Like with the NES, my family would visit video rental places, so I got to experience a wide range of SNES games that way. New stuff that I might like to buy and weird stuff I wanted to try out but probably wouldn’t like.

As I mentioned in the last I, Gamer. I sold my NES, which was a blunder, but the upside was that I could now utilize these kinds of stores to get my hands on games cheaper, make my meager kid money go further. It became common for me to buy used games and play them for several months before taking them back to the store where I got them, only to do it all over again with another game. Sort of a prolonged rental, except that I kept the good stuff.
These used game stores led to the next three topics

Game Genie

I found a SNES Game Genie and codebook. The book was pretty beat up, but I fondly remembered using the Game Genie to make my old NES games do all kinds of cool things. In the back of the codebook was an ad for ongoing subscription services. So I did it and collected a small pile of updated code books.
But with the SNES Game Genie, I quickly ran into a problem that I didn’t have with the NES. Different versions of the game. Turns out not all the codes worked on all versions of the game. A problem I’d never run into before. The SNES Game Genie was fun, but I didn’t use it much. I also never made up any useful codes myself. I usually just succeeded in ruining the color palette or sprites, making the game weird or hard to play.

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The Super Scope

The Super Scope was the SNES’s light gun game. And it came with a cartridge of sample games, Super Scope 6. I tried this one out and quickly tired of it. Resting the thing on your shoulder was much more awkward than playing with the NES zapper. Handguns are intuitive.

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Mario Paint

Another find at a used game store—this one I kept. Mario Paint was like a supercharged graphics program that could do all sorts of things: allow you to create simple MIDI music (something people still do today). Make images, simple animations, and play some simple games. To make all this possible, Mario Paint came with an old ball mouse and a hard plastic mouse pad.
Kind of a funny story. Mario Paint has this thing where when you idle too long, the game will shout “Hey!” I remember being home alone and taking a break to grab a snack, minding my own business when I heard, “Hey!” I froze and then started peeking around the corner, looking for the source of that voice. Finally, when I was looking out the window, the TV did it again, and I realized it was just a strange idle sound.

Multiplayer

With the SNES, I played multiplayer much more often. Not only did I have Super Mario World and Mario Allstars which gave me a wide range of 2-player platformers. But I was also a fan of the Top Gear series of games and fighting franchises like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.

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I fondly remember staying up late playing Top Gear 3000 with a friend until I could barely keep my eyes open. I’d start the race and then black out, then I’d take an elbow to the ribs and wake up on the edge of the track with a jacked-up car. In my defense, it was a long game, and we probably should have jotted down the code and quit. But sometimes it was hard to get those passwords to work right.

Another thing I mentioned in the NES article was Nintendo Power magazine. This is the era in which I let go of my Nintendo Power subscription. I had a two-foot-tall stack of magazines in my closet, and Issue 114 sat on top of the stack for years. Part of the problem was the internet. I had become accustomed to going online and looking up game trailers. And when it came to tips and tricks, I could find that information online faster and easier.

Ultimately, I look back on the SNES fondly. I think it’s my favorite Nintendo console. It’s either this one or one of the future consoles that I haven’t talked about yet. While early 3D graphics aged terribly, sprite-based graphics look classy forever. That, combined with the sound and controls... it left a lasting impact on me.

A couple of years back, I hooked up my SNES to play all my old games again. I made it a point to play through Super Metroid again—one of my all-time favorites. I moved past my old saves from back in the day and started a new file on save three. After a couple of sessions, I looked at the save game screen and realized that this was all battery-backed up memory, and that my save data was approximately 30 years old!

Speaking of favorites, I figured I’d just make a list of them to end things off:

• Super Metroid
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Megaman X
• Kirby Super Star
• Top Gear 1, 2 & 3000
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4: Turtles in Time
• Mortal Kombat 2
• Tetris Attack
• Super Punchout
• Star Fox
• Super Mario World

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Hey did you know I wrote a book?

‍Walk Amongst the Stars is like The Hunger Games and Ready Player 1 collide, but for adults.

Pick one up and help me survive this cyberpunk dystopia.

https://www.danielsevenwriting.com/books-audio

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Back on January 30, 2026, there was a post on Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube channel where he walked an audience of convention attendees through his thoughts on Ai and how it pertains to art.

The conclusion he came to is that what matters about art is how you grow and change as you make art. Which he summed up succinctly as, “You are the art.” He points out that the piece of art you create is the receipt that proves you went on that journey. And that Ai doesn’t do that, it skips straight to making the product.

Last month I already had a blog post in the works, so when I watched this video I felt inspired and started writing in Xed, the Linux version of Notepad. I promptly forgot about these notes, and only when I sat down to brainstorm a blog post did I remember them.

I find that I agree with his core message...

I’ve experienced it myself as I wrote my first book. From the dabbling stage all the way through to the release of my book, I kept feeling a sense of leveling up. My skill at writing novels hitting a whole other level, again and again. And the feeling of holding that finished paperback is so validating.

Since the day I sat down and thought about how I was going to go about this author career, I looked at the contingency that I wouldn’t be able to create a sustainable business. And in that case, I plan to keep on writing in my free time because I find it so fulfilling that I wouldn’t want to give it up.
And in the same vein, even if I could use Ai to magic up a book based on my writing prompt... I wouldn’t want to. Because I’d be skipping the good part.

...but not his complete point.

I started writing those notes that night because I felt a little mismatch between how I feel about Ai art and what he said. It seems to me, after listening to his speech, that he’s hoping against hope that Ai doesn’t become mainstream. He says in the speech that society has the power to say no, and I agree. But it seems to me that society has already said yes, emphatically, and we’re slowly coming to terms with that decision.

Since around 2020, Ai has risen to become mainstream. And now it’s currently being embraced worldwide to create music, pictures, video, voices, code, search results, customer service, podcasts, writing, and that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.

It’s clear the corporate world lusts after the concept of an Ai workforce, with or without robot bodies. And hell, as a sci-fi nerd, I sometimes dream of having a robot buddy who does all the tasks I don’t want to do.

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Synthesis

It’s too late to put the brakes on. Clearly it was too late three years ago when Elon Musk asked Ai developers to put a stop to Ai advancement and come up with some regulation. So what that means for us creative types is that we have a new toolkit we need to learn how to integrate.

For my writing, I don’t use Ai, unless you count running my work through ProWritingAid to fix my atrocious spelling and grammar. But I have dabbled with Ai art and chat. While I don’t see myself ever using Ai to do the writing work for me, I could imagine bouncing my ideas off an Ai while I work or asking it to give me several alternate ideas for a scene that doesn’t work well. Or dictating and having it write the words instead of using my hands.

As an indie writer, I needed an editor to help me sand off the rough edges and polish my work up. If I had unlimited money, I might pay a pro to do every job other than write and edit my latest book. Graphic artist, web designer, promoter, personal assistant, you name it. The only thing stopping me is money. Indie writers start off in the red, so to speak. It would be a massive help if any of these tasks could be accomplished by Ai.

But I believe in the short term, a synthesis of professional and Ai is the way. They have the knowledge to give you a professional job, but the tools to make the job easier than ever before. That should make it possible to get more work done in the same timeframe and offer cheaper prices per job.

Further down the road

What are the repercussions further down the road? I have to imagine that Ai will be the harbinger of doom for many industries and the origin of new, unthought-of industries. I always liked the term Andrew Yang used: the AI industrial revolution. It speaks to how much of a game-changer Ai will probably be.

I’ve heard people prognosticate everything from apocalypse to utopia when it comes to Ai. Who knows what’ll happen, but I think people might have to get used to defining themselves by something other than what they do for a living. I’ve heard talk about how the abundance created by Ai will enrich everyone’s lives. Perhaps I’m just jaded, but I don’t think we live in that world. I can’t imagine any newly created abundance going to anyone but the dragons of our world.

And who knows, maybe given time people will become good at writing books with Ai.

Also, I can’t help but look at the evolution of this technology and see the potential to augment my intellectual property. It would be massive for me to easily turn my books into audiobooks and translate them into other languages. Why stop there? Not everyone likes to read, so I could make them into point and click adventure games, or animes and movies.

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In the Holliday shuffle, I forgot to make the December blog post about my 2026 goals! Since it was the end of the year and I was getting excited looking at year-end recaps, I was eager to do my own. I only realized my mistake around the time I was ready to post my January article. Scrolling past last year’s entertainment, I saw the 2024 goals post, and then I realized my mistake. I didn’t want to go back to the drawing-board, so I simply postponed this article until now.

So how did I do with my goals last year? Let's take a look…

Finish and launch Walk Amongst the Stars: Book 1

This was a success. It still took me longer than I expected, but I launched the book on November 17.

Get the mailing list off the ground; for real this time

Early on in 2025, I went back-and-forth wasting time thinking about this and finally just gave up on it again. A lot of writing advice paints it as the best way to directly connect with readers. But I find I don’t have the patience to set it up, and I dread coming up with content for a newsletter. So the mailing list is tabled for now.

Begin WATS book 2

I brainstormed and worked on the outline for WATS2 while the first book was with my editor. By the time my book was ready, I had finished a small chunk of the rough draft. I’m one of those slow rough drafters who produces a more finished draft, which writing teachers will tell you not to do. Last session I finished Chapter four, and it feels like I’m somewhere around 1/3 of the way finished with the first draft.

Rearrange the blog so it has some structure rather than a giant list of entries

I didn’t even think about this one until it was almost 2026. I’m working on adding store functionality to my webpage, and once I have that, I’ll work on rearranging the blog. I want to make it navigable by year, as well as adding next and previous buttons to each article.

Explore ways to monetize

I did a bad job here. When I looked into this aspect of the business, I encountered the concept of writing a serial story with a membership-first model, and I just kept coming back to that. I decided against that kind of thing for now, as I think it would just pull time away from crafting novels. I did publish my book wide, so it’s currently available in all sorts of places. But other than that, I didn’t get much past the research stage on a bunch of different topics: Amazon affiliation, AdSense, which patron subscription service I’d rather use, etc.

I owe twelve more blog posts and four more merch designs

This one is pretty easy. I might balk at this if I were going to post much more than twelve. The only downside is when I put a lot of effort into these merch designs or blog posts, it can take up more than just a day or two of work.

And finally, I set a monetary goal on a sliding scale. From a reasonable 100 bucks (because I’m a brand new, unknown author) to a completely ludicrous $10,000, because why not aim big?

I technically made $0 for 2025 because each print on demand site only pays out when you hit a certain threshold. But from the launch of my book I made a whopping $27!

Another thing on my to-do list is to get good at marketing my books. Right now I’m a novice at it. So my book has gone pretty unnoticed.

2026 Goals

I came up with more goals than I can accomplish in a year, but here they are...

Finish WATS2.

Start WATS3.

Set up Ko-Fi on your site for tips. (Subscriptions?)

Redesign my blog.

Set up book sales on my personal website.

Create an AI audiobook.

Post chunks of my AI audiobook on YouTube every week.

As always, post at least 12 blog posts and 4 merch designs.

Figure out avenues to interact with readers that I like.

Schedule projects on my planner. (I’m so bad at using planners)

Look into more POD sites for your merch designs. Cast a wider net.

Finish my next book faster than the first one. Need to get the whole process under a year so I can serve readers reasonably quick.

Look into monetizing the blog.

Add RSS to my website.

Make music playlists on my YouTube page to entertain and draw listeners to my author platform.

Make 100 / 1,000 / 10,000 bucks. (since I failed last year)

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Hey did you know I wrote a book?

Walk Amongst the Stars is like The Hunger Games and Ready Player 1 collide.

https://www.danielsevenwriting.com/books-audio

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