Wow, another year down. 2021 was truly the sequel to 2020, as the pandemic continued and hopes for a return to normality were quashed time and time again. In many markets, 2021 feels like it has been hit even harder by the pandemic than the previous year – in gaming for instance, a litany of titles have seen their pencilled-in 2021 releases slide into 2022, including the launch of Steam’s actual hardware, which was supposed to start arriving with early adopters at the end of this year but will instead be debuting next February. Hollywood has been similarly impacted, with films dropping on streaming services day-and-date with their cinema releases (sometimes causing quite the stir while doing so – see Scarlett Johansson vs Disney for instance) or being delayed for months at a time. It’s also been a pretty quiet year on the music scene as many popular and highly-regarded artists such as Lorde released albums that, while not bad, felt a little underwhelming in comparison to previous works.

However, we can’t allow ourselves to be taken in by too much doom and gloom – there have been highlights in this year which have made things a bit more bearable for all of us. For me, my gaming hobby took on a whole new front as I started to build up my collection and invest in filling up my library with some classic games and consoles that I’d never previously owned. 2021 has been a chance for me to really dive deeper into the hobby that I love so much and explore its more forgotten corners while I’m at it. At the end of the year, I moved back from Japan to the UK, which was a big change for sure, but I’m excited to see where these new roads lead in the coming months and years. In any case, despite there being a few duds and few misses, there were a few stellar releases in the world of gaming, music and film, and it’s those that I’d like to celebrate now.