April 2023 Entry:
April has come and gone. Not the best month, but thankfully there were enough positives.
MISC=========================
- Wrestlemania 39 was a spectacle for sure (04.01-04.02). Night 1 was better overall. There was something about the energy and pacing that felt great. Not that night 2 was a complete slouch, but there were definitely more moments of deflation.
- Didn't catch NXT Stand & Deliver when it aired live (04.03). Caught up on it eventually and it was a great show. Teared up a bit with the end of the ladder match. But NXT is still a good brand.
- Helped my dad with our gutters (04.03). I was basically holding the ladder and moving things around that were thrown on the floor. I don't know when our gutters had these filters put on them, but over time the pine leaves from our tree started to clog them up. So my dad was basically removing filters and then brushing off any pine leaves that were accumulating. We're supposed to put a different type of filter, but that hasn't happened as of typing this (05.07).
- Got my copy of River City Girls 2 from Limited Run Games (04.03). Did I play it yet; yes. Check later in this blog entry.
- Gathered for Rannchan's Birthday (04.08). Last year was for Phantasy Star Online. This time was the mini games from Pokemon Stadiums 1&2 and then Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival and Mario Party 8. Same crew of four of myself, G, Kai, and Rannchan. Fun times.
- Watched Batman: The Doom that came to Gotham (04.11). I didn't like it. There were some interesting moments and interesting ways familiar characters were portrayed, but I couldn't get into it. I think I was dozing off a few times too. It seems I'm not high on things that involve Etrigan I guess.
- I had a pocket of 3 days of not streaming (more on that later). I put out a tweet if anyone wanted to hang out in person or virtually (04.12). No one responded unfortunately. But that might have been a good thing. Why?
- Went to the doctor and found out I had a muscle spasm (04.13). For a few days prior, I had been dealing with some pain under the left side of my rib. It wasn't much, a 1 or 2 at best. But I would always feel pain when I would get up from a lying position. Or I would wake up if I rolled over to my left side. I thought that the pain would eventually go away, but it did not. The day prior to the doctor's appointment, the pain was at a 6. This is after icing it, trying a heating pad, regular pain medicine, etc.
Made my first appointment with my PCP in 3 years. But I'm glad I got answers. Was prescribed some muscle relaxers as well as some anxiety medicine to take (in emergencies). The normal dose was 3 muscle relaxers throughout the day, but the doctor said try one for 2 days in a row and then take a day off and then go back. I was extremely drowsy those first 2 days, but thankfully the pain was simmering to a 4 at best. The day off it, the pain was a 5. Then I went back to it until I had a follow up visit (04.18). That's when she prescribed an anti-inflammatory as well as bumping the muscle relaxers up to twice a day. After the visit, got some blood work done (short wait), picked up the new medicine, got a game (more below), and went home. And that's what I've been on as of writing this (05.07, coincidentally when I ran out of medicine). Since then, the pain has been a steady 1.
During that whole time, I didn't exercise. The doctor said not to do any exercise outside of a walk. I even held back on my morning stretches as certain ones hurt a lot. But the stretches were the ones I was building up back to and within a week was okay doing them again. I did wait a full 2 weeks before trying Fitness Boxing and Ring Fit again (04.23). Definitely felt the pain, but it wasn't too bad. At first, the pain went back up to a 3, but it was tolerable. And eventually I was fine doing the exercises again.
Only other thing to note from all this was the blood work results. Low vitamin D, which was something I had many years ago. Been taking vitamin D pills since then. The other was high cholesterol. Prior, it was on the low numbers of the high scale. Now it's high. So I've been watching what I eat to an extent. My diet hasn't changed, but I cut back on my intake.
- The day of my doctor's appointment, I figured to take it easy regardless of the results. So I watched Coco (04.13). I really enjoyed it. I knew a few friends that spoke well of it when it came out and I can see why. This wasn't my first choice for the day, but when I saw it pop up, I figured to give it a shot otherwise I would forget to watch it. I cried a lot.
- After the follow-up appointment, the blood work, and getting the new medicine, I went to GameStop to pick up God of Rock (04.18). I remember thinking if it was better to get the game first or the medicine first. Thank goodness the pharmacy listed their available times and when they take lunch. That solidified going there first and then getting the game. To be played in May.
- Indie World Showcase happened (04.19). Always nice to be exposed to some new games. However, my standouts included; Rift of the NecroDancer, Blasphemous II, and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.
- My copy of Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Collection arrived (04.20). Were I going to continue streaming, I would have scheduled these, one a month. Then I would have streamed Final Fantasy I-XII (minus 11). Maybe in the future? But I do plan to get to the first game after I finish Tears of the Kingdom.
- Met up with some Kpop friends at Jupiter (04.22). First off, this was the only time I never had to wait for a table at Jupiter, ha. One of the Kpop friends I had known for years and only recently reconnected. The other I was meeting for the first time. We figured it would be good to meet up beforehand as we'd be sitting together for night 2 of the TWICE concert. Cool dude, Mina bias. Good food, good stories, good night of hanging out. Hopefully we can meet at least one more time before the concert.
- This was a surprise in the mail; Valis The Fantasm Soldier Collection II (04.26). I knew I ordered it, but never got an email notification that it shipped. So I wasn't sure what it was until I opened it. To be streamed in June.
- Wrinkle is the best duck (04.28). A few videos were shared in a Discord and it was a good way to end the day. But as I started to watch older videos, I realized I had seen Wrinkle before as the duck that participated in a marathon. It might have been a year prior. But yes, meet Wrinkle.
- I cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription (04.29). I had been thinking about it for a while. Made sure to get a notification before it expired and went through with it. I had not been buying as much stuff that I needed the next day nor had I been ordering as much as before. It was good to have when I was still watching free movies, but there's nothing else I felt I needed to watch for the first time or rewatch for fun (especially now that I have access to Disney+).
- GGSN Ep. 04 in the books (04.29). The crew of 4 was back again and we played Press Your Luck, Family Feud, Merv Griffin's Crosswords, and Deal or No Deal. Crosswords was the only new one and while it started well, it didn't pan out as we liked. And thanks to Deal or No Deal and me winning $200K+, I won my second GGSN.
- On that same day, I got the Wario amiibo (04.29). G had messaged me as he was coming back from a convention and found one at a game store. Got him for $25, which is my normal price for loose amiibo. And with that, the current lineup of available Smash amiibo is complete. 3 more Smash amiibo left to be released.
- I banned a user from stream (04.30). It's not the first time, but only the 3rd ban ever. Were they doing anything inherently bad; no. Were they being a jerk; no. However, after over a year of being asked the same questions all the time, I was starting to get agitated. You can tell in my responses as a lot of them started with "you should know this already." Not only that, but they had messaged me a few times outside of stream, has emailed me, and even left random comments on YouTube videos not relating to the video. And even if I replied to those messages, they would still ask during streams. There was an instance during the Metroid Prime Remastered stream where they asked what I did for work. They've asked before and I said I'd prefer not to say (even though I've mentioned my previous employment to others before). However they followed that up with "you look poor." That wasn't cool. I mentioned why and stated they can no longer ask me personal questions. Thankfully others joined in at that time, but they were still messaging in chat. I replied, but when they asked if I was still mad, I did not reply. Shortly after, I noticed my follower count went down. I later checked and they had unfollowed me. I thought that was the last of it.
But then they showed up two streams later and I called them out saying how they chose to unfollow and they're still here asking the same questions. They said something along the lines of they'll follow me back if I'm no longer mad at them. I've mentioned these types of ways to get a statement across during a stream where the streamer pauses what they're playing, go full screen, and directly talk to that person. I did that. I mentioned how they ask the same questions they should know the answers to and that they have crossed boundaries I have set. Basically calling them out on things I've kept private. I went back to the game and even mentioned how I'd really like to restart the stream so this instance didn't exist. And then they asked if I could play Ninja Turtles and if I knew who King Dedede was. At that point, I switched to follower mode only and they haven't been seen since.
The next day, I had someone reach out through Discord because they caught the VOD and felt sorry about what was going on. The same day was GGSN and afterwards that crew spoke to me about that person. And it was only then that I realized they were making it not fun for others to the point that if they were there, others would not be. I didn't think that no one else could tell, but I was still in the mindset of "I'm the only one having to deal with this." But after that feedback I decided to ban them the next day. Not just on Twitch, but on YouTube as well. Hopefully that is it from that person. I'm still waiting for a request for an unban at least. But if they never contact me ever again, great.
- Encanto was the original movie I wanted to watch instead of Coco (04.30). But Encanto was good. Had heard the Bruno song prior and heard positive things about the movie overall. I liked it for sure. If I had to compare it to Coco, I enjoyed Coco more. On its own, solid.
GAMES=========================
- Starting the month again with the Deponia Collection with Goodbye Deponia (04.01-04.02). I see how it was supposed to be a trilogy. If I didn't know they made a fourth game, I would have been okay with the ending.
- Demo Showcase 108 was nothing surprising, but I did declare something (04.04). The 2 find the hidden object games that were voted in to play didn't have good turnouts. So when we played a demo that was one, I stated that I'll still play the demos and maybe give them a thumbs up if I like them, but I won't play the full version of those on stream anymore.
- Puzzle Puppers was the favorite from Demo Showcase 100 (04.06). The reason I chose to play it at this particular time was because last year we played a game involving dogs; Double Pug Switch. That unfortunately ended on a whimper as my save got magically erased. So I figured Puzzle Puppers would make up for that. However...it had kind of a low turnout so I had to look up answers online when I actually needed help. I still enjoyed it, but the ending killed it for me. When you solve the final puzzle, you are given a message to tweet a message to the developers. For me, the game crashed. And it crashed every time I solved the final puzzle without fail. I counted it as complete regardless and looked up the message online and tweeted at the developers and they replied. I did reply to them letting them know that the game crashed every time I finished it and they simply replied with "that sucks." No "we're sorry" or "we'll check it out" or anything. That sucked.
- DAIVA STORY 6 IMPERIAL OF NIRSARTIA was our NES game of the month (04.07). It was pretty good. Unfortunately we didn't see the other half of the game because in the announcement video, they recommend you use a code to go straight into the battles. After an hour and seeing that stages were repeating, I figured to start over without the code. And we saw the other part of the game that had been neglected; planet hopping and wars. So we wasted an hour and then proceeded to play and "beat" the game. Beat is in quotations because it's one of those old school games that wants you to play on the hardest difficulty to see the ending. While I thought the game was fine, by that point I didn't feel like putting more time into it.
- I've been playing THEATRHYTHM Final Bar Line off-stream and finished it (04.07). I was playing around an hour per non-stream day or finishing 1-2 series per session until the credits finally rolled. After that I was playing all the DLC songs that had been released up until that point (04.14). Now I'll only play it each time a new DLC pack releases, kind of similar to how I return to Mario Kart when new DLC tracks are added.
- Cover Fire: Offline Shooting Game was the free-to-play game of the month (04.10). I liked it. It was a pop and shoot type game similar to something like Time Crisis. My time with it was limited as you need energy to play a level similar to how Turbo Shot requires you to have batteries to play. And just like Turbo Shot, I recommend trying this out. The slow motion on good kill shots is very satisfying.
- Helheim Hassle was a favorite from Demo Showcase 60 back in 2021 (04.12). Got it on sale for $7 instead of $20. And I had been pushing it back many times so I figured to make it a priority. The game is silly, well voiced, and a good time. Unfortunately, I didn't finish it. Originally it was scheduled for 2 streams and I stopped with one because of a glitch where I couldn't proceed or save. I looked up multiple videos online to see others not having an issue and proceeding. I even tried doing exactly what they do and it didn't work. After an hour of trying multiple options, looking up what was wrong, and redownloading the game, I tried one final thing. I attempted to go straight to what I needed to do instead of doing any side things that were along the way...and that worked. For whatever reason, doing anything extra that was right next to where my save spot was somehow soft locked the game for me. Had I figured that out within 10 minutes, I might have continued on with the game. But after an hour of troubleshooting things alone, I was frustrated and ultimately stopped because I didn't want a similar situation to happen later on in the game. Granted, that might not have happened at all, but I didn't want to waste any more time. Helheim Hassle is a good game, but after what I went through, I have not motivation to return to it.
- Trials of Mana is probably one of my favorite RPGs (04.16-04.20). Why else did I play it 3 years in a row? This time was the final pairing of Riesz & Hawkeye with Discord voting in Angela as the third party member. So we had no healer, ha. Especially since we were going with Dark Damsels and Light Lads for class changes. I also wanted to play it on Expert since we beat on Normal and Hard prior. Expert was fine until part way through the third stream where a Benevodon destroyed us. And it's not that I didn't see the patterns and knew how to fight it, but they hit harder and had way more health. I at least attempted the bosses once on Expert before dying and switching to Hard. And much like last April which also had issues with some games and other things, Trials of Mana was something for me to look forward to and enjoy. Thank you, Trials of Mana.
- Star Wars: Republic Commando was available as a Game Trial (04.21). It had been a while since I tried a free Game Trial so I thought to give this one a shot as I had a couple days of not streaming. I ran into an issue towards the beginning as I couldn't make something work so I restarted maybe 10 minutes into it. After passing that part, I enjoyed what I played, but felt it was on the tough side as I died a few times. So I turned on God Mode, which you had to turn on each stage. It still wasn't super easy, but made progression consistent. There's no way I would have beaten it without it. Boo for a glitch that happened when I beat the game as one final gallery video didn't unlock. Thankfully I reloaded my last save state close to the end and it worked. And this was all done in one day. It's been a while since I played a game off-stream at that pace (play, pause to eat or check social media or watch a video, play, repeat).
- Metroid II: Return of Samus was our GameBoy game of the month (04.22). Only the second time I ever played it. I started an hour early and also knew I wasn't going to 100% it. Why? Well, if you read what I did on this day earlier in this blog, I had plans. I figured starting an hour early would be fine as rescheduling would have me playing more streams in a row than I wanted. This wasn't an easy game though as I did run into a spot where I had no missiles and was dangerously low on health with no refill stations nearby. And then the final boss didn't go how I thought it was supposed to and I had to retry it from the beginning a few times. Thankfully I was told how missiles it took to beat the boss and I made sure to keep count and rewind if I missed. It's still a good game, but I definitely liked the remake on the 3DS more.
- More Metroid with Metroid Prime Remastered (04.24-04.26). I still say it's my favorite Metroid Prime and Metroid game, but I sure didn't remember it being as tough as it was. I died more than expected and lost lots of progress during multiple streams. Going for 100% wasn't an option for this either, but I tried to get as much within the 3 streams I set for it. And if you read earlier about the comment the now banned user said, this made specifically the second stream of this stream not one I'd like to remember. I did enjoy replaying this game 20 years later, but I wish it went smoother than it did.
- After finishing THEATRHYTHM, I was thinking of what else I could play that I wasn't planning to stream during these last few streams. And that game was River City Girls 2 (04.27). I really liked the first game and recently played through and liked playing Zero. Almost immediately, I did not like this sequel. Music is great. Voice acting is great. But something wasn't clicking with me. I think it was because you had to go back and forth a lot throughout the game and the loading between each area was slow. It took me out of the fun beat 'em up. I was thinking it would only take a couple of days with a good solid 6-7 hours each to beat it. If I started it shortly after THEATRHYTHM, it took almost a month on and off to beat it.
- Pilotwings 64 was our N64 game of the month (04.28). After playing the SNES version last month, I was thinking this would possibly be tough now that it was in 3D. It was, ha. It wasn't impossible, but the game did demand even more from the player. Also this was the stream where I addressed the now banned user. I even said after that that I was considering starting over so that instance would be gone, but that would have been 2 hours of lost progress. Thankfully I didn't start over and beat the game.
- I had an itch to play something short off-stream. That game became Altered Beast (04.30). It's shorter than an hour (I forgot about that) so I did two playthroughs. The second run was with secret options I didn't know exist. You can change how much health you had, how many lives you had, what stage to start on, the difficulty, and what transformation you get per level. I maxed out health and lives on Hard with Dragon being the only transformation. Dragon made bosses way easier to beat.
ETC=========================
- f(x) - LA chA TA (MV remastered)
- Happy Birthday, Ryujin. (04.17)
- ITZY Ryujin - Every Second (cover by Mina Okabe)
- TWICE - Alcohol Free (90s new jack swing remix by dec3m)
- I think I would have put the part about banning someone from stream here, but I think it helped in context with other things that were mentioned such as when instead of me leading to it at the end of all this. One thing I did notice when looking at last month's entry, I didn't talk about GOD EATER 3. So I went back and edited that. And one more thing on the muscle spasm issue. As I'm typing this (05.10), I am out of medication. I could get more, but I was instructed to see how it was after they were done. So far, so good. Hopefully when May's blog post is written, I won't have to type that it's worse. Stay tuned.
That's a wrap on April 2023. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind.
"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."
