Friday, January 3, 2020

December 2019 Entry

December 2019 Entry 

2019 has come to an end. Time to recap the final month of the decade. By the way, this month went by incredibly fast. 

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- I went for a follow up with my ENT (12.04). First, I went to get a CT scan (first time getting one done). Then I went to get a hearing test done. The only thing I questioned was the words used in the test that I had to repeat. They weren't bad, but I didn't know why those words in particular. Then...I waited an hour past my appointment for my follow up with the doctor. I heard through passing staff members that they were backed up. I wish they had told everyone at least. Once I finally saw the doctor, it was short, 15 minutes at max. But I passed my hearing test, yay. And the CT scan showed that I was missing a portion of my ear canal and that's where build-up will get caught (I can draw it in person if you ever are curious). So the two options were to either get surgery to make the ear canal the entire ear canal the same size and lose a little hearing in the process or to wait it out and see how things are after half a year. I opted for the latter. He mentioned the surgery wasn't necessary, but it would be definitive. So we'll see how things go. Yay for my hearing.

- Through some emails, I found out that my local GameStop is closing down (12.07). I had been going there since 2011 when the original 3DS was released. Not only were they the closest store, but they had a good crop of staff members there over the years (not all were winners). I called and asked a few questions like if it were true or not (it was), what will happen to my reservations (they transferred to the closest store), and when they were officially closing the day after Christmas (but as of typing this (01.02) I'm still receiving emails saying that they are about to close). The next time and last time I went there was for all my Shovel Knight stuff (more on that later). I did check around to see if there was anything I wanted since everything was on sale, but nothing stood out. I also cancelled my reservations letting them know I would find another store myself. And then I thanked them for being a good store.

I didn't look for one right away, but I ended up going out to find a new store (12.17). I had a few in mind including the one I used to work at many years ago since it would have been on the way to work. I went for the closest one to my house that was 15 minutes away...and I was done. It was a bigger store, but still cozy, it was clean with a lot of space, and the manager was very good at his job. He even did a thing I didn't know stores could do, which was give receipt print out of stores nearby that hide items in stock. I let him know I was looking for a new store and he was glad that I went to his. I reserved the next crop of amiibo to be released and went back home.

- No picture provided, but I did order a new webcam during Black Friday and it arrived shortly before November was over. But I did not get around to setting it up until early December (12.08). Didn't take too long, but I wanted to make sure to keep the settings for the previous webcam up in case this one craps out. So far, so good. I look sharper and shinier and it's been working fine ever since stream 201. Thanks to those that recommended it.

- It's official, I'm one of the official charter members of the Snerd Herd (12.12). Shout out to SNERDAPERDS for sending me my membership card (which he drew himself) along with a pin (wore it the next possible stream). He also wrote a nice letter with some kind words. He's a cool dude so check his streams out (https://www.twitch.tv/snerdaperds). Let him know I sent you. He's also the second person I've met via streaming that has ever sent me anything.



- While I knew they were coming, I was woken up around 7AM by roofers banging and scraping (12.17). Definitely didn't stream this day as it was incredibly loud and they were almost nonstop for 12 hours. My venture out to the GameStop was only an hour and I couldn't think of anything else to do while I was out. But I was able to take care of things such as stream planning, organized computer files, caught up on videos, etc. There was still more work done the next couple days such as getting gutters replaced and power washing of the house, but those weren't as loud and as long.

- The internet went out (12.18). This happened in the middle of stream, which sucked. What made things worse was that I was on the phone with our internet provider for over an hour and we couldn't get things worked out. We tried so many things. I even bought a new ethernet cable after the call to see if it would work and it did not. I also thought it might have been caused by my dad and uncle who were fixing the heater minutes before the internet went out (maybe the tripped a wire, they did not). For the next 5-6 hours, our wi-fi was working, but any hard wired internet connection was not working. I don't know what happened to fix it, but it's been back and it has been working fine since then. 

- Went to my cousin's house (mom's side) for Christmas Eve (12.24). It was short notice and I was waiting for answers for pending plans. But there was great food as usual and some good laughs

Went to my cousin's home (dad's side) Christmas (12.25). Just like Christmas Eve and previous years, great food and good laughs. My cousin got me a bunch of gaming related gifts with one of them being a code for Untitled Goose Game (to be played in January). Thanks. 

And apparently a new tradition of playing Street Fighter with my cousin-in-laws has started. Last time I was there, I beat them one after the other and maintained a winning streak until I threw a match against one of the younger female cousin-in-laws. I saw the guys playing it again and stayed away, but then they asked me to join. Got my fair share of wins, but they started to learn my play style (as Bison) and eventually got the win. See you next gathering for the next round of fighting in the streets. 


- New BoA mini album and concert (12.27). The mini album is fantastic. I Don't Mind is one of my favorites. Haven't watched the concert yet, but I'll get to it eventually per usual.



- Went to meet up friends after work (12.29). Originally, we were going to play Uno, but we ended up talking the entire time, which is still good. Had not seen those guys since they came to do one of our escape rooms earlier this year. Plus this marks the first time in a long time or ever that I actually ate food while driving. I was really hungry after work and was already running late. Luckily fries and nuggets only require a few fingers to be picked up and eaten, ha. 

- I don't know why, but I've been sleeping very well all month. Other than a few exceptions, I've been able to sleep deeply with few interruptions. And almost every night I've had a concentrated dream. Even if I woke up and went back to sleep, the dream would continue. They're usually about different topics like a celebrity, family, friends, streamers, etc. And as of typing this (01.02), it's still continuing. Although the sleep has been not as great, but the dreams still persist. 

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- Ordered my tickets for Worlds Collide (12.05). I was actually thinking to skip it at first, but once tickets went on sale, I couldn't resist. And fittingly on the same day, my new wrestling shirts arrived. 



- WWE TLC was fun and chaotic (12.15). 


- Shout out to Agent Ocean for the Christmas gifts (12.26). I remember he messaged me during a stream asking about Trish Stratus and Elias and I thought he was hanging out with family who were talking about wrestling. Didn't even cross my mind that he was getting me these gifts, ha. Thank you so much. 



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- Agent Ocean brought some new kind of milk neither of us had before, Fairlife Chocolate Milk (12.20). Delicious. I don't drink much milk, but I won't pass up chocolate milk. Made sure to tweet that out and Fairlife replied to it. Agent Ocean also bought me their strawberry flavor the next day. That was good too. 



- Last work day of 2019 was a good one (12.29). I actually got a lot done despite Sundays usually being slow. And the last two groups I had were fun. First one was a family of nine and one friend that have done escape rooms before and they were really good. Very fun to watch. And the last group was a family of four where half of them had never done an escape room before. Went casual mode with them and they had a blast. Glad the work year ended on a positive note. 

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-  I enjoyed playing SUPERBEAT: XONiC (12.02-12.05). I even brought it to work once so Double Take could try it. Great tunes and a challenging mechanic. I can do 4TRAX fine, 6TRAX...okay, but 6TRAX FX...tough. And any song that was an 8 or higher on any difficulty was hard. I did as much as I could in the game and really liked my time playing it. My favorite song is Let's Go. Funny that the character for the song was wearing a 22 on her shirt and I was wearing a 22 on my shirt during my first stream of the game, ha. 



- My copy of AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES and River City Girls arrived (12.02). Can't wait to play this in them in February and March. 



- Demo Showcase 26 was a great group of demos (12.09). 
'n Velore Verstand - Interesting first-person platform puzzle game. No dialogue, just run and figure things out. The mystery of it all pulled me in. 
Daemon X Machina Prologue - Similar to the first demo, but improved. I liked it as much as I did the previous demo. 
Desktop Baseball - Another Desktop game. I liked the concept of this one, but found it harder than the others I've tried. 
OVIVO - A gravity and plane based puzzle game. Much like the 'n Velore Verstand, they don't tell you anything. You just go, switch back and forth between the plains, and reach the goal. 
The Sushi Spinnery - Another fun simulator from our friends at Kairosoft. Akikobean was in the stream helping out with some of the decisions and it was fun.

Out of this group, my favorite was OVIVO. It really hooked me in with the simplicity of the look and mechanics and still provided a good challenge. 


- Qubic Games was celebrating their 15th year anniversary by releasing 10 games for free (12.10). I already had 2 of their titles, One Strike (which I played) and Geki Yaba Runner Anniversary Edition (have not played yet). I made sure to download the other 8 games. Together, the games total over $60. And I only paid 1-2 dollars for One Strike...which I used a gift card on...so they were all free. Outside of One Strike, I have scheduled to play one Qubic Games game a month in 2020. 



- For my 199th stream, I decided to play Tetris 99 again (12.10). At first, I wasn't going to do anything special, but then I thought I should. I looked up what other games have 99 in the title on the Switch and there weren't many that interested me. I already played through 99Vidas and the other game was King of Fighters 99. So until further notice, every stream with 99 in it will be Tetris 99. Funny that there was an update to the game that added more stuff the same day after I was done with stream, ha. 




- My final trip to my local GameStop was to pick up all the Shovel Knight stuff I had reserved (12.10). That included Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove and 4 amiibo (Plague Knight, Specter Knight, King Knight, Golden Shovel Knight). The amiibo are some of the best crafted. 



- Decided to play Just Shapes & Beats: Just Shovels & Knights for my 200th stream (12.11). I played the original Just Shapes & Beats on day 1 (before I was streaming) and beat and never came back to it even though I enjoyed it a bunch. I had an inkling that the Just Shovels & Knights DLC would be short (but fun), so I decided to play through all the songs again. Not only were the DLC songs great, but playing through the original songs reminded me how much I liked the game. It was still short so I decided to play the Challenge Mode, which I'm glad I did because we got to play the Mortal Kombat movie song (so cool). And then I went through all the songs again on the harder difficulty to finish things up. I'm glad I shifted this song to be my 200th stream. 


- More Shovel Knight in the form of Shovel Knight: King of Cards (12.12). Finally, all of Treasure Trove is complete. King Knight was fun to use. I didn't care much for the card game though so this also marks the first Shovel Knight title I didn't 100% complete. Had I not played as much of the card game as I did, it wouldn't have taken as long to beat. But I really liked it. 




- Ending all the Shovel Knight goodness with Shovel Knight: Showdown (12.16). A simple party fighter that provided a challenge. I did have to turn the challenge down in order to finish my goal of unlocking all the fighters and beating each of their story modes. It went longer than I thought, but it was fun. 




- Those in Discord voted for Worldend Syndrome to be the visual novel game for me to play in 2020 It wasn't on sale on the eShop, but I did some quick research and found a physical copy not sold stateside for cheaper. That copy arrived mid December (12.17). I didn't flip through the art book yet to avoid spoilers. 



- Nintendo had a site to show your Switch Year in Review (12.18). I was surprised by the number of hours I played in 2019 and the number of games I've played (Demo Showcases bumped that number up). I hope they do every year because it would be great to look back on stats like this. 


- Our free game of the month was DC Universe Online (12.18). Spent a good amount of time with the character creator. I really liked the opening cut scene too. The game reminded me of Phantasy Star Online as I was playing similar to how I would in that game. Got lost a few times, but I was able to save Christmas during the last mission I played before the internet went out (darn you, Brainiac). I most likely would have played it for at least 5 hours total had connection not been lost. Plus highlighting the stream via mobile took quite a bit of time to do. At least I know I can do it, but it isn't the best way by far. 


- Got to finally play Hob: The Definitive Edition (12.19, 12.23). It was an immediate favorite of mine during a Demo Showcase earlier this year and I got it on sale during Black Friday. Visually pleasing game that doesn't hold your hand. They literally tell you nothing (no text, unintelligible dialogue). There were a few parts that I felt lost on especially since the world would grow and change. It would have been possible to 100%, but I didn't have the urge to. However, we did watch both endings. I still recommend it for those looking for a simple adventure. 




- Saw that Guacamelee: One-Two Punch Collection was on sale again for half off. So I got myself a copy when the internet went out (12.22). Planning to play the first game the month before Wrestlemania in 2020 and the second game the month after Wrestlemania. 



- Our NES game of the month was JOURNEY TO SILIUS (12.24). I didn't realize it until after stream, but the HVGN did a review on it way back in the day and that's why I knew of it. And I did have 3 people tell me about how this was supposed to be a Terminator game before they lost the license. This game was great. Played it once through with save states and then a second time after setting the number of continues to 9. It's a fun jump and shoot game similar to Mega Man. Simple and fun. Definitely recommend it for some old school fun. 

And as a note for future streams, NES games will be played toward the beginning of the month from now on. 




- Demo Showcase 27 is in the books (12.27). It almost didn't happen as I was going to sacrifice this stream due to taking a friend and her boyfriend to the airport. They ended up not needing me and this Demo Showcase was brought back on. 
Epic Astro Story - Yet another fun simulator game from Kairosoft. It reminded me of the dungeon type game they have. It was fun and of course I got disappointed when the demo ended.
Robothorium - A nicely designed dungeon crawler with turn based combat. I liked it, but it didn't grab my attention that much. 
TINY METAL: FULL METAL RUMBLE - I'm not the best at strategy games and this game was more proof of it. I did like the design and how the characters interacted with each other during fights though. 
Trials Rising Standard Edition - I played the beta of Trials Rising earlier in 2019, but not on stream. I actually enjoyed playing this demo a little more. Easy to pick up and play, but challenging. 
Voxel Sword - Similar to Voxel Shot, it's a multiplayer melee game. This time with a medieval theme. 

I added Trials Rising to my wish list. These games are always fun to try out. Unfortunately the sale was ending in a couple days and I was still on the fence on whether I would buy it or not. So it sits with others in my wish list until I do. 



- And the final game of 2019 was our SNES game of the month; The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (12.30-12.31). This was my favorite Zelda game for a long time and now it goes back and forth between this and Breath of the Wild. Haven't played A Link to the Past since 2014 on the Wii U. Went and did a 100% run and even did a couple things I never did before such as find all the pull spots and reaching a cracked wall in Ganon's Tower. While I messed up on estimating how long it would take me to play making the streams unbalanced, I had a blast revisiting one of my all time favorite games. 




- Games Finished in 2019: 


-----Top 3 NES/SNES Games of 2019----- 
Honorable Mention -- Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
3. Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
2. Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts
1. Vice: Project Doom

-----Top 3 Re-releases of 2019----- 
Honorable Mention -- Ninja Saviors - Return of the Warriors
3. Final Fantasy VIII Remastered
2. Resident Evil Remake (Resident Evil Origins Collection)
1. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

-----Top 3 Favorite Games of 2019----- 
Honorable Mention -- Katana ZERO
3. SUPERBEAT: XONiC
1/2. Luigi's Mansion 3
1/2. Cadence of Hyrule featuring Crypt of the NecroDancer

- I decided to revive my WingedVoX YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. I actually had thought about it for a while. I mentioned last month how I was uploading Twitch streams to YouTube. That's still going and that's what I'll mainly plug. But Facebook and Twitter will just have links to the YouTube videos. So these accounts will be for older streams while the main focus for catching it live or seeing the chat will stay on Twitch. Feel free to follow any of these accounts though. I do see views for the YouTube videos happening so I'm glad to see that. 


- And for a final note on streaming, there are a couple things I would like to get tech-wise in 2020 (just to put it out there).  
1. A bluetooth adapter for my PC. 
2. Bluetooth ear buds to use while I stream. 
3. An extra external harddrive to archive streams and other files in general. 

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- BoA - Starry Night (MV)


- Red Velvet - Psycho (MV)

- That's a wrap on December 2019 and a wrap on the decade. This year...I don't know. It wasn't horrible and it wasn't the greatest. It kind of evened out and that's not bad. I know I've definitely had years where I couldn't wait for them to be over and this was not one of them. As for the decade, it's hard to recollect everything. I could go back and read all my blog entries as I've started this blog back in 2007. Outside of streaming and H.E.R., the one thing I know I can really think back on are the people that are still in my life. Whether they are no longer in it or they are new to my life (mainly thanks to streaming and work) or if we formed stronger bonds over time. The ones I'm connected with matter a lot to me. Know that you can reach out to me and that I will do my best to give you my time. For those that are still in my life, there are multiple ways you can support me in 2020 and beyond.

1. Book a session at the Houston Escape Room. I've been working there for 5 years now, the longest I've ever stayed with any job. I wouldn't have stayed there if I didn't enjoy what I did. And if you know others that want to go to an escape room, point them in our direction. 
2. Come to my Twitch streams. There are multiple ways you can support this venture, but anything is fine. While coming to a live stream is great so you can interact with me, even watching the VODs or archived streams on YouTube works. Talk to me about the streams outside of the stream too. Your time with me doesn't have to be relegated to the time frame that I stream. 
3. Help me find a girlfriend. Local, long distance, doesn't matter. I've done plenty of things myself and missed out on opportunities. So I'm putting it out there for others to help. It hit me hard towards the end of the year so if you can, be a good wing man/woman for me. 
4. Hang out with me. I will make the time if you put in the time. Life happens, but we can make something work. I miss hanging out with friends on a regular basis. I know that part of that is because I've been a bit more solo, but I have been getting better with putting aside what I want to do to hang out with others. This applies to family too. 
5. Go on a train ride with me. Since I still can't fly (one day I will again), it makes it harder to travel and meet others. But I have always heard that train rides are fun. This can be a fun week vacation to take in the sights along the way and visit others. I wouldn't mind doing this 2-3 times a year if feasible. So if anyone is up for it, let's ride.  

Thanks for reading and supporting and take care.






Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."

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