The Game Journal and Project Capture Card

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Aywren

As I continue to collect physical Nintendo Switch games for my collection, I continue to look for strategies to motivate myself to play the games I own. Despite having a wonderful library of games on the original Switch, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to put time into playing the system.

I think I have an idea what I’m going to do, but more on that later! First, I want to talk about the game journal.

The Game Journal

One idea I pulled from a video I watched recently was to create a game journal. While I already have been keeping track of the games I played this year by jotting the titles into my Traveler’s Notebook, I thought setting aside a journal just for my Switch games might be something to help me organize and commit.

So, I hopped on Amazon and found this very cool gamer notebook. It’s very similar to a Traveler’s Notebook in that it comes with inserts held by elastic bands. It’s a little smaller than the standard size notebook, however, so when it comes to refills, I might need to do some searching. But for the price and what it is, I’m happy with what I got.

Especially since the vibe is spot on. It’s hard to see in my picture, but the slick faux leather cover has lots of imprints of gaming systems and gaming related icons. I really do like it!

So far, I’ve used it to organize a list of Switch games that I’ve started but not finished. I also noted which of these games I’d need a refresher for before I’d feel comfortable trying to pick back up – be that a story or control refresher.

On the opposite side of the page, I also created a list of games I poked around in briefly, but didn’t put enough time into that the game would land on the “Finish It” list. These are games I’ll likely just start over because I didn’t spend enough time with the game to care about lost progress.

I want to keep some kind of journal posts about the games I focus on, but I haven’t decided what all I’d actually include in a journal like that. Whatever I do, I don’t want it to take the place of my blog posts, but to supplement them so that I can remember and come back to what I’ve written when it comes time for me to write out the post.

Project Capture Card

Now, for my newest scheme, all brought to you by Amazon Prime Days – in which I was able to secure the things I needed for this setup at a much cheaper cost.

I have determined that part of the issue with playing Switch games is that I spend most of my free time on my computer. I do this because after a certain point of time in the evening, I’m usually voice chatting each night.

Because I’m voice chatting using my computer, it makes it hard to play a console game due to the fact that the sound of the console will come through my TV speakers. The mic will pick this up, and the noise cancelling headphones I wear muffles the game sounds from the TV.

So, overall, it’s just not an idea way to play the Switch. I end up having to put it down whenever I want to interact with voice chat at night.

What I decided to do is this:

I already own a second Switch dock. I picked it up back when I thought my original dock might have been going on the fritz. The original dock never did die, though, and I just have this second dock hanging around doing nothing.

So, I bought a second Switch AC adapter and a capture card – both were on sale - that will allow me to set up a second dock and channel video and audio to my PC. My monitor actually has two HDMI slots and a built-in toggle between them, which makes this all viable – I won’t need to be flipping HDMI cords between Switch and PC.

If all goes well, the setup should arrive this weekend and I can put it to the test. My hope is that I’ll be able to play switch through my PC monitor and PC headphones, which will make the likelihood of me playing Switch games far higher. And then, when I want to play on the TV, the original dock is still hooked up there and ready to go with minimal fuss.

I will update once I get to try it all out!

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