elligames

[elligames]

im not going to be able to beat metroid dread before pokemon arceus comes out and it is a TRAGEDY

[elligames]

I Kept Track of Everything I Did For A Year, and It Was Actually Pretty Fun

HAPPY NEW YEAR YALL! I love this time of year because I LOVE “Best Of” lists. I especially look for them for books and video games, and I have regularly kept track of which books I’ve read for years. I love looking back on the media that inspired me the most throughout the year. This year, I wanted to be a little more involved, and I wanted to track my books, my manga, and my video games. Except, I wasn’t sure how to track my video games since some of them can never truly be “finished”, so I thought I would do the most difficult thing ever right off the bat: keep track of every single hour played.

I really wanna talk about all of those forms of media in this post, so if the others aren’t your thing, you can skip down to video games at the last section. I will include my “Best Of”s, but I also really want to nerd out about statistics. I love statistics.

BOOKS

Like I said, I have always written down, in some form, what books I’ve read. Each year it gets a little more involved. This year, I kept track of page count. I regularly read on the kindle, so this is almost the most uniform way of keeping track of how much I am actually reading.

I regularly read around 40 books, and this year is no different, except I’m including two DNF’s in that number. (Though, one of those was a double-Did-Not-Finish, so I suppose your number can be anywhere from 38 to 41, depending on the flavor.)

My shortest books were Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark at 183 pages, Come Closer by Sara Gran at 186 pages, and Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson at 196 pages. The longest book is Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson at a whopping 1,230 pages. Yeesh. Overall, though, it was a stunning reading year - I definitely feel like my mood impacted my ability to read during some months, but the actual enjoyment of my reading year was very high. We love to see it.

I have a hard time compiling genre numbers, since some kind of fit into several groups, and then I don’t know if I should include re-reads and DNF’s, etc. But I do wanna talk in broad strokes because it really does sum up my reading tastes.

Over half of what I read was speculative fiction in some way, with a heavy emphasis on high fantasy. Of course there’s the Stormlight Archive, as previously mentioned, but some other hits in that genre were the Farseer Trilogy, the Poppy War Trilogy, and the Raybearer Duology.

My next favorite genre is anything historical, which accounts for about a quarter of my reading. I am lumping classics in here, and I read Moby Dick and East of Eden this year. I’m kind of obsessed with both of those books now, but I don’t think I need to wax on about them. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Herman Melville and John Steinbeck are kinda good.

My third favorite genre is heavily concentrated in September and October, which is horror, of course. Come Closer would be a part of this group, and actually really stood out to me a lot this year. The Year of the Witching was also surprising with its body horror moments, but overall a good witchy tale. My favorite horror media definitely revolve around ghosts, demons, body horror, or slow-burning gothic horror, and this year was no different.

Let’s talk about my months in reading. My best month was February, and I truly do not know how I swung that. I mean the month’s got four fewer days. But I finished seven books in those four weeks, somehow, and I read 2,602 pages. I don’t get it either. I read 17,096 pages this year, if you include the double-DNF, which makes for about an average of 1,400 pages per month with some change. That’s about three or four books, or at least one Bran San novel. Which is way better than I would have expected. Thank you, February, for inflating those stats!

Some interesting dichotomies: I read 1,232 pages in June, and 1,584 pages in December. However, in June, I finished four books, and in December, I only finished two. In July, I also finished four books, like June, but I read 1,784 pages. In March, I read 889 pages, and in May, I read 864 pages, so extremely similar. Except for March, I read two books, and in May, I only finished one. I point these out because I find it extremely interesting - and I see this a lot with readers, that we may feel like we’re not blowing through books, but we actually ARE reading more, page-wise. To me, looking back and comparing the page counts vs the book counts is like looking back on a long marathon - “here are the months I had to walk, and here are the months I could sprint all the way down. This month over here was uphill, but I actually did alright.”

So, finally, my top four books of 2021:

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

the Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

These four books are stuck to me like old t-shirts in my wardrobe. I will never stop thinking about these books.

MANGA

Well, friends, it’s time to admit I’m a massive fucking weeb. I know it’s a shock. This year, I read 150 tankoban volumes. If you’re not familiar, tankoban volumes are what you might see at Barnes & Noble, or back in the day you may have seen them brightly colored, with “Tokyopop” labels on the spines. For any omnibus edition I read, I split them up into the appropriate tankoban-equivalent for length. It’s just the most uniform way I can gauge my reading.

However, you are allowed to shout at me, because I am including one (1) western graphic novel in that number, Check, Please!, which was actually the very first comic I read in January.

Including Check, Please!, I checked out 19 series this year for at least their first volume. Of course, there are a few series that are new to Shonen Jump, and so there’s a few more series where I’ve read a couple of chapters here and there. I really don’t do well waiting for weekly releases, though, so I suppose I will always be stuck reading the backlists.

The longest-running series, both in the actual series and the amount I read this year, is One Piece. One Piece is the longest-running series worldwide of any regional comic format, and I read 32 volumes out of the series this year. This one is truly an anomaly, and well…. I think it’s turned me into shonen trash, and I think I’m kinda glad. The series started off feeling like one of the adventure stories my aunt used to tell, so the nostalgia train crashed into me and now I’m knee-deep in a shonen pirate manga I picked up on a whim.

My months in comics really give you a hint of when I started One Piece - I picked up four series in November, one of them being One Piece, and I ended up reading 35 volumes that month. I literally had to redraw the scale in my notebook to account for it. I thought I was going to break the graph. For contrast, the next best month is October, with 23 volumes read. That’s 12 more volumes in November. Most months are 12 novels on their own. In fact, 12 volumes is about the average amount per month. What the hell, One Piece. And to contrast the four series in November, I picked up five series in May but only read nine volumes. One more series pickup, but a difference of 21 volumes. If that doesn’t say, “I fell down the One Piece hole,” I don’t know what does.

My goodness. Well, my favorite four manga of the year were:

One Piece

Dorohedoro

The Promised Neverland

Death Note

Listen, I’m not apologizing for anything on that list, okay, it’s mine and I’m choosing to immortalize it here for some reason. I’m really admitting a lot in this post. And truly, I cannot believe three out of four of those are Shonen Jump titles. I could argue availability, and the means of trying to get a hold of the amount of manga I consume, but I just genuinely enjoyed them. I especially cannot recommend Promised Neverland enough. Like, man, it’s just…. It’s so good. It’s incredible. And no, I didn’t watch season 2, so I’m not here to be negative about the anime. The manga stands well enough on its own.

ANIME

Speaking of anime, well, I know at the top of the post I didn’t mention it, and that’s…. Truly because the statistics don’t really tell me anything. I usually pair anime with doing something else, so any statistic I have tried to compile doesn’t really tell me how I actually spent my time. And I tried to break it down further, but some seasons took months to finish, or I took breaks in the middle, so unless I start tracking per-episode, I don’t really know how much I actually watch. And I really don’t want to track per-episode.

But! I will share my five favorite anime this year:

A Place Further Than the Universe

Golden Kamuy

YashaHime

Fruit’s Basket (2019, season 3)

Yu Gi Oh!

Cue the “one of these things is not like the other” - Look. I’m not defending myself. But I am defending my love of Seto Kaiba, and that man has complicated issues, okay. He has to save Mokuba! You don’t understand.

But in all seriousness, I heavily recommend A Place Further Than the Universe to pretty much anyone who might be reading this. Stop reading this now! Go on crunchyroll, and start watching! Right! Now! I am tearing up thinking about this stupid anime.

An honorable mention goes to Laid-Back Camp, which is a total Vibe of a show, but it was very similar to Universe in the things that I liked about both.

My favorite new-to-me anime movie was Perfect Blue, but I don’t know how to recommend that movie. I guess I recommend that movie for a night you want to feel extremely existential and weird. I also rewatched Your Name, and I rewatched four Ghibli movies, so I was really feeling myself this year. My favorite new-to-me movie in western animation was Raya and the Last Dragon. I watched that right after I came home from my very first root canal, and it made me cry like the little baby I am.

GAMES

WELL….. Here we are. I did my best to track every single hour I played, but I gotta say, I think I’m wrong about some games. So this is a rough estimate at best. And if admitting how much manga and anime I consume didn’t embarrass me, my woefully small amount of playtime in video games just might do the trick. Here we go, friends.

I’m not going to lie, the past couple of years, it has been hard to pick up video games. I just really wanted to build my attention span back up. I think I had a really good year though, because overall, the graph of play time slopes towards more and more hours by the end of the year, and it averages out to be about 35 hours each month. That is, of course, discounting Animal Crossing, which I did not track. I had 100 hours in Animal Crossing this year, which was achieved in the first three months of 2021. I knew I would break 100, so I really didn’t want to track it. That’s too many dots. I apologize if that screws up my statistics for you, but I don’t really have an explanation beyond that. But, outside of Animal Crossing, I picked up 37 games, and played about 440 hours between them!

This year is absolutely the Year of the Visual Novel. Boy howdy. I picked up two Professor Layton games, two Ace Attorney games, and seven other visual novels. Clearly, any form of reading is an absolute win for me. I think this is also the genre with the most amount of play time, as I sunk 30+ hours into several visual novels. One was a picross-flavored visual novel, and Nintendo says I sunk almost 50 hours into it. I prefer my own numbers, personally, as I only tracked 41 hours. All of those hours were over the course of a week, and I saw picross grids in my mind just before waking up each morning. What a week, man.

I also picked up roughly 10 RPGs, though the definition of RPG can be a little hazy. Two of those are Pokemon titles, and some others may be considered as “having RPG elements” by some fans. I’m not going to go through each one and nitpick. It’s roughly 10 titles.

I would like to get better at metroidvanias - I picked up three titles, but I don’t sink nearly as many hours into them as the former two genres. I tend to get antsy with them, but the rewards of exploration always feel so good.

I also did not track Jackbox games, or the mobile rhythm games I played, but otherwise, I played about six multiplayer games. I’m definitely hungry for more of those in the coming year.

For play time, my best month was December. I played 83 hours of video games between three games. My next best month was November, with 75 hours, but it was between eight games. I admit the eight hour difference is probably accounted for by New Year’s Eve, because I spent exactly eight hours on Fire Emblem: Three Houses that day. So that’s just where my holiday from work happened to land.

Interesting dichotomies in my stats show that I may have been somewhat successful in extending my attention span. Contrasting November’s eight pickups with April, April had the most pickups at 10, but 25 hours less than November for 50 hours played. That’s an average of five hours per video game in April, but about nine hours per game in November. August had similar play time to April, with 48 hours, but those hours were spent on five games, exactly half of April’s amount of pickups. Again, about nine hours per game in August. I picked up five games in March, too, but my play time only amounted to 15 hours. So early in the year, I was averaging thee to five hours of attention on a game, and later in the year, I doubled or tripled that attention per game.

Of course, a lot of those statistics aren’t actually “I played three hours per game this month” but really, “I picked up and put down a lot of things until I found something.” I don’t know what this says, but I think I’m getting better at knowing my own tastes. Maybe. And I think that is making it easier to spend more time on video games, because I actually can tell what I am enjoying about the games I’m playing. Which sounds simple enough, but I think I can see that conundrum across all my hobbies.

Anyways, hopefully I haven’t confused you beyond belief and you’ve stuck around for my favorite games of 2021:

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

Hollow Knight

Hades

Persona 5

… And now you can see why I might have a “try everything” attitude that makes it hard for me to glean the video games I like. These are all vastly different games. I think the one thing that really pulls them together is that they all have a fairly strong, distinct narrative style. But all of their narratives are completely different. And I love every. single. one.

My GOTY has to go to GAA, specifically the second title. I am still reeling from those last few cases. I finished it just after Christmas, and I’m just still absolutely knocked out from how good the ending was.

CONCLUSION

This year was friggin weird and maybe my hobbies were too. It was very satisfying to micromanage these hobbies, though. I don’t see myself letting up on it this year - It’s too much fun to have all this insight. If anything, I want to be better about tracking creative hobbies in 2022. I made a few attempts, but it was a little more difficult for me to grasp.

I’m excited to see what 2022 will bring. I know 2021 was awful for a lot of people, and 2022 looks like it’s starting with some Pandemic Groundhog’s Day Shenanigans. But I feel like I have better tools in my Mental Health Toolkit for it, and I hope you do, too. And I hope you’re safe, because I don’t wish this current world we live in on anyone.

But as far as my silly little hobbies go, I really want to get to at least one ending of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I just feel like I left a bunch of virtual friends on read. FE3H is definitely an honorable mention, as I got to the timeskip this year, but most of my love for it was at the end of 2020.

Other than that, I am almost done with my first book for 2022, but I don’t have too many goals. I THINK I will catch up to current-day in One Piece, but if I get overwhelmed by it, I won’t force myself. I would LIKE to finish one book and one manga a month, but I didn’t achieve that this year, and it hasn’t held me back from enjoying all that I did finish. The past few years, I have kept lists of authors I want to get to and read more from, but I’m just not setting those goals this year. I wanna enjoy what I wanna enjoy, that’s my goal. And the statistics will tell me more after the fact than any pressuring I put on myself beforehand could.

So that’s my Best Of for the media I tracked this past year! If only I put this energy towards something more useful than measuring my weeb-stick, but here we are. Lots of energy being put into silly things is my middle name, and It’s Kinda Fun. I’m not sure if I will ever make a post like this again, but I am always down to give recommendations for any type of media.

[elligames]

hades

a rogue-like is still a rogue-like despite the absolute horde of voices saying otherwise

[elligames]

also, i am back on my bullshit

im playing persona again, and you’ll never guess which one. it’s really indie, you might not have heard of it.

i’m also playing a visual novel / TRPG called utawarerumono: prelude of the fallen, and you probably definitely haven’t heard of that one. that one might need a post.

[elligames]

i’m still out here playin’ games, but more importantly, i’ve changed the way i play them

so, animal crossing came out at just the perfect time. it was a game that gave me a task when my job wouldn’t. it set a schedule up for me, and allowed me to have a space where i could exist outside the anxiety of the world around me. it was incredibly therapeutic, and i don’t know how i would have fared without it.

a year on, i’m just now starting to put it down more often. i played it a lot longer than most of my friends, because i really did enjoy having that cemented as a thing to do each day. it was relaxing and freeing. and in these past few months, i have finally started to pick up other games.

of course, i’m always playing something, vaguely, but one significant game that i started playing this past winter was hollow knight. i had always been interested in the metroidvania genre - i mean, how could i not be? the genre-defining games are about vampires in sick as hell castles and badass women in space. but i admit i watch metroidvanias more often than i get through them. they don’t hold your hand, and that can often intimidate me. i wasn’t used to games that nudge you into the deepend of relying on just your wits and skill.

so i don’t know why i thought, “hm, think i’ll fuck around and pick up hollow knight today,” as it is one of the most notoriously difficult metroidvanias out there. but hollow knight presented me this unique and wonderful gameplay that, while i had the tendency to put down, i couldn’t. i was really hooked. so much so that when joycon drift affected gameplay, i came up with several creative solutions to keep playing.

after animal crossing and hollow knight, i’ve started to notice something has changed in how i play games. it’s a little indescribable, but it boils down to this: i’m here to have fun and enjoy things fully, and it does not matter how bad i suck.

now, i watch a lot of kaizo streams. so i should know better than to feel down about dying constantly in video games. but before hollow knight, i thought if i died or messed up, i couldn’t be a real fan. like sure, i enjoy it, but i’m not good like other people, so i couldn’t allow myself to admit i was a fan until i got to a certain threshold. 

but hollow knight just forced that to let me go. you are constantly dying in this game. and in animal crossing, it literally does not matter if you get All the Items Right Away. the items come back, in one way or another, and the primary objective is to enjoy yourself. there is no need to rush yourself in either game - in hollow knight, you start to trust that you will learn the enemies, and in animal crossing, you trust that things come back.

so when i picked up a rhythm game i played years ago, i immediately noticed the difference in my approach. suddenly it was so much more fun. i started to trust that i would learn the combo breakers, and i’ve enjoyed it so much more than i would have if i did not learn these lessons. you don’t have to be good at a game to get something out of it. you will get better and better, and someday, you might think about that game again, and you will be better than you could have imagined, because you already did the legwork of learning the basics. it also does not matter how anyone else plays the game - it is entirely how you want to spend your time.

i’ve noticed this with a lot of games. even super meat boy, famous for the inevitable death, is more fun. that’s maybe the one exception before 2020, where i did not mind dying, but now i notice that maybe i still kind of did.

it is easy to slip into the mentality of trying to be perfect no matter what, but at the end of the day, your playtime is for you. it’s a fun hobby. i love it. and i feel like, before these games, i mostly excelled at games where i could grind - which, don’t get me wrong, i still love the kind of therapeutic grinding in jrpgs - but now, i feel so much more open to so many more games because death in a video game is fine! it’s literally fine! you will learn and you will grow. and maybe some sections in some games won’t be great, but you will tackle them.

i don’t know if this makes sense, and i’m not saying i wasn’t on this trajectory anyways, or that i just never enjoy video games or anything like that - i’m just saying that we all have those games that will make us noticeably better players, and for me, i’m not sure that includes an all-or-nothing mentality to being “good” anymore. sometimes, even difficult games are more about losing yourself in the experience.

[elligames]

exploring new firmware for the PSP

well lads i thought i was just deepdiving into psp nerddom, but the video tutorials i was looking were actually really recent, so i guess it’s time to post on my blog, which should now be titled, “I Thought You Were Here To Talk About Games, Dear God, We Get It, You Love Emulation”. it’s a working title.

so firstly i’ll link to the youtube tutorial, if anyone is interested in what i am going to talk about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-pZeWV5Q8E

i think it’s so cool people are doing this in 2020.

secondly, i’d like to point out that i am no means an expert and that’s gonna be painfully obvious in this post. 

the easy way to hack your psp, the way that’s been done for years, is to put temporary custom firmware on it. it’s literally as simple as moving files over and then telling your psp to boot into it. it’s fantastic.

but, custom firmware needs to run recovery when the system loses battery or shuts down completely. like it is on top of the standard firmware, and the psp boots into the standard firmware, and thus you need to go in and recover the custom firmware that you built on top of it. i think that’s what’s happening at least. i know i work in the most layman of terms as possible.

so the difference with infinity 2.0 is that it is permanent CFW, so your psp will always boot into it. it does not need to lay on top of standard firmware. 

this doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but i have noticed when booting the recovery on temporary CFW, the recovery only remembers save files up to a certain point, and sometimes i lost progress in my games. i installed the permanent one to see if i still have this issue with PSP emulation. (i did this last night so who knows when i’ll be able to see if i have any issues)

oh, and the permanent CFW is only a few more steps. they’re both ridiculously easy to install.

i still don’t really understand how the PSP boots on and off. it seems like holding down the power button is totally arbitrary and it tends to not care if it’s actually off or just asleep. so i’m definitely not trying to pretend like i know how the technology within the PSP actually functions.

i will say, going back to the PSP after the pocketgo, the buttons are so much more mushy - though I have the 1000, and it’s quite old, so it’s not really it’s fault. I just like the clicky keys on my pocketgo. oh, and i learned the d-pad on the psp is actually supposed to be a d-pad, apparently, which makes its quality just so much sadder in my opinion. apparently the 2000 and the psp go models actually have somewhat of a d-pad? so if anyone wants to buy me one of those. you know. i’m available.

[elligames]

all i’ve done is play animal crossing

right before animal crossing came out, i put my gameplay time on my switch to private. i get nervous about the idea that someone might look at my game time and think that i haven’t played enough of a game to talk about it or show affection towards it.

well, animal crossing has obliterated that. 

the biggest appeal to me is that i can simply exist in animal crossing. i usually don’t like sandbox games, or resource management games, or simulation games. when i played the sims as a kid, i would do the money cheats and spend time setting up the houses. i didn’t really care about the daily lives of my inhabitants, or the relationships i could build. it was really just a digital dollhouse, and between that and stardew valley, that’s the closest i’ve gotten to enjoying a game like animal crossing.

but boy howdy, animal crossing is just unique. it’s more than the sum of its genres. it gives you something to look forward to everyday, and each goal is exciting because it’s unique to you - you choose what you want to do and how you want to spend your time. and in turn, everyone’s islands end up differently. and everyone’s progression is different. the mechanics, for the most part, make the game engaging, and unfold new ideas as you get more DIY recipes and catalogue items.

i’m not sure i would have liked it without the current stress of 2020. quite frankly, if i only had an hour or two to play on the weeknights, i would probably be a lot more stressed out about the game. but that’s not how 2020 unfolded, and instead, i really needed a place to turn to. i think that’s true for a large part of the fanbase, considering this game is a global phenomenon at this point.

of course, there are a ton of features about the game that are clunky as hell. my biggest gripe, above all else, is still that the axes require wood to make. but for the most part, the clunky mechanics remind me to take it slow, and that everything works one day at a time. there’s a calming rhythm to the dialogue, the morning announcements, and the tasks to do each day. 

honestly, i can spend 10 minutes in animal crossing redecorating an entire new room in my house, or i can spend 10 minutes simply reading the mail my pink rhino sent me. my villagers do something cute, like sleep standing up or sing in the town square, and my day is completely made. i’m like, nothing can ever top this moment. this is the GOTY. but when i do something big, like sell tarantulas to flick, and finally pay off a loan, i’m like. this is it. nothing can ever top this moment. what a GOTY.

this game is just straight seratonin and vibes. i don’t think yall needed a review on animal crossing at this point, but that’s an update to what i’ve been playing. after putting down video games for a long time, i put hundreds of hours into a game about picking up rocks in less than two months.

[elligames]

i turned thirty, and am still playing my childhood games

i have been playing a few games lately! it feels good to want to play games. despite getting new games, i find myself picking up older ones. because i have 0 self-control.

Yoshi’s Story

i feel like i periodically tweet about yoshi’s story, so i don’t want to dedicate too much text to it, but i do think it deserves a shout-out. it’s an incredibly underrated game. i think, in general, yoshi games are kind of looked over, but i especially never hear anyone talk about this one. 

yoshi’s story has the aesthetic of a stitched-together book, and it sets up the game like you’re reading, having the different levels represent “pages”. 

i’m biased, because i’ve been playing it since i was eight. I will always have nostalgia goggles for this title. but i think it’s actually pretty interesting, mechanically. there’s a lot going on with each level, and there are lots of hidden treasures to find and places to explore. the main mechanic isn’t about finishing the level, it’s about collecting fruit, which i think encourages younger players to actually scout through the levels and find the secrets. it introduces the mechanics pretty organically, and there’s lots of help boxes for young folks. i think it’s appropriately challenging, and also forgiving. i don’t feel like it’s holding my hand, but i also feel like it’s light and fun. it’s not like, a mind-blowing game by any means, and it can be played through pretty quickly. but i don’t think it should be looked over as a part of the n64 library.

Sailor Moon RPG: Another Story

oh my goodness. all i cared about when i was nine years old was pokemon and sailor moon. i wonder what my little heart would have done, had i known there was a sailor moon JRPG that had familiar turn-based combat. 

this game...... is mostly grinding. but that’s part of why i keep picking it up. it’s been a really easy stress reliever to just pick up and grind for a bit when i’m looking to waste a little time. 

the story incorporates all of the sailor senshi, and ties in some other characters from the anime, but it’s a little convoluted. (Sailor Moon... a little convoluted..... who knew.) but the story fits right in with the universe, and it’s not like other popular TV show titles, that just hash out a play-by-play of existing plots. it’s actually pretty unique, and the gameplay is surprisingly deep. it’s not as complex as having intricate class systems for each character or anything, but there’s different things you can do based on which senshi are in your party, and how they’re positioned in battle. it’s more than a copy-and-paste for the IP, and i have to say.. i’m impressed that it’s so unique but still reflects the show and the show’s aesthetic.

i don’t know if it’s worth playing if you haven’t watched the anime or read the manga, but i do think it’s a fantastic game. it’s way more than what i expected.

there are other games i have been playing, and an endless list of games i want to play... but i think these two especially are just not talked about enough. i’ve really enjoyed discovering and re-discovering some underrated faves, though.

[elligames]

i wanna talk about retro gaming

because i just have a lot of feelings. 

i got a pocketgo as a late night purchase when it was on sale for $30. i had seen it floating around the internet this year, and i’ve been intrigued. this year saw a ton of emulator handhelds actually... which makes me super happy, but none of them stand out to me like the pocketgo.

first of all, the thing is cute. it’s the same size as an iphone 5, which makes it tiny and adorable. and they just got the gameboy vibe so perfectly. and unlike other gameboy clones, it looks more like a gba with a comfortable landscape layout... and this is a dumb reason to get excited, but it actually has the right amount of buttons. at least for GBC, GBA, NES, and SNES titles. which i think is what most people want to emulate. i have been turned off by so many handhelds simply because they look cramped, they don’t include basic things like shoulder buttons, etc.... and it doesn’t make itself too big by trying to include extra buttons for games it honestly can’t emulate. (you don’t need a joystick for ps1 titles, for example... because this thing really doesn’t run ps1 well at all.)

also, it has a really decent display. it’s a very clear IPS, and the pixels look just... really good and really sharp. 

now, the very first thing you find when you’re googling for reviews is an issue the screen has, particularly with snes titles.. the display refreshes at 30 fps, causing games that run at 60fps to screen tear. if you haven’t seen it, it looks a bit like someone ripping a seam along the game in things like backgrounds and peripheral graphics. people make a huge deal about it and complain that the screen is crap. i...... disagree a lot. i think the screen is bright and clear and i’m not exactly looking for graphical power when i’m playing 30 year old games. 

i will say that you need to turn on transparency settings in the snes emulator, which absolutely kills the speed of the games and some games really chug along. getting across that timed section in the beginning of super metroid was choppy af with transparency turned on. however, i DO think the timed mini-game in LTTP would probably still be more enjoyable than what i described on the psp. for the most part, i’m not really THAT bothered by it and probably wouldn’t notice if i didn’t have the FPS number right in front of me. it was seriously just that one minute in super metroid where i was like “oh this is less than good”. for the most part, i don’t think it impacts the playability of the majority of games you want to be playing on a small handheld.

and while i originally got it thinking, oh this is absolutely going to be my go-to for most SNES titles..... i guess i didn’t anticipate that it actually is really small. i absolutely love the size, personally. but it does take away from the immersion of a game, and i think is best suited for titles you want to pick up and play. i don’t really notice that with other handhelds, even when they’re just slightly bigger, like the psp. 

gameboy games feel right at home on the small screen, and the emulator has a ton of options for different filters and uses allll of the frames for the super gameboy. it’s adorable.

the emulators are really stable, and i haven’t experienced any crashes yet. which is more than i can say for the psp. i will say that the battery indicator annoys the crap out of me.... it stays green and then it just powers off. that makes it really not suitable for more than a couple of hours of gameplay without a powerbank nearby. it seems to hold a charge okay, though.

the d-pad and buttons are clicky, responsive, and the build overall is actually pretty quality. i honestly can’t believe i got it for so cheap, considering all it can do.

now, i just wanna also talk about the controller in the pic because this is also a really good device for retro games. i got the 8bitdo sn30 pro yesterday, but i’ve had a little bit of time to mess around with it. it needed a firmware update right off the bat, but the updater is actually really smooth and a very stress-free experience, which i can’t say for most firmware updates i’ve needed to perform. after the firmware update... it runs smoothly on pretty much every device i’ve tried? the switch treats it like a ps4 controller, and it’s integrated pretty well. the firmware update makes it compatible with iPad, and KOTOR recognized it fully. i don’t have a true android device, i only have a chromebook with android games... but once i updated the firmware, those games seemed to have no issue. i had a bunch of issues before updating the firmware, however. but i’m not the go-to person regarding android.

and!! that dedicated d-pad!!! oh shit ohhhhhh shit!! the input on this is also clicky and responsive. i’m so excited to play mario maker on this thing. yall. i’m so excited that this thing has a very retro-friendly layout but with all the buttons and functionality of a modern controller. they also have another version with grips. that one looks like a reinvented dualshock controller to me, personally.

i also like that the aesthetic between the pocketgo and the 8bitdo controller just. match. i don’t know why that makes me so happy. 

anyways we live in a beautiful time where you have lots of options to play lots of games, and i’m starting to accept that my obsession with playing old games isn’t going away and boy man if only nintendo would take a hint-- no. that’s a whole ass rant for another day.

i also got cheap usb versions of n64 and gamecube controllers, and i do want to point out that zsnes, pj64, and dolphin are all very stable and fantastic ways to emulate. i could kiss the person who made zsnes. i mean i won’t, probably, but i could. 

[elligames]

emulating on the psp: a review

I initially bought a psp because i am obsessed with kingdom hearts, and knew that birth by sleep was an incredible installment. (spoiler alert: I was right. totally worth it to buy the psp just for that.) but when I bought it, i was surprised the psp held it’s value. my friend informed me that it’s because the modding community for the psp is incredibly strong, and emulation is really easy. needless to say, my almonds activated. so, that was a couple of years ago now. and I’ve had a lot of experience with the handheld since then, so i wanna share what I’ve come to know as someone who uses their psp for retro gaming.

The System Itself

whether you’re emulating on the system or not, there’s a couple of things to note about the system. it’s roughly the same size as the largest iPhones, so it is a pretty good size for a handheld. it’s quite thick, and not exactly pocket-sized, but it’s definitely portable. I keep mine in a 3DS case, and you can find those anywhere. the handheld doesn’t fold, so you might want a screen protector. I’m personally a fan of the screen, which is quite large for any emulation needs. it’s 16:9 though, so it can get annoying to have to change emulation settings back to 4:3. fortunately, though, this is usually a 1 time deal, and i think most emulators for any system are going to require tweaking for personal taste. the sound has decent volume scale, and the system includes a headphone jack. 

what weirds me out the most is that it’s kind of difficult to turn completely off. you can put it to sleep with the power slider, and the battery holds pretty well. but i never feel like i’ve turned my system all the way down. it’s also the only handheld i know of that runs games from a disk drive, in case that means anything to you. the SD cards are also not proprietary like the vita’s are, which is nice.

Library

the first thing to understand is what the psp can actually do. it is a smooth ride up to the 32-bit ps1 system. there are emulators for n64 and sega saturn, but i admit i have not tried them. i have heard everything from “it’s sketchy at best” to “it totally runs smoothly!” so i’ve been wary. the psp can sideload ps1 and native psp games, and emulators from the 16-bit era and below have a huge following behind them.

sideloaded psp games run just as smoothly as games running from disks, which is really nice. 

emulators vary in quality. the great thing is, though, if you don’t like an emulator, there’s almost always a different one for the same system. and most of them have been worked on thoroughly. i recommend snes9x tyl, gpSP, and masterboy. i had huge issues with snes9x euphoria, but made the switch like a week ago to tyl and i’m never going back - the sound and game stability are both fantastic. i admit i’m a stupid nintendo fangirl, so that’s what i use the most. i noticed that my genesis emulator doesn’t use the psp’s joystick, and i’m not sure if i avoid sega because i’m uninterested, or if i dislike the controls. more on that in a minute.

to note, i am running on a psp 1000, which is the first model - so really all models are powerful enough for most emulators. (though this might change if you really are going to research n64 emulators)

Setup

holy crap, it’s stupidly easy. and there’s a lot of guides out there. i used one that was literally just like, “alright, you’re going to put these files in this folder on your system” and that was about all it took. and once you have that file system setup, adding new emulators and roms is really just a matter of moving things over whenever you want. it’s fantastic.

i really recommend using a guide that installs a recovery option. for the setup i used, i need to run this recovery option when the system loses battery. it’s not a huge deal, and doesn’t affect the game saves, but it’s like the system forgot about my files or something. 

Controls

okay, this is the part that really surprised me the most. emulation in general takes you away from the native experience, so some difference in controls is to be expected. so i didn’t really ever expect that to bother me. 

but this is the kicker: there’s no dedicated d-pad. the arrows on the left side are all individual buttons, which means the handheld does not support diagonal directions. i didn’t even consider this on purchase. i had heard other gamers talk about how important a good d-pad is, but i kind of brushed it off. for the most part, i still think i am pretty casual gamer, and i think a low-quality d-pad would not bother me. at least it would still be there.

but the setup of the psp kind of requires you to use the joystick for all games, which really takes you out of the moment for GBA and SNES games. it’s also slightly uncomfortable because of the location of the joystick, and the fact that the joystick is a similar rubber-band-y setup to the 3DS, and not a true stick. if you’re looking to emulate games that require lots of precision, this is an even bigger consideration. i don’t play a lot of games like that (i’m mostly doing adventure-style and jrpgs personally, no intense shooters or anything) but i will say, the 15-second game in LTTP is a bitch and a half on this thing. it is immensely easier on a setup with a real d-pad. moving around corners with a time limit is a real pain in the ass with this rubber-band joystick. and, i will also note that when looking at psp models, i personally think the joystick on the psp go looks awkward, but that’s just something to consider.

it’s honestly annoying enough at certain times like that, that i recommend moving save files back and forth. or at least for that one mini game. 

this also means that, like i said, because my genesis emulator doesn’t support the joystick, controlling sonic feels jilted and unnatural. so if i ever develop an interest in sega, i’ll have to post some updates.

for what it’s worth, the psp includes L & R shoulder buttons, the four shape buttons you see on dualshock controllers, and the aforementioned arrow buttons and joystick. so, in theory, there’s plenty of input for the majority of emulation. 

i will say the controls can also be confusing because the psp has opposite controls of nintendo consoles, and switching your brain between the two can take some getting used to. most emulators use the playstation controls in their settings menus, though i remember snes9x euphoria would use the nintendo controls - which i constantly forgot and found confusing, so there’s another point for snes9x tyl. 

Conclusions

even though the psp has held a value, it still remains to be one of the cheapest options for the library available to it and the quality of emulation. it’s got a great screen, great sound, and a community behind the emulators that ensure you’re likely going to find something stable and worth playing. while the controls severely hold the handheld back, i find myself really, really fond of my psp. i notice cheaper emulation options that pop up, and there’s almost always issues reviewers bring up such as screen tearing or poor sound. more expensive options might fix issues the psp has, but i almost always see them at least double the price of what i paid for my psp. 

of course, the value is going to depend on your local retro gaming store, so it might be comparable to other emulation options. and it might not even be worth it if you’ve got a device, such as a tablet or phone, that can do emulation. you might want to consider bluetooth controllers instead! but as a dedicated machine for gaming, i’d recommend it. i have to say that the psp is a very smooth experience and definitely worth checking out. 

[elligames]

super mario maker 2 is a survival horror game

[elligames]

an update of sorts

oh my goodness, i am actually playing video games again. who am i??

remember when i made this tumblr?? and then i just.... stopped.... playing video games? for a good 10 months?

up to a few weeks ago, my only video game during my time away from this tumblr had been super smash bros ultimate. which is absolutely fantastic. but for the most part, i’ve been reading a lot of books and not playing many video games. so let’s talk about my latest gaming experiences! Pokemon Ruby

So when Gen III rolled around, I was at this age where I was kind of defiant towards pokemon. I felt like I should be growing out of it. So I didn’t pick it up. I actually did own one of those clear purple GBAs, but it didn’t get much love from me. I was Growing Up, Obviously. So I didn’t pick up Pokemon Ruby until my 20s. I don’t know when I bought this game. I don’t know when I bought most of my games, to be honest, but it’s never right before I actually start playing them. Anyways.

I actually really liked it? There are some issues. For some reason, I don’t like the movesets available to the pokemon I chose. A lot of them felt sparse and underpowered. And the grinding is difficult because there’s entire chunks of the game where the gym leaders and team magma/aqua members are all the same level. But it was just the right amount of nostalgia while still being a region I hadn’t yet explored. This generation actually had a decent amount of new pokemon, and I liked a lot of the game mechanics. I didn’t really get into the side stuff, such as having a secret hideout, or participating in the contests. But I do like that the robust gameplay is there. 

I loved X and Y, but the pokemon games are getting really easy. It’s nice to open up an older generation and be reminded of just how much work I put into these tiny little cartridges as a kid.

Mother 3

This week is Summer Games Done Quick, which I’ll probably make a post about. It’s all about watching people speedily play video games. But I cannot just watch people play video games. So I picked up my PSP and was searching through the library, and thought, “well, this isn’t something I can pick up at a store.”

Mother 3 is the cult classic sequel to Earthbound, which I quite enjoyed. Mother 3 was never released outside of Japan, so translations are fan-made. I honestly keep thinking to myself, “this is great, but I’ll probably get bored and put it down.” And then, you know, four hours passed. So I think I like it. It’s the same G.D. inventory system, but it doesn’t upset me AS much this time around. When it’s full, items get passed to your party members when you have them. The saving system is reworked and available often, but the saving mechanics of Earthbound didn’t bother me to begin with. Anyways, it’s quaint and familiar and meandering and surreal and jarring and it’s great. It’s a separate story from Earthbound, but it’s the same amount of charm. 

Final Fantasy VII

I am also about four hours into this, though I picked it up like a month ago! Despite my slow pace, I do like it and am really excited for the remake. I mean, I am definitely the last person on the planet who has not played this, so I feel like there’s not much I can say. I will say, I do like the Switch version. As much as I love retro games, using the cheats to get through the game and get to the story elements is actually pretty nice. 

And between FF VII and Mother 3, the stories are ripping my heart out. Thanks, video games.

Baba Is You

Oh my god I actually like a puzzle game. At face value, I thought this would be the kind of puzzle game I would not be good at and I would really dislike. But I have to throw it in here because I was so surprised at how much I liked it and how good I am at it. This puzzle game provides you with a set of commands each round, and you have to manipulate either the commands or the room in order to achieve the objective. It reminds me a lot of learning how to program. You also kind of have to think in an abstract manner, but the game does a good job of kind of showing you what you can do. It doesn’t hold your hand, imo, but the puzzle progression is pretty good. Anyways I think I’m late to the party on this one as well. But it’s really great. I heard they’re working on bringing it to mobile, too, hopefully!

--

Sometimes I just get into moods when I want to play everything. And I’m pretty happy to have picked up some good ones recently. I know I can always return to RPGs, in particular. I just always know that despite how unfamililar the RPG is, I know I can navigate the mechanics, and I know I’m going to love the experience of the story. 

[elligames]

book club but for video games

[elligames]

i haven’t forgotten about this blog or anything, i just haven’t been playing games a lot. i’ve been reading a lot, though. i guess i have a couple of updates: 

Super Mario Odyssey

my friend lent me this after i was chatting about how i had an urge to buy it, and i DO like it so far! it’s what i wanted 3D land to be, honestly. this might be an unpopular opinion but i thought 3D land was kind of a let down, though i’ve heard 3D world was way better - so i can’t judge that version. even though i’ve been playing mario games my whole life, i wouldn’t call myself a mario fan. but i find odyssey really enjoyable. i’d like to get pretty far before i give it back, but i don’t feel particularly attached to the game.

Tormentum: Dark Sorrow

i love this a lot. it’s got a great atmosphere which i’m totally digging.... but... i think i have to face the fact that i’m not that into point-and-click adventures. i feel like, if i just keep at it, if i learn how to wrap my head around the puzzles in these types of games, THEN i will enjoy them more. but i try, and it’s frustrating. even for this game, which i think the puzzles are actually understandable, and point-and-click fans would find them enjoyable, i think. i’m gonna play the next section of this game and then make a decision. i just don’t think as abstract as the games want me to, but i would like to learn how. (maybe i’ll have to take notes?) either way, it’s helped me sort out whether or not i want to actually purchase some point-and-clicks in my wishlist, which is good! anyways, this game is dark and dreary and the whole thing reminds me of lovecraft. you have to make some pretty serious decisions on letting people live or not, and i think there are two or three endings based on that. 

anyways, i am still totally absorbed by persona 4. so updates more often would just turn this blog into a p4 fanblog which isn’t really what i intended, lol. but that’s what i am turning to most often. i think this weekend i might play a little of the castlevania game i picked up before (i think it’s called harmony of dissonance? it’s a GBA one) in celebration of the SSB announcement of simon and richter!! ahhh i’m SO stoked for SSBU! 

[elligames]

I’m moved in!

And I’m absolutely itching to play some steam games~

[elligames]

couldn’t find my vita charger, so i thought to myself, “this is a good time to get work done!” and my ADHD ass promptly:

1) started LTTP, got five hearts, and am now ready to go to the eastern palace

2) beat hidden folks

3) finished the case i was on in ace attorney 3

4) finally found my vita charger and said, “this doesn’t mean i should play persona 4 all night”

5) proceeded to play persona 4 all night

[elligames]

what i found in seattle

so recently i took a trip to seattle where i was only in the city for like, a day, but true to form, i went to 237 museums. one of them was the pop culture museum, and it. was. AWESOME.

i highly recommend the museum for any nerd, but one exhibit that really fascinated me was the indie game exhibit.

you walk into the room, and play indie games. it was fantastic.

there were a lot of games i had never heard of, or had apparently forgotten about. there were also some videos that featured devs talking about things like sound design. forgive me if you’ve heard of these and i am just totally out of the loop.

Tanya Wanya Teens

this game is an amazing arcade game by the same people who did katamari. two people are presented with a grid of buttons, a joystick, and it plays on a huge screen. with each level, some of the buttons in front of you will light up with a certain color that corresponds to an action you’re supposed to take. each level introduces more actions, which forces the layout of the colors to change, so you have to be quick and remember what color corresponds with what action, and keep your eyes on both the screen and the buttons in front of you. the goal is to perform the correct actions in the correct spots before your partner can get to them.

outside of this exhibit, the game travels around, it seems. so i would keep your eye out. it’s not really adaptable for playing at home, though if they figured it out, i would buy the port in a heartbeat.

Hidden Folks

this is really popular in the android app store, so i don’t know how i’ve missed it. it’s even been in my steam wishlist for a year. anyways, it’s a crowded i spy / where’s waldo game, and it’s so addicting that i bought it on iOS pretty much as soon as i could. it’s all hand-drawn, and it’s black and white, which gives it a certain style that i like, and a lot of challenge to the game. the sounds are hilarious, and clearly all done by the same guy. to me, this adds some charm, but some may find it repetitive or annoying, and might want to turn it off. 

i will say that playing on my phone feels a bit cramped for how massive some maps are, so you might want to play this on a tablet or PC, but it doesn’t hinder the gameplay enough for me to switch to a different device. also, this is currently $4 in the steam sale, which is the same price as it is on mobile! so you have a lot of choice at the moment, if a where’s waldo game is up your alley.

Old Man’s Journey

this one is another one that i think is really popular and just slipped under my radar. i think this is one of the few i had actually heard about, or at least remembered that i’d heard about it. this is a puzzle platformer, and how you advance is determined by how you manipulate the environment. you can click and drag the environment so that your character may access new areas, but you can’t drag the platform you’re on, so you have to do some planning. after looking up reviews, it seems some people find the gameplay a bit repetitive, but i found it enjoyable enough to put it in a “to-buy” list, and my friend has been playing it on her phone since our trip. again, this is available on a myriad of platforms, so you have a lot of choice on how to play it.

Reigns

reigns is a game about choice, and i didn’t have a whole lot of exposure to it, but even in the short time that i did, it was enough to make me anxious and feel as though my choices were making an impact. you’re presented with cards, which you swipe right or left on to decide how you want to proceed. talk about the most nerve-wracking version of tinder ever. i really liked the art style and the medieval atmosphere, so i will keep yall updated on if i check this out further.

anyways, outside of wasting time on my phone and avoiding my responsibilities, i’m still engrossed in P4. it’s fantastic.