Arcana Heart 3 LOVE MAX!!!!!

Holy shit.

Aquapazza Tougeki teams

I had zero interest in this game until I went to Japan, so I didn't even look at the Tougeki teams until yesterday.

Niconico qualifiers: 小路（環/由宇）kouji (Tamaki/Yuu )、トミー（マルチ/由宇）tomy (Multi/Yuu)
A-1：カイザー（アロウン/カミュ）、瀬戸（千鶴/まーりゃん）kaiser (This guy perfected me in the 2v2 at Game Rhino) (Arawn/Camyu), seto (Chizuru/Ma-ryan)
A-2：Z.X（千鶴/まーりゃん）、ワタヌキ（愛佳/皐月）Z.X (Chizuru/Ma-ryan), utanuki (Manaka/Satsuki)
A-3：アノマロカリス（千鶴/スィール）、USARIN（マルチ/まーりゃん）anomarokarisu (Chizuru/Llyr), USARIN (Multi/Ma-ryan)
A-4：ムー民（このみ/カミュ）、ぬくぬく（千鶴/皐月）moomin (Konomi/Camyu), nukunuku (Chizuru/Satsuki)
B-1：OZ（千鶴/スィール）、バター（このみ/瑞希）OZ (won the 2v2, won SBO)(Chizuru/Llyr), Batta (Konomi/Mizuki)
B-2：key（モルガン/由真）、のび（環/スィール）key (Morgan/Yuma), nobi (Tamaki/Llyr)
B-3：しえる（このみ/まーりゃん）、レイ（千鶴/スイール）shieru (Konomi/Ma-ryan), rei (Chizuru/Llyr)
B-4：御庭　つみき（環/由真）、柏木　楓（千鶴/スィール）Miniwa Tsumiki (Tamaki/Yuma), Kashiwagi Kaede (Chizuru/Llyr)
B-5：小川（このみ/由真）、Pincho（アロウン/まーりゃん）Ogawa (Konomi/Yuma), Pincho (Arawn/Ma-ryan)
B-6：神埼蘭子ちゃん（千鶴/瑞希）、雲外鏡（トウカ/由真）Kanzaki Ranko-chan (Chizuru/Mizuki), ungaikyou (Touka/Yuma)
B-7：殿下（トウカ/由真）、真田（環/ウルトリィ）Tenka (Touka/Yuma), Sanada (Tamaki/Ulthury)
B-8：ジン（千鶴/由宇）、カス（トウカ/理奈）Jin (Chizuru/Yuu), kasu (Touka/Rina)
C-1：こうや（千鶴/まーりゃん）、なお（トウカ/皐月）kouya (Chizuru/Ma-ryan), nao (Touka/Satsuki)
C-2：なお（千鶴/スィール）、まく（愛佳/まーりゃん）nao (Chizuru/Llyr), maku (Manaka/Ma-ryan)
C-3：遊（千鶴/皐月）、ナツメ（環/由宇）Yuu (Chizuru/Satsuki), Natsume (Tamaki/Yuu)
C-4：ゴボウ（カルラ/まーりゃん）、ふーせん（アロウン/まーりゃん）gobou (Karulau/Ma-ryan), fuusen (Arawn/Ma-ryan)
C-5：K.A（リアンノン/由綺）、ウラガミ（愛佳/瑞希）K.A (Riannon/Yuki), uragami (Manaka/Mizuki)
C-6：いとりん（モルガン/理奈）itorin (Morgan/Rina) (From what I can tell this was a one man Morgan hero team)
C-7：マジキン（マルチ/瑞希）、いわお（このみ/まーりゃん）majikin (Multi/Mizuki), iwao (Konomi/Ma-ryan)
C-8：大曽根太（ハクオロ/皐月）、タマ姉のうすっぺらい本（環/由真）oozone inu (Hakuowlo/Satsuki), Tamanee no uspperai hon (Tamaki/Yuma)
D-1：GO1（千鶴/スィール）、でぐち（ハクオロ/皐月）GO1 (Chizuru/Llyr), deguchi (Hakuowlo/Satsuki)
D-2：BYU（環/皐月）、日野（モルガン/理奈）BYU (Tamaki/Satsuki), hino (Morgan/Rina)
E-1：ミニッツ（環/ウルト）、みずちゃま（ハクオロ/まーりゃん）Minittsu (Tamaki/Ulthury), Mizuchama (Hakuowlo/Ma-ryan)
E-2：さゆう（環/ウルト）、まぶしん（千鶴/皐月）Sayuu (Tamaki/Ulthury), mabushin (Chizuru/Satsuki)
E-3：まるす（モルガン/皐月）、SBT（アロウン/芹香）marusu (Morgan/Satsuki), SBT (Arawn/Serika)
E-4：ハラウザー（このみ/まーりゃん）、綾（千鶴/皐月）harauza- (Konomi/Ma-ryan), aya (Chizuru/Satsuki)
F-1：鷺ノ宮（環/ウルト）、ダイゴ兵（カルラ/理奈) saginomiya (Tamaki/Ulthury), daigo hei (Karulau/Rina)
F-2：八雲（このみ/スィール）、オーエン（マルチ/まーりゃん）yakumo (Konomi/Llyr), owen (Multi/Ma-ryan)
F-3：ぎんぎん丸（千鶴/理奈）、さいたま（このみ/ラスティ）ginginmaru (Chizuru/Rina), saitama (Konomi/Rathy)
F-4：ゆうじ（千鶴/理奈）、ちせ（このみ/由真) yuuji (Chizuru/Rina), chise (Konomi/Yuma)

31 Teams
17 Chizuru
10 Tamaki
9 Konomi
4 Touka, Morgan, Multi, Arawn
3 Manaka, Hakuowlo
2 Karulau
1 Riannon
0 Sasara (My character sucks!) Oboro

13 Ma-ryan
10 Satsuki
8 Llyr
7 Yuma
6 Rina
4 Mizuki, Yuu, Ulthury
2 Camyu
1 Rathy, Yuki, Serika
0 Octavia

6 Chizuru/Llyr teams

4 Chizuru/Satsuki
4 Tamaki/Ulthury

3 Konomi/Ma-ryan
3 Chizuru/Ma-ryan

2 Chizuru/Rina
2 Konomi/Yuma

2 Tamaki/Yuma
2 Tamaki/Yuu
2 Touka/Yuma
2 Morgan/Rina
2 Multi/Ma-Ryan
2 Hakuowlo/Satsuki
2 Arawn/Ma-ryan

1 Chizuru/Mizuki
1 Chizuru/Yuu
1 Konomi/Camyu
1 Konomi/Mizuki
1 Konomi/Llyr
1 Konomi/Rathy
1 Tamaki/Llyr
1 Tamaki/Satsuki
1 Touka/Rina
1 Touka/Satsuki
1 Morgan/Yuma
1 Morgan/Satsuki
1 Multi/Yuu
1 Multi/Mizuki
1 Hakuowlo/Ma-ryan
1 Manaka/Satsuki
1 Manaka/Ma-ryan
1 Manaka/Mizuki
1 Riannon/Yuki
1 Karulau/Rina
1 Karulau/Ma-ryan
1 Arawn/Serika
1 Arawn/Camyu

双子魔法組曲 -WORLD OF TWAIN- aka Futago Mahou Kumikyoku

Man it's been a while since I've been trapped.
Blaming the artstyle, but I really liked that character's design.
Game is a weird shooting RPG thing, though the official category they gave it was "Coupling High-speed Battle RPG"!
Doesn't help that right after this scene they were like "YOU CAN NOW ACCESS THE DATE COMMAND."
Actual game is pretty fun so far, we'll see if it continues.
In hard mode switching weapons doesn't pause the game so it's pretty hectic.

Comiket rambling

This is going to be a retrospect post, for myself and maybe for other people who go to this thing the first time. (in the summer, winter is probably way different due to the weather)

Day 1 Comiket:
What's sold today: Random circles, BL, game-based doujin (not actual games), corporate stuff
Beginner level, but still an indication of things to come.  Comiket officially opens at 10am, but that time is sort of useless to know.  We all came early, at around 8AM, though I forget the exact time we actually reached Big Sight.  If you come that late though you don't even wait on the steps leading up to Comiket, rather you are lead around in circles to the sides of the hall next to the ocean on these really hard rocks.  Spending hours there was not a pleasant experience in the summer with tons of sweaty people.  I failed my first circle here, waiting in line for 40 minutes at Wirehigh (東A61a).  Saikoubi is the line end but large large circles will have signs indicating the MIDDLE of the line instead of the end.  Unfortunately I failed to learn the biggest lesson, the difference between a wall circle and an outdoor wall circle.  So wall circles are everything starting with A, シ in the east　東 and あ and れ in the west 西.  You expect a certain length of line for these circles, as their location is based on sales numbers.  However, there are certain numbers that are mandatory outside lines: 4, 5, 6, 15, 16 ,17, 28, 29, 44, 45, 60, 61, 72, 73, 74, 83, 84, and 85 for east and 19, 20, 34, 35, 43, 44, 51, 52 in the west.  On the first day maybe this isn't that important, but it's very important on day 2 and 3.  These are the circles you can expect to wait 30+ minutes or more for, depending on your luck.  Day 1 is still really light for most people though, so a lot of people go for Corporate on the first day.  Corporate booths are sort of nightmares, though with a pretty guaranteed stock.  They are in their own tower in West 3 and 4, and because the space is more limited the line organization is way more insane.  You're basically moved in groups of human tetris pieces on the roof in extreme heat.  Also I fucked up at Corporate and bought way too much.  Corporate pricing is generally 5-6x more expensive than circles, so it is really easy to lose money.  Case in point, I didn't have any corporate booths listed period on my list because I felt I didn't need them, I ended up spending like 150 there as opposed to like the 30? I spent for all my circles.  One more thing about corporate is that a lot of them can sell each other's brands.  Meaning you can get an Aoko t-shirt not at Typemoon and it can be official too.  Plus a lot of them have special sets unique to the corporation, so in fact it is highly likely said Aoko t-shirt CAN'T be bought at Type-moon.  It's sort of a deceptive system and honestly only if you remember what they all had on their websites beforehand are you going to know exactly where to go.  I saw an Anzu bag from Exorcist, decided I wanted it and then ended up waiting 1.5 hours for it, and at the counter I was like that was way too much time for a 1000yen bag and just bought a random S;G Chris tapestry and an Aoko set to go along with it.  On the flipside, Tenco's line was EXTREMELY short, to the point that I froze when I reached the counter because I had all of 3 seconds to think.  Ended up buying the towel/tapestry and artbook (which I totally didn't need or want!) before rethinking, regetting into the line (3 seconds) and buying the C82 set as well.  So now I've got a Tenco artbook I need to sell I guess.

Day 2 Comiket:
What's sold today: More BL, Touhou, Doujin games and music
We came around the same time as Day 1 but the line to get in was even longer.  Waited on the lovely rocks by the shipyards in no man's land again.  To be honest my initial list for this day was pretty weak because even with the status of "Touhou fag" in the group I've never really cared too much for Touhou doujins.  I really should have looked for more clean Touhou stuff in the catalog to buy.  I got some additions when I started seriously looking at the games though.  A couple major regrets/losses for this day.  The first is that I took no time to browse character sections (such as Patchouli) as I was going in a preset order.  The second is I totally did not use the color-coded priorities properly for Day 2 (and Day 3).  Meaning I had very little idea what a lot of the things on my list were without pictures and when they were all set to "neutral" priority.  I really should have gone over the list more thoroughly and put more items at higher priority status.  The third was not going to West early.  The general format of "start in the East, go to West," sort of doesn't apply to Day 2, especially in regards to doujin games.  Because CDs/DVDs etc. are way heavier than books, the vendors often carry less stock, and they are overwhelmingly in the West Hall.  Since most of my list was games and not books, I really should have started there.  Ghost92, Edelweiss's Astebreed, Revoler 360, OJ's QP shooting, Diverse System's new music release, Lion Heart's Tenshi platformer, etc. etc., these were all gone.  I went to Tasofro's no line booth and...actually turned around without buying anything lol.  OHBA once again fucking trolled me when I asked about the difference between the two disks (one is an expansion), he was sold out of the original.  Whatever it's OHBA, the people who gave me a youtube strike and refused to remove it for a year.  I got that weird shooting RPG game from eikyuu loop, Suwako 3D shooting just for a troll, Genso no Ronde (I haven't installed it yet, I'm hearing it is bad unfortunately.)  Since QP2 was sold out I bought AOS2 just for support's sake.  Because of a friend I randomly bought Lethal Crisis and Lethal Crisis Proto Sphere as well.  Got Hachimitsu's Touhou defense game, and Snowgale's Valkyrie Profile clone as well.  Remilia game from Youmu Ys people was a 100 yen demo, so just got that for whatever's sake.  My first real line for the day was Angeltype, which went smoothly enough, but I was wondering what the fuck the line next to it was as it was 4 people wide and like 4 times as long.  Kept wondering until I finally reached the table, looked left and saw Zun and his wife with a Shanghai Alice banner.  Oh.  The other high priorities I had marked were the OTHER gaijin circle (after woof) named Medical Whiskey that no less than 3 internet denizens recommended to me ("I KNOW A GUY THERE" from all three), but they were out of their erohon, and desu no, to say Hi to him for mauve.  I felt sort of awkward since I have played very little of his games and his newest release was a fandisk for his previous games...so I bought like one of the random games there.  He gave me four? free fandisks though for being mauve's friend so that was cool.  Day 2 is also the first day I experienced "I'm not here trolls."  Simodoriru's space was COMPLETELY EMPTY except for the green circle registration card that's usually there when the hall opens for participants, I took a picture out of bewilderment.  PlatineDispositif showed up with NONE OF THEIR GAMES, not even old ones.  I'm sortta irked at that kind of thing, because I'm pretty aware that other people get their applications rejected by Comiket quite frequently.  To show up (or not show up) and bring nothing is sort of ass.  The high percentage of misses on this day forced me to reconsider my strategy for day 3, and we got back very late as well because of the 2v2 Game Rhino tournament...so I was not feeling good about my chances.  The group had discussions about how early they wanted to go for tomorrow, and I think they agreed on something like wake up at 5AM leave at 6am...but I wasn't sure if we could pull that off with how tired we were.

Day 3 Comiket:
What's sold today: Everything else, everyone famous, mainly ero.
I woke up at 4:30am or so, realized everyone else was dead, and left alone on a mission.  Grabbing two maps, I went to withdraw 50k yen first, and then straight to Asakusa station.  It was really obvious even this early in the morning that a lot of people were going early to line up for day 3 as well, I reached Big Sight around 6am this time and actually got to line up in the front area (that walks up the huge steps to Comiket) instead of being shuffled off to shipyard rock land.  Reminded of yesterday, I knew that it was foolish to expect multiple outdoor wall circles.  My priorities were rearranged as 1. Oyari and the few things in his hall section -> 2. Straight to West for S.E.C. and everything there 3. return to East.  Even coming super early and getting into the hall at 10:10, Oyari sold out of clearfiles right before I reached the table.  I was able to buy 3 copies of his newest IMAS book however, so good enough.  Cleaned up that hall section, then went straight to West and got S.E.C. (who wasn't an outdoor wall, just a normal wall).  West more or less went smoothly (Harada was there as well), and I returned to East pretty early.  From there I made the same mistake as yesterday without seriously redoing my color coding, as such I went by section of the halls one by one instead of jumping around to highest priority.  As I was alone this time (because I felt the others would wake up too late for what I really wanted) I couldn't afford to just tackle entire areas by myself, even close together, I took a lot of time going through them.  I made out pretty well though, save for obvious omissions on certain outdoor walls.  This is where I learned there is a further distinction among outdoor wall circles as well.  I went to nisemidi's line pretty late in the day, only to find that it didn't exist.  Since I was there I hopped into bolze's line next to him, got his stuff, then just hopped into the 1 second line that was nisemidi's and got his as well.  Not bad for two outer wall circles.  Cut a Dash had TONs of stock left as well late in the day, but by then I had actually burned through a lot of my 50k yen and had to make choices.  Since a lot of the outer wall circles also know they charge a premium, 1ks add up way faster than 500s, and sets and stuff at 3k add up even faster.  Tony of course was sacrificed the second I decided I wanted Oyari, and regrettably Digital Lover and Udonya as well.  When I finally reached their booths both tables were cleaned and it was just Digital Lover signing autographs (probably because she's cute.)  SAZ still had stuff left, Blade was out, as was F4, Clesta, and ponkotsu works.  American Kenpou I got rather early, and I didn't really try hard for CCC.  Oh right and before I forget, hounori showed up with nothing but a little white card saying SORRY I COULDN'T MAKE ANYTHING IN TIME FOR COMIKET.  :V  All in all though day 3 probably went the best it could have been with me being solo, I was actually running out of money before circles.

"Day 4 Comiket:"
Super herpaderp here.  A TON of people resell their shit at Toranoana and Melonbooks the day after Comiket.  Unfortunately knowing what is sold is sort of a crapshoot, and there are some rather obvious omissions.  I was able to find Diverse Systems music here, but Revolver 360, Tenshi platformer, and Astebreed were no where to be found.  In terms of doujins, a lot of super wall circles actually release here as well, but coincidentally most of the one that were selling I actually bought already at Comiket.  Knowing if someone is reselling at Toranoana sort of depends on how much the person updates their website.

Japan

Going to Comic-z's, then to Japan.
Wish me and the army luck at Comiket.

P4U Tougeki lineup

超闘劇枠代表(Super Tougeki Representative) 雲外鏡 [ユメ](アイギス) Yume Aigis
(Yume got a special spot for winning Chou Tougeki)
A-1ブロック代表 K猫(美鶴) Kneko Mitsuru
A-2ブロック代表 電波(直斗) Denpa Naoto
A-3ブロック代表 カイト(クマ) Kaito Kuma
A-4ブロック代表 マオ(クマ) Mao Kuma
A-5ブロック代表 ほーちゃん(雪子) Stunedge Yukiko
A-6ブロック代表 マームールー(美鶴) Maamuuruu Mitsuru
B-1ブロック代表 よっしー(アイギス) Yosshi Aigis
B-2ブロック代表 いるす(美鶴) Irusu Mitsuru
B-3ブロック代表 P3U PLAYER(美鶴) P3U Player Mitsuru
B-4ブロック代表 キャロ(千枝) Kyaro Chie
B-5ブロック代表 シュウト(美鶴) Syuuto Mitsuru
B-6ブロック代表 タヒチ(アイギス) Tahichi Aigis
B-7ブロック代表 れお(真田) REO Akihiko
B-8ブロック代表 回転王(千枝) Spinking Chie
B-9ブロック代表 ゆーさま(番長) Yuusama Narukami
B-10ブロック代表 ぶっぱ(番長) Buppa Narukami
B-11ブロック代表 テオドーレ(千枝) Teodoore Chie
B-12ブロック代表 高槻やよい[はやし](陽介)  Takatsuki Yayoi (Hayashi) Yosuke
B-13ブロック代表 サキ(千枝) Saki Chie
B-14ブロック代表 DIEちゃん(美鶴) DIEchan Mitsuru
B-15ブロック代表 はま～(番長) Hama Narukami
B-16ブロック代表 コイチ(アイギス) Koichi Aigis
B-17ブロック代表 ソウジ(クマ) Souji Kuma
B-18ブロック代表 ヨシキ(千枝) Yoshiki Chie
B-19ブロック代表 ツッパリ(番長) Tsuppari Narukami
B-20ブロック代表 千葉の堕天聖塩澤(番長) Chiba's help this kanji compound is fucked Narukami
B-21ブロック代表 エド(クマ) Edo Kuma
B-22ブロック代表 サトチー(美鶴) Satochii Mitsuru
B-23ブロック代表 エイト(アイギス)  Eito Aigis
B-24ブロック代表 りぃんふぉーす[かすみLOVE](番長) Reinforce (Kasumi LOVE) Narukami
B-25ブロック代表 ぴよっ太(美鶴) Pyo inu Mitsuru
B-26ブロック代表 ウチヤマ(エリザベス) Uchiyama Elizabeth
B-27ブロック代表 カイヌマ(雪子) Kainuma Yukiko
C-1ブロック代表 山昆布(千枝)  Yamaconbu Chie
C-2ブロック代表 肉まん(千枝) Nikuman Chie
C-3ブロック代表 サトウユキ信者(アイギス) Satoyuuki Shinija Aigis
C-4ブロック代表 ひまじん(雪子) Himajin Yukiko
C-5ブロック代表 れりあ(シャドウラビリス) Reria Shadow Labrys
C-6ブロック代表 まさお(エリザベス) Masao Elizabeth
C-7ブロック代表 キングKAZ(真田) King KAZ Akihiko
C-8ブロック代表 えうれーる(完二) Eureeru Kanji
C-9ブロック代表 たろにゃん(千枝) Taronyan Chie
C-10ブロック代表 マジキン(クマ) Majikin Kuma
C-11ブロック代表 とも(シャドウラビリス) Tomo Shadow Labrys
D-1ブロック代表 飛翔兎(真田) Hishou Usagi Akihiko
D-2ブロック代表 蝿(千枝) Hoe Chie
D-3ブロック代表 伝説のN井(美鶴) Densetsu no Nsei Mitsuru
D-4ブロック代表 GO1(美鶴) GO1 Mitsuru
D-5ブロック代表 空シド(シャドウラビリス) Kuushido Shadow Labrys
D-6ブロック代表 まっど(クマ) Maddo Kuma
E-1ブロック代表 ぷれぷれ(ラビリス) Purepure Labrys
E-2ブロック代表 ギャクテンアメリカ(雪子) Gyakuten America Yukiko
E-3ブロック代表 勝子(美鶴) Katsuko Mitsuru
E-4ブロック代表 える(アイギス) Eru Aigis
E-5ブロック代表 ダウト(番長) Dauto Narukami
F-1ブロック代表 シンゴ(真田) Shingo Akihiko
F-2ブロック代表 会長＠HK(番長) Kaichou@HK Narukami
F-3ブロック代表 たかりん(アイギス) Takarin Aigis
F-4ブロック代表 空手健児(アイギス) Karate Kenji Aigis
F-5ブロック代表 けーた(番長) Keita Narukami

Dat Character Breakdown

11 Mitsuru
9 Aigis
9 Chie
9 Narukami
6 Kuma
4 Akihiko
4 Yukiko
3 Shadow Labrys
2 Elizabeth
1 Kanji
1 Labrys
1 Naoto
1 Yousuke

Regarding the Divekick Kickstarter

I'm going to start with an analogy on this one.
If you were told someone wanted to rebuild their house from the ground up because they wanted the bricks orange instead of red, you'd think "that's odd," but it's really their prerogative.
If you were told instead that someone wanted to rebuild their house because they discovered the bricks had been made by slave laborers in China, that would be a completely different narrative.

This is more or less the gist of the initial post by the Divekick lead dev.
They have since changed it after the blowup, but it's not like programmers forget this sort of thing, nor the internet in general.
Instead of giving a specific technical or even stylistic reason for rewriting the entire game in Unity, the statement used a rather weaselly worded appeal to emotion that "XNA is devoted to destroying Indie Gaming" as their main explanation for the platform change and required code rewrite.

This was misguided at best and dishonest at worst, and the surprise the Divekick team is feeling over the backlash is sort of naive.
There are three types of people in regards to this kickstarter, people who would donate no questions asked, people who would never donate, and people on the fence.
For those fenced people, including myself, a lot of the fence-sitting is questioning the cost breakdown that was given to us by the Divekick devs.
People would like Divekick on PC yes, but would they like it knowing it cost 30K? 60K?
To get something like the above statement as part of the list of justifications for the cost breakdown is not very convincing nor persuasive, if not downright bizarre.
As was stated by one of the commenters, Bastion and Terraria, both indie game powerhouses in their own right, both used XNA.

So a rumble started, as it always does, on Twitter, where it quickly descended into soundbites.
More or less the new statement did little to explain the costs: 15K for QA, 30K for the game, 60K for netplay.
 Keep in mind these were all already important questions for the fence-sitters, just that now there was background noise.

Here is the big thing.
Very few people view that initial statement with XNA as a deliberate lie to deceive.
As was explained by Kayin of IWBTG fame multiple times, everyone likes Keits.
No one thinks he's trying to rob people for Divekick.
What it DOES do however, at least to me, is throw into question the dev team's technical prowess and/or programming skills in relation to the cost breakdown.
Why are you rewriting the game in another engine if it's not because of some sweeping moralistic reason?
What makes Unity better than XNA in regards to running what looks admittedly as a very simple game?
In a lot of fence-sitter's minds, the game is already finished, your licensing costs don't add up and your platform switch explanation doesn't hold water.
Let's not even get into the argument of what a single very motivated dev working for free can do versus what a team working on an iPhone app can do.
This is more or less where we are at.
Kayin has suggested a range that Divekick can hit, maybe 15K to 30K, but there has been no change in the initial Kickstarter as the devs and Keits buckle down on the defensive and call out the trolls and saboteurs.
Honestly at this point, it looks like they will change nothing about the Kickstarter and expect it to fail the goal of 30K.
I was asked by a friend why I wished to sabotage the Divekick project and see it fail.
I think the response, "I want to see Divekick succeed, but not like this," best answers that question.
Maybe because of the networks I'm on or the people I know, but I have a fairly good idea of the costs of Indie game projects as a function of their scope, and I remain highly skeptical of Divekick's cost breakdown.
What I don't really know is if the Divekick team considers themselves "Indie" or not and is thus, on the same wavelength.

So I met my first new thing in PSO2...

This fucking monstrosity was met on the way to rockbears.
I t proceeded to go invisible 50% of the time and ram me for 200 damage.
We promptly ran the fuck away instead of trying to kill it.

PSO2 PRE-OBT random

Pre OBT today (lol I can't play) and tomorrow Saturday 6AM to 11AM EST.
Gotta wake up early for VIDEO GAMES.
Also, a semi non-official list of the unique voice seiyuus:
Male:
1. Hiro Shimono
2. Mariya Ise
3. Tetsuya Kakihara
4. Megumi Ogata
5. Ryohei Kimura
6. Tetsuya Kakihara again? Kenji Akabane?
7. Nobuo Tobita
8. Hiro Shimono
9. Tetsu Shiratori
10. Nobuhiko Okamoto
11. Fumihiko Tachiki
12. Yousuke Akimoto
13. Nobuo Tobita
14. Yousuke Akimoto

Female:
1. Hisako Kanemoto
2. Yuka Iguchi
3. Satomi Sato?
4. Mai Kadowaki
5. Kana Hanazawa
6. Kana Ueda
7. Kumiko Watanabe
8. Mariya Ise
9. Kana Asumi
10. Yuka Iguchi
11. Youko Hikasa
12. Megumi Ogata
13. Kumiko Watanabe
14. Yoshiko Sakakibara

Get them flower guns fools.

I can't sleep

Holy crap I didn't think the withdrawal would be this severe.  Also WTF at new Blogger layout once again.

A primer on Phantasy Star Online 2 Equipment Ability Transfer

This will attempt to explain one of the most time-confusing and rather obfuscated systems in Phantasy Star Online 2 Beta, weapon ability transferring.
To start off with, each weapon can have anywhere from 0 to 4 abilities.
The amount of abilities a weapon has is referred to the amount of ability "slots."
To transfer abilities on to a weapon, you MUST have the desired ability on up to two weapons of an EQUAL number of slots (including non-transferable abilities), the exception is if the weapon you are transferring to has 0 abilities, then any weapon with abilities can transfer to a 0 slot weapon.

For example, let us say I have a 2 slot weapon with Burn 1 and Freeze 1, and I want Power 1 and Tech 1 on it.
I need to go find an existing two slot weapon that has Power 1 and Tech 1, or I can find two separate two slot weapons, one with Power 1 + random ability and the other one with Tech 1 + random ability.
Having a one slot weapon with only Power 1 and another one slot weapon with only Tech 1 will not help me, as neither weapon has two slots in total.
Having a weapon with Power 1 + Lucky Raise 1 will help me, even though Lucky Raise 1 is non-transferable, as it counts as a weapon with two slots.

A note on the abilities, all the basic level 1 abilities can combine to make level 2 versions of themselves, and two level 2 basic abilities can combine to make a level 3 version.
This includes Power, Shoot, Technique, Stamina, Spirit, Arm, Body, React, Mind, Burn, Freeze, Shock, Poison, and the resistances.
However the chance to combine successfully while transferring is lower than just transferring.
Whereas transferring a Power 1 over to a weapon might have 100% chance of success and transferring an existing Power 2 might have 60%, combining two Power 1s into a Power 2 might have 50% chance of success.
The exceptions are Lucky Raise 1, which is non-transferable in all cases (as of now), Mutation 1, which requires TWO Mutation 1s to be transferred over and remains at level 1, and monster souls, which also require TWO duplicate souls to transfer over.
YES MONSTER SOULS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.
DO NOT SELL ALL YOUR GARBAGE WEAPONS WITH GOOD SOULS AND MUTATIONS LIKE I DID YESTERDAY, YOU WILL REGRET IT.

Also, a word about extra slots.
When transferring abilities, if the amount of able to be transferred abilities exceeds the amount of slots the weapon currently has, you are offered an "extra slot," aka a chance to increase the number of abilities of the weapon you are transferring to.
However, the downside is that going for "extra slot" significantly lowers the chances of successful transfer of ALL the abilities you are trying to move over.
The easiest example for "extra slot" is a 0 slot weapon.
If I want to transfer a Power 1 to a 0 slot weapon, I need any weapon with a Power 1 ability, and then I get an "extra slot" chance to move it to the new weapon.
Because you are trying to increase the amount of abilities of the original weapon, keep in mind even transferring a measly Power 1 to an empty weapon will have worse chances than if the weapon had a preexisting single ability, such as Mind 1.

So that example was fairly easy, let's start getting into more complicated examples.
This next section is just going to be a bunch of test cases:

Say I have a one slot weapon with only Power 1, and I want a Vol Soul (+30Atk! +20HP!) on it.
I would need two one slot weapons with exactly Vol Soul on each, and no other abilities.
If I have a two or three or four slot weapon with Vol Soul on it, too bad, I can't use it to transfer the ability to my original one slot weapon.
Now let's say I want to take a risk and get two abilities on my Power 1 weapon.
I could then go for Vol Soul on it with the example above, except I can use my "extra slot" chance to add the original Power 1 back in as well.
Keep in mind attempting this drops the chance of transferring the Vol Soul from 50% to something like 30% or so.
In the event you succeed, you have now converted your one slot Power 1 weapon to a double slot Vol Soul + Power 1 weapon.

Let's say you want a Shot 3 Rocket Launcher, which currently has no abilities on it.
You have multiple ways to do this, but let's say you like seeing the risks at the beginning rather than at the end.
You can find two weapons with any amount of abilities that both have Shot 2, use the "extra slot" feature, and combine both Shot 2s to attempt to make a Shot 3 right from the start.
However, the penalty from using "extra slot," plus combining 2 level 2 techs, will make the percentage of success in this case something abysmal like 10% or below (I haven't actually tried)
Let's say instead you want to work your way up.
Your first job should be transferring a common level 1 skill to your Rocket Launcher just so it has at least one ability so you are not forced to use "extra slot" and get a huge penalty on the final upgrade.
Any weapon with like a random Mind 1 will do.
You'll still have an "extra slot" penalty for trying to transfer a single Mind 1 onto your Rocket Launcher, but the percentage won't be as terrible as attempting Shot 3 because Mind 1 is merely a level 1 ability and thus has a naturally higher success rate than Shot 3.
Anyway now you have a one slot Mind 1 rocket launcher.
To get Shot 3 now, you would need two one slot weapons with Shot 2 on them, as remember this is now a launcher with one ability and thus can only transfer from other one slot weapons.
However, you wouldn't have to risk further decreases in your chances of combining Shot 2s into a Shot 3 by using "extra slot."
Let's say you have no Shot 2s.
If you think a little it should be readily apparent what you have to do.
Just do the above except replace all mentions of Shot 3 with Shot 2, and Shot 2 with Shot 1.
So transfer or combine four one slot Shot 1 weapons to make two one slot Shot 2 weapons, then try to transfer the Shot 2s onto your Rocket Launcher.

Real life (my current HU weapon) example.
You have a two slot Alba Partisan with Lucky Raise 1 (nontransferable) and Mutation 1.
You want Vol Soul and Mutation 1.
You will need two separate two slot weapons, 3 out of 4 of the skills must be: Vol Soul, Vol Soul, Mutation 1.
The last ability can be anything.
If you wanted to risk it you could use the last ability in "extra slot" to make a three ability weapon, however I did not think the risk was worth it, as Mutation 1 and Vol Soul both start at 50% success rate and just go down from there.
Theoretically, if the Lucky Raise 1 was a Power 2 and the four skills of the two other weapons were Vol Soul, Vol Soul, Mutation 1, and Power 2, I could have tried for a Power 3, Vol Soul, Mutation 1 spear.
It would probably fail every single skill transfer though!

Anyway that's a not-so-short summation of how ability transfer works in this game.
SAVE THOSE SOUL WEAPONS.

Phantasy Star Online 2 Closed Beta starts

Mizuumi is on Ship 5.
If you want to join 4chan go to Ship 4 Channel 4.
If you want to join the PSOW people and most? of the EN userbase go to Ship 2.

Anyway, old/new impressions:
Areas have been redone again, everything is now MORE HUGE (and easier to get lost)
Story sequences/tutorial/blah blah blah didn't care let me hit shit.
Seems even less? stable than Alpha 2, disconnects everywhere regardless of Ship number or how congested a particular server is.
Tons of unique seiyuu voices! Spot the Hanazawa voice (it's unique voice 5)
Starting off as HUmarl this time because HU is the only class I didn't get to 20 in the Alpha cause I sucked and did it last.
I fucking love the new partisan weapon, so strange for a spear weapon.
Absurdly fast cancel windows and attack animations, like the just frames are really close together instead of spaced out extremely far apart (allowing monsters to hit your face for free in between them), all the attacks including the techs have near instant dash cancel windows, the weapon lets you remain mobile like crazy while mashing shit.
Definitely my favorite weapon so far, probably won't even look at wirelance this time around.

What is wrong with me?

I'm the kind of person who cooks a batch of ground beef into spaghetti sauce for an hour at 2AM in the morning so he can eat dinner with said spaghetti sauce at 3AM in the morning.
Then go to work at 8AM.

Material Brave

Blah blah blah Baldr Team blah blah blah Giga blah blah blah beatemup blah blah blah of course it'll be fun.

Ghetto P4U OST extracted from Nico SWF files

Title as described.

Rurouni Kenshin Live Action Movie Trailer

Reminded of that time in high school I looped Sobakasu to stay awake for a school project.
I stayed awake, but at what cost!? (Not my grade at least)

Soul Calibur 5 the first confirmed console game for Tougeki, SFXT alluded to as a "possibility," but not by name.

Soul Calibur 5 is confirmed as being the first console-only game in Tougeki.
Source is the Tougeki Nico stream, here is a recapture: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/1331043825

Here is a Japanese blog post summarizing the announcement:
http://blog.livedoor.jp/ggxx_matome/archives/51776683.html
Soul Calibur 5 confirmed, SFXT not mentioned by name, but alluded to as a possibility.

Kusoru wins UMVC3 at Final Round XV

So I didn't go this year.
Plane ticket to Atlanta cost a lot plus I was feeling out of motivation for fighting games in general and all.
But man oh man was it amazing to streammonster.

First off, any "anime" fighting game player worth his salt knows who Kusoru is.
If you've got the five gods of fighting games in Japan, you also have the five kusoge (shitty games) gods as their dark mirror.
Kusoru is one, the common joke is he is the weakest member.
His SBO resume is full of shitty game achievements:
SBO08 Hokuto no Ken qualifier
SBO09 Tatsunoko vs Capcom champion
SBO10 Sengoku Basara X Top 8

Kusoru got his start in Guilty Gear, a decidedly not kuso (according to Japan anyway) game where he refused to play seriously.
Or rather, he had extremely strong game sense to the point where he would just abuse it to make you play at his trollish nonsensical rhythm.
Things like constant inefficient RCs off the weirdest moves, wake up supers, using bad supers in general, that kind of thing.
His name came from the combination of kuso (shit) and Soru (sol), which he admitted himself was his level in the game.
"I am not good at Guilty Gear in Japan."
That's more or less Kusoru and Guilty Gear.
While he didn't find much tournament success, he built up a name for himself as being a masterful troll who could sometimes rob top players of wins by being a complete clownface.

Kusoru and Marvel vs Capcom 3.

This might sound harsh, but one of the things about the kusoge gods is that they refuse to play what the Japanese consider legitimate fighting games.
Or rather, they refuse to play them seriously.
Instead, they devote all their effort to playing really shitty broken games at the highest levels for fun.
Games like Hokuto no Ken, where you can combo into Instant Kills or literally bounce your opponents across the stage to absurd heights by hitting them enough times.
Games like Fate Unlimited Codes, where full screen instant overheads and completely ambiguous camera cross-ups are the norm.
This is why Tokido, while playing tons of fighters, even what some Americans dub "anime" fighters such as Blaz Blue, is viewed as a legitimate fighting game god and not a kusoge god.
Even when he played Vanilla Marvel 3, he played it his way, and the same way he plays almost all his games, finding the most efficient and cheapest shit he knew, and abusing the hell out of it.
He basically played MVC3 from an American's point of view at an American level.
Let's get this straight right away, Marvel vs Capcom 3 and its upgrade Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 are not viewed as good fighters in Japan.
They fall squarely into the kusoge camp.
The same was true for MVC2, which was pretty much dead empty when I visited Japan (everyone was on CVS2).
However, there are quite a few differences between the backgrounds for the games, and they lead to very different outcomes in Japan's scene.

MVC2 was solely developed by Capcom.
A pretty lazy Capcom JP, but Capcom nonetheless, with literally no balance attempts made, nothing thought over, a gigantic mishmash stew of ideas and characters thrown together.
Japan was not willing to forge this mess into anything, but the USA scene was perfectly willing to beat on this game until it became something worth showing to others.
Let's face it, no one was interested in 3rd Strike back then, KOF and GG were fringe, and 3D fighters were another universe to 2D players.
The only other game that had interest was CVS2, which required a different skillset and mindset.
MVC2's tech and gameplay is something wholly American and unique, and while the community was not as insular as say Smash, the game had pretty high walls to scale on entry.
The tech evolved so far that it actually looped back upon itself, unfortunately its insular nature was also its bane.
Everyone loved watching Marvel, but it was actually losing entrants.
However it probably could have ran on fumes in America for a long long time...until Capcom woke up and made Street Fighter 4.

MVC3 is quite a different beast.
First, it was developed by Capcom and Eighting.
Eighting developed previous games for Capcom before, including the decidedly kusoge Fate Unlimited Codes and Tatsunoko vs Capcom, which was kusoge to the Japanese cause it was broken as shit, and was kusoge to the Americans because it wasn't named Marvel vs Capcom.
However, there is no way Capcom could make Marvel vs Capcom 3 the same way as they made Marvel vs Capcom 2.
Marvel vs Capcom 2 wasn't thought out at all, was made 10+ years ago by throwing tons of character ideas into a blender, beating it with a hammer by Americans for a lot more years while getting rid of all the impurities (all the useless characters) and forged into a sword.
Marvel vs Capcom 3 was a very calculated move, more or less Capcom brought in a developer known for making broken games, and asked them to try to make a plastic replica copy of that 10 year old sword.
Whether they did an ok job or failed miserably is still up for debate.

The use of Eighting made Marvel vs Capcom 3 feel way closer to Japanese "anime" combo based fighters than ever before.
Even with the lower execution, imported systems from MvC2, and English-focused release, the game always felt like a Japanese localization of MVC2.
Japan more or less agreed.
Because of all the silly systems, the game was still relegated to kusoge, but not kusoge of the untouchable kind such as MVC2 or Smash.
Instead, it attained the status of regular old kusoge, and with that title, came the kusoge gods.

Kusoge players don't play to win.
There I said it, the great anti-Sirlin line.
Or rather they do, but there is almost nothing at stake for them besides their own love of the game.
If you beat them, you have proven yourself a more devoted fan of shitty games than they have, and they will actually be happy for you and with you.
I sincerely believe Kusoru loves Marvel vs Capcom 3 precisely because it is at its heart, a fun but bad game.
I also sincerely believe he loves Sengoku Basara X, the game he flashed on stream after defeating Flip Champ, for the exact same reasons, although that game hurts me to think about it.
He plays for something completely different than most of the people he beat at Final Round.
Of course there's pride but it's a different sort of pride than the traditional "popping off" pride of Marvel, like that of a B-movie fanatic or a campy comic collector, he plays purely out of a love of terrible games.

This mentality is 100% in opposition to most of the American Marvel scene and unfortunately leads to the obvious conclusion:
Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 is a terrible game.
Not only that, it is a terrible "anime" game, because we are somehow losing not to a legitimate player like Tokido fighting on our terms with our tech, but an illegitimate player like Kusoru fighting on his own terms with his own tech.
Speaking of tech, I found it pretty convenient that everyone forgot Kusoru was the first person to discover the DHC glitch back in Vanilla.
But Kusoru's tech at FR (and all the hilarious wrong things people did against it) is a wall of text for another day.
Until then, I guess take a lesson from Kusoru.

Play for the love of the game.
Or get log trapped.

Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story coming to the States

Surprised these petitions for these two games went anywhere with Nintendo.
From Ars.

MMD Cup 8

Two weeks late (internet eons) or something but he finished it.

Landing on Itagaki's face

From a talk on how Dead or Alive 2 was released unfinished without his knowledge:

"I thought I would quit making games," Itagaki recalls, adding that he began to stay home, drinking from morning to night, and crying as he watched the Bruce Willis movie, Armageddon, with his daughter, and listening to its theme song, "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith.

No one's forcing you to read this

I hate this argument.
It is such a trite garbage argument but it doesn't quite fall into fallacy because of the few cases where it can actually apply.
I will let smarter people do the talking for me on this one, as I find it hard to offer a concrete counter to it most of the time.

Because when Google's chairman, Eric Schmidt, told NPR's Andy Carvin, "G+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you to use it", he implied the only time a service should come under critical scrutiny is when it is mandatory.

This simplistic theory of critical discourse is perfectly incoherent, implying that in a marketplace, the only role "consumers" have is to buy things or not buy things, use things or not use things, and that these decisions should not be informed by vigorous debate and discussion, but only by marketing messages.

After all, no one forces anyone to eat at a restaurant, so why should we review it? No one forces you to see a movie, so why have any informed public discussion about which movie you should see this weekend? No one forces you to take a job, so why rank employers? No one forces you to go to universities, so why should we debate which ones are best and which ones are worst?

-Cory Doctorow

Phantasy Star Online 2 Alpha 2 starts

■開催期間
2012年1月27日（金）16:00～23:00
2012年1月28日（土）18:00～26:00
2012年2月1日（水）16:00～23:00
2012年2月3日（金）15:00～2012年2月4日（土）23:00

As you can see, these are some phenomenally shitty times for someone on the east coast!
To reiterate:
January 27th, Friday (today), 2am to 9am EST
January 28th, Saturday, 4am to 12pm EST
February 1st, Wednesday, 2am to 9am EST
February 3rd, Friday, 1am EST to February 4th, Saturday, 9am EST
Incidentally, today I slept at 6:30AM :V
And woke up at 8 to go to work.
Shhhh...

Anyway let's see:
CONCEPTS that are familiar to me from PSP2i:
Weapon elements.
Fusing weapons together to increase the element.
Upgrading weapons.
Shared storage among characters.
Missions.
Hunter/Force/Ranger.
Skill disks.
Individual drop system along with the same color coding.

New or different stuff:
Weapon mods, sort of like extra stats or perks to a weapon.
Destroying a weapon with a desirable mod to put onto another weapon.
Multi-party missions. (Seems you can link up to 3 full parties or so at once.)
Class system seems to have skill trees and builds now, I already wasted some RA points on accuracy up.
The character creation, I think I spent an hour with the 9000 sliders.


Anyway, hesitant to put vids up cause Sega might drop a meteor on all the gaijins playing.
But yeah it's pretty familiar and cool at the same time.

Succumbing to Twitter

Ugh, I've started realizing that all the stupid internet links I find relatively quickly are too easily thrown into Twitter.
Help I can't stop posting stupid shit.

Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere

Warning: This show is weighty.
It feels like reading the beginning of Umineko initially (lots of nothing happening, lots of characters, and you are wondering exactly what the fuck is going on.)
I believe it takes like 4? episodes to cover a single day.
Apparently the "light" novels the show is adapted from aren't "light" at all, we're talking like 3000 pages.
Here's an example for size comparison:

(On the left, Zero no Tsukaima "novel" 16. On its right, Horizon 1a, 1b, 2a. On its right, Owari no Chronicle 7)
That's right, same author, different series set in the same universe set 4000 years before.
Yes, there is an entire who knows how many years of history in the author's head for his universe.

Now right off the bat this sounds like a bad idea to adapt!
Can you imagine say, a Wheel of Time anime?
Because it has about the same amount of characters!
How many episodes until we actually get to Aes Sedai and aren't getting owned in a small village by Trollocs?
But apparently the creator really wanted it to be come an anime.
Like really really.
Like he made an entire 3D model of the country for the anime staff really.
And he brought in tons of notes for the staff, that ended up being something like 20+ volumes of just notes.

So going into this show I had literally no idea what to expect.
Unfortunately, terrible translations on the initial releases left me with even less of a clue (use Commie or maybe Hatena for subs, do not use Hadena).
And it was slow, almost slice of life slow.
There was something being hinted at constantly but it took a while to reveal.
Plus the series is only 13 episodes.
I'm glad I finished it though, because it feels a fresh start to something with huge potential.
Plus the main character is played by otaku Lelouch.

Let's get this out of the way now, the main character looks NOT MANLY AT ALL.
In fact he looks like an absolute dork.
But he has a lot of reasons for how he acts, and honestly at the end I felt like he was one of the coolest characters to exist in a while.
I think the best comparison is really the Umineko sound novels in terms of build-up and delivery, though it's not as troll as Umineko and the Umineko anime was done poorly.

But yeah, for extra help, if you start watching (I originally put reading here I must be tired) this show, go to http://kyoukaisen.tumblr.com/neta for some answers as well.
In short though, the basis for the world is that in the future Earth became pretty uninhabitable, and everyone else except Japan left for the stars, except it seems like they fucked up in space, so instead they had to head to alternate dimensions of Earth, however the dimensions were bound to original Earth through Japan, the sole country that stayed on real Earth.
The people then attempt to recreate the history of old earth so that it will lead them back to space (this is the main "religion," the will of the Testament.)
Someone blew up the connection between the alternate dimension sections of Earth and Japan, so all the alternate dimensions "crashed" back into real Earth, which at this time Japan owned the entire thing.
Japan was blamed for the incident, and so lost all its territories (but it makes sense because everyone's basically thrown back onto real earth, however, the Testament keeps going until the year 1648, where it has stopped (and scared the shit out of the history recreators.)
How's that for a mouthful.
And it's hard to remember or believe but yes, all the nations shown represent superpowers that existed in real Earth around 1648.
Anyway there's a lot of information to digest, but it honestly somewhat makes sense, unlike say, Index's universe, which feels sort of ad-hoc.