Last Wednesday was the coldest day of the year so far. By the time I got done with my day job, it was around 8PM or so… I figure the “day” part of it is mostly theatrics.

I upgraded my desktop computer about two months ago, but up until the past week I didn’t really take full advantage of the new hardware. The jump from my previous rig was so exponentially gigantic that my average workload is now insignificant to the little guy. My dear old computer, the one that used to startup in about 10min, is now sprinting in less than 15sec to show me how messy my desktop has gotten. I have nothing to complain about, really – but in my heart of hearts, I knew, I knew that part of me bought all these parts so I could play more videogames… at my old age, there isn’t a gamer bone left in my body.

With that in mind, I polished my collection of emulators for 20-30 year old games and I’ve been doing nothing but playing visual novels, just to really push the hardware…

How have you been this past month? (* ^ ω ^)

I’m exhausted! Man, I’ve really been working like a horse. Now that we’ve dropped all pretense of these blogposts being entertaining, it feels like the only thing I say with them is “I’m working so much!”. I won’t comment on it much this time.

We’re halfway through the year?! Papagaio…

The videogames thing was true. It seems a lot more visual novels have been translated for old consoles since the last time I checked, which means the last time I played videogames, which means it was ages ago. I get a bit scared when starting up >20 hour games, but I’ve been trying to let go of this fear – is there anything more embarrassing to do as a grown man than cower away when something takes time? I’m getting pissed off just thinking about it!

Well, I can’t make a case for myself as I’ve only been playing shorter games. I beat Super Mario Bros. yesterday, the SNES remake. I’ll have you know this is THE classic Mario I grew up with, not the NES version. I used to play SNES Station on my PS2, way back as a wee child.

In case this earns me a few good points, I didn’t use savestates and I didn’t skip any levels. At the end, Peach told me to try a harder challenge, so I replayed the thing just to find out that the only thing that changes is that the goombas turn into buzzies? I’ve read online the enemies are supposed to walk faster, but I didn’t notice a lick of it. On this second playthrough, I used world skips, because I’d feel like an idiot doing it all over. Still, I technically did beat Mario twice in a row. Maybe if I wasn’t 67 years old and living in 2025 this would be an amazing feat.

As far as visual novels go, there’s this really cute game I stumbled on called Sampaguita, from the Yarudora series. This series was a brief stint, with 4 games coming out on the PSX, all developed by Sugar and Rockets. The animation was produced by the sickos (positive) at Production I.G.. All the games are about girls with amnesia, apparently, which is totally a moe trope (didn’t Welcome to the N.H.K. have a joke about this?). The games later got ported to the PSP, and that’s the version I’m playing.

There’s like 30 endings per game, so even though I’ve “finished” it, I can’t say I beat it. Also, I got an awful ending at first, so I’m replaying it.

I should’ve known: once I saw the boxart for this game, it should’ve clicked. After stumbling into a cop early in the game, I figured the character design was handled by someone who studied Katsuhiro Otomo a lot, and that narrowed my search to maybe 90% of all artists in the world, but really? Production I.G.? Sugar and Rockets? Maria’s big, poofy hair, high-waisted jeans, yes… Masamune Shirow was the character designer.

Well, how did I mess up my ending? I got a bit too swept up… Maria is just so cute. She’s SO cute! Once I heard that low-bitrate “Mabuhay” voice sample… It was over for me… AAH!!! I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s a part early on where, basically, you have to use your brain and not go full on emotion, but I was tired from work, it was the coldest day of the year and this videogame character was TOO cute so I slammed face first into the wrong option. It wasn’t anything indecent, but they basically put that there to stop stupid people from continuing. Lesson learned.

I’m replaying it now and so far, so good. I’ve gotten quite a bit further, and I’m hopeful that I can see the good ending now. Back when I first played Clock Tower (SNES) as a teen, on a cloudy week in October, I managed to go through most of the endings just because I loved the atmosphere, and I feel like this’ll be a similiar case. Maria is SO cute! My heart can’t take this. I have to stop writing.

So where do we go from here? Well, after finishing Sampaguita I might finish going through the Onion Games catalog (we’re a long way from going through the entire Love-de-Lic pipeline, still). I wanted to retry Tokimeki Memorial too, because I flubbed it bad the last time, that game is hard!… Ah, wait, we’re talking about zona.plankton?

Well, I have some vague indicators for you. The first of which is that I’m going to try to write blogposts that are not lame. What this means will be up to interpretation until the next blogpost is out. The second is that on this second half of the year, I’m going fully insane. Even if I somehow manage to not share ANYTHING new, I will know in my heart that I did go insane, because I’m the one that went through it, and I think that’s fair enough. I’m about to work in a manner never seen before…

I hope your July will blossom. Have a nice day!

Signed, with love,
noo.dll__〆(￣ー￣ )
see ya!