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HOW TO DOWNLOAD PIKMIN SQUARED

this is a romhack i’ve been recommended time and time again as a better way of playing pikmin 1, without it being buggy and jank! and hoo boy it’s a good one. it’s just regular pikmin 1, but running on pikmin 2’s engine, along with some quality of life features lost in the switch port like cutscene skipping. (it’s also got an entire side campaign with louie if you’re into that!) this makes the game way more fun in my opinion. if you’re into romhacks, or don’t have a switch, i’d suggest playing pikmin this way. HOWEVER. getting pikmin squared to work on windows was incredibly confusing for me my first go-around, so here's a step by step for others who want it!

first, you'll need an emulator. dolphin is free and is the one i use, so that's the one ill be basing this tutorial off of.

I just downloaded the newest version, but if you have issues with getting it set up later, i've heard from others that the beta versions are more stable. don't quote me on that though! once you've downloaded it and extracted the zip, look for the application and open it. don't do anything yet!

next you'll need pikmin squared, which you can get pretty easily from pikhacker's website. extract it, and then look through until you find the patchers folder, and then the windows folder. once you open the windows folder it should look something like this, but without the third and fourth files.

since pikmin squared runs off of pikmin 2's engine, you'll need a pikmin 2 USA rom.

now, for some reason most pikmin mods only accept plain .iso roms, so basically any rom you can find in normal places wouldn't work. if the rom is an .RVZ, .CISO, or .NKIT file, it will NOT work with pikmin squared. it just wont. however, its extremely easy to convert NKIT files into plain old regular .iso files. i dont know if any other converters exist, but vimm's lair has one! just download the NKIT 1.4 + gamecube recovery files, its the second download link on the page.

as for the pikmin 2 NKIT rom itself, i legally cannot link it. do not under ANY circumstances poke around vimms lair some more to find it. its incredibly illegal and daddy nintendo will kick down your door and kill u. wink wink nudge nudge

anyway, you got all that downloaded? good. take a look inside the converter, it should look like this:

you're gonna wanna right click your pikmin 2 NKIT rom, go to more options, and open it with ConvertToISO. it probably wont show up as one of your first options, so click "choose another app" and rifle through your folders to find the converter. itll do its thing, and once its done, you'll have a nice .iso copy of pikmin 2!

make sure to put it in the folder with the pikmin squared stuff, and drag it onto the labeled .bat file. let THAT do its thing, and you should have a copy of pikmin squared! dont ask me how any of this actually works please, i have no idea!

getting dolphin to run it is pretty easy. itll ask you to select a directory folder, and i personally just used the windows one from before since it has the roms in it already. you should see something like this:

don't be worried if you dont have regular pikmin 2 as well, i dunno why i have it. you should be able to open the game now!

you'll need to set up your controls before you can actually play though, and dolphin has a variety of options. you can even use an actual gamecube controller with an adapter! i just use a regular wired xbox controller though... so ill just tell you how to set that one up.

open up controls. itll give you this menu!

you can ignore all the wii stuff, just make sure to set your controls to the usb port that you're using. the "standard controller" option is the one thatll work with xbox and playstation controllers! click configure, and youll be met with this menu, with different stuff selected obviously.

THIS IS SUPER SUPER IMPORTANT!!! make sure the device section at the top left is set to your xbox controller and NOT your keyboard. its gotta be on and plugged in for dolphin to recognize it as a device. otherwise, you wont be able to set any of your inputs!

now you can set your buttons to whatever you want em to be. id suggest following the format of the physical controller, but who knows! maybe you like going backward to go forward or something. the screenshot above has my controls if you need something to copy off of. save once you're done setting your controls, and then open up pikmin squared! you can play now! finally, after hours of hardship!

i hope this guide helps anyone who was confused about how to play this mod. god knows i was! now go play pikmin squared, you've earned it campers.

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hey dude let’s spar

close ups for fun

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don’t fear the reaper

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so because of the recent homestuck drama i decided to reread the comic, since the last time i read it i was 12 and didnt comprehend basically anything. and ive gotta say for all of andrew hussies terrible behavior and the nastiness that can leak through his work at times, he is coocoo for cocopuffs crazy good at character writing.

basically every character in this comic feels so real in a way that i haven't seen in any other creative work and this shines especially in the beta kids. everything from their dialogue to their coping mechanisms to their goddamn jokes just feels so so human, in a way that almost feels like a love letter to personhood as a whole. every fictional character is a love letter to the experience of being someone, but homestuck does this in a way that surpasses basically everything i've ever read. they go through their trauma, heal, fuck up, and get better, and it all feels so realistic and tasteful. and to top it all off homestuck's characters manage to be the epitome of all of this, while simultaneously living in a world operating on the most goofy, irrational, downright uninterpretable rules. its genuinely baffling at times.

as a writer, this ability of hussies awes and impresses me deeply. but as every other aspect of me that i am, i want nothing more than to shake him by the shoulders repeatedly until he gets permanent brain damage. because that is what he deserves for handling such a beautiful creative work with fingers more buttery and vaseline coated than a gay dude at fucking burning man.

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encyclopedia britannica - red dwarf star

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hot take i think that robots can work as an excellent allegory for autism. as an autistic i connect very deeply with the idea of defective robots, machines overcoming their programming to do something else, something that's in their best interest. its unmasking! and the way they're portrayed with logic reminds me so much of autistic information-based thinking. like yes. i have totally forgotten to consider the emotional repercussions of a decision because of how efficient it would be, and how much it would make sense. yknow. just the thing robots do ALL THE FUCKIN TIME in fiction!!!!

the way other characters tend to disregard the perspectives of robots hits home as well!!! i could go on, but clearly (to me at least) they are a much better allegory than aliens. id rather your autistic character be a robot who's a little emotionally dull than an alien who doesn't even have the capacity to understand anything human.

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me, unknowing of what would occur: this neocities thing can’t be too hard. i learned basic html in school, so css can’t be that bad!

hours later, crawling out of a sinkhole: ok so it was that bad

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i enjoy them

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and it was never just getting bullied as a kid. it’s that deep seated feeling of wrongness. those girls at the lunch table snicker and giggle and laugh not with you but at you, and that soft and primal part of your brain screams, for you are a social animal and being rejected by the tribe means death. that is why it hurts so much. that is why when they laugh so quietly behind their hands and insist that they’re your friends, you can’t help but feel as if you are about to vomit. and it was never about being shoved into lockers or getting called mean names like those adults thought, it was the most subtle exclusions that hurt the most. it was the swollen wound in your heart, unfurled and on display, trying to stretch itself just enough to welcome people inside who never wanted to be there in the first place. it’ll have you wanting to tear the poor organ out, just to have the certainty. to know that the stretching and ripping is over. to be free of the limbo you’re stuck in.

and deep down, very deep down, you know this is not what friendship is. but you have never known anything different, and the adults tell you that it can’t be bullying if they’re smiling at you.

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The family's fighting again.

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i like him a normal amount. a very normal amount.

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onsen

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nature painting i did for finals

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beatiful isn't it

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this is my cat. she is mad at me because i will not let her go sit on my drawing tablet.

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overflow

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something something i got swept off of my feet by an ant