I wanted to take better care of myself this year because I became rather ill in November and December last year and the same thing happened in 2012. I can't say that it's been working out this year. Around April and May, I suffered through a string of problems with allergies, then back pains, and then stomach problems, etc. I got better and felt pretty healthy throughout the summer. And then all of a sudden I started feeling not right yesterday. In the past 2-3 months, I've been experiencing my heart skipping out of nowhere. It doesn't hurt and it feels no different from the heart skipping when you get excited, surprised, or something of the nature that causes shock; however, I've been experiencing it in normal situations such as when I'm just sitting or lying down. I looked it up and found out it's called "heart palpitations" which occur for a number of reasons. Since they were very rare, I thought nothing of it. But yesterday, I was experiencing frequently throughout the day. I tried not to think about it too much and hoped that it would go away the next day. But I was experiencing it even more today and it got to a point I was starting to feel dizzy. It could be anything that triggered it: I ate a bunch of spicy food on Halloween day, the weather became very cold just yesterday, I haven't been getting enough sunlight (Vitamin D), I haven't been exercising regularly and exercise too hard when I do go to the gym (I go about 1-2 times a week recently), the sudden change in time for the end of Daylight Saving Time, or I'm really hungry and it's causing problems. I'll admit that I have a problem of going to sleep really late and often pass a good amount of time without eating which has caused various problems for me in the past (sour stomach, feeling sick, headaches,etc.). I did wake up with a headache and feeling hungry this morning while I experienced the heart skipping. And now that I've actually had two meals throughout the day, my heart stopped skipping as much. I still feel hungry and have a headache. I need to seriously go to sleep earlier today. I also need to add that 2 nights ago, one of my bottom tooth on my right jaw started to hurt when I chew food. I don't know if it's a cavity or sensitivity, but it's tiring chewing only on the left side.
It can also be triggered by anxiety, which I don't really feel like I am. But it's possible that it's subconscious. Something I never mentioned on my blog here or even to anyone else is that for the past half year, I've been experiencing an eerie phenomenon that every time I check the clock it says 4:44. It's been appearing in other places such as the games I play: a score of 444, remaining gold of 444, etc. As you might know, the number 4 is bad luck in Chinese and in a lot of Asian culture because it sounds a lot like the word "death". What's also confusing is that in Chinese superstition, 4 is actually a lucky number for those who are born in the year of the Rabbit. So what the heck am I supposed to believe? I actually try not to think of it. I also can't deny the fear of my own mortality. It was just two years ago that my friend and distant-cousin, Jessica, had passed away from cancer. She was barely 25 years old. Although I wasn't very close to her, I took it really hard and couldn't bring myself to even see her before she had passed. Then this past February, Monty Oum (who was very influential to me as an artist and got me interested in animation) was announced to have passed away at the age of 33 from an allergic reaction during a simple medical procedure. Just last week, Miyu Matsuki passed away from acute pneumonia at the age of 38. I mainly know her roles for Hisui from Melty Blood & Carnival Phantasm and for Harumi Fujiyoshi from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. She also voiced the character Lailah in Tales of Zestiria, which just released here 2 weeks ago. What I fear right now is going without even putting anything substantial out in the world. I have so many ideas and so much work I want to do and so much of life I want to experience before that happens. I don't think anything is seriously wrong with me, but it doesn't stop of the fear of that possibility.
I have been trying to take better care of myself, but perhaps I've been neglecting going to sleep early and going out for sunlight. I had fixed my sleep schedule for a short time in the middle of summer, but quickly lost control of it again. There's just too much I want to do in a day and I never really feel like doing any of it during the morning and feel more "right" during the afternoon and night. Because of the summer heat, I haven't been walking out as much. So I've been lacking Vitamin D, again. I've also been working really hard on my remix project the past 2 months so I haven't been going to the gym as regularly. I'm down to the last 3 remixes in the album remix for The Guardian Legend and am keen on finishing it quickly so I can work on new projects. I already have plans on finding making new original compositions so I can put it on my portfolio as new work and start advertising those on my resumé. I also have a ton of new remix ideas that will help me work more efficiently and get the most out of what I want from the projects.
Because I've been working a bit harder, I didn't complete that many games in October. I finished up Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and was pretty disappointed with it. I bought another top-down, Action-RPG yesterday on sale in hopes of playing a fun party based RPG (It's called Kyn. It's kind of like Krater where you control multiple characters. Krater had 3, Kyn has 6 characters you control in live time). I also finished Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson which I loved. I'm still playing it to max out levels and bought the 3 DLC packs with new campaigns. I'll probably write a long rant about it once I feel completely satisfied with playing it. It's a really fun beat-em-up. As I've mentioned in the past few months, I've been watching Angry Video Game Nerd reviews again and started watching their other videos. In one of them, Mike Matei talks about some obscure SNES games that he found was worth playing. One of those games was Run Saber which I tried out. It was okay. I'm reminded more of the fact that there was thunder and lightning loud and bright enough that it lit up the house and made the ground shake that night I was playing. I finally finished Lost Planet 3 and immediately deleted it. It was a rather mediocre game. Traversing and quest collecting was slow and boring. The combat was okay, but I think I only experienced it half the time playing the game. I recorded an iOS game as completed for once! I've been playing a game called Retimo Adventure the past few months and finally reached the end of story mode in which it prompted a message "to be continued". It's an interesting mobile RPG where it's mostly about party management by leveling up characters, skill levels, equipment, and rank. What got me initially interested was that it claimed to "redefine the concept of cuteness" which sounded ridiculous, but I couldn't deny the characters in the game looked really cute. I'm still playing it now to get my characters stronger and try to climb the PvP rank ladder. For the past few weeks, I've also started playing Gamecube again to finish the 2 games I borrowed from my friend over a year ago. I finished Super Mario Sunshine and had one heck of a frustrating experience playing that game. Now I'm frustrating myself with Mega Man Network Transmission. I might write a rant about Super Mario Sunshine because there's a lot to say about that game. I finally got around to playing and finishing Dark Void which only required 2 sittings to finish (4.8 hours of playtime). Despite the negative feedback from critics and steam users, the game was really fun. The jumping and flying was really fun for me, at the very least. I do think that combat wasn't the best and was, at times, annoying to shoot an entire clip towards an enemy and still not kill them. Lastly, I beat a game called "Cast of the Seven Godsends" on Halloween day as I was itching for a Ghosts 'n Goblins game. It wasn't very good. Just this past weekend, Dying Light was on sale for $30 and a 4-pack was $90. I discussed it with my friends and we decided that I'll buy the 4-pack while they bought me games on steam to pay back the amount as giving money to each other is a bit difficult. So along with Dying Light, I got 9 games altogether that night. Then just 2 nights ago, BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Extend and Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- finally went on sale for $20 each. Adding with buying Kyn last night, I have accumulated 12 games in the span of one week. I felt really happy with the new games I got and been trying to enjoy them before I started feeling "not right" yesterday and today.
In terms of animé, I've been trying to watch all the cute ones. I watched Wakaba Girls, the 2nd season of Kiniro Mosaic, the 2nd season of Non Non Biyori, and today I started watching the 3rd season of Fate/Kaleid. I was going to start watching Devil May Cry or Nobunaga Concerto, but my heart skipping making me feel ill today made me decide to watch something cute and funny instead. The 2nd season of Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? (Is the Order a Rabbit?) is airing right now and I'm definitely watching it when it finishes. When I'm not feeling well, I want cuteness to help me get through it.
I wrote quite a bit...I just want to feel normal again so I can finish up my remixes and start on the new projects...
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
James & Mike Mondays - Metroid Rant
I was watching some videos last night of James (aka the Angry Video Game Nerd) & Mike playing games and I found out they recently released a video of them playing Metroid. I made a post about it on Facebook and it was so long that it might as well be a blog post. So here I am re-posting it here:
Watching other people play videogames through online streaming is one of the biggest trends in recent years. It wasn't too surprising to me considering a lot of us probably did it when we were younger (I watched my dad and my older cousins play videogames a lot when I was younger). Some like to watch others play to know what the game is like before buying it themselves. Some enjoy watching others play Horror or difficult games to see their reactions. Some people don't want to play games and rather watch other people play. I generally like watching high level play in competitive or super challenging games. But I noticed that the majority of gameplay videos and streams consists of people playing the game normally while talking a lot, making bad jokes, forcefully yelling a lot with screaming and cursing, and worst of all: constantly asking for donation/subscriptions.
I rarely watch videos or streams of other people play games, but I recently started watching James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) sketch again and found out that he's been making videos with his partner Mike Matei of them playing games (old and new). The AVGN was a character and thus James acted in a very specific way that set the theme to his games reviews that was both informative and entertaining. So it was really weird seeing him act normal with Mike Matei when playing videogames. What really sets apart their videos from a lot of others on the internet and Youtube is how insightful they are on the games that they play. They know a lot of history behind each game, cultural references made in the game, fundamentals to design and aesthetics, and they grew up experiencing a lot of the old games they talk about.
Metroid is definitely one of my favorite NES games of all time and so I was excited to see them play through it. What really stood out was watching James go up against Mother Brain and finishing the game. The emotion and reactions were so genuine and so relatable for someone who remembers all the challenges and grief this game gave. That sigh of relief and laugh he gave at the end had such a strong implication of satisfaction. I played the game a lot when I was younger, played it a bunch in high school, and played it again in College. I haven't played it since College and I kind of want to now after I watched James play it.
TL;DR - James beats Metroid and man did it make him work for it. It's one of my favorite games on the NES.
P.S. Kraid's Chamber Theme is the song that helped me understand how to play the left hand on a piano when I was learning how to play. I remember hearing the song when I was playing at 5-7 years old and was thinking "I want to be able to play this on an instrument".
[Updated]
So I ended up playing Metroid tonight and finished it. Made another small rant on FB which I'm pasting back on here:
Well, I said I wanted to play Metroid after watching the video of James and Mike play it yesterday, so I did. It feels a lot easier now than it did back when I was younger other than fighting Mother Brain. I ran out of missiles the first attempt. And then in my 2nd attempt, I remembered I used to skip fighting the Metroids to conserve ammo. Still, I got knocked down to 23 EN/hp before defeating her; it was a very close call.
I was surprised I got "No Armor Suit" Samus Ending considering how many times I had to farm for missiles in the beginning and health mid-game before getting the Screw Attack and Varia Suit. I've always found it weird that Samus is shown as a brunette at the end, green hair in-game, and eventually stayed as a blonde. I've always also found it weird on why people were so shocked that Samus was a female. To me (when I was 4-5 yo), Samus sounded like a feminine name and she looked like she was wearing high heels in-game. People had the same reaction with the protagonist of The Guardian Legend (also one of my favorite games on NES) where they thought it was a guy. It totally looked like a girl to me.
Anyways, playing through Metroid was nostalgic bliss.
Watching other people play videogames through online streaming is one of the biggest trends in recent years. It wasn't too surprising to me considering a lot of us probably did it when we were younger (I watched my dad and my older cousins play videogames a lot when I was younger). Some like to watch others play to know what the game is like before buying it themselves. Some enjoy watching others play Horror or difficult games to see their reactions. Some people don't want to play games and rather watch other people play. I generally like watching high level play in competitive or super challenging games. But I noticed that the majority of gameplay videos and streams consists of people playing the game normally while talking a lot, making bad jokes, forcefully yelling a lot with screaming and cursing, and worst of all: constantly asking for donation/subscriptions.
I rarely watch videos or streams of other people play games, but I recently started watching James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) sketch again and found out that he's been making videos with his partner Mike Matei of them playing games (old and new). The AVGN was a character and thus James acted in a very specific way that set the theme to his games reviews that was both informative and entertaining. So it was really weird seeing him act normal with Mike Matei when playing videogames. What really sets apart their videos from a lot of others on the internet and Youtube is how insightful they are on the games that they play. They know a lot of history behind each game, cultural references made in the game, fundamentals to design and aesthetics, and they grew up experiencing a lot of the old games they talk about.
Metroid is definitely one of my favorite NES games of all time and so I was excited to see them play through it. What really stood out was watching James go up against Mother Brain and finishing the game. The emotion and reactions were so genuine and so relatable for someone who remembers all the challenges and grief this game gave. That sigh of relief and laugh he gave at the end had such a strong implication of satisfaction. I played the game a lot when I was younger, played it a bunch in high school, and played it again in College. I haven't played it since College and I kind of want to now after I watched James play it.
TL;DR - James beats Metroid and man did it make him work for it. It's one of my favorite games on the NES.
P.S. Kraid's Chamber Theme is the song that helped me understand how to play the left hand on a piano when I was learning how to play. I remember hearing the song when I was playing at 5-7 years old and was thinking "I want to be able to play this on an instrument".
[Updated]
So I ended up playing Metroid tonight and finished it. Made another small rant on FB which I'm pasting back on here:
Well, I said I wanted to play Metroid after watching the video of James and Mike play it yesterday, so I did. It feels a lot easier now than it did back when I was younger other than fighting Mother Brain. I ran out of missiles the first attempt. And then in my 2nd attempt, I remembered I used to skip fighting the Metroids to conserve ammo. Still, I got knocked down to 23 EN/hp before defeating her; it was a very close call.
I was surprised I got "No Armor Suit" Samus Ending considering how many times I had to farm for missiles in the beginning and health mid-game before getting the Screw Attack and Varia Suit. I've always found it weird that Samus is shown as a brunette at the end, green hair in-game, and eventually stayed as a blonde. I've always also found it weird on why people were so shocked that Samus was a female. To me (when I was 4-5 yo), Samus sounded like a feminine name and she looked like she was wearing high heels in-game. People had the same reaction with the protagonist of The Guardian Legend (also one of my favorite games on NES) where they thought it was a guy. It totally looked like a girl to me.
Anyways, playing through Metroid was nostalgic bliss.
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