What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

August 2022

August 31st, 2022

It's the last day of August, and I have another game finish to report today, with the stunning conclusion of Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance! This game got screamingly tedious, since the layouts just got more and more tiles instead of getting more difficult, but the story didn't have a bad ending, as far as things go. The game overstayed its welcome by a mile, and I'm glad I'm done with it, but it wasn't awful. Plus, I'm at 3 of 10 games cleared for my goal now!

I tried to get a little further in Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight after that, and got two social events and a trophy, which was pretty good. I'd forgotten how motion sick I got trying to find the cards in all of the characters' rooms, so I don't intend to do a lot of those in a night, even if I unlock them. Finishing games is somewhat satisfying, but puking isn't.

With my mahjong game done, I then tried to find another game to play before bed and guessed incorrectly. The Sims 2 Pets might be something I pick up again later, but last night, it did not click. I think that this, in large part, may have been because I didn't know how Sim creation would go and I felt like I did a bad job with that. The control felt really imprecise, too, which was driving me crazy dealing with the titular pets. Regardless of the reasons why I'm abandoning it for now, though, I'm going to try one of the DS My Sims games instead tonight.

August 30th, 2022

I had big video game plans last night, but got sleepy, went to Subway, and totally abandoned them! Instead, I decided to give another go to a couple games that have only popped up in one post here. Today, though, I got up early fearing an internet outage during work. Since my internet is working, I have nothing to stress about on that front and the time to detail my incremental progress before my shift.

After some daily life stuff last night, I went and laid flat on my back in bed and played Sonic Runners Adventure for a few levels, which I hadn't touched since my train ride earlier this month. Freed of being stuck on an Amtrak train, I have to say that this game is barely engaging, and the level layout is super repetitive. Also, despite seeming pretty basic, it crashed my phone. I unlocked Charmy the Bee, though, which was super cute, and got a small feeling of "wow, I'm great at this game" for getting a lot of three star ranks on levels. I'm just glad this is something I could, theoretically, finish.

My trouble for the night started after that, when I went to play Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight. My internet went out just a couple minutes before I clicked the PS4 on, and the machine didn't want to do anything. It threw up error messages when I turned it on, the game was tough to start because it wanted to check for DLC, and I couldn't check my trophies easily after getting during gameplay. Once I got everything up and running it was fine, at least until the system stalled out when I tried to put it to sleep. My goal was to score one social event, so I played a couple songs and pulled that off. I'm actually over half done with this, so I might stick with it. It's fun, and getting all the social events seems doable.

Last, and certainly least, I finished another set of puzzles in Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance, leaving me two stages from the end. I met the vampire, and, after seeing all of his minions die at the hands of my mahjong solitaire skills, he decided that the best way to defeat me, the master of tile matching, is with, of course, more mahjong solitaire. I don't think he's great at problem solving.

August 29th, 2022

I was mildly helpful and productive yesterday, but still found some time to fritter away on games. My biggest chunks of game time for the day were spent on Late Shift, another FMV game I bought cheap on Switch. It's from the 2010s, and it's interesting to see how far production values and filmmaking skill have come since Double Switch, which I was playing last weekend. There's not nearly as much gameplay here, though, with the game opting instead to turn a British crime thriller into a choose-your-own adventure story. I did two 90 minute playthroughs yesterday, swapping out the whole center of the game and getting two mildly different endings. The setup for replay is really rough, though! There's no chapter selects or scene skips, so you have to sit through the whole 90 minutes every time you want to go for a different ending.

In the two playthroughs I did, I saw every scene aside from the endings but one, so I was really tempted to call the game cleared as is. Both endings I got were so bad, though, that it really bothered me leaving it as is without trying to "fix" things. I need at least a few days before I see if I can get a "good" ending, though, so I'm letting this be for now. (I also might cheat and use an ending guide, because watching this 7 times is bad enough without guesswork.)

Before bed, I cleared another set of puzzles in Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. I hit an unclearable puzzle, where the developers had put an odd number of tiles in the stage layout, making a full set of pairs totally impossible. They even left the last tile standing blank! I hit the "skip" button to go past it, but it still left me frustrated. I'm too close to the end of this mess to quit now, though.

August 28th, 2022

Yesterday didn't end up being bad overall. I did get my September placeholder links set up, and set a goal for myself to finish a badly made bootleg diamond painting I was working on for someone else. I did finish the craft project, but since I didn't actually want to be doing it, I procrastinated in completely normal ways- spending over 2 hours on a simple doodle, dozing off twice, and watching 6 episodes of Dirty Pair on Pluto. It was actually pretty fun, but not good for gaming.

I did clear a couple more stage sets in Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance, though, with a lot of 2:30 am giggling at cheaply made story shortcuts and a faint sense of tedium towards the mahjong solitaire itself. I'm close enough to the end that I could finish today, but it's a little boring to play for more than a few minutes at a time, so I'm hoping to finish early next workweek.

August 27th, 2022

It was not a good games day for me yesterday. I still wasn't sleeping well, and work kicked my butt. Today should be better, though! It's Saturday, so I'm off work, and I actually slept decently. I've already been to Target today- I feel very productive all around!

Speaking of being out and about, I cleared the weekly 20,000 step challenge in Pikmin Bloom yesterday. I was really out of it and tired last week, so I didn't make it, making me feel all the better that I got this within five days this week. Plus, my little victory image has a lot of good purple Pikmin. It's satisfying.

My only active gaming, though, was a decent chunk of Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. Below, please see the stock photo-esque woman who is guiding me through the vampire's castle. She's, like, really impressed that I'm good at matching tiles, and only gets more enthused as things progress. The people and damned souls of the area must not get out much.

As far as this website goes, I want to set up placeholder links for my September post archive page today, but Neocities is running a bit slowly right now. I'll probably do that while I'm watching TV later.

August 26th, 2022

My work had an employee appreciation day yesterday, which was actually pretty good. I got to bowl a few games with my coworkers, and though I did a terrible job, it was fun. Plus, I got free food.

On the games front, I did my last playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, finishing up with Honey the Cat. I saved her for last because I thought she had a cute character design and I liked the Fighting Vipers crossover, but she was a good note to end on. I felt like I could pull off some really good combos, and whether that's because I had finally gotten good at the game, or because Honey was a good character, it's fine. Sonic the Fighters was fun to check in on every day, and I'm definitely going to keep fighting games in my rotation.

I'm at 2 of 10 games cleared now! It's not bad progress!

From there, though, I was still dead tired, so I just kept going in Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. The story continues to be bafflingly dumb and cheaply patched together, but I was enjoying all of the super vertically oriented layouts I hit last night.

August 25th, 2022

Yesterday was an in-office day, where I hadn't slept well the night before, and I did some stuff after work. I was pretty sleepy after everything was done, so I just kept plugging away at Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. I will say that I love the lengths this game goes to, with an entirely straight face, insist that mahjong solitaire is a normal way to go about fighting an evil vampire lord, but it's pretty unremarkable. The unlimited number of pairs any given tile can have tanks the difficulty, too. That's pretty much fine for my purposes, since I'm playing directly before falling asleep, but it gives it a too-easy feel.

August 24th, 2022

It was my next to the last character playthrough in Sonic the Fighters last night, and it was truly infuriating! I used Fang the Sniper, who I think would be extremely useful and fun to use against a real person, but was borderline useless against the AI. Since he's projectile based, being the only character with a gun, his attack and defense seemed lower, and he definitely had less attacks that could break opponent barriers. That meant that, even in the early levels, I couldn't get any damage in and then got KO'd from what felt like two kicks to the face. It did get a little easier as I went, but I found the playthrough to be so frustrating it was physically painful at times. It was an accomplishment to clear the arcade mode, though, that was for sure!

From there, I picked up my Switch to play a cheap casual mahjong solitaire game, Mahjong Stories: Vampire Romance. That title may seem quite direct, but it has no romance of note so far. Anyway, I started this one maybe two and a half years ago, after picking it up for a dollar or two on the eShop, and just picked it back up last night. The theming in these games doesn't matter to me- it has that mid '10s PC casual game vibe so hard I expect to see a Big Fish branded advertisement between each level, and it's proficient enough at throwing a mahjong board on screen that I can happily match tiles until I pass out. I would not say it's good, but it does exactly what I need it to do.

August 23rd, 2022

Yesterday was my second day back to work after vacation, and I got stuck with a late call again already. That is okay. I did a playthrough on Sonic the Fighters to get out some mild aggression, with Tails being the evening's victor. He wasn't anything notable to play as, but so cute! I only have two characters left in this game.

After that, in a fit of smart assery, I played Jelly Boy on the SNES app on Nintendo Switch Online. It had lovely music, charming graphics, and I didn't vibe with it at all. The wide open levels with sadistic traps right from the get go were not my favorite things that can appear in a game. That doesn't mean Jelly Boy is bad! It is just not for me.

August 22nd, 2022

It was a big day for headkicking games yesterday. I did another arcade mode playthrough in Sonic the Fighters, with Knuckles this time. It was mildly frustrating, because he can get attacked while gearing up for a "spin dash" in a way that other characters I've used with this ability cannot. Overall, though, it was fine.

In the interest of having another fighter lined up when I'm through with all the characters in Sonic the Fighters, I booted up TV Animation X: Unmei no Sentaku last night, too, feeling like a licensed fighter where you get to fly around and shoot people with your psychic powers would be a good follow up. I hadn't played this since I was in Japan, and only cleared it as one character then, but was able to pick it back up pretty quickly. The play feel is a little weird, but the full 360 degree movement in all directions and projectiles are neat, and it looks really cool for a PS1 game, too. I probably will go with this one directly following the Sonic one, I enjoyed myself and the gallery unlocks mean I get to feel good about clicking a lot of meaningless buttons as I go.

August 21st, 2022

Today's post will be a little long, since a mix of good free time and dicey focus meant I played a lot of different things yesterday.

As the most important game of this post, I'm going to go slightly out of order and start with Lydia, a game I pulled from my Switch digital library figuring it would be a quick and easy clear. I got it through one of those weird "if you own this game, you can get 5 free!" promotions that Qubic Games used to do, which I think is against the Switch eShop rules now. I was right in that it was a quick game, at about 40 minutes. It was also an extremely heavy game about familial abuse and the cycle of alcoholism. Considering the other free stuff I'd gotten from Qubic Games, I was slightly blindsided. It was interesting, well made, and dovetailed surprisingly nicely with my reading for last week, though. I will never play this again, but I'm glad I played it once.

The reason why I was playing Lydia in the first place, though, was that I hit a point in Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition where I sat, silently stared at the game over screen, and decided that I did not need it in my life. By the time it had me figuring out where an opposing character has set other traps, which you must go disarm within a split second, it had become so frustrating that I could barely stand it. As far as things go, though, I like all the different display options this port gives you. I'd been using the "modern" layout before, but switching to the PC layout made it easier to play, with a better readout on what's going on with your armed traps, and it just looked cooler, too. If I pick this up again, I'll probably stick with this layout.

Later in the night, I went back to my PS3 and did a couple more arcade mode playthroughs on Sonic the Fighters. Sonic was a little too easy to play through as, though that is in part because I was being a cheap jerk to the AI, but Bark the "Polerbear" was slightly miserable to play as. I don't tend to like the slow but powerful characters in fighting games, though, so using Bark last night was kind of a "let's get this over with" move.

After that, I booted up Fighting Vipers and got absolutely destroyed, because it's a bad idea to pick up a game I haven't played for years and select a character I've never used after 1am.

I then closed out the night playing a level and a couple of boss fights in Sonic Adventure, where I'm still catching up to my progress in the PC version of the game. I feel like I'm making decent progress with it!

With that, I'm off to a lovely and peaceful Sunday! I don't know what I'll do today, but I'm sure it'll be a decent time.

August 20th, 2022

It's finally done! I got every game I've written about so far on its own page, which feels like a decent accomplishment. Certainly, it'll make things easier going forward, especially in regards to Pikmin Bloom. I've still got quite a few things I want to do to better organize past posts and the game index, though, so I'll keep considering those.

It was my first day back at work after vacation yesterday, but it actually wasn't too bad. A couple of coworkers said things that boiled down to "oh, hi, we missed your very particular form of terrible, chatty BS," and I felt honored indeed.

With the full list of games for the Sega Genesis Mini 2 announced, though, I got off work all excited about FMV games, which is more normal than it should be. Thinking about what I had on hand and hadn't played yet, I landed on Double Switch: 25th Anniversary Edition, which I picked up a while back at a massive discount in the Switch eShop. Redownloading it took ages, but when I finally got it going, I felt like it was both better than I expected and howlingly frustrating. Between my "I can't believe I got a game over for that!" swearing and "I can't believe I'm just gonna sit here and let Corey Haim berate me" self loathing, I pulled up a walkthrough, lost several more times, and made it to the first save point.

I am, with some trepidation, going to give the second chunk of a game a shot today. I tried the second part last night, lost because an entire indie band got hacked up by a scimitar, and, with a mix of frustration that this could happen and sheer delight that it was filmed and included, decided that it was worth moving forward.

I did another playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, too, hoping to clear it as every character. Last night, after my previous failure, I tried with Espio again and won, thanks to the merits of being a cheap, miserable rat (or chameleon, as it were). It was a delight to spin around and absolutely destroy Metal Sonic.

August 19th, 2022

I still didn't play much yesterday. My apartment maintenance caused me a small, but disproportionately agitating headache that threw my whole day off. At night, though, I ended up doing a playthrough of Sonic the Fighters, with Bean being the night's character of choice. I really think every fighting game needs a cute little duck that throws bombs at stuff, it really spices things up. Despite my choice of screenshot for the night, it all went super smoothly. I just have this image because I think it's neat that you fight Metal Sonic on a stage so blue-screen-of-death-esque.

August 18th, 2022

Today, I got a pretty decent website update done! I added a Cleared Games page to my website and header, mostly for my own somewhat boring purposes. I feel like I play a lot of different games, but end up getting more games than I can possibly play. Because of that, I want to clear some of the games I have, which the Cleared Games page will help me track. Right now, I want to clear ten games, which counts games on online services and mini consoles, before I buy another one. (This doesn't count the two or three preorders I have floating around online.) Ideally, I will be able to accomplish this in time to buy Persona 5 when the port comes out for Switch, and I might end up scumming some of my shorter indie games to do it. Progress is progress, though, so I'm okay with that for myself.

Yesterday was a bigger day for my inexplicable ability to spend three hours making a recipe called "15 Minute Vegetable Curry" than it was for my playing games, but I did play a couple more rounds of the story mode in Dr. Mario 64. I really don't like this version of Dr. Mario, at least not the versus mode against the AI. On the NES/Famicom, it's one of my favorite puzzle games, but there's something really unsatisfying about playing this against the computer that I can't quite pinpoint. Superficially, I really like the 8-bit music for the game, none of which is in the N64 version, and the overall color scheme is unappealing, too. It's not terrible, and I still enjoy the base game, but this isn't my preferred version of it by a longshot.

August 17th, 2022

Yesterday, I was super unproductive, in terms of crafts, games, cooking, and any other measurable metric. I felt really bad about it when it was time for bed, but since it's a day off, it's ok not to do anything. Still, I hope I accomplish a little more today.

I went back to the Intellivision Flashback last night, this time electing to play Brickout. I didn't expect anything from it, in large part because Brickout is a miserably lazy name for a Breakout clone, but it was actually super fun. Getting 20 balls at the start is great, since it softens the blow of a single bounce death, the progressive mode it's locked to allows for a lot of super satisfying chances for the ball to get stuck bouncing between two rows of bricks, and moving the paddle was really good with the dial on the controller. I don't know if it beats Cavity mode in Super Breakout for me, but it's really fun. I'll come back to Brickout for sure.

I also put another round in on Idling Idol while eating dinner, and got an ending rank of E for my idol unit! It's not great, but I'm moving up in the game! I'd totally neglected the item store before this round, and wouldn't you know it, using all of the tools a game offers does, in fact, improve your chances of success. Wild how that happens!

August 16th, 2022

Right now, I'm in the midst of a few scheduled-activity-free days off to finish my vacation, so I did a little site work this morning. Basically, I set up a few game pages and added alphabetization headers to my games' index page, which I felt like helped a lot here. Eventually, I want to have a second game index, sorted by system rather than title, but I'll worry about that later.

Anyway, yesterday, I got all the way home from my vacation and proceeded to do almost absolutely nothing. While I was at my mom's house, though, she asked if I wanted an old Intellivision mini console, which was more exciting than it should have been! I hadn't ever played Intellivision before, and I think the controllers are neat, so I was interested in getting it set up, trying it out, and adding it to my artillery of decorative retro games.

The first thing I tried on it was Pinball, because I like pinball games and am nothing if not predictable. For last night, it was also the last thing I tried because I kind of got glued to it. I'd expected the graphics to be about Atari 2600 level, so I was pleasantly surprised at the level of detail and vibrancy of the colors when I got the game running. It's a pretty harsh pinball game, though! The chance of whiffing a ball at launch, before you get your first chance to hit it, seems way higher than it does in other video pinballs I've played, and I felt like the flippers didn't have the effect on the ball's path I expected, which is understandable, considering the game's age. Those complaints in mind, I sat and played it for 45 minutes. My scores went up as I played, so it does seem possible to get the hang of this. With all the pinball options I have on hand, though, I don't know that this'll become a standby for me. That's not a diss against this game at all, it is just how it is.

August 15th, 2022

I got off my last train safely last night and, almost totally K.O.'d, played another round of Idling Idol before bed. I am completely mystified by how to get a good score in this game. Last night, I got all my idols up to level D, but due to a low number of fans and poor earnings, my unit rank was still F. The final score made me wondering if actually levelling the stats is useless, but it'll only take me a few minutes to play a round and test this theory.

August 14th, 2022

I'm posting from a train station lounge today! My last train was 17 or so hours long and I got off of it super dizzy, so, since I wasn't feeling well, I paid my way into the VIP lounge (which wasn't that bad) for the four hours between trains. I leeched their coffee, oatmeal, and off brand vegetarian cup noodles while reading an entire child star memoir (I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy for anyone who wants to know the precise level of class I am dealing in) before realizing there was wifi in here. Now, I'm doing this blog post to kill a few more minutes until my next train arrives.

I wanted to play Idling Idol on the train yesterday, but I'm not experienced enough with Steam to have realized I would have needed to put it in offline mode! Instead, since cell reception was spotty at best, I ended up playing a cheap game I'd loaded onto my phone a couple weeks ago, Sonic Runners. I was so woozy from the train rocking back and forth that I had trouble parsing what was going on in the game, but, since it was a really long ride and I wasn't quite ready to sleep, I played long enough to get full stars on world one, unlock and fully level Shadow, and start in on the same level of completion with world 2, only with slightly more frustration since it sucks to play as Tails in this game. It's not a particularly good game, I don't think- it's maybe a little too simple, and the unlocks can get taken care of a little too quickly. As a time waster, though, it's fine.

Only one leg of my journey remains! I've got this.

August 13th, 2022

Today's post is a little unusual. The images will be a bit higher quality than normal, since the photos themselves are a little different. I'm posting this before going to bed the night of, but after midnight, the day of playing these games for faster travel and less stress in the morning.

That being said, I finally had a fantastic vacation day! I still don't have my bag, but with enough clothes replaced to get by, I set out to have fun and succeeded. I ate at a hole in the wall Japanese restaurant for some fantastic tempura, I took a big sightseeing bus around the city, and, most relevant to this post, I stopped in at a Round One to play some music games!

My first stop was Maimai, a game one of my students in Japan had demonstrated for me when she found me across the game center, binge playing Kiratto Prichan. I had been impressed watching the student play- she was really good- but I questioned why she threw on gloves first, since it looked like you just hit the buttons in the circle around the screen. After playing, I now understand her strategy. The notes you have to drag across the screen have way more friction than you might expect from a touchscreen, making the literal game-feel a bit strange! I was only playing on normal difficulty and felt a bit irritated by it, so on hard and above, I can definitely see where the gloves might be a necessity. Even so, it was fun, and I got an S+ score and felt like a princess.

After that, I tried Chrono Circle, which took the buttons in a circle around the screen from Maimai and added a lot more touchscreen notes and lots of needless complications in the form of the buttons now being on a spinning wheel. I know that sounds like a negative description, but I had a blast playing this one! If there were a Round One closer to me, or if the Spare Time in my city had the nerve to carry music games, I think I'd play this a lot. It was too-much-going-on in a fun way.

My last music game trial of the day was Tetote x Connect, and it was my least favorite. The concept, to match the movements of the dancer on screen by hitting, holding, and dragging notes, sounded cool, but in practice, it was a little overwhelming. The touch screen didn't seem very responsive, either. I can see this being something that might get more fun the more used you get to the game's timing and to keeping track of the full, life sized dancer, but it's so rare that I get the chance to play arcade music games that I'm not sure I'd give this another go if there were other options. I loved how garishly sparkling it all was, though.

My last action at Round One was to play a little Project Justice before I left. I love this game on Dreamcast, so it was so cool to sit at an arcade cabinet for a few rounds! I picked Zaki over Momo for aesthetic reasons, though, and it proved to be my undoing. Poor Kyoko was my team's solo MVP as I floundered with Zaki's moveset! It was still great, though, and a good capper to my arcade trip.

This isn't a game, but I was also very excited (lucky, even) to see Franz Ferdinand in concert tonight! I had a fantastic time, and even though, as you may have noticed, I'm a terrible photographer, I wanted to share some of the photos I got before clicking "save" and posting this. It was a fantastic day!

August 12th, 2022

Yesterday, I still didn't get my bag of clothes back, but when I called the train company for help, they gave me a refund on the train trip that went wrong. With that, I went to a gigantic mall to try to replace enough clothes to last me the next couple of days, and played some Pikmin Bloom. I got a fantastic baguette Pikmin, tiny, cute, and covered in bread, and that did more than it should have to cheer me up.

Since it was another high activity day, I also cleared 10k steps again.

In the end, I felt too burnt out to play anything else before heading to bed.

August 11th, 2022

Last night was spent in pursuit of my checked bag of clothes, which I still don't have. I waited a few hours at the train station for them to show up, and they just didn't, which was frustrating and disappointing. I did, between that and some nice walks in the morning and afternoon, though, play the hell out of Pikmin Bloom. I cleared both weekly missions and got over 15k steps through the day, and saved all my little trophy screenshots to share here. Even on a somewhat rubbish day, fluffy mobile games sustain me.

At about 1 am, I was messing around on Steam because I wasn't tired enough to go to bed, but was too tired to be remotely useful, and found a cheap game, Idling Idol. I bought it because I like games about j-pop idols and, crucially to this decision making process, it was after 1am. It's an interesting game, but definitely not an idle game! An in game day passes in seconds, so stopping to yawn before delegating tasks to the girls can tip things over entirely. I did and failed at one playthrough last night, but it was kind of fun. I might run the achievements as I try to figure out what works and what doesn't with this game. Levelling the girls' stats seems like it might be deceptively tricky.

August 10th, 2022

Yesterday, I was amazingly tired. I was doing overnight train travel, which is not something that fills people with energy regardless. At about 6 am, though, the train I was on lost its engine, so we sat for a few hours as the onboard electricity dipped on and off, with periodic announcements erasing any hope of a few extra minutes of sleep. A freight train came and lent us an engine to push us back to the last station, as a guy at the back of the coach car I was on used the very startling sounding manual brake, and then all of us who were on the train sat and waited for help. Amtrak ended up chartering buses, jammed us on them with no extra space, and got us all to the next station. I missed my transfer by 30 seconds, but I got a giant McDonalds iced coffee (we don't have hazelnut as an option roundabout where I'm from!) and caught the next one an hour later. It was a long, weird day, but I got where I was going.

What did suck, however, was that rather than tossing our checked bags on the buses, they opted to send them on the next day's train instead, leaving me without my clothes bag! Very sleepily, I got checked into my hotel, walked to a tiny and weird Target, bought the cheapest wearable outfit and nightclothes I could manage, and came back to my room to order in a horrifying amount of chicken wings and kimchi, having not eaten a proper meal for 28 hours.

All that aside, in a matter of actual relevance to this blog, I played two more missions in My Sims Sky Heroes before going to sleep super early by my own standards. I don't love that the plane colors are preset in customization, but since there's usually at least one giant robot adjacent scheme to choose, that's okay. The one below reminded me of Max's valkyrie from Macross, but it's a little dull, so if I keep using this setup, I'm probably going to swap the colors to something flashier.

August 9th, 2022

I haven't slept for 36 hours, and might post some about my grand frustration eventually, so this will not be a very long post. Last night, though, I played My Sims Sky Heroes for DS, which may seem like a bit of a random choice. It kind of is, but I'm so awful at flight combat games, and really want to play the Macross VFX games for PS1! I thought maybe by playing a "baby" version of the genre, I could get enough of a grip on this sort of game to level up from there. I played for about an hour last night, and even if it's all confidence-boosting placebo, I don't think that this was my worst idea. Plus, it's cute, and the game cost two dollars. These are both admirable features for a used game to possess.

That being said, I wish I knew why my phone wants to curve DS screenshots. Granted, this is an awful screenshot, having been taken at midnight on a moving train, but it tries to curve the screens when I take a stationary shot, too. It's very odd.

August 8th, 2022

Yesterday was a spot busy, since I was on the road a bit, but I played games for a few minutes. Last week, I was really a slug, so it took me clear until Sunday to break 20,000 steps in Pikmin Bloom. I did it, though, and'll be faster this week! (As for a Pikmin Bloom game page, I'll take care of that soon. For now, it'll stay on the old system on the game index.)

I also played PriPara: Mezameyo! Megami no Dress Design for, like, ten minutes, too. It irritates me a little that you can't wear the arcade coords, or outfits, in this game, so I'm making a new outfit for my idol every play session. After I went to this effort, though, I just played one song and went to bed. It was a low effort evening.

August 7th, 2022

Yesterday, I was coming off of a night of extremely poor sleep and inexplicable nervousness, so I didn't play many games. Before bed, though, I did do a set of levels in Spa Service mode in Pokemon Puzzle League. 3D mode is excellent, and the flower girl Meowth is also very cute. It's a good gaming experience all around.

August 6th, 2022

I got a much better "screenshot" in PriPara: Mezameyo! Megami no Dress Design, opting to do some coin and level grinding rather than hopping into story mode. I was too hot, tired, and lazy to try to read Japanese, so the easier path easily won out. After a few levels, though, including a kami idol time (kind of a bonus round) after one of them, I unlocked one singular coord part, a cowgirl style top. I did get my idol looking a little closer to how I'd like, too, which is something.

Perhaps with more relevance to this blog, however, I picked Sonic Adventure back up, this time on the PS3 port. I love avoiding PC gaming! For now, I'm trying to catch back up to where I was when the PC version of DX kind of fell apart for me. I had worried this would be tedious, but it was not because this game is weird and super-sparkly, and because the casino level is awesome and I kicked butt at pinball last night.

As far as game pages go, I ended up splitting the PS3 port of Sonic Adventure and the PC version of Sonic Adventure DX into seperate pages, both because they're slightly different games, and for "narrative" reasons. I don't know if that really makes sense, but it seemed like the thing to do.

August 5th, 2022

Last night, with some precious time free of work ahead, I got out my 2DS for a couple of rounds of PriPara in PriPara: Mezameyo! Megami no Dress Design, which won out over the Switch port of PriPara by merit of my seeing my 3DS cartridge case first. As I went through the song list, though, I was thinking about how surprisingly limited it was when it occurred to me that I had never actually finished this game! When I got into playing, I had story chapters to do, and was unlocking hairstyles and eye colors as my idol (or in-game character) rank rose, with piles of coord parts to buy in the Prism Shop (the in-game store), and I was pleased.

I considered starting the whole thing over, but ultimately opted not to, as I don't want to go back to having less customization for my idol and less songs to play as I grind for coins. From what I was looking at last night, the payout rate in this game is super low compared to the item cost, so I don't want to fall back on that front. Plus, it's a pretty fluffy, mindless game. I haven't really lost ground on the story, and even if I had, all the chapters are replayable, so there's no harm done there. I'll keep going from where I am.

What I do need to figure out, though, is how to get better 3DS screenshots. My iPad camera put a nasty yellow sheen on this, so I'll have to try it with my phone's camera next. I've got a couple 26 hour train rides ahead next week, so my 2DS is going to be a trusty companion. Whatever I figure out now will probably not work so gracefully hurtling cross country in coach, but I am interested to see what I can do.

I also got a few more game pages built today! I'll keep plugging away at this as I can.

August 4th, 2022

I worked so late last night that I played Sonic at the Olympic Games for a few minutes to try and pep up before bed. It was not successful, but that doesn't have much to do with the game's quality. Making a cartoon hedgehog shoot arrows at thing does not make things worse, at any rate.

My vacation has started now, though! I am a little more relaxed now.

August 3rd, 2022

I got stuck on a last minute call tonight and had to work 2 hours and 15 minutes late, so this is a small post. Last night, I played Beyond Oasis more. A fairy opened a magic water door for me, it was fancy.

August 2nd, 2022

Yesterday was another slow games day, but I picked up a new game and enjoyed it pretty well, at least so far. I turned on my Sega Genesis Mini and was going to play something for a few minutes and crash. Beyond Oasis was my choice, but I saw the strange little rat creatures having a ritual around a fire and was somewhat won over. Then, they dropped little wheels of cheese as healing items and I was all the way in. I beat the first dungeon, and am going to continue on my quest tonight.

There's only two days left until my vacation from work, too! I'm getting pretty excited.

August 1st, 2022

It's the start of a new month, and I have very little to share today, which is okay! Last night, I half-heartedly played Sonic the Fighters for a few minutes. I didn't clear the game, but I played some as Espio, realized I wasn't feeling it, and quit for the night. The Aurora Snowfield level is really pretty, though. I'll have to see if I can snap a sharper photo of it sometime.

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