Tuesday, June 4, 2019

May 2019 Entry

May 2019 Entry

May has wrapped up. Felt like a long month.

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- While I played the Ace Attorney Trilogy on stream, a lot of viewers asked if I had seen the anime, which I hadn't. But I finally bought the two available seasons of the Ace Attorney anime (05.03). I really like that it was two sets of subtitles; one is for the Phoenix Wright translations and the other is for the original Gyakuten Saiban translations. Nice touch. I only watched the first season in Japanese as I didn't want to hear the English voices (or else I'd try to imitate them on stream) and I plan to watch season two after beating Justice For All on stream. So far, retelling of the first game (minus the 5th case). 


- Went to the doctor for a check up and to look at a long standing rash (05.06). First time at this doctor and I do have to say, I was surprised that she focused a lot on mental health. Never had a doctor do that before. Got blood work done and went to get x-rays on my back and hips as those issues were more painful at that time. 

I did delay stream as these took longer than expected. And as I was getting things ready to stream, I accidentally hit the switch on surge protector and my computer shut off. When I tried turning it back on, it wouldn't go beyond a certain point in the start up. Took about 15-20 minutes. Once that was passed, the next thing wrong was that the stream deck and webcam would not be recognized. At that point, I decided to call the stream off. The computer was fine afterwards, but I wasn't in the right mood to stream. 

Went back to the doctor a week later to follow up on all the tests. By that time, the rash was gone even though it had been there for a couple of years. Everything else was minor. Low B-12, low Vitamin D, minor arthritis in hips, minor scoliosis, and small kidney stone forming. Currently taking B-12 shots every 2 weeks for a couple of months, a prescription of Vitamin D weekly, doing more stretching in general (and the new gaming chair helps), and drinking more water. Everything is being addressed so no worries.  

- Met up with one of my best friends to catch up (05.20). We went to eat lunch at Roostars, she showed me her new car, and then we got dessert at Coco. Other than catching up, she had mentioned meeting up with others she had not seen in a while. So I sent out texts to just set the wheels in motion.

That same day, plans for us to meet up again with another friend from high school happened. And as the week went on, another high school friend was added to the mix. Unfortunately on the day of, my best friend had to bow out due to a heavy work order that came in. So it ended up being a mini high school reunion (05.30). We went to Crawfish & Beignets and the food was wonderful and at a good price. Having this trio together was something that had not happened in possibly a decade since both had moved out of town.

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- Money in the Bank was so fun to watch (05.19). Great matches all around, but the actual ladder matches were so good. 



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- Forgot to post this last month, but I bought my copy of Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (04.30). Can't wait to play it in July. 


- We started playing Final Fantasy X at the end of April and beat it close to the middle of May (04.30-05.13). It was great jumping back into this game after almost two decades. The HD remaster makes the game still look good and it was cool reliving these memories.

However, this was a tough series to stream for multiple reasons. It wasn't until the day we had a company meeting and some of us went to an escape room afterwards. That day was great, but I did end up missing a stream. I wouldn't trade it, but that made me want to make up the stream the following Monday, which was the day I went to the doctor and the PC crapped out. So I planned to level up off stream...but I couldn't do that without progressing the story so I missed another stream day. At that point I decided to have 10 streams to make up for it. I made sure to take a long break during each of those to eat dinner, but those were still draining. Stream 5 was especially draining as we attempted to finish the game and died at the final boss 3 times (each were 20 minutes long) and it ended up being close to 11 hours. Between that one and the final stream, I leveled up offline and planned more and that made beating the game way easier. 

A couple key things I noted in my head in regards to streaming came from this:
1. It is okay to level up offline. The audience doesn't have to see everything.
2. No more 10 hour streams. I figured that 8 hours had been a good number for me so I shouldn't exceed that time frame.



- A new trailer for the Final Fantasy VII Remake was released (05.09). Looks great.


- A new Demo Showcase (05.15). The games included in this one were Croc's World Run (simple runner), Mega Mall Story (2nd/3rd favorite from this simulation series), Pillar (interesting puzzles), Pokemon: Let's Go, Pickachu/Eevee! (not bad, but not for me), Riddled Corpses EX (a fun twin stick shooter). My favorite was Riddled Corpses EX so it was added to the wish list. 


- Downloaded my copy of Castlevania Anniversary Collection (05.15). Don't plan to play it anytime soon as it is currently slated for October 2020 (yes, 2020 so that we have "scary/spooky" games to play that month). But if there is a big lull in the year (as of typing this, those months this year are September, November, and December), we have these games available to work through. 


- In preparations for Cadence of Hyrule, I downloaded and played Crypt of the NecroDancer (05.18, 05.21). I thought this would be simple since it was a rhythm game. It was not. It took 90-120 minutes to beat the first dungeon. For the second stream, I played the final dungeon the entire time (7 hours) and only saw the boss twice. While I liked the game, I didn't think anyone would want to watch another multi-hour stream of me trying to beat the final dungeon. So this marks the first unfinished game on stream and I'm okay with that. I can always go back and try it again, but I don't plan to do that any time soon. 


One cool thing that happened during this stream was opening a gift from AGirlKeepSecrets. She was giving away one of her cross-stitches she was working on for Earth Day and I ended up winning it. It's the first gift I've received from someone I met through Twitch, yay. It sits in the background of every stream now. 


- Bought my copy of Resident Evil Origins Collection and downloaded Resident Evil 4 (05.21). Can't wait to jump back into these in October. 


- Played our monthly free game on stream in the form of Gems of War (05.22). It's a match three game with RPG elements and I actually enjoyed it. The five hours went by really fast. Definitely recommend it to anyone that wants a simple free game to play in their down time. 


- We then played our monthly NES game with Double Dragon (05.24). I really don't remember beating this game in my childhood especially when we got to the latter half of the game. But we beat it in about 3 hours. I debated in my head whether to end the stream there or play another NES game like I have in the past when the first game was short. So I ended up playing Donkey Kong Jr and beat it since it was simple. But we also got a nice high score of 185000. I would have kept going if I was able to, but I'm glad that we got that kind of score at all. 



- My copy of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon from Limited Run Games arrived (05.25). I actually got a notification that it arrived a day earlier, but it wasn't with our mail. Came the day after, which was weird. But we now have all our games for October ready and waiting. 


- Held another Demo Showcase this month for a specific reason (05.27). This time we played Aperion Cyberstorm (fun twin-stick space adventure), BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! (a puzzle series I was familiar with), Doodle God: Evolution (a simple simulator?), Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (an action platformer), and Ninja Village (another fun simulator game). My favorite ended up being Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. It was tough to choose between that and Ninja Village (my second favorite out of that series of simulators), but I ultimately chose Monster Boy because it has an end to it. But this Demo Showcase would have definitely gone to BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! had I not already downloaded it. I wanted to make sure to play the demo before actually playing the game on stream. 


- During the demo, I realized that there were multiple game modes for BOXBOY! + BOXGIRL! So I decided to play A Tale for Two (05.28). It's the mode that could be played with two players. It was fun and challenging just like the other BOXBOY games and I'm glad I was able to finish it. It was a completionist run up until the final world as those stages were very tough. I'm not sure when I'll get to the other two modes. It really just depends on the timing and schedule of games. It will either be at the end of each subsequent month (June, July) or at the end of every other month (July, September). We shall see. 


- Started Final Fantasy X-2 a little ahead of schedule (05.29, 05.31). It has been great jumping back into this world. While almost everyone that comes into the chat that didn't like the game always had something bad to say about it, I keep reinforcing why I like it (faster, more streamlined, etc). It's not a perfect game, but I am enjoying it all over again. 

One cool thing that happened during the first stream of the game was that a new comer to the stream followed, subbed, and then gifted enough subs for me to unlock our 3rd tier 1 emote. That was so cool. Now I don't have to rotate those out anymore, only the tier 2 emotes. 



- Over time, it always bothered me how the timing of the stream and Twitch was always off. It really bugged me the most during part 05 of Final Fantasy X that went on for almost 11 hours. In my head, I was going to end the time on 10:50:00 as it would have been weird to keep the end slate of the stream going on for 10 additional minutes. But once the stream ended, it was shy a few seconds of 10:50:00. So from that point, I made sure to end stream an extra minute over when I want it to stop. And if you haven't noticed, ever since playing Phoenix Wright, I removed the seconds from the stream highlights. Now all my streams will end on a flat minute count (hopefully at a 0 or 5) and 0 seconds. 

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- Company meeting with both locations together (05.03). It may be the first time that we've had a company meeting together since we split meetings. It was nice to see everyone at our location as it was the first time for some of them to visit. We played Google Trends together and our team won, yay. It was really fun. 

I stayed a little later after the meeting was over just to talk with others. And there was supposed to be a session to happen, but it never happened. We called and they told us they left a message with someone at the other location that they had to cancel. No message was ever received. But with that news, I blurted out that we should do an escape room (myself, PQ, Ocean, and Blue). We went to the same place that had the wizard and superhero room. We did their spy room and beat it with the second best overall time. We ended up bypassing one puzzle, but also lost some time missing out on simple thing. Not their best room, but I thought it was decent. Escape rate is now 83% with 29 escapes out of 35 rooms. 


- Some changes to the roster happened this month. Agent PQ and Agent Wolfman have switched locations due to projects and role changes. Agent Myth was released and I don't think I mentioned it an entry or two ago, but Agent Widdershins was also released. 

- And more changes are happening. One of those being that we retired Grandma Codebreaker (05.27). A little sad by that as I think it was a top favorite among the customers and didn't get a proper send off. 


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- TaeYeon - Voice (MV)


- In a tactic to pull away from being on Twitch all the time, I start watching older Korean variety shows. Among those were a lot of TWICE appearances on various shows and older episodes of Running Man. Fantastic stuff. 


- To one of my best friends, Happy Birthday.

- That's it for May 2019. Thanks for reading and take care.


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."

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