I’d like to wish all family, friends, regular readers, commenters and all other visitors Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year or any other Holiday Greetings you prefer! As usual, I prefer Happy Newtonmas because Isaac Newton was born on December 25th, but I’m very democratic in that respect and let everyone celebrate the the holiday they like.

2025 was three quarters terrible and only one quarter good. It started in the worst way possible – in February my uncle became seriously ill and I had to make an emergency trip to Berlin because we were not sure if he would make it. But he did and he fully recovered, but it was a long way and most of the Spring and Summer was an emotional rollercoaster. Overall this year war really exhausting. Luckily my own health held up despite the stress, but it definitively was not fun. We’re all sure 2026 will be better, though. Because of all the chaos, this year there isn’t even a Christmas tree anywhere, so this year’s tree photo is a reworked version of the one from last year.

For me, the last few years really turned out to be the years of computer games. Previously, I simply didn’t have enough time or motivation to play a lot, but in Autumn 2022 I was finally able to upgrade the big computer with a “new” graphics card, prompted of course by the release of Return to Monkey Island. Two-ish years and one fried and replaced graphics card later I still only managed to write a short post about Guybrush’s newest outing – but all I can say for now is that I absolutely loved it and it was one of the best new adventures I’ve played in a long time.

The new Monkey Island was not the only game I played in the last few years by far, though! I went through a mix of old and new(er) games, especially after I was able to try out a lot of games which had been pillng up. Since Epic, Amazon and even GOG have been giving away free games like crazy and even the Humble Bundle is sometimes great for discounts, there has been no shortage and while the majority are not very interesting to me, there were still some good ones. Most of the games mentioned in this article were actually new purchases, though!

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Quite a few posts on social media recently reminded me that on July 23 the Commodore Amiga turned 40 years old – specifically the first incarnation, the Amiga 1000. It was the beginning of one of the most powerful computer systems of the late 80s and early 90s that ran circles around the competition for almost a decade. With its trio of custom chips called Agnus, Denise and Paula it was able to run a colourful operating system with a graphical user interface that allowed a multitasking, multiwindow desktop in 1985 that almost no other computers had. Excellent graphics and sound made it a true multipuropse computer that became a powerful gaming platform, multimedia system and even business machine at the same time.