extracts from interviews, Steam Reviews statistics and other kinds of data to back up my points.

So why didn’t this one cross the finish line?

Well, I mentioned before that this kind of content bores me to death while I’m writing it and that was a big reason this one was never published but on top of that? Paradox has hit a few home runs recently that have restored a lot of confidence in their products. Europa Universalis V was ‘officially’ announced (Paradox had already been sharing screenshots and asking for feedback for months but without explicitly telling us what the game was) and it looks to be an excellent sequel, the recent dreadful Hearts of Iron IV DLC Graveyard of Empires has received a few much-needed fixes, the long-rumoured, long begged for China and Japan expansion for Crusader Kings 3 was unveiled to be both real and coming this year and as of now? The new Charters of Commerce DLC for Victoria 3 has become the highest rated Paradox DLC of all time.

I’m glad to say they’re really turning things around.

These have been just a handful of the many articles and ideas that never saw the light of day on the Journal. I hope this was an interesting peek behind the curtain for you and above all else, I hope what you take away from this is that it’s okay to kill your darlings sometimes and you should never force an idea, even if you think it will get a lot of reads; the audience can always tell when you’re phoning it in.

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An Olive Branch

I’ve noticed a few publications around the same size as mine have managed to secure things like review codes and media passes for events. I’m not in London so most events are off the table for me but If anybody is willing to share, I’d love to know how you can get a hold of review codes and such; I’d love the opportunity to give some feedback to developers and also to show off some promising upcoming releases to my audience.

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I’ll finish today’s post by thanking you all once again for subscribing to the Journal. I expected to reach 100 subscribers after a year but I’m extremely happy to have reached this point in just about 7 months instead. Let’s see if we can hit 150 by December.

As always, I invite you to like today’s post, to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll be down in the comments if anybody would like a chat. If you want to support Scanlines’ Journal further, please consider donating on Ko-Fi for as little as £1.