#SO FOR CHRISTMAS THEY GOT ME A PS2 AND THE FIRST KINGDOM HEARTS GAME AND A COPY OF VII | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

starry-blue-echoes · 1 year ago

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Legally Stars: I just. Had. The craziest idea. Based on the release date of a certain game.

So it's 2002, a good amount of time after the mess in Italy. Jotaro wants to help the kids take a breather, but he isn't sure how. Then he sees an ad for a video game and he pauses.

Right there near the bottom of the poster is, of all characters, Donald Duck. He looks at it more closely and... yep, that's the Disney logo, along with some company called Squaresoft.

He isn't the biggest fan of video games, but Joseph did get the kids a PS2 last Christmas, and Ungalo is a huge fan of Disney. Jolyne less so, but she still likes the company and their movies.

He buys the game, but he's still doubtful. How good can this 'Kingdom Hearts' be?

(9 years later, Pucci is beaten into unconsciousness by a Bohemian Rhapsody-summoned, spiky-haired kid wielding a giant key.)

I'll admit I don't know a whole lot about Kingdom Hearts but the fucking snort I let out reading this holy shit-

I regret nothing about making Ungalo a Disney fan because it opens up avenues of sheer insane bullshit like this and makes everything extrodinarily funnier, and it also just hit me that growing up........ Ungalo and the other kids are probably going to use their Stands a TON, especially given the fact they're in an environment where they can freely do so and explore things, and now I rotating ideas of how that would affect them

Ungalo would of course occasionally use Bohemian Rahpsody on his favorites, but after that gets a TON of attention, he also probably begins to get an appreciation for more niche, unknown media. He learns to control his Stand on a much smaller scale but spends time wondering what would happen if he fully cut loose

Rikiel likes to practice with finer controls and while his Stand can't be played with as safely as his siblings, that doesn't stop them from trying to come up with games so he won't feel left out. One of their favorites is a sort of sight based hide and seek where Rikiel Stands in a single spot and has to try and spot their hiding places and direct the rods to them

and Donatello LOVES walking around places and seeing what the ground can tell him. He knows a ridiculous amount of random, untimately meaningless gossip and loves to regale his siblings with stories of what he's heard. He usually doesn't do anything more recent than the last few years to save himself the awkwardness of knowing the people Under World shows him, but it's still very entertaining nontheless

Naturally when Jolyne obtains her Stand, they IMMEDIATELY jump as the oppurtinity. They'd of course always done their best to include her before, but now that she can actually see their Stands and has one of her own the possibilities are endless

I like to imagine the brothers all make sure to be very calm and un-serious about Stone Free. They little sister had to go through enough stress and fear getting her Stand in the first place, she doesn't need to be treated like she was something dangerous just because she had a powerful Stand. In there eyes, she's still their Jolyne, only now she can turn into string

Jolyne takes a shine to cats cradles and embroidery, but she is also unfairley hard to catch in her brother's opinion. She becomes crazily flexible and anytime when they wrestle or play tag, she'll simply slip out of any holds she's put in and wrap around her opponent so they're the one caught instead

but shifting gears a bit, this ALSO got me thinking of everything Post-Golden Wind and also just Jotaro being a Cool Dad/Uncle. After Jotaro very violently curbstomps Diavolo, I'd imagine there's a moment of hesitancy from the Bucci Gang because yeah this man came out of nowhere and just beat the shit out of the BOSS who's been giving us a lot of trouble like it was nothing, but all their worries abate when all four of the kids tackle him with a hug

it's only later they realize No, Mr.Jotaro Is That Scary, He's Just Got A Soft Spot For The Kids And Maybe Giorno

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beardedmrbean · 8 months ago

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Hey it me, zoomer Huey, I saw the post saying about the young gamers retro revival

But how retro because this book..

https://www.tumblr.com/gsirvitor/742534236498804736

Also yes people halo is going to be 23 this fall so it’s a retro game

Yes, don’t have to deal with horrific live service and micro transactions but the thing is….economic reasons

Like I been getting into kingdoms hearts and final fantasy….but I was a Xbox player so they are new ports in the ecosystem

And like I said, AC red will probably be a huge entry point for a lot of new fans. So it very likely they will be curious what the game Easter eggs are about so I will gladly help them get say get the Ezio Collection if the European Templars have dialogue mentioning they don’t want another Borgia fiasco since the game take places in the 1580’s-90’s and during this time many Templars went to the new world or other places to escape the “Dark Age” of the Templars order where it’s was about gaining power for selfish reasons rather further their causes

And about retro games, um…the same way a adult might want to watch old classic movies

Now I watched Fox’s miracle of 34th street a couple of years ago on Disney plus (actually I often use these streaming services to watch old shit like the muppet show) despite being at my depress state, I couldn’t help but smile at the Santa in it

It like for me, I found the Santa that inspired the ones your generation, my generation, and all those in between the Santa we had when we were kids. I’m glad the actor got the Oscar. And I’m more glad Hollywood graveyard help find his lost vase and people came to celebrate the actor new home. With him Unknowingly inspired the Christmas magic we love

Sorry using that as example

Also a lot of young gamers….were often too poor, too young, didn’t have enough resources when these old games came out. So we are interested in what these games that older gamers talk about even if we don’t have the nostalgia for it

Like Xbox Backwards Compatibility library….can someone please make a deal to bring the one transformers or marvel games back on it? Anyways, I’m 24 now, so there a lot of old 360 and og Xbox games I didn’t okay that I use bc for

And modern gaming, ugh feel like it intentionally designed for Twitch streamers and YouTuber gamers. Ugh halo infinite mp made just drop it all together

Oh gaming companies, a lot of modern gamers have JOBS so we might invest in a 1 or 2 live service games. Hell ac red might have a 3-4 live services era (ac Valhalla had 2 years of support) but I’m mostly invested in single player games

Well I’m autistic and I work 10 hour and 4 days a week work schedule. I am not interested dealing with try hards

Like I don’t understand this shock? Ac red is dead ass the only triple a gaming I’m probably going to be paying at launch at full price while the upcoming Star Wars game I’m probably going to get on sale

I feel like people are so focus on young people who refuse to consume pre 2012 media. There are those with a mentality that can stand old shit.

Hey it me, zoomer Huey, I saw the post saying about the young gamers retro revival But how retro because this book. gsirvitor/742534236498804736 Also yes people halo is going to be 23 this fall so it’s a retro game

I think the first post your talking about was one I put up, I go with most anything PS2 on down for consoles, some PS2 aren't really "retro" but the divide for me is mostly based on hotfixes and micro-transactions so like Sims2 is the right age but i shift round on the retro bit since you could buy skins and such still gonna be retro I think.

Online games you could play for free online are retro too, but everyone will define it in their own way too so no hard and fast rules for me.

Like I been getting into kingdoms hearts and final fantasy….but I was a Xbox player so they are new ports in the ecosystem And like I said, AC red will probably be a huge entry point for a lot of new fans. So it very likely they will be curious what the game Easter eggs are about......... And about retro games, um…the same way a adult might want to watch old classic movies

Classic and retro work together in tandem a lot, there is a difference but I don't want to tangent too far into that.

Watch some Mr Rogers, it's a soothing balm on depression, won't make it go away but at the end of a episode or two you'll feel loved, man you've never met in your life but you know he loved you, just the way you are.

Nostalgia isn't required for retro, good games are good games.

If I'd had the money to get one of the first gen PS3's I'd have gotten one since they were built to still run PS1&2 games as well, once they took that away I had no desire to get the thing. Wii was great because you had the Wii shop for the older games and it also played GC games, Wii shop games weren't too pricey either.

And modern gaming, ugh feel like it intentionally designed for Twitch streamers and YouTuber gamers. Ugh halo infinite mp made just drop it all together

I've noticed that with some, they dial back the graphics and all that good stuff so they stream well, or at least leave the option of that. I figure as long as everyone is happy.

That's really all I do, even when battle net was going strong I still didn't sign up for D2 on there except rarely.

Blizard had it right with World of Warcraft, at least at one point. The were selling the game disc for like $5 with a 2 week subscription make their money in the long game, not sure if anyone is doing that kind of thing anymore but they should be.

I feel like people are so focus on young people who refuse to consume pre 2012 media. There are those with a mentality that can stand old shit.

I love seeing people get into the games and stuff I enjoyed when I was younger, watching through the X-Files with a friend who's never seen it before and it's great seeing it through the eyes of someone who hasn't watched it.

Same with nerding out about games, as you've seen me do with FFVI here previously.

Most people that matter feel the same, so don't worry about any haters, they aren't worth your time or thought.

#zoomer huey anon

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cawthorntales · 1 year ago

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About me: Christmas edition Santa

I believed in Santa until my mid 20s. Why you may ask? It's all because of my 12th Christmas. Me and my brother had asked and asked our parents for a ps2 and Kingdom Hearts. We were told couldn't be done this year by them and Santa didn't do consoles. Early December of 2002 my dad died. When Christmas came our first with just my brother, me and our mom we opened our presents as one does. Then we had a big box to both of us. We opened it and inside was a ps2 and the game we had wanted.

What does that have to do with me believing in Santa for so long? Well it also came with a letter in it. The letter was written in a strange handwriting that was super fancy and whimsy looking and looked nothing like I had seen. The letter was from "Santa" and in it he talked about how he usually doesn't do these kind of gifts, but he knows me and my brother had just lost our dad and we were good boys so he made an exception for us this one time.

After my brother and I read the letter we sat it on the living room table to play with our toys. The letter vanished. We know we didn't throw it away as my brother and I were always careful with that stuff. And we didn't see our mom toss it as she was with us the entire time. All that made me believe in Santa a lot longer than I would have. I genuinely believed it was from him, because the whole thing was too weird.

I know as I got older a lightbulb should have went off that was like hey genius it was your mom who wrote it and she spent a long time working on the look of it to be belivable, your mom who got you the ps2 and game and your mom who was quick and snuck the letter off the table to throw out to look like it magically disappeared. But I have always been a bit naive and believer in Christmas magic.

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legion1227 · 2 years ago

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Kingdom Hearts 1: Review

I never had the privilege of beating this game until this year. (And even then, I somewhat wasn't the one to beat it).

I don't remember how I acquired it, but as a child, I somehow got my hands on a copy of Kingdom Hearts 1 on the PS2. I believe someone either gave it to me of their own free will or let me borrow it but forgot to ask for it back. Either way, I played Kingdom Hearts every now and then as a kid, but I never reached far. After the tutorial and the first island, I don't think I ever really got past the first level. I was too young and inexperienced to find a way to surpass one of the first boss fights in the game. But, a few years ago, I acquired the "The Story so Far" Kingdom Hearts collection, acquiring every game out at the time, (minus Kingdom Hearts 3). After putting significant time into Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, I decided to take a crack once more at the first Kingdom Hearts game for the first time in over a decade. I managed to clear multiple levels with varying degrees of ease until I got stuck on that big demon bitch from Fantasia. (Chernabog). I died too many times, and rage quitted, not picking up the game for at least a year. I picked up from where I left off that year and managed to beat him after dying several other times but hit a wall once again. The final boss, Ansem, and his different variations and boss forms are ridiculous. First, you have to fight Ansem on the island from the beginning of the game alongside Goofy and Donald. It was an egregiously taxing endeavor, but it's absolutely doable. But after beating him, you have to fight him again without Goofy and Donald, and I just can not. Those animals were carrying me the first go around, and without them I am incapable. Shoutout to my friend who managed to beat his ass for me after grinding a collective few hours, basically carrying me to the finish line.

There's no way I could have beaten Ansem the next few times without help. But now that it's finished on my account, let's talk about it.

The plot of the Kingdom Hearts franchise is incredibly convoluted and hard to follow, but the first game's story is, mercifully, the easiest and most comprehensible without taking into account events from other games. You play a fourteen-year-old boy named Sora after his home is destroyed by dastardly creatures called the Heartless. Along the journey, Sora tries to restore his world and reunite with his friends, while running into well-known and beloved Disney characters, as well as some Final Fantasy characters. Donald Duck and Goofy join him along the way as you jump into worlds from popular Disney films. Releasing initially in America on September 17, 2002, on the PS2, the game still doesn't look too bad, graphics-wise, for being over twenty years old.

Part of the charm in Kingdom Hearts stems from how likable and cutesy our protagonist Sora is as he interacts with iconic Disney princesses, villains, and everyone in between. There's Atlantica from The Little Mermaid, Neverland from Peter Pan, Halloween Town from Nightmare Before Christmas, Agrabah from Aladdin, and other well-known worlds, plus some original places. From a design perspective, roaming around these popular fictional worlds feels akin to watching the movies once more. Roaming around the bizarre world of Wonderland is none too different from Alice's own escapades in the original film. What's even more remarkable is how the team behind the game, the minds at Square Enix, managed to get most of the original voice actors and actresses to reprise the roles of their esteemed characters for the game. It helps add authenticity while you're combatting the Heartless. (Except they couldn't get Robin Williams to reprise as Genie in Agrabah, opting for Dan Castlellaneta to voice him instead, which is fine, but all I hear is Homer Simpson whenever Genie talks). Some levels are more inspiring and fun than others, but most are a riot to traverse through. I love how depending on the world, you can bring along a character to help you fight enemies. When you're in Deep Jungle, the same jungle from the film Tarzan, you can replace Donald or Goofy and have Tarzan accompany you in the fight if you please. I wish they could tag along instead, rather than outright replace Donald or Goofy but I appreciate that they can even tag along with you, to begin with...

Enemies' designs are another plus, as I love how the Heartless looks will vary in each world. Adopting spooky looks to fit the vibe of Halloween Town, fish, and merman looks in Atlantica, and animals like monkeys in Deep Jungle are what make the first game so unique from most other action RPGs. The gameplay in KH1 is still fun. The weapon Sora uses, a Keyblade, has weight to it as you smack around bosses and enemies alike. Dodging and deflecting attacks, casting spells, and swinging your blade is an uproariously satisfactory feeling that was only improved in future games like Birth By Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 2.

There are a few gripes I have with the game, however. Some levels are nowhere near as fun to go through, lacking in care as Halloween Town or Wonderland. I like that the Pinocchio representation is that you go inside the whale Monstro rather than a town, and I enjoy the flash of colors within the massive whale as you travel throughout his body. But the maze-like structure of the world gets tiresome real quick as you struggle to go where you need. Neverland is incredibly limited as you can only head toward Captain Hook's ship or Big Ben, which are small in scale.

And Tarzan's Deep Jungle just fucking sucks.

Besides a few poor-level designs, my other gripe stems from the sudden uptick in difficulty within the last hour or two. I already mentioned Chernabog and Ansem, but besides them, the final leg of the game becomes unnecessarily more difficult and rage-inducing. It's a steep contrast from the rest of the game. Honestly, most of the game is durable, but it's just right at the end when it becomes ridiculously unfair.

Story-wise, it's just cheesy goodness. That's all I'll say. It's a blast to see Sora, Donald, and Goofy interact with classic Disney and game characters. The game isn't perfect, but it's fun and still holds up twenty years later. I'm glad I got to see through to the end, and I'm looking forward to going through the rest of the franchise, the game is greeaaaaaat. 4/5.

#kingdom hearts #video games #game review #review #kh sora #lol

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blazehedgehog · 5 months ago

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So when stories about the Xbox 360 having red ring/heat problems started coming in, I began to worry that my 360 would be struck with it at the worst timing. When Microsoft began offering free repairs, there were stories about people intentionally smothering their Xbox with a blanket to force a red ring.

I seriously considered smothering my 360, but it turns out I didn't have to. For some reason my brain has latched on to the date of November 22nd, 2006 as when this happened, but my Xbox 360 red ringed itself. It was easy to blame Sonic 06 as the culprit, given I had just finished the game barely even a week earlier.

When you registered for a free red ring of death repair, what actually happened is you'd send your console in, and Microsoft would instantly ship you out somebody else's refurbished console. This kept queue times low, and it made sure they weren't hung up forever personally repairing everyone's individual console. (They asked you to remove your HDD before you sent your console in, so you could keep your saves and downloads)

So I put in the repair order and shipped my console off, expecting to get a replacement in a couple weeks. This was 2006, before everything sent you notifications about anything, so once you shipped your console, that was it. You couldn't track repair status or anything, I don't think.

A whole month passed. No Xbox. Well, okay, it's Christmas, right? Maybe they're backed up. Maybe they're on vacation. I can't really blame them for a small delay.

And I was patient. I'd bought this Xbox 360 because I'd won grand prize in a video contest on Gametrailers.com in August of 2006. The prize was $1000, spread across two different Gamestop gift cards, and I did not spend the whole thing on the Xbox. In total, I'd gotten:

An Xbox 360

Pre-ordered Sonic 2006 (the first pre-order I'd ever made, and my only 360 game)

Ninja Gaiden Black (Xbox)

Forza Motorsport (Xbox)

Spider-man 2 (Xbox)

A refurbished Playstation 2 (first time owner)

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 (PS2)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PS2)

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (PS2)

Kingdom Hearts (PS2)

Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil (PS2)

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (PS2)

A Nintendo DS Lite

New Super Mario Bros. (DS)

Mario Kart DS (DS)

Sonic Rush (DS)

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)

And then, closer to November, I spent the last of the money pre-ordering The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube.

So even though I didn't have the Xbox 360, I had plenty of other toys to play with.

But by the time it became the end of January, I started to wonder. It was coming up on THREE MONTHS. Surely they couldn't be that backed up, right? I'd long since finished NSMB, Sonic Rush, Castlevania, Dragon Ball, and Klonoa. Christmas was over. Heck, New Years was over. They'd be back to work by now. Where the hell was my Xbox?

So I had to call them. I gave them my repair work order ID, and I was informed that while they registered my console entering their repair facility in McAllen, Texas, it disappeared from their system after that. In other words: They lost it. The guy on the other end was very apologetic and quick to smooth things over.

Before I'd called, I was talking to friends. They'd told me to get angry. Even artificially angry. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that. I tried to summon up the courage to sound indignant: "Is there anything else you can do to set this right? Maybe a free game?"

It probably sounded more like nervous begging.

The voice on the other end of the line stammered. "Um. Sure, we've got a few games lying around. You could have Perfect Dark Zero or Project Gotham Racing 3."

I knew about Perfect Dark's reputation, and I'd played a little bit at an in-store demo kiosk. PGR3 it was.

Deep down in my heart, I was hoping for Gears of War, or maybe Oblivion. There was a time, 2003 or 2004, where Microsoft sent me a 20 minute Windows product survey and the payment was Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC. It felt opulent. Every product survey I've ever done since then, I think about the time Microsoft gave me a $40 PC game for 20 minutes of my time. I was hoping they were still that generous. Beyond Sonic 06, Oblivion was part of the reason I'd wanted a 360, and Gears of War was lighting up the charts.

I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. I was more than fine with PGR3.

Within two days (by now the first days of February 2007), I'd had my replacement Xbox 360, and a factory fresh copy of PGR3 packaged along with it. They'd paid for free expedited shipping. About 30 minutes after getting it unboxed and hooked up, the phone rang.

It was Xbox. The same repair center guy I'd spoken to not even 48 hours earlier was calling me to make sure I received the package okay and was satisfied with the console.

In truth, I was not.

These were refurbished consoles, remember. And I assume they had to turn things around pretty quickly to keep pace with demand. Usually there isn't a problem with buying refurbs, but occasionally you run into things where a refurbished item will pass inspection but is otherwise still damaged. The 360 they had sent me was one such case.

The first thing I did after hooking the console up was begin downloading demos I'd missed. This included the stone cold classic Crackdown 1 demo. I was actually in the middle of trying it out when the phone rang, and I was already noticing problems. The intro movie for different middlewares and company logos would often stutter and skip, which seemed odd to me. Then, while driving around in the demo, I'd hit an area where the textures stopped loading.

A couple of other games displayed other stuttering problems, as well. These were problems that didn't happen with my original console. I was suspicious they had sent me a bogus replacement.

The guy at the repair center brushed me off. "Sometimes that just happens," he told me. "Don't worry about it."

I pressed him, repeating again that these weren't issues with my previous console. I told him I was concerned this replacement was already on its way out.

He suddenly got terse and cut me off mid-sentence. "The console is working right now, isn't it?"

I was kind of taken back.

"Uh, yeah, I guess?"

"Then everything is in order. I hope you have a great day."

Click. He instantly hung up on me before I could say anything else.

That 360 continued to show signs of its growing problem. The textures not loading in the Crackdown demo became my litmus test for how it was getting worse. Soon, other games started experiencing the occasional polygon explosion error.

If you don't know what a polygon explosion is, it's basically this:

Its severity depended on what game I was playing, and sometimes it would go away if I closed and rebooted the game.

I have a distinct memory of booting up the Tomb Raider Underworld demo in October of 2008 and it being a totally unplayable, because all the visuals were stretched, warped polygon explosions, all the time. There was no normal gameplay in view anywhere, and while trying to adjust the camera, the game straight up froze.

By now, the Crackdown demo consistently loaded into a completely untextured world, and sometimes would trigger its own polygon explosions. Other games were beginning to lock up as well. This system was three sheets to the wind.

Here's the deal though: since it wasn't a red ring of death? Microsoft was a lot less charitable. The repair center wanted $100 to fix the bogus 360 they sent me, and they refused to hear anything I had to say about how it was their fault to begin with. Cough up the hundred bucks or hit the road, kid.

I remembered the smothering trick. I wrapped the 360 in a blanket, popped in Sonic 06, and ran around Soleanna for a while. I ran through all of the levels at least once.

The Red Ring of Death was caused by a heat issue inside the console. The CPU would get so hot it would begin to make the motherboard flex and warp from the heat, and the solder they used to keep the chip in place would weaken. After long enough, the CPU would wiggle loose and lose contact with the board, resulting in a total system failure.

Refurbished 360's, as I came to learn, "fixed" this issue by absolutely DROWNING the CPU contacts in solder (or whatever adhesive they were using). They made absolutely certain that chip could not budge come hell or high water. If you had a refurbished 360, the only way to get it to red ring a second time was basically to take a sledgehammer to it.

In other words, I could smother this console all day, every day, and it would probably never red ring.

So I decided to go over their heads.

Six or eight months before I won the Gametrailers contest, around March of 2006, I shooted my shot: I emailed Xbox's Major Nelson.

I wanted to play Oblivion so badly that I was actually having dreams about it. I woke up from one of these dreams and was feeling particularly bold. Major Nelson was the Xbox brand/community manager at the time, so intrinsically ingrained as the voice of the people at Xbox that he publicly listed his email address and encouraged anyone to email him.

So, I metaphorically got down on my hands and knees, and I begged. I told him who I was: fledgling game developer, and wanna-be games media "journalist." And the one thing that would help kickstart one or both of those careers would be an Xbox 360. It'd be great PR, too. I ended the email humbly saying I realized what a ridiculous request I was making, but that "it never hurts to ask." Even if the answer is no.

Major Nelson responded a day or two later with some very kind words, and ultimately told me he'd love to give me an Xbox 360... when we met in person at E3. Did he mean it? Was he calling my bluff? E3 wasn't open to the public in these days, but it wasn't hard for people like me to get a press pass if they really, really wanted them. There were always stories of people from the public getting in.

Needless to say, I was too poor and too chicken. Didn't have the money and didn't have the guts. But he ended it saying if I ever had any other questions, he'd love to talk to me again.

So they lost my console, sent me a broken refurb, and were now asking me for $100 to fix their mistake? I decided to see if there was anything Major Nelson could do about it. Again, it never hurts to ask.

The best he could do: $50 off. I'd still have to pay $50 to get it fixed. I didn't like it, but it was better than nothing.

The next Xbox 360 they sent me worked all the way up until about 2019, when its disc tray mechanism finally gave out after 11 years of service. I replaced it with an Xbox 360 E.

I'd like to end this saying it might make me sound like a loser to say I flat out emailed Major Nelson and begged for freebies. That may be true, and it's also true that I really wanted to play Oblivion.

However: Upon winning the GameTrailers video competition and buying that 360, it really did actually change my life. That Xbox 360 is the entire reason my Youtube channel became what it is today, and that Xbox 360 did in fact get me my first paying games writing gig. It really did jumpstart whatever you might consider the tatters of a career. That wasn't a lie.

A Eulogy for my Playstation 4 Pro

So since I was a brain genius who decided to transfer all my fundraiser money to my bank account on a weekend, let's have a little eulogy for my poor Playstation 4 Pro.

I bought it in 2017 after a hellish move from Colorado to Nevada. We'd lived in Colorado for 26 years, and rented the same house for 24 of those years. I literally grew up in that house. Then our landlords got greedy (as all landlords eventually do), almost tripled our rent, and we had to move.

One of the last things I did before I packed up my computer was release The Definitive Way to Play Sonic Adventure on Youtube. That video was a modest success, but it had a secondary effect where a no-commentary gameplay video I'd uploaded for the fangame Sonic Utopia got picked up by the algorithm as a result, and that video suddenly took off like wildfire. I found myself sitting on a pair of videos that were about to pull in close to a combined 3 million views. It was the most I'd had a video blow up in a very long time.

I was now flush with a few thousand dollars of cash that I could do whatever I wanted with. That was great, as I got to help cover some moving expenses. I gave my Mom some money, I paid one of the deposits on our new apartment, paid to fix some stuff that got broken in the move, I bought myself a new desk, new computer chair, some storage shelves, a new bed frame, and still had about $700 left to spare. So I bought a PS4 Pro and a small handful of games (The Nathan Drake Collection, Yakuza Kiwami, The Last of Us Remastered, and Parappa the Rapper Remastered, I think). It was the first true next-generation console I'd bought in 11 years -- I'd had a Wii U, but that doesn't count.

Within that first year, I'd already run into my first problem with that Playstation 4. Back in the Xbox 360 era, I had a moment in my life where I was a psychopath that was running a media server off my PC. Every morning I'd wake up, download everything my Youtube subs had posted the day before, along with whatever GiantBomb had uploaded that day, and threw it up on the media server. The 360 could see the server, and those downloads would basically become my background noise for the day. I watched the entire GiantBomb Persona 4 Endurance Run that way: on the 360, through my media server. For context, these were the days before there was any way to watch Youtube on a television. There was no app. Youtube was just a website. So the Media Server was what I had to do to see Youtube on another screen.

In the move out to Nevada, I'd bought a cheap 32GB USB thumbdrive from the back-to-school section at Wal-mart and filled it full of movies and videos and stuff. With the PS4 set up, I plugged that thumbdrive in and tried out the PS4's media player capabilities, hoping it worked like the Xbox 360.

It did... for about 45 minutes. In the middle of watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie the media player suddenly crashed and refused to see the USB thumbdrive anymore. I reached down to pull it out only to find it was almost too hot to touch. I might have actually dropped the thumbdrive because it shocked me just how hot it was. I have never felt a piece of electronics be that hot before.

For the rest of that day, that USB port was dead. Nothing you plugged into it would be recognized. Eventually, it finally started working with controllers, but it never accepted any other thumbdrives, ever.

After about three years, I started to notice recordings were starting to get a little weird. Clips I'd record of my Fortnite matches would have huge 2-3 second chunks go missing, or the encoding would corrupt and smear. But then it went away, so I figured maybe it was just a problem with the game and not the console. It'd come back every now and then, maybe once a year, but it only ever happened with Fortnite, and only occasionally.

About a year and a half ago, I started to notice something else weird. Unless there was a specific game I needed to play for work stuff (like Sonic Frontiers or whatever), my PS4 was mostly just a Fortnite machine, and mainly because the PC version of Fortnite is a disaster.

But for months I'd left a disc in my PS4's disc drive. I think it was probably Balan Wonderworld or something, and as I booted up Fortnite for my daily founder's mission rewards, I noticed a sound. I'd been hearing it on and off for a while, but now I was finally paying attention to it. I realized: the console was sitting there scanning the disc, over and over and over, like it couldn't read it. I'd hear the disc motor spin up, the soft click-click-click as the read head scanned for data. It'd spin down, spin up, click-click-click, whirrrrrr, click-click, spin down, spin up, etc. Over and over. It'd do this for a good 30-45 seconds, then finally settle down and identify the disc.

The first time I noticed this, I ejected the Balan disc and put in something else; I think it was Dreams. PS4 read the disc instantly. I shrugged, figured maybe the Balan disc was just cursed and didn't think anything of it.

About a week later, I caught it doing it with the disc for Dreams. And then Sonic Frontiers. Then Sonic Superstars. Pretty much any disc I'd put in there. As the months wore on, it started taking multiple minutes for it to identify the disc.

A few weeks before it died, I ended up taking the disc out and basically resigning myself to only putting a disc in if I was going to play it, and removing that disc the moment I was done, because that scanning process seemed like it was making the problem worse.

A few months before it died, I got a full hardware crash on the console. The error code it gave me pointed to a hardware failure, but a google revealed that it was a generic error code that could mean literally anything. Right around this time, the video corruption in my Fortnite recordings came back around. I had a feeling it was the HDD.

Thus began the saga of trying to replace my PS4's HDD. I knew it could take SSDs, so I did some research, saved up $100, and bought a 2TB SSD that was compatible with the console. Followed Sony's official instructions on replacing the HDD, and...

It didn't work.

I vowed to get my money back and order a different HDD, but prices went up and realizing the other mounting problems with this machine (including the fried USB port), and my general mood overall, I just kept the money and figured I'd ride or die until the machine breathed its last.

8 months later... it refused to boot up at all.

Rest in piece, king. The only other console I've ever had straight up die on me like this was my Xbox 360, and if I'm being honest, I kind of smothered that poor boy a little bit hoping to get a sturdier console back from the repair center.

(I did not, but that's a story for another day.)

#playstation #eulogy #sony #microsoft #xbox 360 #red ring of death #major nelson

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applebandito · 2 years ago

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100% Kingdom Hearts 1 (Day 7)

Current Targets: Colosseum Champion

I awoke beneath a mountain of discarded soda cans and a blanket like it was 2002 again. I recalled the day I actually was introduced to Kingdom Hearts. I’d long since stopped reading video game magazines and the only thing I’d heard about this game was “Disney and Final Fantasy characters in the same game.” This was enough to pique my interest, so when I was standing in a Target and staring through the glass at the video games, I saw the shiny blue cover and knew I needed it.

As if by fate, my grandmother found me standing there after she’d finished her shopping and asked if I saw something I wanted. Figuring this was a leading question for Christmas or a birthday, I mentioned the game and pointed to it. She hailed a store associate and I was on my way home reading the back of the box.

I was deposited back at my home and my father was gone for the day, so I sat down with a two liter of soda and a bunch of chips and the rest was history as the game spun in my PS2 unchallenged for weeks. It was a rare time that with the measly job I had, I decided to purchase a strategy guide to ensure I’d milked the game for every last secret. Also the strategy guide was great and very handsomely decorated.

I’m waxing poetic about the first game and my history with it mostly because this was the day a metric ton of the achievements were going to get done and frankly nothing of any sort of interest happen. The ultima weapon got swung, bosses died, and that’s that. Sephiroth wasn’t even that difficult, nor was the Organization 13 guy they added. The Ice Titan was a dawdle, the sandy man took a bit of time, but it wasn’t bad. I maybe died to Sephiroth and the clock tower dementor but nothing gave me much to talk about.

Honestly the only comedy really came from doing 100 Acre Woods to close it up. Something about how slow it goes made me wish it could be all over. I also had to go back and collect a torn page from Halloween Town. Despite going back through every world and opening up every chest I could find and locking up the remaining worlds, I never found the last one because of where it was hidden.

Pooh moves like old people fuck when you need to get him to go somewhere which means you have to stutter step while you’re locked on to him to help him get up to a swing or find his friends. Getting him up to a swing in order to get Eyore’s tail actually made me mad because he got distracted by honey. On brand for him, sure, but part of me honestly want to commit war crimes just because of this minor inconvenience. It’s at this point I knew this game was having the appropriate effect.

I also finally touched Gummi ship building and quickly discovered that the appearance of some weapons severely belied what exactly their function was. Thundaga-G look like gatling guns, so I figured they’d shoot a ton of bullets straight ahead. I built a beefy A-10 Warthog of a Gummi ship, prepared to turn Heartless children into Heartless orphans. But no, they shoot fucking missiles! Not even good missiles. They go roughly ten feet, run out of breath and explode into a pathetic poof of damage. The only thing that was good was the lasers I’d attached, but I ran out of power faster than a Texas town in the winter; and I had to desperately get to Cancun.

I wound up mopping up the keyblades, the tournaments, even the staves and shields for Donald and Goofy. By this point I was numb to collecting things and having to go back and kill white mushrooms with the variety of spells to get one of the shields. Or a stave. I can’t be arsed to look up what it was. What I do know, is there’s going to be a lot more to write about when I do my Proud Mode playthrough because then I’ll be paying more attention to the story. Or at least the early simplicity of it. Before the series got more convoluted than a Reddit Rube Goldberg machine.

Once the journal for Jiminy Cricket was all filled out and all the dogs had been packed into their modest upper class home, I finished all the last little bits so that all was left was completing the game on Medium/Hard difficulties and the coveted platinum. Mercifully, completing the game on Hard would also unlock the medium difficulty trophy, so this would be the last I’d be seeing of the trophy unlock until I beat the game a second time.

So while this may not be as entertaining as the other entries, We’ve got the memes and dreams of watching the story.

Completed 53 of 56: He Who Doesn’t Exist The Cloaked Shadow The Sandy Blade Coliseum Champion The Frost Giant One-Winged Angel Level Master Master of the Seas Pooh’s Friend Record Keeper Storyteller Searcher Professor Top Dog Best Friend Mini-Game Maniac Gummi Ship Collector Customizer Ace Pilot Blade Master Master Magician Master Defender

#kingdom hearts #playthrough #playstation #playstation trophies #platinum #sora #donald #goofy #disney #trophies #kh1 #blog #word vomit

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kervinredfire · 4 years ago

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My Other Fanfics in the Future

Well, I made announcements about my 2 Loonatics fanfics-related stories coming soon. So here are my other fanfics that I am making. But before I am going to show you my other fanfics, I like to share what most of them are like. Kervinverse related. If you checked my Tumblr header it's pretty obvious.

As you may wonder what is the Kervinverse is all about? The Kervinverse is like the multiverse but with all different kinds of Kervin. Inspired by Spiderman Into the Spiderverse all the versions of Kervin contained different personalities, stories, almost the same appearance, fighting styles, and special abilities. One of the most signature outfits is the black and red formal suit.

I already made a folder in toyhouse. However, most of it are unfinished and still ongoing.

https://toyhou.se/Kervin619/characters/folder:812137

People think that those stories a self-insert but it is actually not. Me and my other Kervins are the same but they are different the appearance, abilities, and personalities. An example is Denk Ops’s Chris Danger from the WWE games. And note that this is another long announcement for the other fanfics

So anyway, here are my Kervinverse stories that I would really like to share about Wattpad in the future. So are book covers later

KERVINVERSE STORIES (Including crossovers):

Grand Theft Auto Origins: Kervin Made Liberty – Set in the GTA HD Universe. Before Kervin (GTA Online) came to the place called San Andreas, he was just a very young boy who was born in the place called Liberty with his parents. His father Claude who became rich and retired to a life crime and his wife Misty who used to be a prostitute. It was normal and happy life for him and his parents. But when years passed when he is getting older, he slowly starts to realize what kind of broken world he is living in.

Now for those who played the HD Universe of the GTA Games you know every protagonist in the HD universe like Niko, Johnny, Luis, Michael Franklin, and Trevor. As much as they have different stories and perspectives but this story about GTA OC that he was living with full of offensiveness, disrespectfulness, brutal honesty, and others. An example in GTA IV a radio commercial of Babies Overnight that said that someone was not satisfied with the baby it can be disposed of. Although it would be interesting to have that backstory for my next OC for GTA. So, this story may contain a lot of murder and crimes on what led to him going to San Andreas. So, watch out. And for those who have not played GTA Online why his parents are both Claude and Misty is because it was part of the premium edition for free in Epic Games.

Def Jam X Kung Fu Panda: Book 1 Fight for A New Fight (maybe a working title) - After the events of Def Jam Vendetta, Fight For New York, and The Kung Fu Panda Trilogy including Legends of Awesomeness. Set during Paws of Destiny Season 2 in the Kung Fu Panda universe while in Def Jam 2 years later in the year 2005 after Crow's death (Fight for NY still takes place in 2003) Kervin (Def Jam Fight For NY) the new leader D-Mob's crew but also officially known as the Def Jam Crew after Blaze appointed him to take his place. Kervin has to manage every venue, club, and arenas in New York including places that Crow took over. But in Chinese New Year there was something strange that Kervin and his crew got transported to a different universe. Including former members, fighters, and circuit fighters.

Now, this fanfiction sounded really odd. As you may know why I am making crossover fanfic of Kung Fu Panda X Def Jam? Easy. The first one is because this is what would have been my PS2 games if I ever have a PS2. I was thinking of Mortal Kombat or Yakuza for Def Jam but Kung Fu Panda is the only thing I know when I was 7 years old. The second is because back in the days Hip Hop mixed with Kung Fu was very popular. Although Def jam may be a wrestling game martial arts stole my heart in Def Jam Fight For NY. I heard about things like the Wu-Tang Clan for example but the biggest problem for me is that I am not a true fan of Def Jam because I don’t know about hip hop artists. Just only the games so I will be focusing on their video game counterparts in their fictitious manner meaning pretending real-life characters with their real name are fictional characters. So, if there and fun facts in those real-life counterparts I may add them to it like easter eggs. The third is that there are Kung Fu Panda characters that did not get enough love and mostly art. So many recognizable characters like Po, Tigress, Tai Lung, and many more have become the most recognizable characters in the movies. But what about the tv shows like Legends of Awesomeness and Paws of Destiny? One of my favorite characters of Legends of Awesomeness is Peng, in short, he is the nephew of Tai Lung and he is such an interesting character that he deserves a lot more love. While for Paws of Destiny is Xiao because she is such a cute character, so is her personality and the best character to have hugs with. So, what I am trying to say is that I need to start off with the character that is unrecognizable then bring it recognizably. I may also add characters from shorts like student Mei Ling in the future book and it would be funny and to see rogue Mei Ling. 2 Mei Lings in one. Even Su and Master Snow Leopard because are both female leopards with the same appearance and outfit. I may also include some characters from the flash game Tales of Po and may possibly rewrite them in different stories because I love the character designs thanks to Blue Maxima’s FlashPoint. And the fourth and final part is that to make the Def jam games more recognizable. Def Jam in music is not absolutely enough but video games are. The Def Jam games did not bring a sequel after Fight For NY so I might as well make a sequel with interesting and experimental crossover fanfic just like The Loonatics Road.

The Red Fox (Kingdom Force Spinoff and maybe a working title) - The Kingdom Force has 5 members defending the 5 Kingdoms. Luka the wolf who leads in red, Jabari who runs in yellow, TJ who drills in green, Delilah who swings in orange, and Norvyn who strengthens in blue. Each of the 5 drives Kingdom Riders and turns them into Alpha Mech to fight against evil in the 5 Kingdoms. But even if they save the day multiple times the 5 Kingdoms are still filled with more crime and every antagonist came back doing other crimes and evil deeds because they were not arrested or eliminated. That's is when a red fox came along...

I have seen popular fandoms in cartoons that were supposed to aim at younger kids like Lion Guard, MLP, Paw Patrol, and even Bluey. But Kingdom Force is the cartoon that did get enough love. It's like Power Rangers and Voltron but with anthropomorphic animals like Zootopia. However, the stories and episodes in the show is very confusing and give me almost a lot of questions. But I do like the character designs in the show. My favorite hero is Luka who is a leader with and cute cuddly character personality and my favorite villain Envie Fernadez which she has a pretty hot design, name and voice and so is her personality. Reminds me of Sly Cooper but I have not played the game yet. But for the red fox also OC Kervin (Kindom Force) It’s still at work.

APB Reloaded X Zootopia: Anyone Can Be All You Can’t Be: - In Zootopia “Anyone Can Be Anything” But in San Paro “Be All You Can’t Be” Zootopia is a place where vicious predators and meek prey live in harmony. This means that people in Zootopia live together without the prey getting eaten by predators and predators not getting feared by the prey. They almost eat like us, they sleep like us, they speak like us, they walk like us, they run like us, they bathe like us (well almost), and most importantly they use technology like us. While San Paro maybe has a good look to sightsee but this city has a lot of crime. Robberies, bombings, thefts, drug dealing, murders and causalities, vandalism, and much more that we can think of. But that does not mean there is no justice in this world. When the Criminals like the Blood Roses and the G-Kings try to take over San Paro? The Enforcers Prentiss Tigers and Praetorians from come and save the day. What would happen when a human Enforcer meets a police fox and a police bunny? And how did it happen? Only one way to find out.

Now this one is also a Kervinverse crossover story. It focuses on Kervin (APB Reloaded) meeting Judy and Nick. I am trying to find a way on how will they meet each other. But the only thing ideas I know is that it can be a delivery gone wrong, an invention gone haywire or maybe a criminal stole something magical that is transported to a different universe. But I have a lot of strange things in the game like the Christmas events and Halloween events. I like to see any volunteers who play APB Reloaded. And for those Zootopia fans who have not played APB Reloaded you check it here. https://store.steampowered.com/app/113400/APB_Reloaded/

Well, that is it for the Kervinverse stories. Now it’s time for the other stories that I also planned in the future.

OTHER FANFICS:

Alza Flare (Road Rovers Fan Spinoff)- Alza is a black cat born in the place in New York City, USA. He was born inside a pet shop without cat parents since he was born. His parents' status is unknown. Although he did make friends with other cats and non-cats in the shop. But it was a short while until a human customer named Drayson Flare and adopted him as Alza Flare. Alza has been Drayson's pet for 3 years and they instantly became best friends but when during the time when they are about to go home from the park. A terrible accident happened.

A long time ago I watched Road Rovers on my phone just to try something nostalgic and the show is pretty good though although there are some parts that don’t use their powers all the time. One part that caught my eye is how brutal car accident in the episode “Dawn of The Groomer” which gave me an idea of my new anti-villain OC character named Alza Flare. Sadly, he does have an image of him yet. But I will tell you that I will give you an interesting revenge story for him.

The Best Surfer In The World (Surf’s Up Spinoff. Maybe a working a title and synopsis change) - After the events of Surf's Up and Surf's Up 2: Wavemania. There was once a wolf who lives in the place of Chicago Illinois. He quit his own career due to being a rejected member of Hang 5 for being too unstable and after beating J.C. in a tournament years ago and after his early retirement, he spends his normal life as an ice cream man in his own ice-cream motorcycle with one of his own freshest ingredients and swears to himself that he would never in the waters again. Until he met a young Toyger.

Surf’s Up is my first favorite mockumentaries since I was young. It’s like you are watching animals andromorphic animals absolutely existed in the world we live in. It had an interesting story and writing so are the interesting characters. But when I watched Surf’s Up Wavemania. Well, I honestly love the WWE Superstars and Diva came into the movie but the story did not actually surprise me a lot. Even if the movie has a lot of beautiful locations it still did not surprise me enough because it is more like an adventure than a tournament. That is why I am planning to start my fanfiction in a new different approach with a real story and a real rivalry. Starting with wolf inspired and based on CM Punk during the part when he won the WWE belt against Cena in Money in the Bank when I watched it since intermediate school with a little rename change so it won’t be obvious. And of course, my Toyger OC because he would be trained by his own surfing master. Also, I added a Slam City easter egg

Fire Pro Wrestling World Origins: Story of 2 Angels – There is no synopsis of them yet. But I will tell you they are brother and sister with the last name “Angel” The brother who is a pop artist while the sister who joined a motorcycle club. What they both have in common is they both can fight. Their stories about my 2 new Fire Pro OCs will be coming soon. But they are not part of the fighting roads.

Well, that is all for all the future stories with some summaries that I really want to share coming soon. Thanks for following including Wattpad

For those who are new here follow me on both Tumblr and Wattpad with the orange word link

Feel free to donate to me in PayPal

Also making fanfic is really long to make just like making an announcement. So again. I only post all chapters in 1 book.

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lifewithchronicpain · 4 years ago

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When I was 18 years old I got my first gaming console ever. Before than I played games at my friends house or when I was younger, NES and SNES at my adult cousin’s house. My mom was against video games. She said because we wouldn’t do our homework but I think they just couldn’t afford it. When my younger sister, by 12 years, was born she had not only a ps2 but hand consoles too by the time she was 7. I actually have a GBA that was found and I bought a cartridge with 100s of old school nes and sega games. Finally have them after all. C:

Anyway, when I got my first console, a ps2, I had to convince my mom and then they acted like they couldn’t afford it so when I got it was a real surprise. Then by a random coincidence my aunt bought the very game I wanted to play, FF9. The first video game I ever owned and completed. I had sampled it at a friends house and desperately wanted to play it all. My aunt had no idea.

Now, I am an uncoordinated mess due to autism so games like Mario and sonic, I could only get so far before the skill required was too much. But a turned base strategy game? Suddenly it wasn’t how fast you could press a sequence it was making the right decisions based on the monster and other factors. I could do that. I then started playing other FF games and I’ve only ever played FF10 to the end. I’ve played 7 close to the end but a big mess up made me not finished then I watched someone else beat it and learned the ending. I’ve dabbled with 8, 12, and the DS version of 3 but never beat because they were too different from 9’s system and I adapted to that far better.

Then I got into cosplay and I joined a group for a couple of years. It was mostly based in NJ, and I traveled back and forth by bus from Boston to NJ so many times to visit my friends. Whom I met because they did a Central Park fullmetal alechmist cosplay picnic and I decided to go not knowing anyone. But it was the best decision I ever made, I made a dozen friends that stayed with me for many years.

So they decided they wanted to do a huge Kingdom Hearts cosplay for AnimeNext (I can’t recall the year) complete with organization 13 and even a Mickey. (No Donald or goofy though, our Mickey was talented enough to make a full mask) I was originally given vexen out of what was left plus I never played the game. Then the person doing namine wanted to switch, and something drew me to her so I claimed that character and someone who really wanted to do vexen claimed him.

This meant of course now I had to play the game. Setup was a lot like final fantasy for obvious reasons but the fighting was not turned based. You need a little coordination. Luckily with a help from a friend teaching me at first, I realized button smashing and magic shortcuts were all you needed to get the job done. Then it became so much fun and I have gotten to add KH and KH 2 to my small completed games pile. (The only other game I ever beat was Ico)

The cosplay group was such a hit. I mean we had to have at least 25 people and it was a highly recognized cosplay. I think the only other cosplay I had as much fun is was when me and my friend did a white mushroom and rare truffle with see through black fabric for faces. Good times. Oh and I’ve also cosplayed Zidane from FF9 with a friend as dagger, another favorite cosplay that came out very well.

Anyway, KH3 came out last year and I took I crack at it. No problems, lots of fun until the fucking pirates world. There’s a mini game where you have to man the pirate ship and fight of other ships. The way you control it is entirely disorienting to me and I couldn’t get past a mandatory challenge with this battle system. Stopped playing and now I forgot what happened.

Since it’s December again that part of me that got to enjoy my first console during the 12 days of Christmas just gets an urge to play either ff9 or one of the KH’s. Since I replayed ff9 not too long ago when I bought them ps4 version, it obviously was going to be KH, so why not restart 3 and try again.

When I get to the pirate level I’m hoping a fresh approach might make the difference. If not I may have to beg the younger sis for her help to get past it. She beat the game in like a week. Her gaming coordination is on point but she got to hone it in from a young age.

Anyway this got longer than expected but it took me down memory lane. Hopefully I will be able to KH3 this time.

#video games #gaming #spoonies #spoonie problems #disability

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creativetrashcans · 5 years ago

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Simmer - Get To Know

By @cupcakegnome

Tagged: @ talemagne

CHIWAWA

Your name: Lonely Chiwawa (she/her)

Languages you speak: Catalan, Spanish and kinda English

Are you a mermaid: No not really... can barely swim tbh

Your play style: mmmh i like most things, creating sims, builidng is so much fun too, also challenges mmh stories no tho i cant write em LOL rip

Your Selfsim picture:

Stories or gameplay, builds, lookbooks, edits or cc: Challenges, builds and some other things coming heh

Your favorite age state: Teen or young adult

Your favorite season: Winter!!! i feel it has a lot to do and the snow is soooo pretty

Your favorite holiday: Only played harvest fest so far... in sims BUT irl i like Christmas

How was your day: It was chill and nice, even went outside wew

Your favorite career: Painter...........................maybe?

Your favorite aspiration: Soulmate

Your favorite EP, SP or GP: Seasons

How old is your simblr: Less than a year i think

Have you woohooed: Yes, many times

Your favorite skill: Cooking, parenting and painting

The size of your Mods folder: 37,7 GB

Your 3 favorite mods: uhhhh hahaha impossible to choose

Your interests (other than sims): Drawing, make up and nails, mmh minecraft old anime and series too

Your favorite sim (picture if possible): Maybe not my favourite Sim of all time because we got so many! But this is our version of Franky form One Piece. Before starting any project just for fun we made him and I always felt so proud of how he turned out. Not only he looks very attractive, i also feel its a good representation of how a human him would look like.

Which Sims games you have played (including mobile games): Sims 2, 3 and 4

Propose a crazy scheme: People being nice always and world being in peace and not dying in gud old climate change

Best part of simblr: seeing how other people enjoy the sims and how they play also them aesthetic

Worst part of simblr: mmhhhhhhhh lack of comunication between players i don’t feel much sense of community here at least now... i actually suck at comunicating so..... dunno

What other games you play: Minecarft recently but not much into games actually

Other websites or accounts (origin, twitter etc..):

Twitter --> https://twitter.com/creativetrashc1

Intagram --> https://www.instagram.com/creativetrashcans/

Personal Instagram --> https://www.instagram.com/elia_clco/

My side tumblr --> https://generationtrashcan.tumblr.com/

Are you single: Nuuuupe

WORM

Your name: Lively Worm (she/her)

Languages you speak: Catalan, Spanish and some English.

Are you a mermaid: Nope, I’m a worm.

Your play style: I love building houses and decorating them, dressing sims and doing their makeup.

Your Selfsim picture:

Stories or gameplay, builds, lookbooks, edits or cc: I do gameplays, challenges and buildings.

Your favorite age state: I think it’s young adult because I can explore more.

Your favorite season: Autumn, because of the beautiful colors.

Your favorite holiday: I don’t know yet, I haven’t explored all of them.

How was your day: It’s 15:40h and I’m hungry, I want to eat soon.

Your favorite career: Musician.

Your favorite aspiration: Musical genius, unsurprisingly.

Your favorite EP, SP or GP: Pets and vampires.

How old is your simblr: Less than a year.

Have you woohooed: ¬_¬

Your favorite skill: I don’t know, maybe the singing skill?

The size of your Mods folder: 29,9 GB.

Your 3 favorite mods: I can’t choose. There are so many so good!

Your interests (other than sims): Singing, drawing, anime, manga and kpop.

Your favorite sim (picture if possible): Why?? I can’t choooooseeee, I love most of them! Okey, after a lot of thought I’ve chosen Una, Usopp’s daughter from our 100 Baby Challenge, because the three of us love her and I love drawing her!! She’s really charming and she’s grown up really well. I relate to her because she also loves drawing and vampires.

We posted some drawings of her on twitter and insta!

Which Sims games you have played (including mobile games): Sims 2, 3 and 4. And some PS game I don’t remember.

Propose a crazy scheme: Making people learn expectatives are bad and judging others hurts everyone involved.

Best part of simblr: I can share our art and tell many stories with interesting sims.

Worst part of simblr: The lack of comunication.

What other games you play: Kingdom Hearts, Hollow Knight, The Last of Us... mostly play station games.

Other websites or accounts (origin, twitter etc..):

Common Twitter: https://twitter.com/creativetrashc1

Common Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creativetrashcans/

Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makaru_walker/

Are you single: No, I’m Turtle’s.

TURTLE

Your name: Lazy Turtle (she/her)

Languages you speak: Catalan, Spanish, English and some basic French.

Are you a mermaid: Pretty sure I’m not.

Your play style: Starting projects and never getting past the building process is a playstyle? I usually like to have some objective though, instead of just playing aimlessly.

Your Selfsim picture:

Stories or gameplay, builds, lookbooks, edits or cc: I find stories pretty awkward to portray on Sims, and fashion and decoration were never my strong point. So I stick to challenges, both found and created.

Your favorite age state: Depends on what for. Young adults are the easiest to manage and have more options, but toddlers are the most challenging on a Baby Challenge.

Your favorite season: Autumn, always. Its colors are just beautiful.

Your favorite holiday: Haven’t played them all yet, so I can’t say.

How was your day: (Tumblr erased all my hard work on this thing, but the day I first wrote it I had my blood taken so not great). Today, I discovered the extent of human stupidity in mass hysteria situations. Never seen a supermarket so empty of food before.

Your favorite career: Hypotetically, writer. But I haven’t played as one yet so I can’t confirm.

Your favorite aspiration: Big Happy Family’s been pretty fun for our matriarch, but I still have many more to explore. (I can say it’s not the kid’s mobility one. Stupid mecanography.)

Your favorite EP, SP or GP: Probably Seasons so far.

How old is your simblr: Less than a year.

Have you woohooed: Uh.

Your favorite skill: Uhhh... No idea.

The size of your Mods folder: 29,9 GB. Worm and I share a game and a mods folder, but Chiwawa dumps her messily organized mods on us from time to time.

Your 3 favorite mods: Wow nope.

Your interests (other than sims): Mostly writing and reading (I’m the main writer of this tumblr, btw), but also videogames, anime and k-pop.

Your favorite sim (picture if possible): I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite sim of all time, I have far too many sims I love for different reasons, but this one was specially hard to get right so we feel particularly proud.

His name is Carles Serra, and he’s a parental figure for two of the MCs of the story we’re working on. He’s a math and ethics teacher on a very exclusive highschool, and he needed to have both a very refined and snobbish air and this inevitable awkwardness all math teachers seem to have. Plus, he has to deal with teenage drama all through the story, so I feel like he needs a lot of love. And maybe some vacation.

Which Sims games you have played (including mobile games): Sims 2, 3 and 4. And I think I once tried to make a sim on a terrible PS2 version or something.

Propose a crazy scheme: Mandatory therapy for teens so everyone learns empathy and management of one’s emotions would be pretty neat.

Best part of simblr: Sharing our common passion with others in a free and creative way, probably.

Worst part of simblr: The lack of interaction, I guess. I had only ever been in a very small fandom here on tumblr before, and compared to the closeness of that comunity, I feel like simblr is... very scattered.

What other games you play: Play Station ones, mostly. Whatever gives me a compelling story.

Other websites or accounts (origin, twitter etc..):

Common Twitter: https://twitter.com/creativetrashc1

Common Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creativetrashcans/

Personal Twitter: https://twitter.com/ALazyTurtle1

Are you single: I’ve been dating Worm for years now.

We will tag: @hellobreadsims

#sims #sims 4 #new simblr #franky #op franky #one piece #one piece franky #oc #original character #100 baby challenge #selfsim #sims tag #get to know tag

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eggoreviews · 5 years ago

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My Top 25 Games Advent Day 4 - Kingdom Hearts II (#22)

“We can always buy some sea salt ice cream.”

I have a very odd relationship with Kingdom Hearts, and honestly, I sometimes can’t decipher whether it’s mostly love or hate I feel for this game. But above all else, this overtly ridiculous crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy captured my heart and mind when I was young and I became so obsessed, I actually managed to progress further in the game at age 7 than I did this year before I got stuck. Kingdom Hearts is my strange and confusing paramour and I still don’t really know why it exists or, even 14 years later, what the hell it is.

Kingdom Hearts II, which is of course the third entry in the series, came out for the PS2 in 2005 and was actually gifted to my mother first, before she gave it to me when she realised the Disney characters on the front weren’t a brilliant representation of the game’s contents. And so putting the disc in for the first time in 2005 and revisiting it on the PS4 this year had the exact same effect on me; I knew immediately I wasn’t in this for the story. Kingdom Hearts as a whole is notorious for having a bumfuck crazy story with ungodly amounts of branching plot threads that were more than enough to make my tiny 7 year old brain shut down, as well as my tiny now brain. And it wasn’t the fact that I entered the series at the wrong point, it just be like that. You follow Sora, and occasionally Roxas, along with everyone’s favourite least favourite companions Donald and Goofy as you travel to Disney world upon Disney world fighting off creatures called heartless and nobodies for a reason, presumably.

Taking a step back for a minute, I realise how vaguely and snarky I am referring to this game, so why do I love it enough for it to make spot 22? It’s not just blind childhood nostalgia (though I suspect that plays a part). Kingdom Hearts II is just a blast to play, from the engaging and varied combat mechanics that encourage experimentation with spells, abilities, limits, summons and transformations to make every fight constantly insane, to the fun little skateboarding sections at the beginning of the game. Focusing on the combat for a sec, which I view as the central portion of the game, it really isn’t child’s play. If you jump into a boss fight or even a particularly gruelling set of regular enemies unprepared, then accept the fact that you are about to have your arse personally handed to you by a Disney villain. This is especially true for the later stages of the game, as you start to take on members of the central villainous group of the series, Organization 13 (which of course has 14 members) where they really just pull out all the stops to make your life misery if you don’t master your style of play. But that really is the beauty of Kingdom Hearts; it encourages you to create your own playstyle based on the arsenal of weapon types, spells and abilities the game locks and loads you with, making each quick access selection you make for each menu be the crucial difference between life and death.

So other than the blisteringly difficult combat, the main draw to Kingdom Hearts is the fact you get to visit various different Disney worlds and beat things up on them. I'll be honest, each of the worlds in this game very wildly in quality. Unlike most others, I adore the opening to this game and how gentle and mysterious Twilight Town is as a starting area, which sets up some intriguing plot threads for later in the game. Hollow Bastion, the gathering place of the strange selection of Final Fantasy characters, is unique and atmospheric, as well as later in the game playing host to one of the coolest, well-crafted horde battles I've seen in a game (apart from the Goofy death fake-out, that was just weird). There's even a Winnie the Pooh section filled entirely with fun minigames and if there's anything that's going to make me regress into childhood, it's that. Some of the worlds, most notably A Nightmare Before Christmas, Pirates of the Caribbean and Tron actually alter the designs of Sora, Donald and Goofy so their costumes fit much better in the aesthetic; I think that was a brilliant idea and was well executed. My favourite of these though, as well as my favourite world in Kingdom Hearts overall, is the Timeless River world based off the first '30s cartoons of Mickey Mouse, which regress Donald and Goofy back to their original designs and gives Sora his own monochrome old style appearance! It's adorable and is just bursting with that Disney style and creativity I'm really sad they seemed to have lost overtime (but that's for a different post). To perfectly compliment these worlds and the game overall, the soundtrack is amazing (which I often hold as one of my main conditions of putting something in this list); sometimes they went for a basic instrumental of a song corresponding to that film, but for others like Twilight Town and Hollow Bastion, the original scores created for those are jaw-dropping, with the same applying to each and every battle theme they composed. It doesn't seem obvious until you say it out loud that a combination between Disney and Final Fantasy is of course going to yield some awesome music and I really can't get enough of it.

Oh yeah and then they decided to ruin it all with the Little Mermaid game, in which they threw away everything the game had implemented up to that point to make you play a babyish, unresponsive rhythm game so Sora and the gang can take a break from vanquishing evil to appear in a musical. And the best part is you can't get this monstrosity out of the way in one sitting! Nope, you have to continually come back and complete sections of this hell periodically just so the game can make sure you're not having too much fun.

Basically, other than that mild (monumental) hiccup at the end there, Kingdom Hearts II excels at what it's trying to do and be, whatever that is. It somehow succeeds in pulling off the tenuous connection between world-famous, family friendly Disney and edgy, batshit Final Fantasy. It's wild and it's funny when it isn't quite meant to be (see the moment when Tron just fucking yeets himself into a pit for no apparent reason at the end of his section, because I lose it every single time at that, especially since the game is playing it off as something really sad). But most of all, it's a reflection of pure insane creativity and corporate synergy all welded into a series literally no one can ever truly comprehend. And they actually hired on the late, great Christopher Lee to say the line "We can always buy some sea salt ice cream". So here it stands, as my 22nd favourite game of all time.

Standout Moment Award: The Nightmare Before Christmas, purely down to visuals and soundtrack alone. If not that, then anything involving Twilight Town because that's one of my absolute favourite settings in a video game.

Standout Character Award: Axel. Axel is just a chill dude, not quite hero and not quite villain, who’s a welcome presence throughout the Kingdom Hearts series. Not so edgy he’s completely unlikable, but enough edge and humour to make 12 year old me happy.

Tomorrow: No. 21; Intense family drama: Zombie Edition

#eggoreviews #gaming #best games advent #kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 2 #kh #kh sora

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oveliagirlhaditright · 5 years ago

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So... I’m a few days late for this, and I apologize. I was busy making birthday presents for the best friend and lost track of time.

And if people can’t use this because it’s late, they of course don’t have to. But...

This is what KH means to me... My thank you to the KH team...

I would have loved to write something for them, but I don’t know if they’d be big on getting fanfiction for their own work. I also could have done a digital manipulation or gmv for them... But IDK. Maybe them getting their own work back to them in a fan-edited way wouldn’t seem good at all? Because you didn’t do most of the work there. They did. You just edited it. And maybe you even edited in a way they wouldn’t approve of, and they see your work as copyright infringement?

So that leaves drawing, but I’m not the best drawer yet...

So screw it. I’m just going to write an essay about what this series has meant to me, the last seventeen years.

(Warning. This will be long. And probably emotional.)

Where do I even begin... I discovered this series when I was nine-years-old, right after the first game had come out. And seeing the advertisements for it on Disney channel made me want to have it so very badly.

I actually didn’t have a PS2 at the time... And while my sister and I did want other games alongside KH, yes, it was mainly for KH that we wanted a Playstation 2... So we begged our parents for one for Christmas, and they were gracious enough to get us one and quite a few games... and, of course, Kingdom Hearts with them.

We actually didn’t start with that one, though (even though I wanted to). My sister wanted to somewhat save the best for last, I guess... And when we did finally end up playing it, I had actually caught a bit of a cold (and it was only the promise that we’d finally play Kingdom Hearts, that day that got me to game. Even though I had been every day before, and had enjoyed all the other games--don’t get me wrong--but I was feeling that crappy, and it took the incentive of Kingdom Hearts to get me to agree).

And to say that I fell in love with it from the get-go would be an understatement. The opening cinematic pulled me in, it’s true (and already, I could tell this was different from the other games based on movies that I’d played), but it was mainly the Dive to the Heart section that really captured me (and made me forget my illness). That atmosphere still gives me chills and wonder, and calls me back to give it a go again years and years later. And I’m glad something like it has been included in games since, like in KHII, KHIII, Re:Coded, and what have you.

I was nine... So I stumbled my way through a lot of this game--and I mean stumbled--I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. In the fights, a lot of the ways I’d let Donald and Goofy do all of the work... and it took me a whole month to find Maleficent in Hollow Bastion. But I did end up beating the game, and understanding all of it.

I also ended up getting deep thoughts about it--as it is a mystery series that leaves you thinking--and I know I used to annoy people by talking about it. Haha. But this series got me thinking in a way that nothing else had... And that I honestly don’t know if most other kids my age could have... at least without something like this in their lives.

At this point, the series owned my soul. It touched me more than any other piece of media ever had, and ever will--and I’d had plenty pieces of media I really liked back then, such as Sailor Moon and yet they didn’t even come close. And while I’d shipped other couples before, such as Usagi and Mamoru from Sailor Moon, Sora and Kairi was the first one where I really felt like “These two have to be together”--and my life became about waiting for the next game (it still very much is, as sad as that might be to say).

I remember I would go to the store, and often times ask people who worked in the game section if they knew anything about a Kingdom Hearts II (this was before I had the Internet), and I recall being really sad one time when one of the workers told me maybe there never would be. LOL And to be clear, this was the time even before Chain of Memories.

Eventually, I saw Chain of Memories advertised on Cartoon Network and then begged my parents for a Game Boy Advance, so I could play this sequel. And for the Christmas that year, they complied as well (gosh, I have the best parents in the world). But I was saddened when I realized I couldn’t really play it with my sister (and her best friend) who I’d played the first game with. So my sister just told me to play it, and then tell her everything that happened. Which I did... With notes, and everything. Oh, yeah. I kept notes on KHI, CoM, and KHII, I think. I was that level of crazy (in a good way!).

Around this time, I was also subscribed to Disney magazines... And when I eventually got one that had Kingdom Hearts II in it: the one that revealed Sora’s new outfit as Beast’s Castle as a world--the first I’d ever heard of it, and the first I realized that Chain of Memories wasn’t the “true sequel” (as much as I did like Chain of Memories, I was glad to hear this. And even moreso that it was coming back to consoles, so I could experience it with my sister and her best friend again), I legitimately screamed so loud, you don’t even know. It’s a good thing I was home alone that day... And screaming about anything Kingdom Hearts related has pretty much become a trend of mine. Oops.

...So then I ended up pre-ordering Kingdom Hearts II from GameStop, with all of the cool things that came with that (like the special edition strategy guide that had four different covers, based on Sora’s Drive Forms. I have the Valor/Brave Form one), and I asked my mom to pick it up for me while I was at school so I could come home the day it came out and immediately start playing it. It came out near the beginning of that year’s spring break, and I beat the whole game in that time... You couldn’t have pulled me away from my Playstation 2 that break if you had tried.

I also know that I tried out for my school’s show choir the time that Kingdom Hearts II had just come out... Something I really should have cared about, but I didn’t as much as I could’ve... And while my mom had gotten busy talking to someone, waiting for me to come back from my audition, when I got back and she was still talking to them... I sort of wanted her to hurry along, so I could get back to my game... Something I think my mom even admitted to that person (but in as nice a way as possible)... Oh my gosh.

I also know that one day, I was thinking about KHII in class--I’d left off on the half-way mark of the game, with the 1000 Heartless battle and all that--so it was heavy on my mind... Our teacher was asking us about our weekends, and someone else in class started talking about how they started playing Kingdom Hearts II, and I gasped loudly--to which everyone stared--and I said that I had the game, too, and loved it... My teacher then said that was the most emotion they’d ever gotten out of me.

Ahahahahaha. I have many other embarrassing stories that I could admit with this series--particularly with KHII, and I have on past accounts--but you know what? I’m going to save myself some humiliation and keep them to myself.

But KH... It means the world to me. How can it not? It’s been a constant joy in my life for so many years: That’s been with me through just a little before my double-digit years, all of my teens, and into my adulthood.

I’ve made many friends through this series, too, either by convincing my friends to give it a try or making friends with people I know love the saga.

It’s a constant light for me, and always has been, that reminds me of my childhood (for so many reasons. The Disney for sure being one of them) and simpler times: And that there always is a light at the end of the tunnel...

In fact, the KH characters even feel like friends I’ve had for a long time--that I can always count on--and who I’m always happy to see.

And even now, that feeling hasn’t faded away (it probably never will). Since the way I reacted to KHIII, is pretty much the way I did KHII: Even fourteen years later, and as an adult now.

Kingdom Hearts even introduced me to all the things I love. I found YouTube--after I finally got Internet--when a friend told me I could watch the Kingdom Hearts II secret ending there, as I hadn’t unlocked it myself (and since I had doubts in myself as a gamer back then, I wasn’t sure that I could. Even though I had unlocked the one for the first game. And did eventually do so for the second game... and all of them, except for KHIIFM so far). And YouTube, amvs (a lot of them for KH) is how I found my love for video editing.

And moreover, I’m a writer. And it was in Googling stuff about Sora and Kairi that I eventually discovered fanfiction (that I actually, stupidly, thought was official stuff by the actual writers at first, because I found fanfiction on sites that weren’t called that), and through that started it myself and honed my writing skills. My writing style is probably even inspired by KH, in a lot of ways--like how I handle mystery and when I deliver information to the reader, and all.

KH also did simpler things, like getting me into other Square Enix games (Final Fantasy, The World Ends With You, Bravely Default), and gaming in general.

I wouldn’t be the person I am today without Kingdom Hearts, and that’s just the facts.

I’ve even bonded over it with my dad. My dad doesn’t know the series at all, God bless him, but he’s always willing to talk to me about it and ask me questions since he knows I love it so much. He always asks me when the next game’s coming out. Or if he knows one’s coming out, he’s aware of how happy that must have made me... Or if I’m playing it around him, and he hears a long song begin to play, he knows I must have beaten it. He also went to the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra with me:D

My mom also knows the series through me. A bit more than my dad, since she used to come up and watch us play it some (my dad also did a few times). But I felt it’s more fitting to mention my dad here, since he actually knows it less... And still admirably does this stuff, and is still this in the know about how much it means to me.

...I’ve admitted this before (like in an official survey to Square Enix)--even though I don’t like to, for obvious and personal reasons (and this is for sure something my parents don’t know and never should)--that in really rare, dark times of mine... Kingdom Hearts has saved me from suicide: Those times that I struggle with depression, and felt like I really had nothing else to live for... And yet wanting to be alive to finally see the end of Sora's story, drove me to give life another chance.

And I don’t really think I can say much more than that, or go deeper, to express just what this franchise is to me.

So Kingdom Hearts team... from the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything.

#thank you kh team

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generatedreflection · 6 years ago

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I've wanted to write something like this for some time--I love hearing other people's stories and sharing my own, but I've never felt like there was an appropriate occasion for going in depth about my experience with KH. I’m not sure anyone would want to read this, but I still want to give this pre-KH3 era some kind of sendoff, so here it is.

Here's what KH means to me.

As a kid

13 years ago, my best friend moved away.

I went to the same tiny, religious school from kindergarten until I graduated high school, but I didn't make my first real friend until 5th grade, which was the first time I was able to really share the things I loved with someone else. When I discovered Final Fantasy, she didn't really get it, but she supported me every step of the way. I didn't quite appreciate how special that was until the summer after 8th grade, when she moved to another state. And as 9th grade began, I realized all my school friends were gone, and I needed to keep my interests to myself again.

At church, I never had any friends to begin with, so I was surprised to find myself talking with my seatmate on the bus to our fall retreat that year. And somehow, the topic turned to my dark secret: those weird Japanese video games. And it turned out she played them, too.

"What do you play?" she asked me.

"Um...Final Fantasy," I said.

"Oh, I've heard of those! I've never played them, though. I just know them from Kingdom Hearts."

I had heard that Squall, my favorite character of all time back in 2005, was in some weird crossover with Disney characters. My only feelings about it had been a brief curiosity about what his voice would sound like and whether he played a major role, so I decided to ask her about it.

In response, I got the entirety of KH1 and CoM. I had literally no context for any of what she was describing--possession? A giant castle? Memories being rewritten?? This is a Disney game why is the plot so complicated???

But the upshot was that she decided showing would be better than telling, and she invited me over to play once we got back. And I enjoyed it. Unfortunately, we never got that close, as I soon started going to another church, but my curiosity had been piqued.

That Christmas, my parents got for me the last thing I ever expected to receive--a PS2. My parents hated video games and had spent much of my childhood being warned about them: “Don’t become a junkie like your brother.” I got two games that day, too: Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts. And that was just the beginning.

I blasted through the game over winter break, but before long, I was back in school where I had no friends in my class. There was one girl in the grade above me who was sort of a friend of friends from church, and one day, she invited me to sit with her and her crew. And as we were talking, I heard next to me:

"No, no, you gotta guard the ice shards back at him..."

And I was like, "This sounds familiar???" And after eavesdropping a little more, I finally got up the courage to ask the two guys: "Are you talking about the Ice Titan?"

I was a little afraid they'd tell me to buzz off, but their eyes lit up, and that day, I suddenly had two new friends. One of them even loaned me his copy of CoM so I could play it before KH2. I never finished it because a little kid ""borrowed"" it without asking and saved over my file, but I’ve finally forgiven him for that. I think.

When KH2 came out, I started getting involved in online communities. And in real life, I was able to introduce gaming and KH to one of my non-school friends. We would get together and play and write absolutely awful crack fanfiction that we would never post in a million years, and for the first time in my life, I had friends in my life who not only didn't judge me, but loved the same things I did as much as I did.

For the first time, I was introduced to the possibility that I didn't have to be someone else to keep from being alone.

Riku

Yes, Riku gets his own section, haha.

I'm a little sad to admit this, but I actually didn't fall in love with KH right away. I was 14--old enough to feel like I should have outgrown Disney and not yet old enough to realize I didn't need to. I was here for the FF characters and not much else.

To my young and cynical mind, the story was very predictable. You have a hero, an ordinary kid who is "chosen" for whatever reason, fighting a bunch of bad guys, and you have his damsel in distress. Good vs. evil. Light vs. darkness. Black and white, cut and dry, come on that's kid stuff.

On the other hand, Riku was an archetype I was at least not as familiar with--the friend/rival turned antagonist--which automatically made him marginally more interesting to me.

There was, however, a pattern I was familiar with: the genius versus the underdog. The one who could do anything without even trying, and the one who had to fight with everything they had just to keep up. And generally, the latter is the one the audience is expected to identify with and root for, often to finally take down the former.

But I WAS the former. I was top or near the top of my class every year, and even outside of class I tended to pick up many skills easily. To me, the standard to shoot for was 100%, and because I so often managed to hit that mark, I never had the opportunity to learn that it was okay to fail. Instead, I internalized the idea that I was one of the lucky ones, and the responsibility for ensuring my life was smooth sailing fell solely on my shoulders.

If you don't struggle in school, I believed, nobody wants to hear your story. If you don't have anything that's difficult, then you need to focus on not being arrogant about your gifts--even hiding them so that you don't make anyone feel less than you. Clearly, you're strong enough on your own, so you just need to sit down, shut up, and let people help the ones who actually need it. And if you're lonely and unhappy, that's probably your own fault.

Which was why Riku's story absolutely floored me. In the original KH, I wasn't surprised to see Riku become an antagonist, but I was surprised that his motive wasn't just "I'm better than you and I deserve everything," but that a crucial part of his rift with Sora was a feeling of abandonment. And then in Chain of Memories, we were asked to root for him as he fought against the mistakes he himself had made--and then learned that it was okay even when he didn't get it perfect. For him, the solution wasn’t just to realize that Sora, being a kind person who failed at the right things, was better--in fact, as revealed in KH2, that was part of the problem.

I knew loneliness. I knew abandonment. I knew what it felt like to want to be something else, and you just...couldn't.

Being raised in a hyper-religious environment, taught that moral perfection was the ideal, I thought that accepting your darkness was heresy. I remember watching that scene between Riku and Namine for the first time and thinking "Well, I know that's not how it REALLY works..." And yet the idea that Riku was allowed to exist as he was, that people still loved him before he felt worthy to face them, struck a very deep chord within me, and many years later helped me to understand what accepting your flawed self would look like.

The very first analysis/meta I ever wrote for a character was Riku, in my journal, almost exactly 13 years ago. It was mainly just me trying to make sense of why I liked him SO much, but it helped me discover how to think about why I like what I do--and storytelling analysis is one of my favorite hobbies now.

As an adult

After KH2 came out, I wasn't able to play the next several games in the series. I wasn't ready to buy a handheld system just for one game, and I was afraid the series overall was moving away from Sora, Riku, and Kairi after the popularity of the Organization and all the new prequel stuff. I started college and chose not to bring my PS2 with me in a bid to satisfy my parents that I wouldn't slack off, and eventually I drifted away. And then in early 2013, I discovered that Dream Drop existed.

The idea that there was an entire game out there that had a full story for Riku that I didn't know about had me floored, and I watched all the cutscenes in one go. I had no idea what the sweet creamy hell was going on, but there was one idea that I latched on to.

They let Riku get better.

For some reason, I sort of believed that Riku would always struggle with the darkness in some fashion, as he had throughout the series to that point. After all, that was who he was. That struggle defined him as a character, so he couldn't exist apart from it. Right?

But the boy I watched in that game, and especially at the end, was someone I'd never met. I felt like I was getting to see glimpses of another side of Riku, one that had always been there buried underneath the ~darkness~. I was seeing him use everything he'd gone through for good. And they had my attention again.

The announcement of KH3 came soon after, but it was a long time before we started getting any substantial news. During that time, I was kicked out of my church, burned out in grad school, became fairly depressed, moved to Japan for two years, and then moved back home with even worse depression. While I was living with my parents trying to make my brain functional again, I found myself playing a lot of KH, as my PS2 was nearing death, I only had a few games for the PS3, and games were the most reliable way of shutting up my brain.

On a whim, I applied for a job that would require me to relocate to New York. Surprisingly, I managed to get the position, and I got there right before NYCC, where I saw the demo for 2.8.

"Oh, well," I thought. "I don't know if I'll get a PS4 anyway, so I'll just try out the demo."

While I was in line, I started talking to someone who also hadn't played any of the games since KH2, and that little connection was...more meaningful than I had expected. The demo afterward knocked my socks off, I ended up getting a PS4, and I was all aboard the hype train (and I created this blog).

In early 2017, I discovered that one of my coworkers was also a huge KH fan, and we decided to go to the orchestra concert together. Not too long after, things started deteriorating where I lived--I basically couldn't live at home. I was sort of couch-surfing for a while, until the same friend who invited me to the concert let me stay at her house for nearly a month around the time of the orchestra as I figured out how to get out. I literally have no idea what I would have done without her. This was also right around the time that the marketing finally started in earnest, and it's not an exaggeration to say that the anticipation helped me through a lot.

God, this post is already too long, and I feel like I haven't covered all of it--like how Hikari was the song that made me want to learn Japanese and set me on the career path I have now, or how KH helped me stop hating myself for liking video games and taught me I don’t have to “grow out of” things I like, but...I love this series, how it's affected both me as an individual and how it seems to bring me together with others. It's a beautiful thing.

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect anyone to read all of this, but if you've somehow read all the way to the end of this, thank you. See you on the other side.

#kingdom hearts #kh #long post #personal ramblings #thankyoukingdomhearts

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heroic-endeavors · 3 years ago

Note

🧧

A Random Fact.

My very first game system was a Super Nintendo. Though it was more of a family game system. So the first system that wasn't a shared one was a Sega Genesis. First handheld a Gameboy Color.

At some point I got my first PlayStation in which mom got used from a Garage Sale for pretty cheap. Even so I never had any issue with it. I still have that system packed away actually.

Around the same time I've already had my Nintendo 64. When I had the two systems I mostly played with the N64. At least up until I started playing Final Fantasy VII.

Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts were what motivated me to get a PlayStation 2. Which I got as a Christmas Gift with Final Fantasy X-2. Strangely I remember writing the list where I was asking for the Ps2. I was quite tired at the time. Normally I don't put anything expensive on wishlist when asked to give one. But I thought, why not?

A funny fact, one thing that motivated me to play was how much I simped for Sephiroth.

When the Ps2 was broken I bought a Ps3, it was the older model. I'd later replace the rom drive to give it more memory. Which ended up being a good thing because ones like that ended up dying at some point and mine lasted at least ten years.

For the Ps4, it was a birthday gift in which I got a month after Kingdom Hearts III came out. I had it pre-ordered so I ended up getting the game before the system.

I've had a PSP at some point. I remember I had a hard time finding Birth By Sleep for a while. The funny thing is that when I wanted to find it I couldn't. But when I can't afford to buy it was when I see it everywhere.

Later would get a Vita. The first one got lost and then I replaced it with another one later. Still have no idea what happened to the first one. I never had many games for it. It was mostly just Persona 4 Golden and Final Fantasy X which got lost with the first system.

For Nintendo systems I've had a hand me down GBA. Would later get an SP when I had a hard time playing Final Fantasy IV. Managed to buy a Gameboy DS by trading in a load of DVDs when GameStop still took them. A friend hyped Ace Attorney so I wanted to get it.

Would eventually get a 3DS then later a 2DS which sadly broke. The 3DS still works.

Had a Wii. Got a Switch Lite last year. Never had a GameCube though.

#about the mun #a bit of a long post

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colorelijahtheory · 6 years ago

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After game thoughts: Kingdom Hearts

Welp, I completed Kingdom Hearts 1 100% (except for 4 Gummi Ship missions because F**k them) This was written in a Discord chat, but nobody really responded to that apparently.

WARNING: Obvious first draft of long text incoming!

I think this one washed away my frustrations with Birth By Sleep. Because while the gameplay starts off kind of slow at first, it starts to pick up much better. Anything that was frustrating in KH1 mostly comes from the slowly teleporting enemies, and I mean there are a lot of enemies that do that, or the platforming.

The problems with platforming come from Square Enix experimenting with how to make a 3D real-time battle system, while also figuring out how to make the worlds. Unlike the later games where the worlds are mostly composed of big separate areas meant for bosses, and hordes of heartless, KH's worlds have this maze-like mentality where there's more than one way to enter a room, and even in Wonderland and Hollow Bastion there are a couple of secret rooms once you solve a puzzle or two.

I understand how that could be confusing to newer fans, or even fans who only played KH2 where the worlds are more streamlined or straightforward. But I do miss worlds like Traverse Town, where it feels more like a town with a bunch of other people from other places, and not just a bunch of areas.

The only way that that town could feel more alive and at home is if they have NPC sidequests and stories on par with something like Majora's Mask.

As for the Gummi Ship, I do get people's complaints about how the Gummi Ship starts slow at first, but once I started upgrading my ship, from its armor, to its weapons, to it's engines, to even a few gadgets and doohickeys, it's a bit more fun. Again, kind like upgrading your arsenal and abilities.

The Final Mix version adds in some missions for more parts and blueprints. Some of them are simple as getting a higher score or getting a high score while having a specific weapon. Some of them can go straight to hell like getting no score while not getting hit.

Speaking of Final Mix, the additions they made to this game is pretty impressive from new weapons, new enemies, new cutscenes, fixed glitches, and new bosses that mostly tie in to the next game. It just sucks that we common international people never got a chance to play this until it was released until the PS3 which even then I didn't think we'd get at the time. I played this on the HD remix collection on the PS4 and it still looks fantastic even if they didn't change much.

(I was hoping they would alter a lot of scenes where they have the low quality facial models for the HD remixes)

Despite that last parenthesis comment, the graphics still hold up for even to this day. Square Enix games have this tendency especially during the 64 bit era where they look good at the time, but will get dated about a year or so. But the graphics here, even though you can tell it was made during the PS2 era, is expressive, colorful, and cinematic. A lot of love and care went into making sure that the Disney characters and worlds look like their respective movies, even the original worlds have a lot of detail and imagination that Disney would do if they made an RPG.The choices they made for the Disney worlds, stand out on their own both in aesthetics and in structure, from Tarzan's Jungle, to the desert of Agrabah, to Halloween Town, and... okay a little confession to make.

The first KH I ever played was Chain of Memories for the GBA, because I didn't have a PS2 at the time. So I didn't know much about the first game, other than the trailers showing me which Disney movie is going to be represented, including the Nightmare Before Christmas, which I had vague memories of watching before playing CoM. So I thought that the Heartless originated from Nightmare Before Christmas. I mean can you blame me? The heartless are black creatures some of which with pointy antennae, and they mostly look Tim Burton-esque.

In fact, if Tim Burton himself designed some of the heartless, it wouldn't surprise me.

Notice I haven't even gotten to the story yet. I mean at this point before all the sequels, midquels, and prequels, the story is actually easy to understand, with a few hints of complexity and ridiculousness that Square Enix put in. Now the crossover element isn't fully there, but that's okay as long as the original characters are interesting, fortunately, they are.

As much as people mock Sora for being a young idiot, he's one of the few Square Enix leads that is an optimist. Which even before Square Enix tends to not have anymore. He's not a brooder like Cloud or Squall, but he's not as annoyingly immature as Tidus. Although if I were writing the story as I was, I would have a small moment where Sora realizes that his home is destroyed, and everybody he knows might be dead or the very least missing, he could cry even though he's trying not to, and the others are trying to comfort him. Because I don't care if he's a teen, you'd be emotionally f*cked up if your home is destroyed by an unspeakable force.

Riku actually does have an interesting character arc throughout the series. He starts off as a troll who wants to leave his home, and then becomes manipulated by the villains to make him jealous of Sora join the dark side, becomes possessed by the real villain, and then redeems himself in the end. I noticed how the Final Mix main story cutscenes mostly revolve around him. One scene he's waking up in Hollow Bastion calling for Sora and Kairi, realizing they've been separated, and another has him walking in the Realm of Darkness realizing that he's lost everything, and wishes that he could apologize. This makes him a bit more sympathetic I'll say.

The only real issue I have, that I think is being brought up in KH3, is the world order stuff. Like don't meddle or chaos and darkness... I don't really know what, but it's never explained why it's a good thing. In that case, why would they bother with the other worlds, other than to find Riku, Kairi, and King Mickey? Wouldn't you want to tell them about the heartless so that they know what to look out for? It also makes King Triton kind of a jerk, I mean more of a jerk. What would he do if the Keyblade master never came to your world and saved it? You wouldn't do anything because it'll be gone, and everybody would've died. I mean the trio doesn't even try to defend themselves by saying he's trying to save the other worlds if that's what they're even doing, which they are, but it's not exactly their number one priority. There's responsibility as a king, and then there's responsibility as a protector.

But oh well, it was mostly dropped in KH2 because the villains f*cked up everything at this point, although I think it's being brought up again in KH3. But if I'm speculating based on the cutscenes I've seen, maybe most of the story could be about the world order collapsing, because the world's inhabitants are getting smart, and the only choice to have is to risk the world order or the universe will be no more.

All in all, Kingdom Hearts 1 is not my favorite, mostly because I have yet to play all of them again. But it's definitely up there, just for having all that Disney charm, and being a neat little experiment. I say play this first, if you want to know how the games evolved from here to Kingdom Hearts 3. But for Disney fans, this is the few KH games that still retain that Disney charm, and for Final Fantasy fans, there are many familiar spells, references, and cameos that I'm sure those fans appreciate. I might do another when I beat Chain of Memories.

#after_game_thoughts #Kingdom Hearts #big wall of text

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biscuitreviews · 6 years ago

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Biscuit Reviews Kingdom Hearts (Anniversary Review)

It’s been one year since my first review on Biscuit Reviews. Thank you everyone for reading, following, liking, and reblogging!

I recently purchased the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 HD Remaster for PS4 in response to Square Enix finally announcing a release date for Kingdom Hearts 3. I’ll be honest, I’m actually afraid of Kingdom Hearts 3 because of how Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance ended, but that’s a story for another time.

For now, let’s focus and review where the series started, the original, Kingdom Hearts!

My story of how I came across Kingdom Hearts is probably very similar to many of you. I really enjoyed playing Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, and 10. I remember walking through the video game section in the store and saw the cover of Kingdom Hearts. My immediate thought was “Why is that guy using a giant key as a weapon? That looks dumb. Why is Donald and Goofy there?” Then I noticed the name and the companies behind it, Squaresoft and Disney. The makers of Final Fantasy teamed up with Disney to make game.

I was curious enough because of the Squaresoft name, I imagined it would have fun RPG gameplay and an emotional-complex story to go along with it. Come Christmas, I would find the game under the tree. I immediately loaded up the PS2 once the gift opening was done and went on to save various Disney worlds.

The story for the first entry was very simple and easy to follow.

You play as Sora, a boy who wants to visit and see other worlds. One day, his world is destroyed by dark beings known as Heartless. It is then he obtains the power to summon the Keyblade, a mysterious weapon that can seal the keyholes of worlds to protect them from the Heartless. The Heartless have great fear over the Keyblade and will stop at nothing to defeat its wielder. Sora later teams up with Donald and Goofy to join them on their mission to find King Mickey and they travel through various Disney worlds to search for him as well as Sora’s friends, Riku and Kairi.

This was a really cool concept, traveling to the worlds of various Disney movies and not knowing which one you would find next. Even interacting and participating in a modified version of the movies was really cool. You even got to fight well known Disney villains, like Hades, Jafar, Captain Hook, Ursula, Oogie-Boogie, and Maleficent.

Not only were there Disney characters, but Final Fantasy characters also made an appearance and contributed to the main story. When first playing this game, fighting Squall from Final Fantasy 8 was mind-blowing and unbelievable. It was that fight that really cemented the charm and uniqueness of Kingdom Hearts for me.

As mentioned earlier, Kingdom Hearts is an action-RPG. The player moves around the environment in real-time to attack, cast magic, and dodge attacks. This was amazing, being able to react appropriately in battles and move around at will. It even had a great lock-on feature to where the camera would keep focus on the targeted enemy.

It was a simple game with an easy to follow story of searching for Sora’s friends and battling the darkness. It does a fantastic job to teaching you how the fantasy elements of the series work, but it doesn’t really dive into the core story until near the end of the game. It gives enough information to be curious for more, but, not enough to make you know everything about how the Kingdom Hearts series will approach it’s world. Which in this case, I guess it’s the universe since you’re traveling to various worlds protecting them.

Although the series did set new standards for the action-RPG genre, it wasn’t the first entry that set those standards, that honor goes to Kingdom Hearts II, which I’ll talk more about when it comes time to review that game.

The first entry in the series, although unique and charming, came with quite a few faults. The first was a not so user friendly camera. Locking-on is great, but using it to explore the environment, not so much. The Final Mix versions on the PS3 and PS4 actually fixed this issue, making world exploration more user friendly. Combat was kind of clunky and often teams really stiff. The Final Mix Versions are much smoother, but you will still feel the occasional stiff motion. There’s also the biggest issue with Kingdom Hearts, that the Final Mix version couldn’t fix, the environments. They’re small and cramped giving the feeling of claustrophobia during fights.

There’s also one of the most heavily criticised parts of the game, the Gummi ship. This ship is what allows Sora, Donald, and Goofy to travel through the various Disney worlds. Although the gameplay for the Gummi ship sections function well, it’s how that gameplay was handled for the first ¼ of the game is what cemented a lot of dislike towards the Gummi ship. During this section, you’ll will be repeating the first few levels of the Gummi ship and it’s this repetition having to go from world to world that brings it down. Although you gain the ability to warp to other worlds that you have visited which gets rid of the repetition. The other strike against the Gummi Ship aspect is the creator menu. Commands are delayed and is not user friendly when trying to create your own Gummi ship.

The first Kingdom Hearts is a game that I feel will continue to charm gamers for generations to come. Playing this again had me appreciate what it was that captured the hearts of many fans of the series. Fighting alongside and interacting with the many beloved characters of both the Disney and Final Fantasy franchises.

It’s shame that the rest of the series gained the stigma of having a complex and convoluted story, which is a topic I’ll tackle another day. However, this misconception has started to dissipate with Square making the entire series playable on one platform, rather than multiple consoles.

If you’re curious about the series, I highly recommend picking up the 1.5 and 2.5 HD Remaster for the PS4 as this edition does fix some of the issues the PS2 version had. It even includes some extra story cutscenes and extra bosses for those that love a challenge.

Kingdom Hearts gets a 3 out of 5

#Kingdom Hearts #KH #Sora #Riku #Kairi #Square Enix #Disney #Kingdom Hearts 1.5 #Kingdom Hearts Final Mix #Playstation #gaming #video games #game review #video game review #biscuit reviews

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