What am I doing to do this week?

It seems that nowadays, I have nothing particular I want to do. It always seems to be the same schedule over again. Is Toronto getting really boring? Perhaps.

I have a new plan in mind that while it's not the smartest decision I've made, I'm going to proceed with it anyway. I should somehow get myself lost on purpose so I can have a chance to explore that particular area. At least then I'll have a new adventure.

Re-sorting my game shelf.

As a few of you may know, I've posted on twitter that I'm slowly running out of space to put in all future purchased games. I haven't actually found a way around it yet but instead, I took the time to sort all the games lying horizontally on the shelf.

So now it looks like this. This is also a good chance for many of you to know what my game collection partially looks like.

For those that wanted to know what the Japanese games are (and can't read it), here's the list of games listed from left to right.

Playstation 2:

  • Armored Core Last Raven
  • beatmaniaIIDX 9th Style
  • beatmaniaIIDX 11 RED
  • beatmaniaIIDX 12 HAPPY SKY
  • DDRMAX -Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix-
  • SEGA Ages: Galaxy Force II
  • Gradius V
  • Mushihimesama
  • IBARA
  • Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T.
  • The King of Fighters NESTS
  • Thunder Force VI
  • Shikigami no Shiro II
  • The Shooting: Double Shienryu
  • Zone of the Enders

XBOX360:

  • Arcana Heart 3
  • Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou Black Label EXTRA
  • Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Ver 1.5
  • Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label
  • Deathsmiles
  • Deathsmiles II X
  • ESPGaluda II Black Label
  • Gal☆Gun
  • Ketsui ~Kizuna Jigoku Tachi~ EXTRA
  • Mamoru-kun wa Norowarete Shimatta
  • Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5
  • Otomedius G
  • Raiden IV
  • Senko no Ronde DUO
  • Shikigami no Shiro III
  • Strike Witches
  • Shooting Love 200X
  • Tetris Grand Master ACE

So there you have it.

February's agenda.

Life CAVE STG 怒首領蜂大復活

There's been far too much to do for this entire month, besides the inevitable midterms or so. This seems to be the month where I'm going to have to deal with at least 5 new game releases. Out of the 5, only 1's a domestic release.

  • Gal☆Gun (ギャル☆がん) - XBOX360
  • Arcana Heart 3 Limited Edition (アルカナハート３減退版) - XBOX360
  • Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu Black Label＊ (怒首領蜂大復活ブラックレーベル) - XBOX360
  • Muchi Muchi Pork & Pink Sweets (むちむちポーク＆ピンクスィーツ) - XBOX360
  • Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 - XBOX360

＊This game comes in two forms: DLC and Retail. The only benefit that Retail has over its DLC counterpart is the addition of an Arrange Mode, which allows you to use the AH-Y72 Tiger Schwert from Ketsui, as well as the game's BGM being replaced with arrange tracks of Ketsui's BGM, courtesy of virt.


On the personal side, nothing's been going on lately. I'm still my fat gluttonous self as ever. I've been on the craze of finding glasses to wear lately.

I think it's safe to say I've been trolled hard while I was on my search to find myself a pair of Gunnars. At the time, these were pretty uncommon, so I ended up buying a pair from Canada Computers (Paralex Silver) during Boxing Day. It took less than a week for me to realize "man, silver frames didn't look as good as I thought". I didn't wear them as much as I would in the end.

Last week, I visited VGP over at Keele/Wilson after school with Jimmy and ..some guy whose name I can't remember at the moment. It's a pretty cool game store that I never visited in a long time. Anyway, it seems like they had a booth that sold Gunnars too. I ended up buying a pair of PPK Black-frames. I liked them a lot, and I knew this is something I wouldn't regret buying.

Until about an hour later after that, we all went back to York University and it turns out the optical store in the campus sold Gunnars as well. Not only that, it had every single frame available. Needless to say, I raged hard because there was a pair of thick-frame Gunnars that looked really appealing. Funny enough, it's called the Anime.

I'm just going to hold back this time.

Okay.

Many of you that know me pretty well know that I'm a gamer at heart and I rarely read manga (because I watch anime more than I read manga) unless someone recommends me a good series.

Judging from what I've observed of a few episodes along with the fanbase, I told myself I wasn't going to read anything from the JUMP series. The general consensus was that Naruto and Bleach ... are crap.

Anyway, I've been told by Kai and Terry to read up on a series called One Piece (YES I'M FUCKING SLOW, I KNOW. SHUT THE FUCK UP), and I was reluctant to read it at first because lolJUMP. I've read through several chapters already and I really do like the story.

That's one burden off my shoulder for now. One Piece is really great and I'm liking it, if it wasn't about one gripe. I'm lazy to read the thing in Japanese, so as every other person, I go and read scanlations of it online. The first 30 chapters or so had tolerable scanlators, but around chapter 35 is where I go ... "What the fuck?".

Seriously, I don't know who scanlated these chapters specifically, but I can't enjoy a good story if most of the dialogue's riddled with fucked-up grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.

There comes a point where I keep telling myself...

...that I really should start updating this blog more often. There's always something for me to talk about but they're always lost in transition or something.

Anyway, I hope all of you had a good New Year's Eve / New Years. I can't say I have. I think that at this point, I can't really enjoy New Year's Eve like a normal person anymore, considering it's the day when my grandmother's passed away. I really can't believe it's been a year since that day, and I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Ah well, times pass.

It's 6 in the morning and I can't fucking sleep. All these thoughts are clouding my mind and it's pretty hard to get them out of my mind. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm going to have an overwhelming amount of work to do when the morning starts. *sigh*

またね。

Obligatory "It's been a while" entry.

It's been a month, and I must admit, I forgot I had this blog at all.

A month has passed and there's been an overwhelming amount of events that have occurred within the relatively long time-frame.

First off, I think I've been going pretty alright in my Japanese course. So far, I've been given 4 tests and a oral exam. I'm expecting a mark tomorrow for the oral but for the last four tests, I'm pretty satisfied with what I got.

Test 1: 93%
Test 2: 96%
Test 3: 98%
Test 4: 100%

I can't say that I expect good marks out of the oral exam, since I stuttered and I made shit up from the top of my head. I didn't know that you needed to have something written down on a piece of paper for the sake of memorization. Oh well. There's the written exam to take care of and I'll just wing it like I did for every single one of my tests.

Secondly, I've been participating in something called the Winz Language Exchange. It's pretty awesome as it's a 2-hour session every Friday.
In the first hour, you try to create a conversation in English with a group of Japanese students. In the second hour, they try to create a conversation with you in Japanese.

I've been going every Friday since the beginning of November and it's a really great experience. Not only do you get the benefit of speaking with Japanese students, you have the incentive of trying to improve your Japanese and ask as many questions as possible about the language and the culture of Japan.

Saturday November 27th was definitely a night to remember. Kai, Jake, and I went downtown to go check out the DISTANT WORLDS: FINAL FANTASY concert. Upon arriving in the theater, I've met a bunch of people I know. Let's see if I can remember them all.

Pat, Vicky, Tam, _eternal from twitter, Robin, Celena, Ron, Mike, May, and Hime among others. Apparently there were a lot more people I knew but I didn't get to see them. Sorry, Vincent.

ALSO HOLY SHIT, MY PROFESSOR FROM SCHOOL WAS THERE TOO NSAKLGNSAKLNFKLSANFSA.

All in all though, the concert was pretty fucking amazing beyond words. I cried a bit when some of the FF6 tracks were being played, just because it's my most favourite of the Final Fantasy games.

I seriously regret not buying -any- kind of memorabilia from there though. It's just amazing.

Oh yeah, and as of late, I've been playing Do-Don-Pachi Daifukkatsu on XBOX360. I haven't been playing much out of 1.5 and 1.51, but goddamn, I love Arrange A to death. It's basically Daifukkatsu using the DAI-OU-JOU Type A ship along with the DAI-OU-JOU Hyper system. I've been playing it so much that I'm currently 14th place worldwide in the Arrange A internet rankings.

That is.... until CRI starts to beat it again.

The aftermath of Irregular STG Life + other things.

Even though I had announced it at the last minute, it was great having all of you guys come and watch the stream. Here's hoping to an even better session next time!

I've learned a few things while streaming, due to the loads of discussion that were had during the stream's chatroom. It's also time I cross out and add a few things into the goal list that was made in the previous post.

Battle Garegga MAX RANK
Erppo and Azinth over at MotK requested this. Jesus Christ, this mode is impossible, with a capital I. Not only do enemies shoot craploads more at you, the enemies themselves have higher defense, so they take more shots before getting destroyed. Speaking of which, it makes the 1st stage so tedious. You know those sets of stationery tanks or so that drop mini bomb icons at the very beginning? It's impossible on max rank, since the tanks take a lot of hits and you only end up destroying about 3-4 tanks in total. Oh, and the bosses....don't even get me started with the bosses. Increasing the rank ramps up their health so high, bossfights nearly take an eternity, resulting in many timeouts. Funny thing is that when Glow Squid (final boss) times out and goes into its 2nd form, the music pretty much dies out and you end up fighting the crazy thing w/ no music. Overall, I can see why many superplayers suicide to minimize rank. When it gets too high, it's not only difficult, it's just plain annoying. I like it better when rank only affects bullet density and not the enemies' defense.

Dimahoo / Great Mahou Daisakusen - MAX Difficulty
Bananamatic requested this during the stream, so I checked it out. Just as I expected from a Raizing game, this game is deadly at MAX difficulty. There's not much I can say about Dimahoo except I 'credit-fed like a GameSpot reviewer'. All the bosses are freaking hard and I went through the misfortune of destroying both arms of Gigafacer during its last phase, which unleashed a set of unavoidable bullet hell. It was still fun though but Jesus Christ, it was fucking hard.

DoDonPachi [no-vertical] attempt.
This was probably one of the highlights of the stream. I never actually attempted this seriously until yesterday's stream, and let me tell you, it provides a rush of adrenaline like none other. I didn't think the game would actually be doable with up and down movement restricted but it's certainly possible. I've made it up to Stage 6's boss on my best try and it's satisfying as hell. The sad part is that this is even better than any other legitimate attempts I have ever done.

Anyway, in conclusion, great stream as usual, it was really nice talking to some of you (the usual people), even some newcomers that showed up. I'll be sure to announce the 4th one sometime down the road with an updated goal list.