ohai thar!

2016-06-25 01:16 pm
ree: baby Metroid with pink hearts in its speech bubble (baby Metroid <3)
I still ain't dead, thank you. I've been sleeping rather poorly. At the moment, I feel more alert than I have in days, so I wanted to eke out an update while the eking was good. Or something. (I said I'm more alert, not that I'm totally on the ball. This is as good as my attention gets right now. I don't like it any better than you do.)

I got a bee in my bonnet about wanting to play my vintage games on the living room flatscreen. This is nothing new. But this time, I griped enough that my brother wanted to see my much-lamented lag for himself. He came over with a Nintendo 64, all the cords, and a cart of The World Is Not Enough, and went to town.

"I'm not seeing it," he said.

So I tried for myself. All I proved was that I am still pretty bad at TWINE, but nothing about alleged lag.

Super Nintendo. Fired up a save file still on the first island, took the Star Road shortcut to Bowser, and I beat him.

Prior to that day, I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the TV in the living room lagged so much that basically everything was unplayable. I was 100% certain.

I don't know if my memory is that malleable (which is terrifying to consider), or the one or more of the TV's relatively few settings got changed by accident, rendering a delightful change (which would be upsetting if it ever got accidentally reverted, with no knowledge of how to restore the desirable state) or if I am currently hallucinating or what. Maybe the internet isn't real. Maybe you're all inside my dream! (That's enough Link's Awakening, Ree, back to Earth now.)

What I do know is this: I can beat Super Mario World on the living room TV. I can very likely beat any of my SNES games on it (except the sims; I don't think SimCity has a win state, and my Civilization best is merely surviving under Stalin's bootheel).

I've been enjoying the GameCube and Game Boy Player lately (finished a run through Dragon Warrior GBC and am well pleased with myself). I am tantalized by the possibility of throwing my entire weekend into a replay of Eternal Darkness. I won't actually let myself do that, but I could if I truly wanted to, and that alone is pleasing.

I currently possess a computer that is neither a slow-ass pile of slag nor a self-freezing failbot. I have gotten a proper IRC client installed. The good folks of the chat helped me figure out how to temporarily disable the touchpad, which allows me to type without wanting to defenestrate the contraption.

My interactions with electronics are really good lately! I hadn't realized just how good until typing it out like this. Yay!

I'm less satisfied with my creativity, which has quite stagnated. Earlier in the week, I had an idea for a tiny scifi story and set myself to getting it written post-haste. It was like trying to weave wet cotton candy. Every strand I grabbed or even reached for just dissolved before I could get put anything together. I have the dregs saved, but it's looking like this was a burst of inspiration that just won't hold up in story format. I might write the basic gist as a sort of Tumblr outline fiction ("so there's this person who discovered this thing, and they use the thing to do this idea....") and see what others think of it. Maybe somebody can write a formal story of it it, even if that somebody isn't me, and may not be anyone I know directly. That's pretty cool too.

My alertness is fading and I need to finish the laundry. Bah. After the laundry's done, if I remember to do it, I think I'll reward myself with some Crazy Taxi; there's a timed mode so I can't completely lose track of time, and sooner or later I'll need a break from the music. I like it okay, just not hours of it at a stretch or it starts to eat my brain.

bai!
ree: photo of a woman with long blonde hair and glasses (okay)
I've started about three different entries this week; I think it's about time that I finished one, so long as I keep the whining to a minimum.

I'm still getting over a cold, which moved in mid-Tuesday. Coincidentally, I was supposed to be out of town Wednesday to scour a going-out-of-business sale. Instead, I stayed bundled up at home. Also, while under the effects of sickbrain, I mistakenly updated my 3DS firmware, so now I can't play EarthBound on it anymore.

So that was all unhappy and I spent an amount of time whining to an empty house about the unfairness of the world blah blah blah.

After I finished unleashing my inner teenager, I grabbed my PSP (which already had a SNES emulator on it), transferred my EarthBound save to it, and spent about an hour fiddling with and testing some advanced settings until I could play EarthBound at a reasonable speed and still see my pre-battle swirl. (While not hugely important, I like the swirl; its shape is different for boss fights, and its color is different depending on if you have the advantage, the enemy does, or neither of you does. A green swirl usually means you don't even actually fight. The game just recognizes that you're going to win and hands over the victory banner and some experience. Yay!) It is not quite as nice, because it means carrying 2 handhelds instead of just my favorite one, but it's the next best thing.

All I really want out of video games is a continued opportunity to escape to someplace familiar where I can use my recognition of the rules to gain advantages and make a difference. New games don't usually give me that. My old favorites do. And now I can play EarthBound on my living room sofa again. That sounds like something I want to be doing right now, come to think....

o hai

2015-11-03 03:52 pm
ree: baby Metroid with pink hearts in its speech bubble (happy)
Man, I keep forgetting to write here.

After a string of days ranging from downright unhappy to so-so, today has been distinctly good. Lots of little things: an inexplicable stain that washed out perfectly, one load of dishes less than usual, a sizable cache of discounted Hallowe'en candy, the discovery that http://rainwave.cc/ is basically my iTunes library but more.

I fell into the usual Circle Ent. trap again. That is, Circle had a game on the 3DS eShop sale, and it had a demo, so I played the demo; the demo cut off just when I was getting really into it, so I bought the full version so I could continue playing. This time it's Fairune; last time it was Witch & Hero. Someday I'll stop being surprised.

Anyway, Fairune is fun. Very short, but fun. The iOS and Android versions are free; the 3DS version (which has a few puzzles the free versions don't) is normally $3, currently marked down to $2. And I get to play as a girl! I get to start in a pretty dress (the game even says so) and then I get to gear up and fight evil. Yay!

I made a shortsighted New Year's resolution that I would spend as much or more time playing as a female protagonist as a male. Since my main gaming loves are turn-based RPGs, Zelda, and some Mario, I am dearly looking forward to the end of the year and the return of my old favorites. (At some point I stopped keep track and just didn't bother to play anything unless I could play as a girl, having gotten thoroughly pissed off at my meager options. I've since caved to a playthrough of EarthBound, which currently sits around two-thirds in, but I'm sticking to my guns. Or, you know, to my Sword of Hope or Cracked Bat or whatever.)

The thought occurs that I abuse commas. Whoops. I'm out of practice at this writing thing.

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