#to be fair i have been playing a lot of nintendo switch

[mooifyourecows]

Been feeling pins and needles in my fingers recently. I swear to god if I have carpal tunnel I'm gonna be so peeved

That being said if I have diabetes I'm gonna be even MORE peeved

[victory-cookies]

I hope my uncle follows through on giving me his xbox bc I’d really love to give bg3 a try fr

[goquokka00]

Want So Bad

This was requested by @mamnaimiefrankie, and so I really hope you enjoy!

Summary: Jisung, Minho, and Hyunjin were hanging out. Upon getting some munchies, Jisung found some gummies that seemed to look appetizing enough. However, someone forgot to read a label...

Pairings: Han Jisung X Reader (F!)

Genre: Humor (I mean come on, Paboracha is involved, of COURSE there's gonna be humor), Smut (MDNI), fluff at the end

Warnings: Use of aphrodisiacs, mention of cunnilingus, grinding, pet names, Switch! Jisung (man is whiny, needy, and begs a LOT), Switch! Reader, dirty talk, oral (m! receiving), overstimulation, unprotected penetrative sex, cream pie, bunny fucking, scratching, 100% 18+ (seriously like if you're a minor don't read pls and thank you <3)

Word Count: 4.1K

Saturdays were always something that Jisung looked forward to. Sure, he loved being with you, as you two had been together for almost 2 years now, but he also loved spending time with his friends. Specifically, Minho and Hyunjin. And every Saturday, while you worked your shift at the nearby bakery, Jisung would hang out with Minho and Hyunjin.

These hang outs could be anything from watching movies, to playing board games or video games, to having deep conversations about the stresses of work and being idols, to being on the floor laughing about literally anything. It was fun for them, and they always looked forward to it.

Today wasn't any different.

The three men decided to meet at Minho's house, as his girlfriend was gonna be gone for the day at work. That meant they had access to the Nintendo Switch. And that meant they could play Mario Kart. A game they all liked, but only one was good at.

"JISUNG, NO FAIR!" Hyunjin whined, watching as Shy Guy passed the finish line in first. Jisung could only laugh as he watched Hyunjin and Minho struggle through the computers they were playing against, constantly running into bananas or being hit by shells. "You really can't take it easy on us ONE time?!"

"Where's the fun in taking it easy when I can wipe the floor with both of you?" Jisung laughed, watching Minho finally pass the finish line in fourth with Tanuki Mario. Hyunjin finished soon after in seventh with Princess Peach, practically throwing his controller down on the sofa.

"I think you play this game too much." Minho said, crossing his arms. Jisung could only shrug, standing up and stretching as the final results played. Jisung got first in the Grand Prix, while Minho got 5th and Hyunjin got 8th. "Find another hobby."

"No can do, sorry." Jisung said, watching Minho roll his eyes.

"Whatever." Minho said, looking to Hyunjin. "Let's do a round with just you and I, Hyunjin."

"Okay. I'm down for that." And with that, Hyunjin and Minho started a two-player race. And as they did that, Jisung walked over to the kitchen, looking for something to snack on. After all, he hadn't eaten much that day, and he knew that he should eat something. Otherwise, he'd get an earful from you.

And so, into the snack closet he went. He always knew Minho was stocked and really didn't care about what he ate from his stash, so long as it wasn't any of his girlfriend's food (which had all been labelled after the Changbin incident 3 years ago). And sure enough, when Jisung opened the door, the closet was filled.

Candies, chips, pretzels...you name the snack, it was in there. But the thing that caught Jisung's eye was the gummy hearts up on the top shelf. They didn't have Minho's girlfriend's sticker on them, which meant free grabs. And so, Jisung took a good handful from the bag, before closing the closet and going back to the couch.

"Jisung, how do you drift again?" Hyunjin called out. Jisung quickly threw some of the gummies into his mouth, chewing and swallowing as he sat back down onto the couch.

"It's the right trigger." Jisung said, watching Hyunjin do so. And then he spun out of control. Jisung laughed as Hyunjin freaked out.

"You liar!"

||

Finally, after a nice hang out with the boys, Jisung had said his goodbyes and made his way back to the apartment. He loved hanging out with them, but he also wanted to actually be home when you got home. He always felt bad that he'd return so late after you've gone to bed, and tonight he wanted to see you awake.

But...it was when he stepped inside of the apartment when he noticed how weird he felt.

The first thing he noticed was how hot it was. At first, he thought it was the apartment, which would've been weird since the both of you loved keeping the apartment cool for wearing hoodies. But when he went to the thermostat, it read 68°. Right where it always was.

And upon walking back to the living room, he noticed how fuzzy his head was. He wasn't dizzy, just...he couldn't focus on anything. His body felt like it was in the clouds, too. Not just his mind. That's when he noticed that it was him that was also feeling hot.

Okay...weird, but whatever. He could ride it out, and he'd be fine. Right? R-Right?

Well, that's when he noticed just how much his shirt was grazing his nipples. He...never noticed that before. Every movement caused the shirt to graze oh, so lightly against them, and it made Jisung's breath hitch. That wasn't the only thing. He felt like his pants were really tight. Really, really tight. And that never happened unless...

Oh...

Oh...

He had a boner. A really, really bad boner. He could see it through his jeans, and he could never see his boners from his jeans before. And that made him concerned. Not to mention how much it just...hurt.

He was hot, sensitive, hard...he couldn't think straight... what the hell was going on with him?

His first thought wasn't about figuring this out, though. No, it was about getting his damn pants off. They were just too tight, his dick was so sensitive and hard that if he kept those jeans on any longer, he might cry. And so, he did exactly that. And the sight afterwards of the hard-on in his boxers?

Oh, it was just worse.

Jisung just groaned, leaning back against the sofa as he ran a hand through his hair, squirming. This was so bad, he needed to fix this issue before you got home, he'd die if you saw him this hard and horny. It would just be straight up embarrassing--

But all of his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening.

Fuck.

Jisung's head whipped around to the door, his face flushed as you walked into the apartment, setting your bag down. And the second you looked over at him in your outfit you decided to wear to work? Oh, it just made him whine. God, this was so embarrassing...He didn't even know what to say. Thankfully, you spoke up first, still not noticing the issue at hand here.

"Oh, you're home? I thought you were planning on staying over at Minho's for a lot longer." Just the sound of your sweet and smooth voice washed over Jisung, making his cock twitch. God, you sounded so heavenly, he just wanted to hear you moaning his name, screaming out from how good his cock felt when he--

Immediately, he got that thought out of his head.

"I-I just wanted to surprise you, my baby..." Fuck, why did he have to stutter? He never stuttered; you knew he never stuttered. And so, he winced as you walked over to him with an eyebrow raised.

"Oh? And you wanna tell me why you just stuttered?" You asked. You didn't sound mad, just curious. But Jisung didn't have to say anything to you, because it didn't take your eyes long to notice the large tent in his pants. And immediately, your eyes widened. "Oh, Jisung, what--"

"I-I don't know, okay? I've been feeling really, really weird and-and I don't know why, I just walked through the door and immediately I just got horny, and hot, and hard, and I don't know what to do or why I'm like this, and-"

"Hey, hey, hey, slow down." You said, kneeling down to look at him. Your eyes were so warm and comforting, they always felt like home to Jisung. It was nice, and always got him to calm down no matter what.

"Sorry..."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, okay? Do you want me to call Minho and see what's going on?" You offered. "Knowing him and Yejin, they'd know what's up with you."

"Ye-Yeah, okay..." Jisung said. It made sense. After all, he knew that Minho and Yejin were a freaky couple. They've tried everything under the sun, and had sex all the time. So if anyone would know, it'd be them.

And so, that's what you did. You dialed Minho's number, waiting for him to answer. And he picked up after the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Minho." You greeted, hearing his audible sigh on the other end of the line, as well as a moan.

"Okay, what did I do this time? And can it please hurry, I'm in the middle of something." Minho grumbled.

"I'm sure you can spare getting your dick wet for 5 seconds so you can tell me what's wrong with my significant other."

"What do you mean? Is he dying or something?"

"No, but he's hornier than a dog in heat."

"Well, that's probably because he thinks you're hot. Can I get back to going down on my girlfriend now--"

"No, because he doesn't get that horny when it's just me. He's literally panting and is non-stop squirming."

"Oh. OOOHHH--"

"What, oh?"

"Shit, I knew we didn't use that many!" Minho waited a second, getting a question from Yejin. You couldn't quite make it out, but you definitely heard the response. "Well duh, we literally just bought those gummies a few days ago!"

"The gummies? What gummies?" You asked.

"The gummies?" Jisung also asked, feeling his heart drop.

"Yeah, so, Yejin and I invested in some aphrodisiac gummies a few days ago. They look like hearts, kinda coated in some sugar, they're actually pretty damn good. But you shouldn't eat like, more than 5, I think."

"Did you eat heart shaped gummies covered in sugar?" You asked Jisung, watching him go pale at the question. And his lack of an answer gave you all of the information you needed to know. "Jisung!"

"I was hungry, okay! And they were in the snack closet, so I thought they were good!" Jisung whined.

"Why the hell would aphrodisiac gummies be kept in a fucking snack closet?!"

"I didn't know where else to put them, so I put them in the top of the shelf." And that resulted in Minho getting an earful from Yejin. You could only roll your eyes, hanging the call up.

"Okay, so you ate a few laced gummies that will make you horny. That's fine." You said, going back over to Jisung, giving him a small smile.

"I-I'm sorry, my baby, I-I should've read the packaging, I-"

"Jisung, it's fine. Really, it's not like we haven't fucked before, right?" You asked him, going to straddle his lap. Jisung immediately blushed, seeing you on top of him. It was a beautiful sight, one of his favorites. But in this situation?

"Wa-Wait, I don't know about this...I don't think I can control myself, baby." Jisung told you. "I-I don't wanna end up hurting you or anything..."

"Then let me be the one to help you, okay?" You told him, kissing his cheek. That's when you lowered yourself over his boxers, your shorts grazing against his boner deliciously. Jisung let out a pathetic moan, throwing his head back at the feeling. "Can I help you out, Sungie?"

"God...please, baby..." As Jisung spoke, he bucked his hips up against yours, moaning at the feeling of grinding up against you. And with that, you smiled, pulling him into a kiss.

The two of you grinded against each other as you made out, Jisung moaning out like he hadn't been touched in his life. The kiss you both shared was messy and sloppy, but Jisung loved it like that. And so did you. And his tongue immediately went to exploring your mouth, only making the kiss sloppier.

But before long, Jisung pulled away, getting louder. It was an indicator that he was getting close already. You immediately slowed down, watching his brow furrow and his jaw hang open. You knew that look. But when you heard the displeased whine of you slowing down, you were shocked.

"N-No, gunna--please, baby, lemme cum..." Jisung whined, looking up at you. God, his pouty lips, the way his eyes begged you for that sweet release...You couldn't help it.

"Fuck, baby..." You groaned, sliding off of Jisung. You immediately took your shirt off, as well as your bra before slipping his boxers down, seeing his angry cock spring up and slap his stomach, leaking precum.

You didn't even stop to admire him like you usually did, you immediately gripped him and put his tip into your mouth, sucking. You let your spit leak from the sides of your mouth, making it as wet as possible. And Jisung immediately wailed, bucking his hips up at the feeling.

"Hoooly fucking shit! Oh, please, just like that baby...I...I'm gonna fucking blow, oh my god! Keep--Keep going, please!" Jisung moaned out, closing his eyes and clenching his thighs. God, your mouth always felt so damn good to him, he could never get enough of it.

And sure enough, he came a few seconds later.

"Cu-Cumming! I'm cumming, oh...fuck, keep--keep me in, baby!" Jisung cried out, holding your head down on him. You did as told, staying put as he shot his seed into your mouth. And once you were sure he was finished, you slowly lifted up and off of him, swallowing his load. And that got a low groan out of him. "Holy shit, baby...you're so hot..."

You just giggled, moving back up to him and pecking his lips. Jisung could only whine though, still feeling weird. And you were quick to notice. Your eyes immediately grew concerned, looking down to see that he was still hard.

"How...what?" You questioned. His cock was practically inflating like a balloon, ready to go again within a few seconds. Your gaze went back to Jisung, who was already starting to softly whine again. "How many of those gummies did you eat?"

"I-I don't know, maybe like, 13?" Jisung guessed, making your eyes widen.

"Minho said that the recommended dosage was only 5..." You trailed, looking back down at Jisung's cock. Once again, it was leaking precum with an angry red tip. And once you heard Jisung whine again, you let out a huff. And upon seeing your determined face, Jisung immediately whined again, his cock twitching. He knew that look.

"Baby, y-you've done enough, you don't have to--"

"No, I do." You said, standing up. And once your gaze hit Jisung, that determined and frustrated glint in your eyes, he immediately whimpered. "Lay down."

"B-But I don't wanna lose it and hurt--"

"Lay. Down. And don't make me repeat myself, Jisung." You told him.

Your voice was stern, and God, Jisung loved when you got like this with him. When you took charge in the bedroom, it was the hottest thing. The way your face would get so determined, so confident...shit, Jisung could get a boner just thinking about it if he didn't already have one.

And so, Jisung did as told, going and laying down on the couch. As he did that, you pulled your shorts and panties down before walking back over to Jisung and straddling him again, bringing a hand up to your face and spitting in it before grabbing Jisung's dick and covering it. And then, you lined it up with your entrance while Jisung waited in anticipation.

And the feeling of you sinking down on his cock as slow as you were taking it make Jisung let out the filthiest, most scrumptious moan. And once he was fully sheathed, you rolled your hips, Jisung's jaw opening in a silent moan, his breath stopping. Before he knew it, you were bouncing on him, doing your best to get a nice pace for the both of you.

"Holy...baby, you-you're so tight, this is...I-I don't--this is too much!" Jisung whined, his hands going to your hips. Moans left the both of you as you rode him, your eyes focused on his, as well as where the two of you were connected. You were bound and determined to get him to cum again. You wanted him to feel relief.

"Feel good, baby?"

"Fuck, yes! Baby, please, more, can-can you move more?" Jisung looked up at you, panting as you tried your best to move quicker. However, there was the single inevitable fact both of you knew.

You weren't the best with riding Jisung.

Sure, Jisung loved when you were on top of him, and you loved it too. However, you could only bounce so fast before it felt like your legs were gonna give out. And so, when Jisung was in the right mindset, he'd brace you before fucking up into you, which always felt incredible. But that sadly wasn't the case.

"Ji, I can only move so-fuck...so much, baby...I can hit deeper, but--"

"Do that! Please, just give me anything, m'close!" Jisung whined. And so, that's what you did.

You slowed your pace by a lot, but you lifted yourself almost completely off of him before letting yourself drop back down on him, causing both of you to cry out. After a small grind on his hips, you repeated, doing the same thing, except going a little faster.

"Fuck, just like that, baby...holy-m'gonna cum! Keep going, don't-don't stop!" Jisung wailed, gripping your hips tightly. And so, you did exactly that, moaning out as you continued to lift yourself up and drop down. And before you knew it, Jisung let out a sob, slamming his hips up into you, causing you both to cum at the same time.

"Shit shit shit, Jisung!" You cried, your front collapsing a bit. You were able to catch yourself on his chest, feeling his hips jut up into you as you ground yourself down onto him. You were panting now, trying to collect yourself as Jisung tried to calm himself down as well.

But you missed the fact that Jisung's cock wasn't softening inside of you. And you also missed the dark, lustful glint in Jisung's eyes.

"Holy...wow, that was something-ELSE!" You squealed.

You didn't even have time to realize what had happened, as Jisung had managed to muster up the strength to pick you up and flip both of you around. Now he was on top of you, both of your legs on his shoulders as he practically folded you in half. His face was inches from yours, his mouth hanging open as he slipped inside of you again, somehow hitting deeper.

And the second he managed to just kiss your cervix, he began to thrust mercilessly into you. He fucked into you so fast, his mouth near your ear as panting moans left Jisung as you let out cries. Both of his elbows were on either side of your head, his hands cradling you and holding you close to him as he pounded you.

"Fuck fuck fuck, you feel so fuckin' good, so tight and wet, I-I can't take it, baby...god, you're pussy's talkin' to me, I can hear it while you suck my cock back into you..." Jisung growled, before humming so lowly it practically shook your core. Every time his hips slammed into yours, his pitch would bump up for a second, before going back down. And that low hum was what got you to cum for a second time.

"Jisung, I'm cumming!" You cried out, gripping onto him. Your nails dug into his skin as you clung onto him for dear life. His pace never slowed as your body trembled, hell, he probably went faster at that.

"Hell yeah, you are...fuck, you're creamin' me, baby...god!" Jisung growled. He could feel your juices dripping onto his cock and down his leg as well as yours. And he could hear your cunt squelching. "Cum again--cream on my cock, make it messy...just how I like it, baby..."

And that's exactly what you did. You moaned out at his words, feeling your third orgasm rip through your soul. If there was anything that was gonna do you in, it was the combination of Jisung practically fucking into you like a rabbit, his hips unfaltering, and his fucking voice.

"Good girl, such a good girl for me..." Jisung growled into your ear. Of course, he continued his merciless pace. And due to you having gone through your third orgasm, you were sent right into overstimulation, meaning it wouldn't take you long to hit your fourth.

"J-Jisung, I-I can't...s'too much, I can't--"

"You can, baby...do it for me, you're takin' me so well, just a bit longer..." Jisung wasn't gonna take no for an answer. To make things even worse (not really), he quickly brought his hand up to his face, licked his fingers, and slipped it in between your bodies, only to start rubbing tight circles around your clit, which sent you reeling. You practically let out a sob, scratching Jisung's back harshly.

"JISUNG!" And without any warning, your fourth orgasm shot through you, making you wail. Feeling you hit your fourth orgasm is also what did Jisung in.

"Fuck, I'm gonna cum, baby...m'gonna fill you so much, m'gonna stuff you so full..." Jisung mumbled, his rhythm getting sloppier. You just wailed, just getting over that fourth orgasm, feeling that fifth one approaching quickly. "Fuck! I'm cumming!"

And with that, Jisung slammed his hips into you one last time, painting your walls white with his seed as you also hit your last orgasm of the night, your entire body shaking viciously from it. You felt like you had practically ascended, seeing god for the nth time.

Jisung slowly pulled out after that, finally feeling satisfied after that, and went to grab the cum towel you both kept in the bedroom. As he left, you continued to tremble, feeling aftershocks from your orgasms. And once Jisung came back, already cleaned up and in sweatpants, he immediately went over to you, kneeling next to your head and peppered your face in kisses.

"Good job, baby...you took me like a champ, you did so well, my baby..." Jisung said gently. His small kisses didn't stop once, making sure that you actually came down from your high before cleaning you up. And once you did, you let out a small giggle, letting Jisung know that you were back. "There she is..."

"Stop it, it's not like I blacked out." You said. Jisung pecked your lips, caressing your face for a second, just admiring you and your features.

"I know, but you definitely weren't here." Jisung told you, going over and wiping you down. He was nice and gentle, making sure he didn't accidentally make you uncomfortable.

"I scratched you, didn't I?" You asked, giving him a slightly concerned look as he continued to clean you up.

"Yeah, but don't worry about it." Jisung told you, giving you a smile as he kissed your thigh.

"You sure?"

"Mhm. Trust me, it didn't hurt, and if they stay, then it means that I get to show off how good I can make my baby feel, right?" Jisung asked, making you blush. Of course he'd wear those scratch marks around like a trophy. He'd do that with any marks you left on his body.

"Do you have to put it like that?"

"Of course I do!" And with that, he got back to work. Once you were clean, he left once more to put the towel away.

When he came back again, he had a pair of clean clothes for you. Kind of. It was a shirt of his that would be way too big (not that either of you minded) and a pair of panties.

He sat you up, kissing your cheek three more times before sliding his shirt over your head. And then, he slipped the pair of panties on your legs, getting them as high as possible before stopping and setting your arms around his neck.

"Alright, and... up!" Jisung said, standing up. Since your arms were around him, you stood up too, and he quickly slid the panties the rest of the way up. And finally, once you were fully dressed, he readjusted the two of you slightly before picking you up, making you squeal.

"Jisung!" You held onto him tightly as Jisung walked you to the bedroom, laughing at your reaction.

"What? I'm just taking care of my baby." Jisung told you, pressing yet another kiss to your cheek.

"But I can walk myself!"

"See, you say that, but we both know you're legs are gonna be the equivalent of Jello."

"Jisung!"

"You know I'm right!"

And with that, he gently set you on the bed, getting you underneath the covers. And after he quickly turned off the lights, he went to join you, pulling you close to him and holding you in his arms. Every here and there, he'd place gentle kisses on your head, admiring you with him. Neither of you could stop smiling either, just enjoying everything in this moment.

"I really love you; you know that. Right?" Jisung finally said, watching you nod.

"Mhm." You replied, tilting your head up before kissing his lips gently.

"And I love you."

Hey! Firstly, thank you so much for reading this post, and I really hope you enjoyed! If you did, please like, reblog, or comment so I can see how I'm doing with writing and getting feedback! I hope you have a lovely day! Sleep well, stay in good health, and eat something if you haven't! ❤️❤️❤️

[ickyarson777]

Ooooh requests! I have one! I am dying for gamer boyfriend iii. Maybe playing games with him? Or just snuggling up with him, playing with his hair, while he slaughters digital zombies? XD Whatever you think!

GODS YES PLEASE

ahem anyway, of course love i can definitely do that for you! and thanks for the request! i hope it lives up to your expectations!!

content warnings: none!! just fluff and games today. tried to stay as gn with the reader as i could. only things used for them is 'love,' and 'lovely.'

notes before we start, this is about *not* about the actual people in the band, just the characters they’ve created on stage.

that being said, here you go! it's a bit short, wish it was longer but this was fun to write :)

Word count: 843

I curled up in bed, scrolling mindlessly through my phone, glancing every now and then at III, back facing me as he played his game. Since he’d downloaded Skyrim, he’d been playing it every chance he got. He talked a lot while playing, so I now had my own fair share of knowledge about the game.

“These damned draugr,” he’d mutter every now and then. “Fuck, dragon’s gonna eat my ass!” he’d groan as his character got snatched up. 

He was never one to scream angrily while playing, something I appreciated. He would, however, get very worked up, shaking me around and celebrating when he finally would pass a section of the game that was giving him trouble.

He’d lean over, ask if I saw how many times he’d died trying to pass that specific section, I’d tell him, laughing, ‘yes, I did see you die over and over, you sure you didn’t do it on purpose?’ He’d gasp in mock offense, ‘Seriously love? You think I’d willingly get fucked over by that shit over and over like that?’ then he’d lean in for a kiss, something to make up for the lack of focus on me, and get right back in. 

Tonight however, we played together. He’d recently bought a Nintendo Switch, and we’d spent the past couple nights staying up playing Mario Kart. We sat next to each other, leaning forward on our knees, deeply focused on the race. I’d hit him with a shell, he’d throw a banana peel. Each time I overtook him, or vice versa, the other would cry out in both frustration, laughter, or an attempt to rile the other up. Eventually after we’d played for a few hours, we’d lose count of the score and take a break to go get some snacks from the kitchen. After making our way back to the room, arms full of snacks and drinks, we’d lay back in the bed and he’d talk my ears off about anything and everything he could think of. 

“There’s a new Zelda game that came out, a sequel to Breath of the Wild! Supposed to have two whole new maps and shit,” he’d tell me, running his fingers through his long hair. “Can’t wait to play it.” 

I smile at him and yawn softly. 

“Getting tired, love? Or tired of losing Mario Kart,” he said with a stupid smirk. 

I scoff at his question, “You’d like to think I was losing wouldn’t you?”

He chuckles at me, “Of course I think that, ‘cause it's the truth.”

“Whatever,” I say , rolling my eyes. I lean back in the bed and slip under the covers. “Think I’m done for the night.”

He sighs dramatically, “Guess we’ll have to settle our score tomorrow then.”

“Mhmm,” I hum in agreement. I watch him as he picks the controller up again, and closes the game. He turns the tv down a bit, and opens Skyrim again. I watch through eyes fluttering, trying to stay awake a bit longer as he begins his in-game trek across the map, trying to reach new locations, every now and then stopping to fight some monster, creature or enemy in his path. Carefully, I nudge him with my foot and he glances back at me. 

“What’s up, love?” he asks.

I hold my arms out to him, wanting to cuddle up to him. He smiles at my gesture and crawls across the bed, leaning back against me, head on my chest, still facing the screen. I kiss the top of his head, and run my fingers through his hair, and listen to him talk. He’s always so loud, but now he mutters queitly to himself, perhaps trying to mind my tiredness, perhaps feeling his own tiredness start to take over. 

“Love you,” I murmur sleepily into his mess of red hair. 

“Love you too, lovely,” he mutters and then exclaims loudly, “Motherfucking dragons!”

“III,” I groan, having been snapped out of my almost sleep. 

He chuckles, “Sorry love.”

I smile, taking strands of his hair and braiding them carefully. “It’s ok,” I tell him. “What are you doing in the game?”

And then it begins again, his nonstop talk about the game. Eventually his accent gets thicker with sleep creeping into his voice, and I have no idea what he’s saying anymore. I drift off into my own slumber.

At some point, he’s gotten off the game and shifted to lie next to me, because the next morning, I wake up to him, arms lazily wrapped around me, mouth hanging wide open, soft snores excaping his mouth. I smile at his goofy expression, his messy hair tangles and spread over his pillow, over his face. The quiet moments with III are rare. Odd but not uncomfortable. 

I curl up next to him, and drift off to sleep again, knowing the moment we both wake up, its back to the games again.

‘Gonna need my rest if I’m gonna beat his ass at Mario Kart,’ is the last thing I think before drifting off again. 

---

how do you end stuff like this :')

anyway pls y'all give me more

[sablegear0]

Finally cracked into Metroid Prime Remastered last night. So far it’s been a mix of me whipping through the gameplay because I’m very familiar with enemy behaviours and gimmicks, and me standing around admiring the scenery and geeking out about the level of detail introduced. Played all the way up to the second visit to the Ruins after getting Spider Ball, utterly in my glory, before getting tired and having to stop.

There are some details that I miss, which I'm sure everyone has heard by now (beam lighting is a sore loss with the thermal visor changed to a blurry mess, the doors don’t look quite right, no reflection in the Ruins mirrors did make me a little sad), but some of the work put into visually sprucing up the game had me giggling with delight if not gobsmacked with awe.

Some of the things that stuck out to me were:

Parasite Queen got a makeover; she’s much more plated and creepy now.

Flaahgra got some texture upgrades; its flower is now distinctly fleshy and you can spot a new idle animation through the door rather than the bloom being a static model.

They actually animated Samus doing a proper roll in the Flaahgra intro cutscene, where it had been a brief duck into morphball mode previously. Both are good but the effort pleases me.

Stone and architecture textures look great, more distinct markings on a lot of stuff in the ruins, including a few new decorative textures. (Notably the base of the halfpipe in the Ruins plaza; it looks like they’ve taken some cues from the SkyTown aesthetic for their fill-in decorative textures which is a very nice nod)

Columnar basalt in Magmoor! Which may have appeared in some capacity in the original but it is lovingly sculpted and appears in a handful of rooms, flowing naturally out of the smoother lava-rock formations. Neat stuff.

Dynamic heat-shimmer in Magmoor. For an example, the room just before the first elevator to Phendrana abuts a room with magma in it; closer to the magma there is heat-shimmer, but further away there is not. Again, this may have appeared in the original and I just never noticed, but the effect is much more pronounced here and it looks good

Rain effects remain gorgeous on the visor. The artifact temple’s window has an animated ‘rain on glass’ texture that had me staring at it for a while.

Moving clouds! Notably in Phendrana but other areas may have them as well, the skyboxes have an extra layer so they’re not just static painted images but have some cloud movement to them that looks decently realistic.

The snow-on-stone texture looks great. I don't know how to describe it but it has a realistically wind-scraped look, which adds a lot of life. GC Phendrana had very neat snow-caps on everything, which to be fair has aged well, but the gradient shown by the new textures feels very real.

The Switch appears in the options menu. Maybe this is a silly thing to marvel at but there’s a very detailed model of a Nintendo Switch where once was a GameCube (Or whatever was in he Trilogy version, I don’t actually know.)

Will report more as I go through. Needless to say I am deeply enjoying myself.

[nickmakura]

VA-11 HALL-A - Mar 10

This is transcript for the scrapped extra day for the Nintendo Switch release of Sukeban Games' Va-11 Hall-A. Unfortunately, due to some disagreements between Sukeban and Nintendo for the following interpretations the deal fell through. All that was written here is still technically unfinished, only in the sense that Kiririn51 only wrote this draft of the script into the code before the failure of the deal. So, there are no alternate routes depending on drinks sold.

Jill: G'Evening.

Dana: Hey! Jill, how'd the date go?

Jill: Uh... good? I guess.

Dana: I guess? What's that supposed to mean?

Jill: No no no, it was a good date boss, she was just strange.

Dana: Define strange, Jill. We meet a lot of strange.

Jill: Well, she was like a... racist republican trans trucker.

Dana: That a euphemism for somethin'?

Jill: No, she was a racist republican trans trucker.

Dana: Eesh. That's like meeting a homophobic vegan.

Jill: Ughh... she was pretty too.

Dana: Had to have been to go out with you.

Jill: I-- sorry?

Dana: I said what I said. If you need me, I'll be in my office.

Jill: (... I'm gonna go setup the jukebox.)

Jill: Time to mix drinks and change lives.

Jill: Welcome to Va-11 Hall-A.

Samus Aran's design, found in the files of the switch release.

???: ... Hey.

Jill: ... Hello?

???: ...

Jill: You gonna order something, miss?

???: ... You'll have to forgive me; I don't spend a lot of time around other people. What do you recommend?

Jill: Well, that depends on what are you looking for. Do you want something sweet. something bitter?

???: ... Hmm. Something sweet sounds fine.

Jill: Got it.

(Something sweet... she looks like she could go for a Moonblast.)

Jill: Here you go, miss...?

???: Sam.

Jill: Sam?

Sam: Just Sam.

Jill: (Huh. Weird. The registry doesn't say anything here for name. The money is still being sent over though...)

Jill: Well, "Just Sam" what brings you in here today?

Sam: Drinking.

Jill: Yeah, no I got that part. I was asking what your day was.

Sam: ... Who wants to know?

Jill: I don't mean to pry. I'm just... striking up a conversation.

Sam: I see. Well, I just finished a hunt.

Jill: A bounty hunt?

Sam: Yeah.

Jill: Y'know we got a bounty hunter who comes in here from time to time.

Sam: Do you know his name?

Jill: Jamie, he's a nice guy. Y'know him?

Sam: No. I do know a couple of bounty hunters, but... to be frank I tend to keep my circle small. I can't let feelings get in the way of my job.

Jill: Surely you make some time for yourself?

Sam: What do you think I'm doing?

Jill: Fair point. Despite that, you seem quite somber.

Sam: ... I do?

Jill: At least, I think it is. You've hardly changed expression during this conversation.

Sam: ... Yes, I am in a fairly bad mood yes. I just... something about this last job was different.

Jill: How so?

Sam: I'm afraid I can't share too much. But a... kid saved me today.

Jill: A kid?

Sam: Yeah. We were deep into a fight. It was me and this other person. I was nearly on my death bed. The final shot was coming and... this kid I spared jumped in there. I got to my feet, I took out the bounty. But, there was just this dread in me. This unspeakable feeling in my stomach.

Jill: Wow. That's...

Sam: There's nothing you can say about it Bartender.

Jill: ... I didn't think there could be. Do you want another drink?

Sam: ... Do you have something bitter as hell?

Jill: Yeah, I got something like that.

(Sam wants something bitter as hell, huh.)

Jill: Here you go.

Sam: What's this one called?

Jill: That is a suplex.

Sam: Hmm... did you pick the music?

Jill: Hmm? Yeah, I did. We got an old jukebox that plays all day, but I gotta pick the tunes before it starts.

Sam: There's a lot of synthwave in this selection. Do you know the artist of some of these?

Jill Uh... Garoad, I think, did some of these. I know Kira*Miki did "Your Love is a Drug." Do you like synthwave, miss?

Sam: It's all I listen to when I'm alone on a planet.

Jill: Oh? You're not local?

Sam: No. I am a galactic bounty hunter.

Jill: Oh, what's that like?

Sam: Lonely. Music like this though fills the time. I think my favorite artist is probably Hip Tanaka.

Jill: Oh, I'm aware of that guy. Didn't he say he started making music because he was tired of the more poppy happy type music?

Sam: He said he wanted to write more atmospheric music yes. I love his work. It feels simultaneously triumphant and desolate at the same time. It really fits any mood when I'm out there in some sort of hell.

Jill: I'd sure hope so. Do you want another drink?

Sam: Hmm... no, I don't think so... I'll be out soon. Thank you Jill, I hope you have a nice day.

Jill: Mhm. You too. Please come back soon.

Sam: I'll do my best.

Jill: (I think she was built up stronger than boss is...)

???: --Look Luigi, alls I'm sayin' is dat there's no way Daisy doesn't like youse.

???: AND I'm saying it's my business whether I go for her or not Mario! Granted she's a nice ragazza, but fratello, I don't even know if I wanna be with anybody right now anyways.

???: Gah, Cazzo de mierda...

Jill: Hello, welcome to Va-11 Hall-A.

Mario & Luigi in the files. Curiously, they take after the 1993 Mario Movie designs.

???: Hey how youse doin' bartender. Can youse just get us a couple-a-beers.

Jill: Coming right up.

Jill: (Two beers. I wonder what's with the matching outfits.)

Jill: Here you are. Now what's this about relationship problems?

???: Just that my brother here is so fuckin' blind he doesn't see romance when it slaps him in da face.

???: He thinks this friend of mine, who is frankly very attractive, is interested in me.

Mario: Oh yeah, sorry. I totally forgot, uh... My name is Mario Mario, this here's my brother Luigi Mario.

Jill: Nice to meet you two. I'm Jill.

Mario: Nice to me youse Jill, but uh... youse ain't gonna comment on da last name thing?

Jill: Eh, it's not that interesting.

Mario: Ayy, whaddya know Luigi? First time for everything!

Jill: So anyway relationships?

Luigi: So, there's this completely platonic friend of mine, Daisy, she's a paleontologist. We talk a lot when we're at the gym, and we hang out a lot.

Mario: Youse was goin' out on dates man.

Luigi: Those weren't dates!

Mario: Whaddya call goin' out for dinner at a fancy restaurant and not inviting your big brother, huh?

Luigi: Okay, #1. Hoskin's is not a fancy restaurant. #2. We were just hanging out and talking.

Mario: Mhm. Yeah, sure, bro. We'll go with dat. Whaddya think Jill?

Jill: I think it's none of business, and it's none of yours.

Luigi: Ah-HAH!

Jill: BUT. Aren't you at least interested in pursuing a relationship?

Luigi: Well... I mean I've thought about it maybe sure. But I'm just a plumber and a technician, and she's... amazing. She's a freakin' paleontologist for christ's sake! Like that's dats amazing! She's going places I can't even dream of.

Mario: Basta! She respects ya just as much as youse respect her Luigi.

Luigi: Eh, maybe. What's your situation with relationships Jill?

Mario: Nice subject change.

Jill: Eh... well... I did just go out on a really strange date.

Mario: What was so strange about it?

Jill: Well, it wasn't what was so strange about the date, it was moreso the person.

Mario & Luigi: Ah...

Luigi: So, what was the deal?

Jill: Well, she was this lovely trans lady. She was incredibly attractive, and she seemed funny. She had this like... tattoo of one of the bad guys in Model Warrior Julliane.

Luigi: Oh, yeah, I remember seeing that on air.

Mario: It was aight.

Jill: ... Anyway. She was one of those bad guys that connected with a lot of the audience for having a tragic backstory or something, and that got me interested in her, so I asked her out.

Luigi: So, how'd it go?

Jill: Well, we went out for some coffee, and we're sitting down and chatting, and it turns out over the course of the conversation, it turned out she was racist and a republican. Also, she had no time for a relationship anyway. Chick was signing up to be one of those space truckers.

Mario: Eh? Why even go out on da fuckin' date den?

Jill: I forgot to ask. I did ask why they liked Lazula. Because she was quote "patriotic."

Mario: Dat... wow. Yeah, no dat bites. That's special.

Jill: Then she brought her gun out halfway through the date.

Mario: WHAT!? Ay, if youse being tracked by some chick with a gun, youse better go home safe or somethin'.

Jill: No, they weren't gonna USE it on me. They had just been sitting on it for the last minute or so. They wanted to put it in their purse.

Mario: Well, first of all, youse conceal your gun someplace safe on your side. The back is just uncomfortable.

Jill: But then they just kept bringing it up into the conversation. Like the gun was just so integral to who they were as a person.

Luigi: Do youse not like guns Jill?

Jill: Um... It's a bit mixed for me. I can't deny they have purpose in certain situations, and it's good to have if shit goes down. But it's also not good to have if shit goes down. There's also the whole fiasco with gun laws and how it affects minorities. It's a complex issue.

Mario: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. But what was so upsetting 'bout this chick ownin' one den?

Jill: It seemed like it consumed her whole personality the fact that she owned a gun.

Luigi: Dat'll do it.

Jill: You two want anything else to drink? Mario: Nah, we gotta get back. There's a couple of things we gotta get to. Thanks for asking though. Youse have a nice day Jill, aight? Jill: Will do. Come back soon. Jill: Boss, I'm gonna go and take my break, lemme know if anybody walks in! Dana: Got it!

Unfortunately, this was all that was written for the day. The second half is not present in the files. What do you think? Would you have liked more cameo characters in Va-11 Hall-A?

[boredgabe2000]

My thoughts on Pikmin

I think after a while of replaying these games and getting to know them, I feel like I can that this is a really fun and unique series, but it isn’t necessarily a perfect series and has its large amount of flaws.

This is a series I hold very close and dear to my heart as it has so many unique environments, characters, creatures, and ideas that its crazy this is from Nintendo of all people. It can genuinely be so fun just talking about the series with friends and such just discussing the weird characters and enemies and how all the games play.

Even though I love this series and how its been able to get a second chance with 4, I do think the series is flawed, but thats not really me trying to say its a bad series (if it was this thread would be completely different,)) I’m just saying this as to really love a certain thing, you have to at some point acknowledge the flaws and issues present throughout the whole experience.

In general I think each game has its series of flaws that while annoying or strange, kind of add to the whole game and its experience for me.

Pikmin 1 is generally fun, but short and somewhat janky and sluggish game to really go back to after playing games like 3 & 4. The general gameplay of needing to have a Pikmin be right by you to throw consistently is inherently somewhat annoying, and having to constantly babysit them to make sure they don’t fall off a bridge or do something you don’t want them to do is very obviously a little irritable. Some of these issues were made somewhat worse in the Wii version with the screwy SFX and that infamous crushing glitch, but seem to have been alleviated to an extent in the Switch ports. All that aside though the game still is fun and short, and it makes for a really good afternoon type game to play when you have nothing to do.

Pikmin 2 is a good improvement over 1 in a lot of areas, particularly with the gameplay and Pikmin AI being slightly improved for things like bridges or throwing, and in general I feel like its a much stronger looking game in terms of visuals compared to Pikmin 1 (few more years of development does that for a series.)) But the general gameplay of the caves can get a little repetitive after how much time you have to dedicate spending in them compared to the overworlds in the game. I do find caves fun despite that! There are aspects that are cool and I do like with how it feels like entering a creature’s den or a really strange and dreamlike areas with the toybox or metallic floors. But the amount of time you have to spend in them is what kills it for me, it can be a bit tiring having to do multiple back to back. I should also mention the difficulty is really not well maintained for things like Purple Pikmin, Bitter Sprays, and numerous other little things that kind of play into it. I still like the game regardless though, and I think how unreasonably mean the game is to you is kind of funny to an extent, and honestly it kind of adds to everything lol.

Pikmin 3 is a really nice step into the HD era for this series, as it works really well for these games and I really think 3 and 4 especially benefit for that realism and cartoonish look for the environments and enemies. Gameplay has taken a real good step up with the throwing feeling much nicer and AI just feeling a little more reliable (although I’ve still had numerous stupid Pikmin moments in 3 so I guess it just runs in the series lol.)) The new captains are also pretty fun and unique, I feel like a lot of people do gloss over them which is fair since it doesn’t really feel like the game really highlights too many aspects about them (and it sucked that the Piklopedia wasn’t originally present in 3 for Wii U, really a shame since that couldn’t really highlight their character as much as DX did.)) Also I just feel the game is pretty fun to play, I like just booting it up and messing around. The juice system is a little bit too lenient for what it wanted to do for the day system in Pikmin 1. The idea is really cool as its basically a time extender based on how well you can play on obtain fruit, but its an incredibly forgiving system as you can very easily grind out fruit and juice, and by basically all my playthroughs I’ve had 30+ juice rations, so its a little bit half baked honestly. Enemies have also taken a bit of a hit in terms of player leniency, as they feel way more frail compared to Pikmin 1 or even 2. Makes new enemies feel a bit underwhelming with how easily Pikmin can rip through their health and how the combat is significantly easier. The bosses are also pretty cool too! I think trying out the more traditional boss fight as opposed to what previous games did is a unique idea, but I feel like they reaaaallly tried to draw them out a bit much, as bosses in 3 have caps to how much damage you can do to them at a time, which can be more annoying than anything since bosses are unfortunately also much more frail and can sort of feel like trying to make them feel “tough” or “imposing” when in reality it just makes me want to finish them since time still progresses when they’re just standing around and winding up for an attack. Even if a lot of aspects of this game can feel a bit too scaled back or oddly designed, I still think its a quality experience, and it really is just a delight to walk through and play.

Pikmin 4 is just bizarre to even think about since it felt like a mystery for the longest time, but it’s finally here! The game is honestly just so fun to cruise around in and fiddle around with since the Piklodpedia from 2 finally returns in its original form, but the game is much more lenient with just doing things in your own order rather than being a much more linear adventure compared to 3. It also has Oatchi (bless his heart)) which is a really cool extension of the Pikmin franchise as instead of just adding another captain (which if thats what they did for 4 then I would’ve been a little let down honestly)) they added a character who can jump and act like an independent Pikmin. Honestly a really fun idea and it’s cool just multitasking and getting stuff done with Oatchi that would normally need the help of the Pikmin. Plus the little intervals with Dandori Battles and Challenges are fun as they’re just a cute little distraction from doing the usual cave and above ground exploration like in 2 or 3. 4 is also just one of the biggest games of the bunch, which is cool since its nice having a game to sink your teeth into after the wait from 3 to 4. The environments are super pretty and stunning for the Switch, the enemies are pretty cool, and overall a lot of aspects of this game are just really cool, but it obviously isn’t perfect (unfortunately 😔.)) Oatchi, while being a really good addition, can really be a bit much in terms of the whole combat stuff of 4. Oatchi can really make fights and such much easier with how stupidly strong he gets by the end of the game, which is unfortunate with how this seemingly was made a bit worse from 3 since enemies can still prove to be somewhat frail. I don’t really feel like I have to dwell on the auto-lock aiming as it’s been an incredibly odd choice to make for this game. I think the game really could’ve benefited from just not including this or having it as an option, but it really feels like it sort of bogged down an otherwise great game for a lot of people. I still got around it and really didn’t mind it too much, but it’s still somewhat disappointing that this is a mandatory thing and not optional. Caves are actually pretty neat as the forgo the random generation aspects in favor for the more naturally designed areas which I think was a cool choice, I do think they could’ve stretched the concepts of them further as I do think aspects were lost in translation from 2-4, but I still think they did a decent job with caves being absent for 20 odd years. Overall, 4 is a really cool but somewhat flawed game, and I really like it for that despite these issues.

To really answer why I made this thread, it was to really get a lot of thoughts about these games out of my head.

This series is not perfect by any means, and sometimes I think these flaws can be really apparent and make the experience feel a bit too much at times or like they tried too hard to do this thing in comparison to that thing. But I don’t think that deters me from not liking this series as much as I do.

This is a genuinely great series and I think each game is really deserving of a playthrough despite how different and somewhat estranged each one can be from one another. I’m just glad that this series has gotten a second chance after how it basically was just in limbo for a long while. I made this as a thread to essentially show that you can still love something even if it has a large amount of issues in each entry, and it can be ok to like something flawed.

I hope you enjoyed this read, this wasn’t meant to be some critical look at the games, but more of a fun look back at what I think about them now.

Have a good day, stay safe around ants since you never know if they’ll start attacking you

[journalsouppe]

A LINK TO THE PAST!!!! I love and adore this game so much. I love and adore my little pink son he's so sweet despite witnessing some fucked up things. This is one of my favorite spreads, I love the color combination I chose plus the stickers are really cute :').

I bought two different sticker sheets: The pixel inventory stickers are by Comstock Cafe The chibi/character collection is by Pashmakshop

Writing typed below!

Rating: 8.5 Played: Fa 2022 Port: SNES Switch Online

Comments

I am so glad the switch has save points

I love that Ravio is dressed as dark world link, also glad I played ALBW first!

Harder to figure out in between dungeon objectives

I love how this is the game that is the origin of human Ganon

The game is a lot more cryptic than intuitive

Flute boy is so dark but also so interesting

Moldorm was so annoying

oh Link is the last of the Hylian knights

yay new decrease damage armor! idk why the hat isn't also blue

i think turtle rock island was at the lake in ALBW ... interesting

when you start the game, why do you start with 1/2 health?

I'm still surprised the 7 sages were originally the 7 maidens

i hate ice dungeons T-T

the design of ganon's tower is really cool

omfg the mirror shield is so big it covers most of link's face

i like the bunny beam

you can see all the insp ALTTP had on OOT

i think the blue and red mail should be farther apart (play time wise)

omfg the lynels are terrifyingly fast T-T

LMAO vulture recap

THANK GOD NO DEAD MAN'S VOLLEY AHHHHH

Ganon's tower is SO LONG

oh? talking directly to the triforce essence? interesting

UNCLE ISN'T DEAD? AHHHHH

Sumary:

I can see why this game is so popular, it revolutionized the Zelda franchise. It is still a pretty cryptic game at times, but it was a lot of fun and very charming. There was amazing character and world designs, the artists absolutely killed it. I love how this game was the origin to a lot of things for the future: human Ganon, the ocarina, the dark world, the lost woods (although it was technically in zelda 1), ahhh it's so cool. I'm glad ALBW changed and improved on many things, giving more depth to the dark world, but I will say both have their fair share of annoying bosses. I hope Nintendo will continue to expand on the dark world in the future, especially because it's never been 3D. What a very charming game, I think I might replay it in the future since it's such a short game. I'm excited to finish the rest of the 2D games!

[whythewords]

In all unfairness

Hard to say what I'm feeling these days... That's a lie, all I do is talk about my feelings. It's never been more apparent how desperately I need to go back to therapy.

I'm keying this entry into my chosen notes app on my phone while on a plane...but much unlike the last time I did this, I am not on my way to Japan for the trip of a lifetime and a journey of self-discovery. Instead, I'm heading to Quebec for a 3 day work trip as part of a job I stopped liking all that much some time ago now. Our agenda is a lot fuller than last year's work trip, but realistically how much could I complain about being put up at a bougie resort. I brought my Nintendo Switch and plenty to entertain me during after hours. I sense there's gonna be less fraternizing with my co-workers when I don't have to this time around, but we'll see.

Either way, I applied for the local municipality gig and I'm feeling decent about that. It's a step closer to where I wanna be, I think. It's progress, and any progress is good progress right now.

Wish I could say the same for dating. I had a date this past Thursday night that may go down in history as one of my worst experiences on these apps thus far...but it didn't start that way.

I drove all the way out to Oshawa to meet this girl, (but in fairness, I did offer to come out her way as I often do on these first dates). She arrived at the bar and she looked, honestly stunning...better than her photos by a country mile which is something that definitely does not normally happen. She sat down and we got to talking. The conversation was flowing, I was making her laugh, it felt fun, and free and flirty. All my misgivings about "making a move" with the last girl I dated through the apps had lead me to awkwardly move in for the kiss on the third date. That nervous energy wasn't present here, or at least it wasn't the same. We were 20 minutes in before I confidently thought to myself: "this is working! There's a really good chance I make out with this girl...tonight!" Oh, if I only knew what was coming...

As we're getting ready to leave the bar, she steers the conversation toward politics, and as it turns out, she seems to think that society has been making too big a deal out of this whole racism thing (this take was particularly wild being that she was a biracial woman). Then she begins with the transphobic rhetoric of "someone can't be something just because they say they are" and other fun statements like that. My heart sank. This was the first time I had felt a real, exciting, solid connection with someone, pretty much since my ex-wife. We were VIBING HARD as the kids say...and in an instant it turned out she was not at all the kind of person I could see myself in a relationship with. I felt so very defeated, like the universe had just played a sick joke on me.

That lingered on my mind for several days...it's still there really. I was thinking that after an experience like that it was definitely time to pack it up and take a hiatus from the apps again, lord knows I've decided take a break from them for a lot less. Oddly enough though, I didn't. I don't know if it's apathy, or perhaps some last little flickering light of unwavering hope somewhere inside of me, but I took a deep breath and asked myself: why leave? Why leave if I'm just going to end up right back here anyway? I think I know what I want. I know I want to be in love again. Why not just...keep trying to figure it out? The girl I mentioned in my last entry here is still in the mix, the date just got postponed...and there are some other prospects. So why not just...continue?

So for now I will. After all, the world looks pretty small right now from this plane. My person is bound to be out there somewhere right?

They gotta be.

[ghostlymonade]

Three Hopes, The Best Way to Experience Fódlan

That might be a pretty bold statement, especially given the rather lukewarm response most Warriors-style spinoffs inspire in fans. However, I'm here to tell you exactly why I think, (writing-wise anyway), Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes is the best way to experience the world of Three Houses. Note: This post will be based on my playthrough of the two Blue Lions routes for the most part, both for brevity and fairness!

I’m assuming if you did choose to read more, you’re familiar, at least in passing, with Fire Emblem. But for those who don’t know, a brief summary: the Fire Emblem series is a longrunning tactical RPG franchise which finally found a well-deserved audience with the thirteenth game, Fire Emblem Awakening. Since that overwhelming success, Fire Emblem has been cementing itself, game after game, as one of Nintendo’s exclusive heavy-hitters. And I would argue the entry that truly brought Fire Emblem to its current status is the first Switch title, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. While it retained many of the popular features of prior games, there was a notable tone shift. This was Fire Emblem’s big Switch entry, and it was definitely a bold swing. Fódlan feels storied, complex, and rife with intrigue in a way I haven’t really found a Fire Emblem setting to be since the Tellius duology. At every corner, there’s more to learn, and you can feel the weight of that history bear down on everyone in the Officers’ Academy. While there are definitely aspects of Three Houses that feel rushed or glossed over, few would argue the worldbuilding isn’t up to snuff.  Where I feel Three Houses misses the mark somewhat is two key aspects: the character writing and trajectory of the story. These sound like huge, thorny issues, but hear me out; Three Hopes does it better.  Everyone who’s played both games is certainly in consensus that Hopes learned from its predecessor in some important ways (namely, no more spending three hours between levels running around the monastery), but I rarely see discussed how the writers handled Three Hopes’ story, and I think I can guess part of the reason...

Ah, well. I can’t force anyone to play it through, but I would argue the writing of Three Hopes is a lot more thoughtful than most give it credit for, and that between the two games, it’s the better way to experience the excellent world of Fódlan. We’ll go through two key issues that I, and quite a few others, had with Three Houses, and how they’re tackled in Hopes. What do you see in him, girl?

Despite Byleth having the approximate appeal, charisma and personality of a damp sock, all of Fódlan falls over itself to tell them how amazing they are. It’s been a recurring problem with the player avatar in recent Fire Emblem games, but I argue it feels more egregious with Byleth than any other. They’re the Ashen Demon, a mercenary with inhuman skill. They’re a capable professor, there’s something about them that draws in all three lords, instantly... Lacking any demonstration of the why or the how in action, it feels like the worst kind of player pandering, almost nonstop. And what bothered me most was the talk of Byleth’s mercenary prowess, constantly. Given we never see them in battle acting like their Ashen Demon namesake, I hated hearing every single character in supports and cutscenes speak of their mercenary prowess with such quivering awe. So when this trailer dropped?

Consider me hyped. And the game’s intro did not disappoint. Not only did we see Byleth earning their title, I also appreciated the intro truly establishing Shez as a mercenary. They’re part of a company, they actually talk about having to work for a living...it’s still the Fire Emblem brand of mercenary, complete with Honour™️ and hard limits on what they’ll do, but they felt more of a mercenary in the first ten minutes of Three Hopes than Byleth did in ten hours of the first game. And that persists throughout the game, too. Shez talks about sleeping outside, about the reality of working a job where people can die any minute- for lack of a better term, they show a real mercenary attitude. Behold, My Edge-elgard! (Credit to Kotor for the meme)

Three Houses has a tone issue, at times. What I definitely enjoyed was its refinement of the fledgling idea that Fates played around with: War sucks, actually, and it sucks for everyone because these are real people killing each other. Having three nations that aren’t ‘The Nice Ones’ and ‘Nightmare Before Christmas-themed War Crimes’ certainly helps, and I think introducing the player to each nation through getting to neutrally meet and grow close to some future key individuals before they launch into any huge conflict is a much better setup than Fates’ attempt to make Nohr’s leadership seem less evil through Corrin’s family being nice...to Corrin.  However, I believe that at times, it swung a bit too far into Angstland, and lost its way home. Azure Moon is a great example of this, often feeling as though things get worse, then they get worse, then they get worse. Contrast this with Azure Gleam, the Three Hopes route. While war does, indeed, still suck, there’s a distinct feeling that things can and will get better, so long as the team can pull together and keep fighting. They have victories and losses. One moment that particularly stuck out to me was this conversation with Felix:

He’s always critiquing Dimitri to his face, but it’s clear that Felix holds a lot of concern for him, even if he conceals it as purely being concerned about the future of Faerghus. And Dimitri does need that voice, to an extent. When you look at the rest of his circle: Dedue will die for him and follows Dimitri more or less anywhere, regardless of what he does or the reason why. Sylvain and Ingrid both know he’s been through a lot and try to take it easy on him. Felix is the only member of this close circle who seems willing to say anything negative to his face. In this sense, you could say Dimitri has the healthiest circle of any of the three lords. Claude has a goofy group of chill friendos, and Edelgard has Hubert, who is ride or die no matter how often she tries to kill God. It was a sweet little moment, and a fascinating insight into where Felix sees himself in this group. Azure Gleam is full of this kind of thoughtful writing, and it makes playing through the darker periods of the story feel like it’s worth doing, rather than giving the impression that the only good choice is to put the game down and take Byleth’s horrible influence three million miles away from these poor kids. I don’t just say that for comedic effect- it’s tacitly implied by the two games’ radically different stories that Byleth chasing support ranks and engaging in waifu-motivated war crimes is part of why Three Houses ends up so much darker than Three Hopes. Shez has a distinct, headstrong personality, and they aren’t afraid to offer their opinion. Not falling down a canyon for five years helps. In a sense, the two issues play into each other. If Byleth was better defined as a character, it might be easier to understand and believe their motivations throughout the war arc especially. If the war arc finds its way out of the angst, even for a day trip, it’s easier to believe Byleth can have a real, positive impact on how things turn out. This is a big part of why I think Three Hopes is the best way to experience Fódlan. The title is, admittedly, clickbait-y, as I think Three Hopes truly shines in the context of having played Three Houses first. But when taking both games together, it’s fascinating to see how differently things can go, when the writers had a chance to explore their world from a new angle, and I for one, look forward to seeing more of this alternate timeline style writing in Fire Emblem in the future! Hey, they’re already doing it in Heroes.

[toxinfrog]

Some thoughts on the secret bosses

I have some thoughts and theories/incoherent ramblings about Deltarune that have been rattling around in my head all day, and I've decided to share them, if only because I have to talk to somebody about them. Also, I've come up to this section because WOW this post is getting long, and I haven't even gotten to my main point yet, so, uh, fair warning: It's a long one.

So, first of all, Spamton and Kris are quite similar characters, and sort of "rhyme." I want to use the word "Foil", but I don't think that's quite right, so for now, I'm going to go with saying that the characters Rhyme. Spamton is a puppet under the control of another being, and so is Kris. This is quite well-trodden ground, so I don't want to linger here much longer than I have to, but I'm starting with this because it's where my train of thought began.

I then remembered how I leaned towards the idea that the thrown-away flowers could be the secret boss for Deltarune Chapter 3, as they would have some severe narrative importance for Kris as a discarded relic of their divorced father. Then, the thought occurred to me that I have no reason to assume that all of the secret bosses are going to be narratively significant to Kris, aside from the motif of seeking or having freedom: They may be the main character, but there's already counter evidence to this idea, and that evidence is Jevil.

As far as I can tell, Jevil does not have a lot to do with Kris. He has quite a few things in common with Spamton (Nihilism, thrown-away thing, ect.), but Jevil does not rhyme with Kris. That being said, you know who Jevil kind of does rhyme with? The Player. For starters, both Jevil and The Player see the world as a game and make the people of the world its participants. Sure, Jevil may have decided to go around killing people and we as players didn't (Or rather, couldn't in chapter 1, with the most one could do being frightening enemies away), but we both played a game with the people of this world, whether that was reducing their HP to zero or ACTing until they were unwilling to fight back. There's also something to be said about the perspective of imprisonment: Much like how Jevil saw those outside his cell as imprisoned despite the protests of the fun gang, we see the characters as trapped inside a computer screen, or a television, or a Nintendo Switch, or whatever else you're playing on that I'm not thinking of right now. Their world is very much limited to just the confines of hometown in our eyes: They probably believe that there's a whole world out there, but to us, it sure looks like a prison. Another thing, and one that I only just now thought of, is that Kris is known to imprison the player's soul, much like Jevil was imprisoned by the other darkners. One final note, and this one's a bit of a reach, but I did warn you about the incoherent rambling: Both Jevil and the player live in a spinning world.

One more angle that I just now thought of is the angle of Spamton embodying Kris's fears and the idea of Jevil embodying the player's fears. Kris is, of course, afraid that they can't live without being under the control of their puppetmaster, and Spamton embodies this fear by dropping to the ground the moment their strings are cut, and only coming to life again after being strung back up, implying that Kris is screwed if they manage to get what they want. That being said, what does the player fear that Jevil represents? Well, if you ask me, my greatest fear when trying to get into an RPG is that I'm not going to be able to get invested in the story and characters, and Jevil definitely seems uninvested in the well-being of the darkners: He's more interested in playing the game than he is in the people within it. In fact, his treatment of characters in the story as obstacles to be overcome and little else is what got him locked up in the first place. Jevil may very well be the living embodiment of becoming so disinterested in a story that you just start mashing A until you get to the fun gameplay, and for an RPG player, there's not a whole lot worse.

Something that comes to mind is the fact that the player is treated like a character in the story: Most main characters in video games don't interact with the player playing them, but Kris frequently puts the character in Time-Out to go do their own thing without the player's intervention. With that in mind, as well as the fact that both Kris and the Player rhyme with secret bosses, it may very well be possible that there could be a pattern of secret bosses rhyming with different major characters in the story. This could mean that instead of every secret boss connecting back to Kris, there's a secret boss meant to connect to Kris, the player, Susie, Ralsei, Noelle and whatever other major players come up in later chapters.

The main reason I think I assumed secret bosses were always Kris adjacent was because of the freedom motif throughout them, but who's to say that freedom isn't just a motif for the whole cast? For example, Noelle certainly seems pretty constrained on freedom between not being able to do anything about her ill father or missing sister and having a very strict mother. Continuing down the list, Susie is probably either homeless or neglected, and probably feels pretty powerless to change that, not to mention her pushing the whole "Your Choices don't Matter" Idea onto Kris when half of her bullying seems to be projection. Ralsei seems to be least in need of freedom at first, but considering how closely he holds the prophecy, it seems that a certain level of predetermination is core to his worldview. As for the player, well, you may get all sorts of choices, but the steam page DID say there was only one ending, and yeah, there was a question mark at the end, but it is definitely put into your head early that this game is not as free as Undertale.

So anyways, if the secret bosses are all related to characters, then maybe we can use the relations between characters and compare them to the relations between secret bosses and see if there's anything interesting there. Well, Kris is probably not very fond of the player: I mean, we ARE the ones controlling them, and I definitely feel some malice in the way they chuck our soul around. So, what are Spamton's opinions on Jevil? Well, he certainly doesn't seem fond of "THAT DAMN [Clown around town]" at all, honestly. One thing in particular he cites that stands out to me is his need to bust his ass working while Jevil only cares about games: This sounds a lot to me like how Kris has to do all of the physical labor that would be expected of such a grand adventure while we simply get to experience it as a game. I'll admit that that part is a reach, but I do think that the mirrored disdain is worth something, at least. I would love to examine the other side of this relationship in detail, but Jevil barely talks about the people he's interacted with, and never even mentions Spamton (which all certainly fits with my interpretation of Jevil, but I digress), so that's going to be difficult.

I wonder if Spamton mentions any other secret bosses? Well, the only two characters he mentions that we haven't met yet are Tenna and Mike, and by all accounts, Tenna is almost certainly the TV that is going to be the main antagonist of chapter 3, so that just leaves Mike. I don't know if Mike is going to be a secret boss or have some other significance. That being said, let's suppose that he is to be a secret boss, and try and extrapolate from there. What does Spamton think of Mike, and what do we know about the guy? Well, Spamton is fairly fond of Mike, and based on the warning he gives us regarding not believing "[Anything you see on TV]", it seems that Tenna is spreading negative rumors about Mike, and, considering this Tenna character is the ruler of a dark world in the same league as Queen or the King of Spades, it wouldn't be surprising if these rumors stuck. You know who Kris is quite fond of and finds themselves swarming with negative rumors? Susie. It seems like you can't talk about Susie with anyone without the rumors about her behavior coming up: Even Noelle seems shocked by the idea that Susie is a nice person, and Noelle is probably the most Pro-Susie biased person in existence. I guess what I'm trying to say is I think there's a possibility that Susie and Mike are going to rhyme in the same way that Kris and Spamton do.

At any rate, seeing some secret bosses get into other character's heads the same way that Spamton did with Kris in that way that only said character truly understands is a narratively fascinating topic, and I hope the idea gets explored.

Okay, I think that's everything.

[rlyehtaxidermist]

“If any other game had half the complaints that Pokemon did on release, it would be boycotted! People are too soft on Pokemon!” to me is sort of missing a part of the critique and counter-critique, which is that most of the issues that allegedly make SV unplayable are... honestly not that severe? Like I have a busted ass Switch with a broken fan and while I’ve noticed the occasional lag, it’s never been enough to really impact gameplay unless I go specifically looking for it?

Reviewers are proclaiming the game “inexcusably shoddy” because of things like objects in the background having lower framerates, or crappy-looking textures. Sure, it can be a bit visually jarring and looks unpolished, but it’s hardly game-ruining. Could they have fixed those things by throwing money at them? Sure. Did they have the money? Absofuckinglutely, TPC is loaded. Should they have? Probably. But they’re not fundamental flaws in the overall game design or gameplay - just the visual design.

That’s not to downplay that people do have legitimate gameplay issues that I haven’t seen in my personal experience, or that it’s wrong to dislike the graphics. I place basically zero weight on graphics over gameplay for everything I play, and if the graphics are a dealbreaker for you that’s fair enough - but don’t act like this is universal, or that buying a game despite poorer graphics is some indicator of blind brand stanning. I know it doesn’t look great, and it’s not that “I don’t care because it’s Pokemon”, I don’t care because I’ve spent like six thousand hours in Dwarf Fortress and I don’t give a fuck how it looks as long as I have fun actually playing it. (Which I have, so far - I’d rank SV pretty high in terms of the mainline series’s gameplay, though I wish they’d brought a few more LegArc mechanics along - like throwing balls outside battle.)

Like, I’ve played unplayable video games from nominally AAA studios. (And TPC has AAA money - even if they’re not Nintendo proper, they make more than enough on the franchise to merit comparison to the big leagues.) For all Pokemon’s launch should probably have been delayed a couple months for QA, it’s far from the worst launch product a major publisher has put out, and I think it’s weird that a lot of people are singling it out as such. Go play Sonic 2006 or the original PC port of Dark Souls. “Needs work” is not “unplayable”, and I think a lot of people only care because it’s Pokemon.

[freifraufischer]

It's been a rough month for the Pokemon Company and I thought I'd give a summary for those of you sane people who are not obsessed with collecting little (and sometimes very big) creatures.

I'm not one to try and set developers on fire when something isn't to my taste and in fact I stopped playing Pokemon Go when I found that it wasn't making me happy anymore. With that preamble I want to say this is not a call for action or a condemnation ... I'm not here to tell you how the Pokemon Company is the richest franchise in the world and they should do better. Nor am I here to excuse what in some cases were stunning decisions.

In background: The flagship games of the 9th generation of the Pokemon franchise were released late last year and while I adore them and they may be my favorite Pokemon Games ever they have some very serious flaws. There are frame rate and performance issues. Those issues may be related to how old the hardware of the Nintendo Switch is and may be related to the fact that the ocean around Paldea is literally bigger than the planet earth and the skybox is bigger than the sun. The switch is old hardware but I don't really think it's fair to expect my hand held game console to render celestial sized objects. The games has many charming qualities but it also sacrifices some things that have been expected from the franchise over the years. You can enter very few buildings and most of the NPCs which often had wonderful bits of characterization in past games wander around with single speech bubbles like "I need a new notebook" or "I wish I had a lechonk."

There have been three patches since game release and the only seeming attempt to address any of the performance issues was a note on the second patch that said they were removing pokemon and NPCs from some parts of the map to reduce issues. If it did anything I didn't really notice but as I play entirely on hand held I don't think I'm a very good judge of it. The performance issues never really impacted my enjoyment of the games but I do understand why for others it is unacceptable. Their frustration doesn't negate my fun and my fun doesn't make their frustration invalid.

The 1.2.0 Patch was dropped 3 months ago to coincide with the inevitable announcement of DLC. And as one should probably expect with the painful technological history of this game there were two very significant issues. 1.2.0 came with the introduction of an ingame event introducing two new Pokemon that were part of the DLC. Some players who were online and in game when the patch dropped encountered this event but because the pokemon didn't exist instead they caught a bad egg which they could not delete and which prevented them from catching one of these special event pokemon. At the same time a very small number of people encountered a save corruption glitch that seemed to wipe out many hours of progress from months of playing. Now to stress these save corruption incidents were extremely extremely rare given the number of players of this game. So rare that it seems that it was essentially impossible to replicate. Content creators on youtube and people on twitter were quick to blame a feature that connected Pokemon Go to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet but a significant portion of the people who had the safe file corruption never connected to Go and the issue hasn't really been a topic of discussion in Go only players who used the feature very heavily. After a number of weeks Nintendo appears to have found a way to restore files for people who contact them and there are no reports of this glitch from 1.3.0 onward (where we are now as of the writing of this).

The save file corruption issue caused a lot of fear in the community (remember these are collecting games and as there is no cloud saving at the moment there are no backups--more on that later). The general state of the games on release have left many lingering frustrations and anger among some of the most intense fans. Oh and while this is not related to this post except tangentially the people running Pokemon Go decided to anger their player base with deeply painful and unpopular changes dressed up with language that amounts to "we're doing this for your own good." There is a complicated relationship between the developer of Pokemon Go and the Pokemon Company in general and that's for another time ...

Woooeh that was a lot of background.

So what could have happened in the last few weeks.... that could possibly make this worse? Well three almost unrelated things ...

It started with the competitive/esports side of things. The Japanese and South Korean national championships and qualifiers for the Pokemon World Championships in August were plagued with bugs. Some tools were not working and some matches were decided by who experienced fewer bugs. The events are having to be replayed and some worlds invites were revoked and the people told they had to qualify again--including a former world champion. Messing up the national championships in two of your largest markets because your game now famous for it's bugs and performance issues was certainly not the news they wanted.

Then late last week one of their weekly raid events went awry. While people wait for DLC to drop (vaguely sometime because the only date we have is Fall 2023 for the first part) the thing that keeps things active in the game are special events where unusual pokemon can be caught. It so happened that last week the featured pokemon were special in that they don't normally appear in raids and have some ingame unique qualities to them. The easiest way to explain this is that there is a crafting system in Scarlet/Violet where when you kill or catch a pokemon it gives you some crafting material. You catch a Pikachu it gives you Pikachu fur. Let us not dwell on the idea of how you got Pikachu's fur from it as no good can come of pondering some things. The loot drop pool for raid pokemon also include this crafting material for pokemon that are within the game's pokedex. Now most of the really special pokemon in these limited time events are not within the games pokedex so the game doesn't try to generate the crafting material.

Well for the first time last week the raid pokemon were from a sub group of pokemon within the game that do not drop crafting material but the apparently automatically generated raid reward pool... tried to drop the non existent item.

And if you were lucky enough to get None x 2... your game crashed.

They pulled the event raids within a few hours and we have no word on when we'll see them again (and it has also put on hold future raid events the next one would have been announced a few days ago).

The third part of this triple whammy has to do with a service called Pokemon Home. Now remember Pokemon is at it's heart a collecting game and you can carry your old friends from game to game and still preserve (if not always use) a pokemon you caught long ago in a different game. It's a feature that isn't useful to many casual players but for the most loyal of the franchises players it is deeply emotionally important. There have been many versions of the storage service for this purpose and the most recent one is a subscription service that costs USD 15.99 a year. Historically Home compatibility has not been available at game launch because the developers want you to play the game not just dump your years of pokemon in immediately. Generation 8's Sword and Shield took around 4 months to get compatibility but for the last titles of Generation 8 Briliant Diamond/Shining Pearl and Legends Arceus it took longer (a full 6 months for BDSP).

Compatibility with Home for Scarlet and Violet were slated for "Spring 2023" (though an English language Pokemon video presentation said "Early 2023" but that may simply be a translation variation). Either way people are inpatient understandably in my mind given that this is a paid subscription service and given the game's now history of save corruption with no public explanation of what caused it or if it was fixed. The community's tolerance of the wait ran out a while ago... and last week (before the raid glitch happened) a date was announced. We would have Home Compatibility on 5/24 with all these features.

The next day--after the raid glitch happened but likely unrelated to it--the Pokemon twitter announced that they'd made a mistake and that it wasn't coming on the 24th. The date was "yet to be announced" (let's not dwell on people who announced something telling you that it wasn't announced when they were pulling the announcement because Franz Kafka died 99 years ago and he never met a Pikachu or a video game developer in his life).

And that's where we are.

When will the raids be turned back on? Who knows. When will Home compatibility come? "Soon". Will these games ever get performance patches.... never.

[bonkusdonkus]

Zelda has changed, and is going to keep Changing.

You know, with Tears of the Kingdom right around the corner, I’ve been thinking about Zelda and where it’s going.

I loved Breath of the Wild, and I’m like 95% sure I’m going to love TotK too. It looks awesome, and it’s obvious that Nintendo has taken the first game and turned it up to 11.

 But, it’s undeniable that Breath of the Wild was a huge step away from the classic Zelda action-adventure formula. And with any big step, it’s inevitable that some people are going to feel left behind.

I hadn’t actually realized how many people there were who didn’t like the changes of BotW until they started speaking up about how they didn’t like the way TotK looked. Breath of the Wild turned the Zleda formula on it’s head, discarding the story-driven linear dungeon exploring adventure, for an open world sandbox. 

Personally, I really resonated with the changes, but a lot of people hated it. And seeing TotK apparently doubling down on those changes has really disheartened a lot of folks.

And even if I don’t really agree with them, like... I feel for you guys, I get it. A series you love is changing in a huge way, and there’s no way of knowing if you’ll even like what it becomes by the end of it. Heck, I’m an old school Paper Mario fan, I’ve been there.

And I know there’s gonna be some Asshat who’s like “Oh wHy Don’T YoU jUsT PlAy sOmE OTher ActIoN-AdVeNtuRE AnD StOP WhINinG! UgH, GaMErs ArE So EnTiTlEd!”

Listen. No one makes games like 3D Zelda anymore. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Okami, and that game came out 17 years ago! And even if they did, it wouldn’t be Zelda, not exactly. People love Zelda for all the classic adventures it gave them, the stories and battles they hold close to their hearts. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize those people for being upset that Zelda isn’t going to be like that anymore.

Because let’s be honest with ourselves, BotW changed Zelda forever. Period.

I don’t presume to know where LoZ is going after this, Nintendo is nothing if not unpredictable, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that we’re going to be seeing the influence of the two Switch Zelda titles for a long, long time. As of writing, BotW has sold upwards of 29 MILLION copies, making it the top selling Zelda game of all time by a cool 21 million, more or less. ( Last I checked, number 2 was Twilight Princess, at 8 million.)

Tears isn’t out yet, but I bet it’s gonna sell like hotcakes too.

And on top of all of those numbers, we can’t forget that this is Nintendo we’re talking about. Obsessed with gameplay mechanics and innovation as they are, it’s hard to imagine them trading in this new wide-open sandbox for a more linear adventure now that they’ve figured it out.

Even if Nintendo does address a lot of the big complaints people had about BotW, like the story and the lack of classic dungeons, (which I hope they do, I’d like to see some more work in those areas too,) the runaway success of the game and the near inevitable success of Tears of the Kingdom mean that Nintendo really doesn’t have a reason to go back to the Ocarina of Time style ever again. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I were a betting man, I’d say the Zelda sandbox is here to stay, at least until Nintendo dreams up some wacky new thing to replace it.

So, yeah. On the one hand, I’m very excited for Tears of the Kingdom, and whatever comes after it. It’s a fresh, exciting new direction for the series I love, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us. But on the other hand, I am a little sad for what we’re losing in the process, and for the people who are really hurting for a good old fashioned zelda game.

I can only hope that this divergence in the Zelda series has the same affect it did so many other times when Nintendo left a beloved game or series behind: Inspire other people to go and make their own!

 I mentioned Paper Mario earlier. When that series went through a big change, it inspired games like Bug Fable and Born of Bread to step up to the plate and fill in the gap left behind. And it’s not just Paper Mario either! You can see it all over the place now, games inspired by series like Star Fox or F-Zero that have been abandoned by Nintendo! I hope that’s what happens. As much as I love the new style, I think it would be a real shame to see the old way disappear.

[game-boy-pocket]

I was wrong about not being able to fit one more Mario game in before the Mario Movie. I just beat Odyssey, though it took me all day.

I forgot that if you aren't trying to grab everything, Mario Odyssey is actually pretty short. In fact I was a little upset that the game took me a single evening to beat when it first launched. I'm generally not a fan of locking so much content behind post game.

But to be fair to Odyssey, I played that game in a very wrong way, and under very poor circumstances where I was stressed about family related drama, and it soured that whole day for me. I just breezed through it, leaving each kingdom as soon as I had the minimum stars, I actually thought thats how I was supposed to play the game because we were chasing after Bowser and the Broodals, it seemed urgent not to linger. I even missed some bosses because of this.

Well now I know that's not the case I can play the game at my own pace. I eventually got all of the moons... not this time though, I played much like I did on launch day, except I didn't go for minimum moons, I at least made sure to solve all the major problems in each kingdom so I could experience most of what the game had to offer. So it didn't fly by nearly as quick as it did launch day.

I actually think this game is better for being able to be beaten in a single day. I don't want every game to be a huge commitment. I don't think i'll ever do 100% in this game again unless something terrible happens to my switch and I lose save data.

I'm also a lot more keen on this game than when I first played it. I was a bit harsh, partially because of how I spoiled it for myself by playing wrong and in a bad mental state, but there were things that I felt were legit issues with the game. I still kind of stand by them, there are way too many moons, and I think there's a lot of really bad decisions with the art direction... I understand Mario is meant to be a kind of experimental series at times but I did not care for the realistic humans in new donk city, or the vaporwave colored playstation 1 world made out of food, I think we really need to ditch the tradition of multiple Bowser fights in each game, and I think not fleshing out the ruined Kingdom was a huge mistake, seeing what the game could have been via the Mario Odyssey Art Book really brings my opinion of the game back down, you know? Almost everything in that art book is better than the final product.

But anyway, I don't want to end on a bummer note, because man this is a fun ass game, I really wished Nintendo would consider making a sequel but I feel like if they had plans to, they already would have, and if the rumors of true that EAD is now doing a Donkey Kong game, I would much rather have that, but man.... I really want a new 3D Mario now. Bowser's Fury was just not enough...

And speaking of Bowser, I discovered that in the end segment, if you do a triple jump, he does a "Yahoo" with his fist up like Mario... god damn, I forgot how fucking good that climax is and how badly it makes me want Bowser to be playable in a platformer, but like, the whole thing, not the last five minutes.

Mario Odyssey, fantastic game. And with that, I've spent too much time playing Mario today, but I think i'm gonna go watch the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with my buddy.

[acnlmorioh]

some new horizons thoughts

i don’t think it’s controversial to say that new horizons ended up being a little underwhelming. i was so so excited in 2019 when a new animal crossing game was announced. i even bought my switch specifically to play it! when it released, i played it every single day. i worked hard on my island to make it look pretty and to get my dream villagers. yet not even a year later, i fell out of love with the game and stopped playing. in fact, now i only ever log in on my birthday and the day i started my island. what’s the issue with new horizons? why is it that i can still come back to new leaf 10 years after release with no problem, but not new horizons?

i think the biggest issue for me is that at a certain point, you run out of things to do. whenever i occasionally log onto new horizons, i just walk around my island for a bit. i talk to the villagers. maybe even catch a fish or two. then i inevitably get bored and log off. there is simply nothing to do. obviously there are the standard dailies of check the shops, shake trees, find fossils, etc. but at some point you just think what’s the point? i finished my fossil collection, so why would i keep digging them up? i could sell them for money, but i never buy anything so what’s the point? and sure, i could restart my island and have lots of early game stuff to redo, but after working so hard on my island since release i don’t want to lose all of that.

maybe i could just get a different game card to have a new island? well not only does a new game card cost £30-40, your island isn’t even saved by game card, its saved by console. i get that this is an issue with the switch rather than with the game, but it is just so annoying to me. i have 2 new leaf game cards which i can swap between whenever i want. why do i have to buy an entirely new switch just to have a different island?

well, maybe new horizons would be more fun with friends! now you can even have up to 8 people in multiplayer at once. once you’ve got past the paywall of NSO (which is quite cheap to be fair), you can have your friends on your island! and you can do… so much stuff! i really think so much is missing from new horizons, with a big thing being tortimer island. me and my friend used to spend hours on tortimer island together, whether it be catching bugs or playing the island tours. what are you supposed to do when you play with your friends on new horizons? it usually ends up just being a tour of your island and then maybe you run around and hit each other with nets for a bit.

speaking of missing things, i think so many important things have just been cut out of the game. for example, the shops. you can have two shops on your island: nook’s cranny and the able sisters. this is a significant downgrade from new leaf, in which you had nookling junction, the gardening store, able sisters, kick’s, shampoodle, club LOL, the dream suite, and the fortune house. instead, many of these have been downgraded into small shops on harv’s island that can easily be unlocked simply by paying 100,000 bells per shop. if these shops weren’t brought into new horizons, they were simply cut out - where’s gracie? where are pelly, phyllis, and pete? where’s wendell? where’s katrina? it’s sad to see such memorable characters be removed and often replaced by inanimate objects (the card stand, the custom design kiosk).

this isn’t to say i dislike new horizons, however. i think certain features such as being able to place furniture outside which is an insanely huge change (for the better!). i love a lot of the new additions, like the new emotes, furniture, clothes, even the ‘replacement’ characters like cj, flick, and daisy mae. i also appreciate nintendo adding things such as the northern/southern hemisphere options as well as more skin tones (!!!). i just think that for what it was, the game was underwhelming. and maybe i’m biased because of nostalgia but i will always prefer new leaf.