Testing

Out the new computer.
Holy crap this mouse is sensitive.
And this monitor is HUGE.
I feel humbled.

Upgrade

Two things.
I finally ordered all the parts to my new computer early Saturday morning (like 1AM).
Second, I had to work 7pm to 5am Saturday-Sunday on a server upgrade and then drive home in freezing rain/snow/hail mix.

Cockslapping the Mona Lisa would make an excellent band name.

It's been a while since I've found a bitter shell of twisted humor as great as the Escapist's Zero Punctuation.
Starring a Brit living in Australia so named "Yahtzee" after his parents lost a wager in said game; Zero Punctuation is a collection of rather random rambling video game reviews.
It is also awesome.
Unless you're a prude.
Then you'll probably get offended.

DRILL ON WALES!

Note to countries, do not put polls for new national flags on the internet.
Or if you do, do not let foreigners vote on them.
Otherwise you get some funny designs winning.

NEC 2007

I got 7th out of 32.
Not bad at all, considering when you look at the people above me.
Then again I had a comparitively easy bracket:
Lord Knight -> Arlieth(l) -> Capps Indigo -> KenmastersX -> Chibi -> Choco(l)

I knew brandon would do really well, I just didn't know how well.
It was sort of weird, cause like he was one of the first netplayers I ever truly enjoyed playing and respected, that and he's the only CL I ENJOY playing.
We played zero casuals however, mainly cause I was sort of dead tired every time we had a chance.

I took a match off Arly, and I'm sort of annoyed that I lost, even though he's the best Nero in the USA and the best native player on the West Coast (kijea and nerina are exchange students) and I've never fought Nero.
I know that matchup is stupidly in my favor, 236a and teleports all day.

I know Zar really wanted to MM brandon after the tournament, as did Sp00ky.
They were both out for blood after teams the previous day (which ended up as basically brandino fighting Arlieth's team 10 times or something as Lord Knight kept scrubbing out.)

XAQ seemed pretty sad faced the entire day haha, not sure why.
He eliminated sp00ky but lost to Zar (Standard).

Choco is like the first Satsuki I ever played since version PC came out, I took one round with 5C before he ran a train on me and I got utterly confused.
Should have stuck to the plan (play it safe, ring whore all day.)

I still can't beat sphyra's Hisui, our casuals were like 18-1.
He sent Sp00ky to loser's second round.
He's really formulaic, but so am I, and his formula completely shuts down mine.
Not sure why he stopped blocking XAQ's overheads though (Arc's are slower than Warc's!)

There are quite a lot of people below/equal to me in place who would have ended my run really early too.
Zaeler is STILL FUCKING RANDOM.
Fighting Chibi was ugly, as always.
I always forget how to play when I'm against him.
Hnana was raping me in casuals.
bell was being mean on commentary and calling out my moves before I did them.
"YOUR SHIT IS WEAK!"
Sp00ky is a lot lower than he should be.
Dippy is also a lot lower than he should be, but he fought hnana, and I probably had a worse chance than him against 2aaaa Sion.
Finally, Lord Knight continued his scrubouts by losing to me (orz) and then getting eliminated early. :V
He's good, you can have momentum for 3/4ths of the match with Vakiha, but all it takes is 3 combos to die.

Anyway, pretty damn good for my first Major.
Mad slops to Philly for being an overall hole and people getting their stuff stolen all around me. (Hyperhal lost a ps2, ipod, a NGPC!?, and his clothes, Brandon lost his cell, SK lost his PSP, etc etc the list goes on. Myself, I'm a paranoid bastard because of the clowns I live with, so I made out all right.)
Still, definitely coming back next year to this hole.
This tournament honestly revived, or at least injected a shot into our little scene.

Congratulations!

Congrats to Allan and Anna for getting engaged!
And once again I feel old :3

Ar Tonelico II JPN - IPD 05

Ar Tonelico II is looking more and more like Valkyrie Profile.
Which is a good thing...
The first one's gameplay was sort of lacking (the only reason you fought was for the DIVES. Innuendo extreme.)

Obligatory Hatsune Miku post

For those of you who are not completely attuned to Japanese memes and corresponding weirdos, this post is about Hatsune Miku.
Hatsune Miku is the mascot of sorts for Yamaha's voice synthesizer software "Vocaloid."
In short, after a little calibration, she sings for you.
The supposed purpose is to make your own vocals easily without needing a real singer.
She does a passable job, but of course her design is so obviously cute that Japan has fallen into love and started using her to sing their meme songs and video game sound effects.
She's definitely more suited for Japanese above any other language (people have tried English and it fails spectacularly) but this is the first time I've heard her do another language, and an opera at that.
The obligatory Korean German sz said it was undeniably cute (but I'm still curious if her pronunciation was any good.)

Touhou Dango Dai Kekkai

Agh more stupidly cute stuff!
Ironically, the hideous monstrosity before this video is more popular.

Makonyan Dance

One of the best MADs ever, the creator redrew and recolored EVERY INDIVIDUAL FREAKING frame for this opening parody.
I saw the initial statges when they were just line art...
Japan is too crazy.

アイドルマスター 「団結」 IM@S ALLSTARS

THE SONG IS TOO CUTE.
YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE.

The Trouble with Tomboyish Witches

Studio Siesta is making an English? version of their shooter Trouble Witches.
Odd.
Also, Zepy reveals in the post comments that the leader Tsuji of Studio Siesta posted on their own BBS under a fake name on how Touhou was trash and Trouble Witches was arcade quality.
Course board logged IPs, drama llamas, etc.
So he stepped down.

Interesting how SHMUPS creators aren't all one big happy family, you'd think because they're so niche that they all share the same cup.

Clannad #1

Well, it's another game turned anime from team Sad Girl in Snow.
This one's pretty...hm different?
I don't know, again, different mood than Air, different mood than Kanon too I feel.
Lot more down to earth.
Nagisa's father is awesome.

Edit: I just realized that Nagisa's entire family has AHOGES. I wonder if that was intentional, it just makes it even sillier.

THE SEQUEL TO THE NUMBER ONE GOOGLE RESULT FOR "ikusat"

[22:19] <ikusat> so one of my friends is in japan for an exchange program
[22:19] <Aya-Shameimaru> aren't we all
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: there's this taiwanese guy who thinks he's a hotshot at japanese in the program w
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: and he's decent too
[22:19] <ikusat> me: punch him in the face
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: except that all his t are d...
[22:19] <ikusat> me: GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY
[22:19] <ikusat> me: there's a very obvious difference between t and d
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: i actually didn't really believe you until i heard him speak w
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: it was like mata ne
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: and he's like mada ne
[22:19] <ikusat> friend: and i was like lolwut
[22:19] <Aya-Shameimaru> LMAO
[22:19] <Aya-Shameimaru> oh ffs

R.I.P. Robert Jordan

Man, what a downer.
Say what you will about not being able to continue after book #Inserthere, I still planned to resume from where I left off after the final book was written.
Unfortunately, it seems like that won't happen.

.

Certified Software Manager

What I learned at the Certified Software Manager course in Jersey City this Wednesday.

Love Death 2

One of these days that area will sink beneath the waves.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei

I was browsing niconico for random Touhou vids and I found one done in a really weird style, so I looked up the parody it was based on...and well then I downloaded and watched the five episodes that were out.
Its category is firmly in the Pani Poni Dash/Azumanga Daioh style of mad random.

SWR CASTER BETA

Tropy and Mauve in #IaMP have hacked iampcaster to work with SWR and have released a beta to both the USA and JP communities.
ATM, there are some issues, (like lol too long Japanese profile names), but it's working for the most part.
Mad props to them for figuring caster out (well not entirely lol, caster is still cursed.)
Yay for open source!

TEXT MIXUP TOO STRONG

So one day in the lands of Melty Blood, random user wondered aloud how some of not-so-random user's quotes would sound in a stuffy British accent.

This is the result.

Post C72

Too many Touhou remix albums.
Sound Holics is really overwhelmingly good.
Yellow Zebra's song 1 and 3 are also very good.
SWR is much more complicated than IAMP

SCARLET WEATHER RHAPSODY

IM AT WORK AND I DONT CARE IM KEYBOARD CRUSHING THIS GAME DOWN!

Comiket 72

Happens this weekend?
Anyway, stuff I'm looking forward to...

Touhou 10, Mountain of Faith
Touhou 10.5 (Yes it's no longer 9.8!), SCARLET WEATHER RHAPSODY AKA IAMP 2
NITRO ROYALE (Wtf, a fighting game with Nitro+ heroines? IGNIS)

Edit: BTW this post will grow longer and longer the more excited I get.

Edit: Comiket is now four hours in. JP are posting screenshots if Hisouten and Mountain of Faith, but so far all files on share have been fake.
I'm not going to repost the screenshots I'm tired.

Bad Idea Department: Maple Story Anime

TV Tokyo has announced that it will start broadcasting an animated series based on MapleStory, the Korean fantasy massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG), on Sunday, October 7 at 8:30 a.m in Japan.

Well now, there are ALL sorts of stupid jokes I could make of this.

[13:14] <SabinJPN> hey guys
[13:14] <SabinJPN> sorry i lost :(
[13:14] <ArlyNoir> hey sabin!
[13:14] <ArlyNoir> naw you did good
[13:14] <Nanaya> how was getting your match stolen from you?
[13:15] <SabinJPN> dude
[13:15] <SabinJPN> i was about to pull off the biggest upset ever
[13:15] <SabinJPN> lol
[13:15] <ArlyNoir> we saw
[13:15] <ArlyNoir> live
[13:15] <sibladeko> dude we saw
[13:15] <SabinJPN> the room at tougeki was going nuts
[13:15] <ArlyNoir> but you know what
[13:15] <Nanaya> yeah
[13:15] <sibladeko> they didn't rape your shit
[13:15] <ArlyNoir> you got mad props for repping
[13:15] <sibladeko> baldy raped every other foreigners shit on the live feed
[13:15] <sibladeko> but yours
[13:15] <ArlyNoir> hahahaha
[13:15] <sibladeko> we got to see it
[13:15] <Nanaya> lol
[13:15] <SabinJPN> because it was hyped up in the tougeki book
[13:15] <SabinJPN> thats why
[13:16] <SabinJPN> and kuni was there adn made sure it was a feature match
[13:16] <ArlyNoir> that's awfully nice of hem
[13:16] <SabinJPN> caue they wanted to see me gat raped they said
[13:16] <ArlyNoir> them
[13:16] <ArlyNoir> wtf
[13:16] <sibladeko> lmao
[13:16] <Nanaya> lol
[13:16] <ArlyNoir> loo
[13:16] <SabinJPN> then i won a round and everyone in the corwd started exploding
[13:16] <ArlyNoir> looool
[13:16] <SabinJPN> lol
[13:16] <Nanaya> the feedback on 2ch was you were a free win if I recall
[13:16] <SabinJPN> yeah they called m ea keyboard crusher
[13:17] <SabinJPN> but afterwards ppl were like yo im sorry
[13:17] <ArlyNoir> fuck the haters
[13:17] <Veteru> keyboard crushers unite ~ ~
[13:17] <ArlyNoir> haha
[13:17] <SabinJPN> and the announce rwas all like "i didnt know they had a arcana cabinet in usa" lol
[13:17] <Nanaya> lol
[13:17] <ArlyNoir> LOL
[13:17] <SabinJPN> then ppl wer elike who do you play with, im like, um, 2 ppl and cpu
[13:17] <SabinJPN> lol
[13:17] <Nanaya> lol
[13:17] <ArlyNoir> damn
[13:17] <Nanaya> that's pretty hardcore dude
[13:17] <ArlyNoir> well you made a jackass out of them :3
[13:17] <SabinJPN> cause seriously hts my comp
[13:17] <SabinJPN> yeah they werent feeling that lol
[13:18] <NerdJosh> ARTTTTTTTTTT
[13:18] <NerdJosh> good shit good shit good shit :D
[13:18] <SabinJPN> is funny too like i lose 20-30 games straigh tin causls, but i guess its only leveling me up
[13:18] <Kumubou> SabinJPN: also I think the enviroment helped you a LOT
[13:18] <SabinJPN> i get smashed by the top players here, but everyone else i can o back and forth with
[13:18] <ArlyNoir> i think if you had a week
[13:18] <Kumubou> oddly enough
[13:18] <ArlyNoir> it would've helped

Good shit Arturo!
You did us proud!

SUPER BATTLE OPERA IS FUCKING AMAZING

OMG OMG OMG OMG
One day left, but it's the day before work, I'm going to be up to like fucking 6am Monday.
WHO CARES!
Have to watch these games (Day 1 was 3d, Day 2 was old school, Day 3 is NEW OTAKU GAMES :V :V :V)

But yeah I have to say, this live feed is making me stupidly excited over games I hate/do not play/don't care about.

Like for 3d, Soul Calibur 3 was tight close, VF5 was bananas (Lion), unfortunately I fell asleep for Tekken at like 6am because of 1. Two cabinet failures. 2. I sleep normally for most of the week. But what I did see of Tekken was just freaking amazing, it's a pity I passed out.

2d old school was god like. All China final in KOF as expected, some guy used an all girl team with NO DAIMON. Seriously fuck Daimon, watching him sucks, his throws and ground pound glitches and whatever. But yeah China is mad high risk reward style, while Japan is still doing Daimon low shorts. By the way the finals, all girl team PERFECTED first round, and the other guy came back with Chris to win. Winner's name was "Xiao Hai," which means little kid in Mandarin, while the other guy's name was "Ching lung." (Something dragon? lol I couldn't read the hanzhi.) But yeah there was a double KO in the semis, it was all really close.

SFAE annoyed me. First, I stopped my record stream feed between the games and couldn't get back on. Second, when I went to check if my stream for KOF was intact, WMP didn't make a new instance and instead SWITCHED OFF MY WATCHING FEED. Then I couldn't get back on and I missed the first and a half games, INCLUDING Team Wolfe (American Team) actually winning one for the foreigners. Team Wolfe actually hit top 8, but during the second match it went to interviews with the freaking baldy. I sort of feel sorry for baldy, but he is the scourge of the live feed. He is the one that interrupts !!!FINALS!!! footage with interviews cause he has to sell the DVDs, even the Japanese don't like him and call him baldy. (HAGE KURUNAAAAAAAAAAAAA) He knows it too, there was a point where he called himself baldy, the forum hate in Japan must be overwhelming. But yeah there was a girl (Chamu) on a team! She played Chun Li and her partner played Guile, they got top 8 also. I think a lot of people were amazed. She was cute too. :3 Anyway though there was someone using ST Bison, we were all amazed. But he scrubbed out and used CE in the end and got owned. Serves him right, fuck CE Bison. Anyway Ohnuki's team won.

3s was amaziing. Period. It reinstalled life in the game. Namely because of all the upsets and because of one man, RX. KO's almost OCVed a team with Yang, and then RIKIMARU's chun li came back and OCVED KO BOSS MOV just like that. Ohnukis team ran into RX. Let me make no exaggeration that RX Urien played like a God. The guy hit so many clutch moments it was madness. Guy was too beastly, it was amazing, every one of his matches had you on your seat. So now favorites are gone.

In quarters or semis, some Chun li destroyed KOKUJINsan (kokujin retired, but this was a tribute team) team's Akuma and Ken, and it came down to the anchor's Yun. Reading the #capcom logs I have is hilarious, right away everything was going poorly for the kid. "Yun is the worst of the 3." "This Yun sucks, what is he doing." "This is like amateur night at the apollo." Anyway, first round ggpo. SECOND round Yun wins with genei jin. Third round...Yun gets SA2ed, down to like 5% life with Chun sitting on a bar. Yun gets combo into Genei Jin... and GOES FOR RESET to bring Chun down to 1%, then dive kick for the win. At this moment the Yun has redeemed himself in lol #capcom's eyes. Second round against Makoto, it's 1:1, and Yun pulls a CLUTCH play again after being super punched into space, this time at 1% life. Final round is Yun mirror, and I have to say I never thought Yun mirror could be interesting at all (run away crouching build meter), but they both went insane. "WHAT IS HAPPENINGGG?" Epic finish.

There's a lot more but it's really hard to put into words, just look at some of the vids on youtube using the tags "tougeki" or "闘劇"

LIVE SBO FEED

mms://eblive.pod2.jp/scvftk
RUSH THAT SHIT DOWN
I have never been so hype for games I don't play than right now.

Idolmaster Your Song

So more random silliness, I was browsing nico and u2b the other day and noticing versions of the god song (Air opening) "Tori no Uta" with the secondary title of "Chihaya version."
Of course this catches my eye, as Chihaya is the only reason I'd get that silly game Idolm@star after all.
Turns out there's an Idolmaster album called "Your Song" of songs not inside the game.
It's a wide range here, with the seiyuu doing stuff from anime openings to enka.
The overall quality is very good! Surprisingly enough.
I probably like it more than what I've heard of Idolmaster so far.
And it's funny because a girl (not an idol) who is like the announcer/stage crew in the game sings a song, and she is really good too.

By the way, Chihaya's VA is probably the best singer in idolmaster, the problem is she is a REAL singer, meaning a lot of the cute sugary crap when sung by her sounds plain awful.
But she's amazing at songs that suit her.

Anyway, Chihaya's Tori no Uta is of course top tier, Haruka's DAISUKI! is stupidly cute, Yayoi's Mojipittan is also stupidly cute (Yayoi's VA is also Lilica in Arcana Heart by the way), and Kotori's (the stage crew person) Yasashisa ni tsutsumaretanara is really really good.

Not dead yet!

So my main computer died on Tuesday, spitting out random ass lsass errors and what not coincidentally after I had left it on all day on share trying to find this stupidly obscure PC-98 Touhou remix album for a clown named White_Knell.
Anyway, lsass errors of the type I was receiving are generally associated with hibernation errors...except I don't play with power options on my desktop at all.
Safe mode would fail and just restart also.
Using the Windows CD, I was not given a repair option for my existing install.
Using recovery mode let me get into the drive, but when I started to chkdsk I'd blue screen.
All in all pretty random ass errors completely unrelated to the problem at hand.

So I let it sit a day.
And then the next day I got something called Hiren's boot CD.
I'm surprised this thing even dares to exist, it's so obviously illegal it's laughable.
Yet the guy hasn't been sued into oblivion yet.
Anyway though, Hiren's RAM loader what not failed magnificently.
I was just using Hiren's because the program I really wanted was Acronis.
Got a copy of just Acronis, installed it on my laptop, made a boot CD, got into my main system, changed partition sizes, and voila.
Let this be a lesson to not let the C:\ drive ever fall below 20kb of space :V

Type Moon Crossover Drama CD

Posting old Zepy's links, one at a time!

Type-moon has announced that they will be selling an audio drama called All Around Type-Moon at the coming summer Comic Market. The audio drama will span for 150 mins over 3 CDs featuring all the characters from the Type-moon universe coming together in a cafe.

The works featured in the audio drama are:
1: Kara no kyoukai
2: Tsukihime
3: Kagetsu Tohya
4: Melty Blood
5: Fate/stay night
6: Fate/hollow ataraxia
7: Tobidase! Toraburu hanafuda douchuuki
8: Fate/Zero

I guess that means they’ve already casted voice actors for the characters from hollow ataraxia and Fate/Zero.

Tactics OL

A commercial for Jeanne D'arc on the PSP which involves workers in an office moving on a tile based tactics map to beat their boss.

Kings of Power 4 Billion %

Well the Aussie (Paul Robertson) behind the pirate baby craziness is at it again with a trailer for his new...uh...thing.

Melty Blood Version B2 PC is OUT!

Melty Blood Version B2 PC is OUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!
NYANYANYANYA

Death Lolita?

Cave's new game, thought to be some wacky combination of the Japanese words for "Angel" and other stuff, is now officially named "Death Lolita."


via Insert credit

Musings on poker

I find it sort of funny that poker is the only "tournament sport" where the larger the size of the field the less skill matters in the victory.
Even Magic doesn't follow this rule, though I'm not quite sure how that would hold if there was a 6000+ person Magic tournament.

Passive vs Active Safety

Some random clown (:3) named White_Knell linked an article about a new diet pill.
Reading the guy's blog though linked me to a Malcom Gladwell article, a rather interesting one.
Basically it takes the question of why people like SUVs even when the statistics of death are higher and brings up an interesting point of passive vs active safety.

We're in your routers, hacking your government.

via Metafilter
Since I work in teleco now this is pretty damn interesting to me.
The way these guys made 29 patches to an OS without being detected is hardcore.

HEVAD MAKES FINAL TABLE

RUSH THAT SHIT DOWN.

"CAUSE I'M GOOD SON"

KHANNNN

This vid's actually old, but it captures Hevad perfectly so I couldn't pass on posting it.


Also, latest choice quote (he's still in with 17 people left!

Mad Respect for Khan

Hevad Khan finally played a hand, moving $800,000 into the pot in late position to fold the table. "Thank you," said Khan to the folders, "that was one bet in three orbits. I respect the fact that you respect me."

Hevad in WSOP

I have to say this is one of the funniest profiles I have ever read.
Anyway, a little stuff on Hevad.
Same high school, two years below, he was in Kenny's grade.
Gamer fiend, he basically taught all of us Starcraft (Kenny, Brady, me).
Guy really loved his games, and later it was poker.
He used to be known as DS-Strife for SC way back in the day, but when that went to shit and Testie got accused of hacking and whatnot he wanted a clean break, so his name became sG.Rain.
Seems like he stuck with it, cause his poker name was rainkhan, etc etc etc.
Used to play a lot of just neighborhood games with him.
A while back he quit?graduated (I never really pressed him on it) college and moved west to Cali to play poker full time.
Last year or so he made a splash by bankrolling half of Sanford's 2000 money match vs Duc Do.
Now it looks like he's on the road to becoming a millionaire.

The 5 Killers

http://www.clockworkmachina.com/?p=288
I'm sortta liking where these Japanese/English anime hybrids are going.
Afro Samurai was downright fun.

Evangelion Re-Take

It's been a long long time since I watched Evangelion.
Again, it was one of the earlier series I watched, though not my first at all.
Problem is, the ending soured me on what was a great series for pretty much the rest of my life.
Even a remotely halfway decent ending combined with "first love" anime syndrome would have been enough to vault it into my most beloved (Magic Knight Rayearth, Escaflowne) series list.
Instead I just get a feeling of mild disappointment which slowly built to a "most overrated" stance because of the people who could actually seriously watch the movie and extract something more than a "FUCK YOU" out of its contents.
So deep!

However, when someone was talking about some random Evangelion doujin and how it was the greatest doujin he ever read and such, I admit it had me curious.
After all this guy doesn't really read doujins, and it was an odd person to come from.
Plus he said it was "adult," which had me even more curious, as he doesn't really touch the stuff. (Yeah, I on the other hand -_-a)
Anyway, so I decided sure, why not, and downloaded Re-Take 1, 2, 3, 0, 4, and AFTER.
It's to be read in that order.

Honestly, he was right.
The entire series is extremely well-written "what-if" piece that does incorporate both the anime and the movie into its premise, but retells the end of Eva as what some would say is what should have been the ending.
The art does a good job at imitating the old style to prevent artist shock, the character development is pretty off the hook, it still keeps a great deal of the mindfuck that makes Eva oh so special (but not eva movie fuck you mindfuck), and it wraps everything up nicely.
It's nice to see old friends grow spines :3
Anyway, highly recommended piece of work for any and all Evangelion fans and former fans (i.e. myself), just a warning that it IS for adult and not for kids, and there IS violence and sex in it.

By the way, it does go down Shinji x Asuka, so just a warning for the Rei doll lovers out there (well they do good by her, but it's not Shinji x Rei).

Temporary Direct DL link

Arcana Heart PS2 October 11th

Two days after my birthday.
Get hype?
Lol

<37fest/AX2007

I didn't know all THREE female lead seiyuus for Haruhi were going to AX.
Thought it was just Aya (more than enough), but Yuko (Mikuri) and Minori (YUKI.N) are both going.
Damn...if they do some live role reprising I will be sad I missed out.

HeartNana (<37, get it? a heart and a seven) fest started this Wednesday but of course due to work I can only go from Friday to Sunday.
Still, I want to see him peace fools out in Arcana and play him in random doozin games.
I am still sad (I'm sure bell is sadder) that he decided to take IaMP completely non-seriously, but eh, what can you do.
Buri keeps throwing out "MONEY MATCH YOU IN MBAC" threats, I didn't think I hurt his pride that much with my remarks :V
Whatever, time to see if I can win.

Chu Chu Rocket

Ahahaha I remember the times we had with this game with four players.
zubabababa!

Tohgeki 2

Finished recording, encoding, and uploading everything.
There's 119 matches, by the way.

Persona 3 Fes - Fuuka Joins

Just what I've been wasting time on.

HALFBY - RODEO MACHINE/SCREW THE PLAN

It took me forever to find this.
I first found a fastforwarded version in that meme video.
It was the only video I didn't really recognize so I looked on nicovideo for the original, and saw a comment saying grooooooovision.
Went from there using my leet jp google skills.
Anyway, the songs are Rodeo Machine and Screw the Plan by DJ Halfby.
The video was made by groovision.


Ahahaha they did a new one.

Music for busy people who obviously do not include PBox

"Music for busy people."
A compilation of almost every JP meme song in the past year, fastforwarded and remixed.

SKITTLES!

IaMP 2: Direct Feed

The best footage we have so far.

Thoughtamps

Well Tohgeki 2 has come and gone, and I'm churning out youtube vids.
XCTU has come back home stateside, and has played IaMP, but he's sort of meh on it, probably cause he believes he will never get better.
XAQshinor hates the input, but he plays melty blood, I don't understand.
Surprisingly, Sp00ky is getting hardcore into it, which is sort of scary, cause I'm trying to get into Melty Blood.
I think there's this dual mentality of, let's try the other game and try to get good because I'm getting a little tired of my main one.

BTW, about IaMP.
I feel like I get zero leveled a lot.
That being said, I do plenty of dumb shit against my opponents, because I completely dislike blocking/being on the defensive for any moment of time.
Hell, of course I am I'm Patchouli.
But I still feel that I'm much more susceptible to random joe 66B crap than I should be, and it's sort of wearing on me.
I try to slow down my game and then I fight Remilia players and it's back into hyperactive scared as all shit mode again.
So much work and not safe by any stretch of the imagination.
I remember way back when bell called Alice a weaker Patchouli.
Well now he calls Patchouli an Alice except you can graze all her shit.
Sounds right.
Maybe I should put effort into learning a char who's actually safe.

Joystick Status

Shiny.

ODIN SPHERE IS AWESOME

There will probably be 900000 vids of it so I'm not recording.
Let's me go faster and enjoy it more.
Game's freaking amazing.

Also, TOHGEKI 2 replays were released.
I'm in a dilmena here.
Only solution is to BEAT ODIN SPHERE ASAP.
And then record and upload Tohgeki 2.

Web2Zone tournament

The place is pretty huge, I didn't know there was a downstairs.
Anyway, MBAC, I got kumuhands.
Suddenly I could not do a bnb.
It made me a sadpanda.
Tourney wise I killed two players worse than me before losing to I think...Zaeler then Dippy.
Blah I need my stick.
Spooky got randomed out by Ciels (Damian and Andrew).
XAQ got randomed into losers by Zaeler before getting mad and crushing everything in his path.
Tinshi showed up late and entered 3s (it was teams).
Somehow he got third.
Arturo and Flare got second.
Mutant and Justin Wong (Using ghetto Yun now), got first.
Damn 3s.

MOTHER FUCKING STARCRAFT TWO

HELL YEAH, IT'S ABOUT TIME.
Gameplay vids from gametrailers.

Ragnarok Online 2

Zepy: do you know new exciting system has been recently implemented into RO2 Zepy: it allows guys to lie down on girls' laps 7:47:09 AM Zepy: and innovative feature lets the guy have an action where he touches the girl's hair while he is lying on her lap 7:47:45 AM Zepy: and another even more innovative feature lets the girl point at the guy who is lying on her lap and say "what the man you are~"

Iamp 2 = Touhou 9.8

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody looks like to be Iamp 2, standalone and being built from scratch.
The screenshot is depressing ugly however.
It takes place after Bunkachou but before Touhou 10 (The newest one.)
AYA HAS TO BE IN IT.
DIBS ON AYA.

James Chen (among many) tells it like it is.

For those of you who haven't been rolling with the Showdown lols, basically Emogear's "Showdown" tournament and upcoming SBO qualifiers have been caught by drama llamas after quite a few people had problems with how Showdown was run.

The entire thread is sort of a civil point counterpoint style, with some flames but everyone trying really hard to keep their patience.
What's ticking everyone off is basically:
1. If showdown is an example of what type of tournament Emogear will run then why the fuck does he control SBO spots? (Yes, people have still not been paid.)
2. His rule 7 basically states that if he doesn't like you you're not going to SBO even if you qualified.

Tons of arbitrary bullshit, everyone now knows that Showdown was basically an attempt to get Texas, and specifically PZ players, to Japan, not any sort of team USA effort.
Thing is it FAILED spectacularly.
Out of staters won everything and now Emotiongear is dragging his feet.

Arturo in particular really wanted to flame Emotiongear down to the ground, but Emotiongear holds the SBO spots for Arcana Hearts, and thus his tickets, so he really couldn't post his full opinion at all for fear of reprisals.

Anyway the tide is turning.
Arturo learned Empire is backing him; even if he doesn't get the qualifier spot (because of llamas) Empire will send him to the last chance qualifier in Japan.
Arlieth and John Choi have also stated (not in the thread cough) that they will back Arturo.
SRK mods are posting like crazy in the thread (they are also backing Arturo *political maneuvering*)
Unfortunately Aruturo still didn't let loose cause Arlieth played nice guy politics, it'd be bad form if he flamed (too easy.)
But he did lay his cards out on the table and basically say, "You have jerked us around, and I'm not happy about it."

Anyway Emotiongear pretty much does not answer Sabin and goes and attacks ChaoticBlue in the thread because it's an easier target.
Then jchensor shows up and tells it straight.

And that's the drama llama news over Texas showdown.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Asian-American women ages 15-24.

I'm not sure if this is a completely random story/study or what not, but it's sort of depressing.

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody

All that's known is that it's a fighting game of some sorts and is going to be shown at Reisaitai on May 20th.
GET HYYYYYYYYYYYYYPE!

DSS 64

If I ever went to hell, I'm sure I would be forced to play a platformer by the name above.
Dragon Shadow Spell's jumping puzzles are the WORST.
EVER.
NO CONTEST.
Whoever designed them must have been on crack, cocaine, heroin, and dust at the same time.

ＨＡ☆ＮＡ☆ＳＥ

Japanese meme :V

The Irony

Interview with Ray Nakazato

Ray Nakazato is the president of Feelplus, which is currently working with Sakaguchi on Lost Odyssey. Lots of honest stuff in the interview, it's rare to see a Japanese interviewee be so frank.

Windows Update Sucks

Whoever programmed that thing was on drugs or a monkey.
Seriously, every time a patch or update rolls around I get multiple people calling about svchost 100% CPU usage and being unable to do jack.
The rub is it's not even wasting all that CPU installing updates.
It's wasting it trying to FIND them.

MBAC verB2 for PC probably delayed

The 070427 entry is pretty bleak.
"This isn't a forward facing difficult journey, I feel we are going backwards."
And a winner of a line:
"I feel like I am being punished for past sins."

Anyway lines 8 and 9 basically say that they probably won't make the end of June release.

がんばります…プログラマが。
Good luck programmers! T_T

Showdown Wrap Up

Spooky/Zar got second, Spooky didn't lose to Mint this time around but Ruu was still too high a cat to jump over.
Incidentally, Ruu/Mint won GGAC, AHF (Arturo/Marn got second), and MBAC.
Too freaking good.

Japanese also took Tekken DR, crazy 17 year old Heihachi user doing EWGF EWGF WTF.
Thing is, USA doesn't allow stage select, Japan does.
So after Bronson killed off the Heihachi genius, Japan counterpicked a stage with no walls.

Tokido OCVed the finals in 3s, except that Japan had actually been put in the losers by the undefeated USA team.
Then they decided to make the finals SINGLE ELIMINATION, so Japan didn't have to win twice to win.
In the words of Mopreme on SRK:

Hi. When are the grand finals for 3rd Strike going to be held?

Thanks.

You can feel the bitterness.

Finally, AHF and MBAC weren't on the large screen, so no FINALS RECORDED FOR THEIR GAY DVDS EVEN IF THEY SAID NOT TO BRING CAMERAS TO THE LAST DAY.
That and the crowd consisted of a thousand otakus in love with Japan.
"Let's hear it for USA!" (clap clap)
"Let's hear it for Japan!" (sound of 1000 otakus screaming)
Arturo: "What fucking country am I in again?"

It seems the general opinion of a lot of people is fuck you Texas.

Further edit:
Seems like the prize money wasn't paid to ONLY USA PEOPLE at the event.

what happened to this? Everything was cool until I couldn't get my money, but I see how it works.

Maybe next time I'll enter the tourney and tell them I'll mail them my entry fee later or maybe I'll tell Time Warner I don't have thier money but I'll send it to them when I feel like it. The way I see it, if I gave you my money on the spot why couldn't get my prizes on the spot like you guys said.

Product Zero strikes again!

HYPE

Spooky and Zar are in the grand finals against Ruu/Mint.
They took down Bas/Tokido and will play Ruu/Mint on Sunday.
Lol just for the record, BAS does not play Melty Blood, he didn't even have the bnb dow.
Tokido however, seems to play a beastly Warc, although Spooky said he doesn't know how to deal with VSion's summon shenanigan gimmicks and was getting destroyed in casuals when Spooky used them.
Fubarduck lost to Tokido.

Mint actually peaced Spooky out to the first time in the tournament with a 5C to the face after activate.
Saiyid then picked up the slack but lost in last round to Ruu, sending them to the losers.
But hell I knew they weren't going to get randomed out.
HYPEEEEEEEEEE

Texas Showdown

LIVE UPDATES LOL:
Arturo missed his initial flight.
Missed CvS2, Arcana, Tekken 5 DR, everything he was signed for.
I feel really bad for him, especially on Arcana, because he was singlehandedly trying to build a scene and he really was the best guy we had statewise in that game.
Whoever goes to Japan won't stand a ghost of a chance.

In the Melty Blood: Act Cadenza department:
Mint uses Warc, he got destroyed in casuals.
Ruu, as expected, is fucking godly.
Spooky got like one round and that was it.
He was counting Aoko's jumps and doing 236a ex ice trap after Saiyid ran out of them.
Tournament has yet to start, there's about 10? teams.
Saiyid better think up some anticat strats quick.
Thing is Ruu/Mint is Japanese so they can't qualify for SBO in Japan at an American tournament.
And it's double elim.
Spooky/Zar should easily steamroll the rest of the players, they are our nation's best in MBAC after all.
GET HYPE!

Footnotes:
LOL DPC IS BANNED FROM ALL EVO TOURNAMENTS AHAHAHAHA.
Wait Pyrolee is banned too?
And Arly made the decision?
STUPID FIGHTING GAME DRAMA.
GET HYPE!

Apartment Troubles #1

Someone stole my pot.
Not drugs, but my cooking pot.
You can use it if you want but WHY WOULD YOU TAKE IT OUT OF THE KITCHEN.
Same with my chopsticks, and my RAZOR (from the bathroom.)
And you know what?
I bet it was the Chinese guy who came back from two weeks wherever.
It sounds mean but shit was NOT disappearing until he came back.
And WHO THE FUCK ELSE USES CHOPSTICKS!
DAMN CHINESE, ALWAYS TRYING TO STEAL FROM TAIWAN! (I kid I kid.)

I've requested a custom stick off of SRK, xarcades are shit and HRAPs die in a year (according to spooky.)
I guess I want to get serious about MBAC at least, I waited till after I actually foudn a job and moved because there's no way my parents would tolerate competitive gaming in their house.
They think I waste enough of my life on it already, if I randomly disappeared at moments to go across the country they'd be very hard to deal with.

Today the full weight of "wow you haven't talked to people in real life in forever outside of family after graduation" hit, it was sort of sad.
Went to a random EB to pick up lots of used games for ps2, basically what I did at the end of the ps1 lifecycle (Har har Suikoden 1 and 2 still in original case for 9 dollars. I should ebay that shit.)
Girl there happens to be Taiwanese. :V
Says the sims were too girly for her (Anna you and your damn sims!) :V
Says she doesn't buy new games because she is too cheap for them and her JAPANESE IS BETTER THAN HER NONEXISTENT TAIWANESE. :V
That and she's like the first person to ever get my idiotic screenname pronounciation right on the first try. :V
It was a nice feeling.

Armored Core Team battle

Just wow.
I like his color scheme lol.
Once he drops his missile launchers he gets crazy fast.

Resume padding

MIT dean resigns over misrepresented credentials.
Irony-tastic here.
Telling parents not to pressure kids into getting the best colleges because...she herself lied about her degrees on her resume.
For some reason I feel this sort of deep anger that someone like that managed to work at MIT for 29 freaking years.
Maybe it's because that even with a degree I had such a hard time finding a job.
The world doesn't care about your personality when they read your resume, it only really matters after you land the position.

MBAC ver. B CE

Well, they fixed Sion's 2C, and looks like...they made some other changes.



Fear the Neco Arc COWS.
White Len is looking pretty nonshitty as of now actually.

I LIVE!

I now have internets at my place.
Yay.
To celebrate, I will teach you a secret recipe:

FUCKING LEGENDARY!

Haha a word on internet celebrity.
I occasionally get recognized online now by strangers because of my youtube videos.
It's a small thing, and rather niche-oriented, but when random joe is like, "OMG YOU," it's a nice feeling.

Anyway, I hang out in #MBAC a lot now, where there is someone named Sabin, aka Arturo Sanchez, and someone named HNana, aka XCTU.

Arturo's a real legend in the fighting game community, guy has tournament wins up the wazoo and is a proven EC player.
The fact he showed up at Sp00ky's house during my stay there sort of impressed me; the fact he's going out in the community to promote freaking ARCANA HEARTS impresses me also (Though the final version removed Lilica loop. WTF. GG Lilica T_T)
XCTU was one of the best Soul Calibur II players (Talim user) in existence.
In fact he's sort of one of the reasons I picked up Talim, the other was Kayane, random 12 year old French girl (at the time.)
Thing is I didn't know HNana was XCTU, I knew he was in Japan and was a dork like the rest of us, but it surprised me when I found out.

Anyway he's learning IaMP :V :V :V
Let's hear it for more competitive players joining the fold.

TYPEMANIA

Be sure to have sound, you'll recognize a lot of the songs.
Someone already AA'ed the 13 step one.
HAXOR!

Blitzkrieged

I start new job tomorrow.
Have to move in very fast short time.
Not much time for belongings or say a tower with a non slim ps2 with recording equipment :V
I'm debating what to bring, I could attempt to be crazy and do the computer in suitcase trick I pulled repeatedly in college.
But more like I'll just bring a laptop.

Ar Tonelico 2

via zepy
Two singers at once!? (WOW SO NEW...:V)
Then again she has a sword (the one dressed in smoking white.)

Code Geass 1-23

I marathoned it.
It hasn't ended, episode 24-25 are due to air in the summer.
Anyway, my god.
My god my god my god.
Too twisted, the worst/best possible option.
I'm really speechless how it turned out.

Anyway, LL x K is completely out.
However heartbreaking and accidental, he sealed his last way out.
"Unfortunately I've contracted with the devil."

Orochi Musou

Got it, played it to near death.
Still missing everyone's personal items, which honestly don't seem to do that much.
Zuo Ci is stupidly stupid stupid.
No wonder 2chan ranks him with Orochi.

Anyway two small vids up on youtube for it, but I've already gone back to DSS (probably because I won't be able to play anything for a while soon.)

Sue everyone!

Those of you who pay attention will know I have a youtube account, and it's where I waste a lot of my time (encoding and uploading game videos.)
Any way, I try to respond to intelligent comments, and I respond to almost all private messages, no matter how unintelligable.

Some of the comments though, are silly to the point that I feel they require correction.
For instance, on the Megamari video, I see comments like "Capcom should sue their asses."

I felt it necessary to respond with this article, which really presents a good point of view on why Capcom would not sue their asses, nor is it good for other companies to sue people's asses when it comes to game design.

Lucky ☆ Star

Lucky Star is out!!!
I didn't think they'd animate this, glad they did.
Kyoani is doing it.
Slightly pervier slice of life (it was a 4koma like Azumanga Daioh) type show (because the main character is a lazy underage high school girl who plays eroge)
Of course the entire budget went into the opening XD
SERA FUKU!

Fucking Gamefaqs.

I know it's Gamefaqs, but when someone so utterly devoid of intelligence feels compelled to spray their particular brand of idiocy at people new to the game I get angry.

First of all, you are confined to play this game on a keyboard. I don't know about you, but fighting games are not meant for keyboards. At all. What made TF decide upon this is beyond me, and no matter what you do you can't configure the game to use a gamepad instead, which, in the end, hurts IaMP's fun level. Being forced to use your keyboard in the very heat of the battle is a very annoying and bothersome task that only makes things more complicated than simple, especially when pulling off super attacks, producing difficulties up the wazoo. Funny that, I was told it would automatically configure itself to a gamepad... well, this game pretty much proved that wrong and makes playing it uncomfortable, difficult, and awkward. Never try playing this game on its hardest difficulty setting with this in mind: it becomes extremely aggravating, almost impossible even. If you love punishing mistakes, and you're a sadist, then by all means, go right on ahead.

Translations: First of all, I will tell a blatant lie. I in fact do not own this game, as I would have seen a GIGANTIC CONFIG.EXE IN THE SAME FUCKING FOLDER. OR MAYBE I AM LEGALLY BLIND. MAYBE I HONESTLY BELIEVE IN MAGICAL PAD CONFIGURATION FAIRIES, AND I WILL NEVER HAVE TO HIT CONFIG.EXE TO CONFIGURE MY PAD.

Second, a lot of attacks and moves are barely comboable, and considering that it's part of what you must rely on in this game, it just won't do, leaving the game engine rather inflexible and stiff rather than varied and deep. There is barely even anything to work for other than unlocking four hidden characters by beating them in the Story Mode, and considering the game's playability and all, this is actually pretty much a good thing, as forcing yourself to play the game in any other means would probably result in a lot of broken fingers and broken dreams.

Translation: WHERE IS MY 2ABC SPECIAL COMBOS FROM EFZ? WHERE? I'M SORRY YOU SAY THE COMBOS ARE DIFFERENT AND FOLLOW A MORE KOF STYLE OF NORMAL TO COMMAND MOVE TO PROJECTILE TO SPECIAL? I'M SORRY I'M SO HARDCORE I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Another flaw in the game is that later on in fights after you've worn your opponent down a good amount, they will start to rely on doing nothing but shooting projectiles all around you in a sort of pattern, which is reminiscent of other entries in the Touhou series, though this isn't always a good thing. To note, this may not seem bad at first, especially when you can use the V key to dash around and “graze” along the projectiles, which is actually a very good saving throw. But later on it starts to become boring, predictable, confusing and annoying after a while or after the next several times. It also tends to get in the way of the actual fighting, making it very difficult later on to progress the fight when you are forced more to dodge your opponent's shots. It hampers the overall flow of the experience and drags the fight on for an even longer time, making the fights more of a chore than actually being fun, and kicking the very novelty out the door. Really, the most fun you can get out of this game is by playing it with a friend (if you want to share the same annoying keyboarding experience with).

Translation: SINGLE PLAYER IS TOO HARD, MAN THE ONLY WAY I CAN ENJOY THIS GAME IS WITH ANOTHER PERSON! IMAGINE A FIGHTER REQUIRING ANOTHER PERSON! AND HE HAS TO BE ON THE KEYBOARD TOO BECAUSE I CAN'T SEE CONFIG.EXE

There's more but I'm not going to spoil the entire gem; read it and gouge your eyes out for yourself.
Fucking idiot.

Pyromaniacs plus KoF plus Cosplay equals ???

How do you prove photography to a blind man?

Via Metafilter.

Sp00ky's sausagefest report

Stayed 21-25th.
Really fun.
I think I might "get serious" at Melty Blood, but I'd need a stick first, the pad is completely destroying my hands.
Bellreisa was almost exactly the same offline, which is good and bad haha.
Saw that clown Buri and Sp00ky again, met Zaelar, XAQ, Saiyid, Tinshi, Chibi and Arturo (who came at the very end after cleaning up the Arcana Hearts ranbat at Chinatown Fair).
Dippy COMPLETELY emoed out Thursday; he left the next day.

About Melty Blood, if I meet someone with a faster better air normal (Ren) than Warc's jB, I lose 90% of my game.
As such how badly I lost depended on their character.
(Notice I didn't say how I did, I pretty much lost to everyone there for free)
My highlight was a random bara 236C off of Saiyid's Akiha 2A (lolpadhax)
I was in IaMP mode a lot, trying to jump out of blockstrings and not blocking low (which you really should in MBAC).
That and I loved superjump jB like an only child.
Saiyid is really really strong.
He plays too many secondaries at a decently high level that can kill you for free, and then when he plays Aoko it's worse.
I managed to lose to his Miyako, Akiha, Nero, Satsuki, Hisui, Tohno, Nanaya, Aoko...ok yeah uh hell if I remember all of them.
Sp00ky got more perfects on me than anyone else, I really don't know what to do against him, so aggressive.
Zaeler's Ciel doesn't do stupid crap now, but he still loves the ex hiero just a little too much.
Bell's Ren is decent, but it's still Ren.
Still, freaking jA beats out jB, so I'm left with not many noob-friendly tactics to do.
Tinshi's rather screwy when drunk, his Shiki is crazy "rush that shit down," ignoring orbs (at his own peril) like mad.
Chibi's Hisui is solid, I had a lot of trouble figuring it out, but Saiyid's is better (freaking Saiyid).
XAQ's Arc is ANNOYING, freaking charge 5B is DEFINITELY definitely faster than Warcs, that blockstring basically forces you to always block high on wake up against him.
I never fought his M. Hisui.
Buri plays MBAC like I play MBAC, which is to say, not much.
His Miyako was lols; I could trade games with him cause we both sucked.

IaMP was still rape.
Bell really really doesn't like that Alice vs Suika match though, he'd switch to Yuyuko just to equal out the lame factor.
Buri would still get peaced out lol.
Dorks (aka chibi tinshi and saiyid zaeler) played way too much Ranma, that game is SLOW, but still hilarious in a party situation where Genma randomly wins with a panda slide.
I'm surprised to learn that Chibi and Zaelar still use pads, though Chibi can use stick.

Anyway, we ate free food (86 noodles/Papa Johns) and slept for free (though very cramped, 750 for an apartment like twice the size of my room, geez NYC) and it was a pretty awesome experience all around.

Oh right, Chinatown Fair is CRAMPED and there's no place to sit but the racing games.
The current NYC Arcana hearts scene is like 5 Kamuis, 1 Kira, and 1 Meifang.
Kamui mirrors galore.
I didn't get to touch the machine because of the ranbat going on, maybe next time.
Need to at least lose with Lilica once.

Super Mario Kart What?

And you thought the 64 version was breakable.

DBZ MMO

El oh el.
Just what we need, more Saiyans.

Xerain: wow, that's goign to be the most boring MMO ever
Xerain: will take FOREVER for anything to die
Xerain: since you'll have to sit there and stare at it for like an hour first

Nyoro~n

A little background.
Some doujin artist in Japan made a little series of comics with Tsuruya from Haruhi, except they messed up her name on purpose as "Churuya," and had her doing all these stupid things (related to smoked cheese?) that ended with the line "Nyoro~n."
Tsuruya NEVER says "Nyoro~n" in Haruhi.
Anyway, it became a stupidly huge internet meme, both in Japan and the USA (parodies are everywhere, melonbook's new mascot says "Mero~n")



This kid killed himself and wanted Churuya at his funeral it seems.
WTF.

Little Big Planet

GDC stands for the Game Developer's Conference, for those of you who don't know.
To put it bluntly, it looks drop dead gorgeous.
A gigantic leap in the right direction from Sony.

Unit 731

Sometimes you stumble upon weird things while looking for completely unrelated subjects.
In my case, while reading about the latest Visual Novel news I came across a reference to "Unit 731"; a simple analogy would be Nazi Germany:SS, WW2 Japan: Unit 731.
The entire article was really disturbing and fascinating at the same time...an example would be the testing of grenades on prisoners (distance/trajectory/radius of explosion) or lab-bred plague infest flea drops on Chinese civilians.

The thing that really pisses me off is the comparative punishments these "doctors" received compared to say their Nazi counterparts, most negotiated deals with the USA for amnesty in exchange for their information and went on to be come members of government.
The most punishment reported was 25 years to a work camp by a Soviet court that was conducting their own investigation (heck even the Soviets were lenient.)

(W)Otakuology

Learn something today!
Even if it's about a special class of social deviants!

SAITAMA!

Gundam Musou

So we have...Gundam Musou.
Or Gundam Warriors.
Or whatever they'll call it.
The commercial announcer sounds like a used car salesman.

Anyway, I never really hated the Musou style games, but it's for PS3, so automatic "Won't get" on my list.

ココロが止まらない

I was looking for the first song in this video forever, it's catchy as hell, my initial sources failed me so I started transliterating lyrics myself and googling them in Japanese.
Unfortunately, my transliteration needs a lot of work.
I transliterated wo as mo, suru as sugu, and riyuu and jiyuu.
I fail completely.
Good thing pbox has Japanese friends...
Ironically, the song turned out to be sung by a Korean group called Jewelry.

Plague is the new irradiate.

Man, just man.
Freaking amazing.
Seriously the zerg was using defilers like terran use vessels, absolutely ludicrious.

Classical Music Drama

Joyce Hatto

It seems like a virtuoso pianist with a cult following stole all her recordings from other artists, or time stretched and altered slightly.

It's nice stuff, what she stole, but it took them a while to figure out (she died of cancer recently)

Loopy doo.

I don't know if I can take Arcana Heart seriously anymore. :V

BOONNNNNN!

Those silly 2chan vippers have created their own mod of Super Mario World.
At first I was playing "spot the 2chan meme" but after a while it became "wow this hack is pretty freaking hardcore."

Dragon Shadow Spell

I wonder how RPGamer missed this.
I forget how I heard of it first, Insert Credit or EChang.
Either way, it looks really nifty.
Seems like if you beat the game once on replay a shop opens where you can buy the ability for a lot of the named enemies you fought and minor characters to start joining you on second play.
When I say a lot I mean they're like talking like 50%+ of the cast.
Lots of nice character designs and such.
Anyway, I've already got a liking for:

Now THERE'S a mage.

Also, the main character's older sister is like Ignis, cept redrawn into a cute tactics rpg style.
Still very hot.


Ah heck a lot of the females are cute:
BANG!


Rollerblade weapons are always cool (Lilica!)


*Cough* someone for Helma to pick on mercilessly


OSHI BOOC

Ar Tonelico

So I caved and bought it.
Even though I had just finished dling the torrent.
Eh whatever.
It's pretty simple and what not, this is one of those rare instances where the charm in the setting/universe really speaks to me a lot more than the gameplay.


Also lol this is a guy.
And he's supposedly the main character's best friend.
Doesn't he look so obviously evil?

Instant Ramen Shenanigans

Wait he was Taiwanese?
How many wives again?
Seems like there was a lot more to Momofuku Ando, or should I say Wu Bai Fu (Inventor of the instant ramen) than first appears...

HADOUKEN

Robot Chicken would probably be one of the one and a half reasons to get cable.

Youtube keeps annoying me...

It seems that a whole shitload of my videos with JP text have lost their encoding or hell I don't know what's exactly wrong.
I just know the JP text is not displaying in any of the browser encoding options I choose and that I'll probably have to retag them all.
I don't even know what those jokers keep doing with JP text support but it's obviously crap.

Poughkeepsie mentioned alert!

Poughkeepsie watch
Ho ho, Poughkeepsie being mentioned in mainstream news!
In relation to...a professional gaming article from Time Magazine.
"The uniqueness of the MLG is that you can start as just four guys from Poughkeepsie and end as a top-five team..."

Hey hey now, we're not exactly the backwater of gaming here!

食傷気味

I'm tired of all this.
Truly tired.
For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry this information has been used against you in hurtful ways.
I'm sorry that the one person from #SM I told this spread it.
And yet I get the funny feeling you don't even read this blog.
In fact I have a funny feeling this won't even reach the parties it's intended for.

But in the end it's not really his fault, as I wrote it all down here first; clever google hides and all, it would have come to light eventually.
I do not apologize for writing my feelings down in here.
That is what this blog is for, even though it deviated away from it for a long time.
I do not sanitize here, otherwise I would have no where else.

I'm sorry.
If you request though that the entries be removed, I will remove them.
It has to be you though, I can't really trust second hand dialogue anymore.

Kanon 17

Shiori's my second favorite girl, but wow they really really did her justice here.
More justice than Mai?
It's hard to say...Shiori's story is much less supernatural than the others; it is the sparkling vision of sad/happy? girl in snow.
But just the little moments make watching her oh so worth it.

I like how they're not forgetting everyone else at the same time, like when Yuuichi talked to Makoto on the hill.
You know Yuuichi's still sarcastic and mean and funny, but you can see it wearing on him.
I think this might be a new element of Kanon 2006 really, the fact that since they are going through everyone's scenario, and EVERYONE'S scenario is sad in some way, that the emotional toll is going to be HUGE on Yuuichi.
He's forgotten everything that happened 7 years ago, yet he's managed to realize:
1. He abandoned someone dear to him.
2. He ignored someone who needed him.
3. He met someone new who is going to die soon.
4. Spoiler spoiler spoiler.
5. Spoiler spoiler spoiler.

It's not a good feeling to have.

Waiting Game

I think my mother would have a heart attack if she was with me when I drive on the Taconic, pushing 80-90 nonstop.
I don't really speed that much, I just go the speed of everyone else.
However, the Taconic is freaking treacherous, curvy as hell, and the entire time I'm thinking, "Man, just one slip and there's no way I'd get out alive if I had a wreck here."
Rush hour made it extra special (in that while sometimes it was slow, most of the times it was a LOT of vehicles moving at oh too fast speeds on this snake of a road.)
I realized that I start playing mental games when on long highways, I start viewing cars that go at a constant speed in front of me (Slow, if you will) as obstacles, and I just start obstacle hopping.
It's somewhat subconscious, I was doing it on I84 when I was nearly asleep at the wheel coming back from RPI.
It was like...slow car, pass. Next slow car, pass. Next slow car, pass. Etc.
So I guess I go just above the speed of everyone else or something like that.

Anyway it's waiting game time.
It really wasn't an interview, it really was basically a meet and greet.
The position is pretty...freeform, it's like Wilson's been adlibbing as he goes, and I'm fine with that as I'm pretty good at picking up random pieces.
My only worry is between now and whenever Tony (corporate hierarchy confirmation person) gets back that they change their minds about giving me an offer letter or do a grilling (of the fish, sort of speak.)
Otherwise, hopefully I'll be out of here by February. (Yes moving south)

JC

I was honestly going to title this post Jade Cicada (with no space), and then I thought twice about how Google's indexranking pages work and that people randomly googling her name might have this post pop up.
And yet, why should I care so much?
Decorum?
What's it worth anymore these days?

Anyway, the series of unsavory wheel clicks that had been going on in my head over and over was that JC had been Chris.
Specifically the Chris who had come by and told me her room number.
He had dropped all sorts of clues when I kept pressing for information (but not her real name); he matched quite a lot of them and honestly I think it was a natural conclusion when I had finally reached home rather tired from RPI.
Jacket color, German last name, looks Asian more than German, anime shifts, game developer's club, knew what Touhou was, etc. etc. etc.

She obviously wasn't going to be on pyoko in the main chat but I remember miho had invited her over to arc a while back, /whois told me she was there.
I had to ask.
Yet she denied it.
She denied being Chris and admitted to having a huge panic attack Thursday and delibarately avoiding me throughout the convention.
That she had used the second floor overpass (I had known about and never bothered cause it's a roundabout route) and side entrances and had never gone to the game room on purpose.
That she was surprised Chris had given me so much information, and yet again surprised that I had found her on irc on arc.
Just your normal extremely private Jade.

It was like heaven and hell.
On one hand if my carefully reached conclusion had been proven true, I think I'd have been less angry but more disappointed.
It would have meant I HAD met Jade after all.
And Chris was quite a cool guy, we played PoFV for hours and honestly he was the only one who could beat me consistentedly (more like 50/50, but it got worse if I used my crappy controller and gave him my pink satapad).
That and it was fun watching Kanon with him (I like people watching Kanon :V)
However, it just didn't jibe, the vibes I got from Chris offline and the vibes I get from Jade online.
However her denial threw me back into the anger of before, though less white hot and now more muddled.

Honestly, I wanted to believe her.
I wanted to believe that there were two separate people here, and that I wasn't being screwed with again.
I wanted to believe in Chris and I wanted to believe in her.
And yet it would also mean I wanted to believe that she did not trust me enough to see me in person and had let me hang for three days with no notice of this.

This is a horrible horrible mix of emotions to have swirling and turning round and round in a washing machine.
I don't like drama.
And I know some people actually read this blog.
But I need to write it down, because otherwise I'll twist myself further into knots.

It's funny, if you start from the beginning of this blog you'll notice I write some very personal posts, and as it goes on it becomes more and more gaming related and I hardly bring up my life.
This has been the first real e/n post in a while, I almost forgot how to write them.
Guess that's what you're supposed to use them for some times.

Genericon

Only screwed up once going up, was blinded by sun and ended up on 87-S instead of North, went to one of those gaps in the railings with a big ass NO U TURN SIGN and made a uturn.

It's pretty cold up in Troy, mostly stayed in the video game room showing POFV/IAMP/EFZ/MBFT/RBO.
Fought the same guy first round in like 3 tournaments and lost to him all 3 times (except for smash, where I raped 9-2 when they forced us to play freaking FFA with Peach, then lost in 1v1 versus a Jiggly of pain)
Watched Haruhi 10-12 again for awesomeness.
Watched Kanon with two other people from shrinemaiden boards for funnies.
Brady borrowed my car (AND IT WAS SNOWING), but he had promised a to fill up the tank and I was nearly empty so I said sure why not.
Incidentally Brady's apartment was like worse than Brennan and mine...except they didnt have cockroaches (probably too cold for even them).
Seems like they don't really live in it, just sleep in it.
Or something to that effect.

Anyway, we get to the main complaint I had with this con, which I'm sure way too many people know by now (I asked so many people it was ridiculous.)
That is my main reason, or rather 90% of my reason for coming up failed to materialize.
Online there is a girl named Jade Cicada (Additional space to counter page rank algorithms), she's the one who suggested I come up to the convention.
Now keep in mind I really wouldn't do this for anyone, but Jade's intelligent enough, likeable enough and interesting enough to warrant a visit.
Seeing as I have an interview through a family connection soon and that if I land that job I'll probably be moving, I was like sure why the hell not, as it would probably be the last time the drive to RPI would be tolerable (two hours).

I didn't expect to play some massive mind game once I got there.
Keep in mind I don't know Jade's real name.
The tidbits of information I had at that point were:
She definitely goes to RPI, she's half-german, half-taiwanese, in the game developer's club.
That's it.
Not much to go on, but she said she was going to be a volunteer for an anime showing, but didn't know where/when.
Whatever, work it out there right?
In retrospect I should have known.

Registration was 25 dollars, it could have been ten if I used Brady's student card, but I felt bad about being THAT cheap plus Brady wanted to play in the magic tournament (200 dollar prize) anyway.
Talked to a Reisen cosplayer. Yes male. Haha I think I was the first who recognized him as I kept staring at him in the registration line and couldn't resist chasing him down afterwards.
Afterwards, I checked the showing rooms when I got there, didn't see anyone remotely asian and female, and set up in the gaming room for a while.
Showing POFV and IAMPs and all that.
Anyway somewhere along the line a random guy (nametag says Chris) recognizes Touhou and is like hey, and we play POFV for a while.
Then he asks if I'm from JHU.
This isn't common knowledge so I answered yes along with how did you know?
He said that the person I was looking for (Obviously Jade) would be in 318, but he said that she didn't give a time.
Right here I should have pressed him for more information but it didn't register to me.
Since shifts were every four hours I felt that it shouldn't be hard to find her.
So I played games...and every four hours I'd check room 318.
And there would be someone obviously not Jade there.
I'd check the other two rooms half the time just to be sure, and to EACH volunteer I explained my story.
I'm sure I must have sounded hilarious, I must have talked to 70% of the total volunteers for Genericon.
Each one denied/had no clue, they suggested I go to HQ to see.
Well I went to HQ and looked at the volunteer list and there were only two asian last names, neither in 318.
Bleah.
Asked the two about it, both had no clue (One didn't even go to RPI, she was there from mm...Albany I believe.)

Anyway met Chris the next day again and asked about it, he said she had a German last name.
Stupid. Me. Should have figured that out. But hell if I know German last names, and that list didn't ring any bells.
Plus he wouldn't give me her real name, as she had explictly told him NOT to.
Gah more mind games.
Played a bazillion more POFV with Chris and Strider (from sm boards) and left my lappy in the videogame room on cpu matches when I went to check the anime showins just so people would get interested, lost over and over in fighting games against Nuclearcheese :V
Chris also mentioned that Jade had been in 330 during Loveless lying down under the soundboard, this made me feel silly as I had been in during the Loveless showing and had talked with the person running it lying down near the front, only I hadn't recognized that it was Chris (we didn't recognize each other as it was dark and Loveless is so bad you can't turn away, but I didn't bother to check the people next to him on the ground.)

Anyway third day since Chris had said the day before that she had stuck mainly to the Great Hall (never went to the game room), I just set up my laptop there and waited with a sign taped to it.
NoShow.
Toward the very end, I got to talk to someone named Hui? Hsang about the entire thing, as she seemed like a head of volunteers (was in HQ a lot) and she got a big laugh out of the whole thing, I felt sort of silly every time she walked by and smiled out of pity -_-a
Well, that's the con wrapup.

What's chocolate worth?

What's Noka worth?
This is old, I just forgot to put it up a while back.
Anyway, the author basically deconstructs one of the most expensive chocolates being sold on the market today in ten parts.
By the end of it you'll know more about chocolate than you'd ever want to know and be a pseudo-expert yourself!
Completely obsessive, and an amazing read.

From there though I was able to find the author's review of FIFTY country fried steaks, which was just batty and all sorts of amusing.

CATCH MY HEART! VERY MELON!

BURAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BURAAAAAAAAAAA

EFZ

Bored and from work.

The EFZ netplay is shaping up to be on par with IaMPs, which is actually a scary thought, as I might try to seriously play EFZ.
I've already started losing to VMan and casually practicing Akiko combos (why am I using her she's not easy nor my traditional playstyle at all =O)
Honestly the only thing holding me back before was no one in person to play with, that and I absolutely can not stand subpar lagplay, it's my first person shooter genes.

I don't really hate the game like the people in channel that must not be named do, I just think getting a knockdown if you're a good player is like winning the entire match in that game, the okimeze is that retarded, that and the rejuggles are...silly (everyone has dloops!)

Although that girl VMan uses...with the plates (I wish he'd just go Misuzu so I could beat him out with Akiko jB/5B cause they really stuff anything she has) has all these superarmor type moves that blow my jump-ins, okimeze out of the sky.
That and he can actually combo for a bazillion hits.
It's quite annoying to watch yourself be air thrown comboed 5 times in a row and not be able to do anything about it.

I almost say they should do this for MB now, except FT is not what most people play; all sort of version issues come up if you start switching between two different versions of a game.
Maybe that pc demo can be expanded to more than what we got with the Lens...one can always hope.

Saitama is going slowly, D block is all encoded, just didn't upload yet.
Unfortunately there are more holes in the replays than the pdf indicated, it's like missing the entire first half of block H for no reason listed.
There's also a replay that is 365KB, I fastforwarded it at like 10x speed and it still took like 2 minutes.
It's Youmu vs Youmu, and it is by far the most boring match ever, the first 5 minutes there was no damage or something like that.

FUCK YOU BALTIMORE!

Ahahahahahahaha I think someone doesn't like Baltimore car commercials.

Kanon 15

Usagi-san!
Mai is completely and eternally squee.

Type Moon Collection

Not bad for trading figurines.
Maybe if they replaced the Ciel with a Sion...though that's quite a good Ciel.
I just don't like Ciel!
-_-a

IaMP again

Saitama tournament 2 is going up on youtube.
The bracket is weird but still Japanese, 11 blocks of 5, fight everyone else in your block, person with most points moves on into a single elim bracket.
A loss early on is basically fatal, so it's like single elim except you have more chances to lose early on.
Everyone gets a lot more guaranteed playtime though.

Ah well, least you get a lot of matches (Freaking uh 110+ uh...12 I think), even more than freaking Tohgeki.
Ugh this is going to take forever.

Results are pretty loltastic though:
1. Alice
2. China
3. Yukari

Low-mid tier in first and two worst characters in the game in second and third.
TIERS DONT EXIST!

Youtube video comments

This comic is just weird enough for me to thouroughly enjoy it.
I think the only thing remaining for 100% satisfaction would to be a math major (as it seems he is.)

ANIMEJUNKIES LIVES

The legendary mass naked child eventers have returned!
Which is amazing.

<|7hs|> i mean most of the original lineup probably fled the internet in shame by now