#Mini Design

[vmantras]

Mini Cooper SE Review: The Ultimate Urban Electric Car

₹52.5 Lakh The Mini Cooper SE is an electric iteration of the iconic Mini brand, combining classic design, premium build quality, and cutting-edge electric vehicle (EV) technology. It’s tailored for urban environments with its compact dimensions, engaging driving dynamics, and eco-friendly appeal. Here’s an extended review of its features and capabilities: Design and Aesthetics Exterior…

[shopwitchvamp]

“Omg, I love these! They go up to size 6X AND they have pockets?! Wow!! But do you have anything longer?”

Sure do, no problem!!

“YES these are great!!! But what about.. longer?”

I gotcha!! Comin’ right up!

“Perfect! But I have just one more question… what if I’m feeling spicy? How about skirts that are even shorter than the first ones?!”

Oh, you’re in luck! We’ve got minis now.

*wild cheering* /scene

🖤witchvamp.com🖤

[sleepgarden]

Pupa ✢ The writing reads:

Time envelops and keeps me Not awake / Not asleep In this chrysalis / In this shroud I am stillborn / I am buried alive Yet I change / I am changing / And I ache Held still

I started this over a year ago and came back to it periodically, but I decided to just finally finish it. It’s morphed, undone itself, and transformed many times in the process of illustrating it. Sincerely, I considered giving up on the piece. I am glad I didn’t despite its awkwardness; I admit that it doesn’t sit in the eye well. But somehow I feel that it suits the piece and what it means.

I am, if anything, relieved to have finished an illustration finally. It’s been nearly eight months since my last. Prints are available in my shop. (I also have mini prints for $5cad/$3.40usd!)

[natsumipocket]

˙✧˖°⋆｡˚

[cherrie-blue-s]

Timtam and charlie

Ft. Kon

[br3akfestattiffanys]

Cherry Blossom Dress by Oscar De La Renta ❀໋༘ࣧ

[syntxri]

We love the copy and paste tool

[akanemnon]

Golden boy has entered his rebellious phase. Kind of...

I'm a sucker for "DR Asriel and Chara as college buddies" stories, as you can tell. Had this idea swimming in my brain for a while now and really had to get it out.

You can consider this a Twin Runes Mini

Asriel will play such a minor role later on, that I really wanted to give him a comic on his own. Kinda wanted to explore how his "golden boy" persona would clash with his new "college" persona now that he was free from his town's expectations.

[mishim0]

Honestly I don't think they Will get along huh...

Mini comic I made a while ago heh

Sorry for some mistakes

[keepingitneutral]

"Brutalist Plants"

Reinforced hillside, Aogashima, Tokyo, Japan. Photo © Yasushi Okano,

Bucharest, Romania. Photo © Bogdan Anghel,

Casa Alférez, Cañada De Alferes, Mexico. Architect Ludwig Godefroy. Photo © Rory Gardiner,

Monumento a Azeredo Perdigão by Pedro Cabrita Reis,

Casa de Vidro, São Paulo, Brazil. Architect Lina Bo Bardi. Photo © Celeste Asfour,

Artwork and photo by Karsten Födinger in La Vallée, Basse-Normandie, France,

Jurong Bird Park, Jurong, Singapore. Architect John Yealland and J. Toovey. Photo © James Wong

Courtesy: Olivia Broome (Hoxton Mini Press)

[vmantras]

Mini Countryman EV: Performance and Features Explained

₹54.9 Lakh The Mini Countryman EV is an all-electric premium SUV that extends the brand’s iconic charm into the eco-conscious automotive space. Designed for urban and suburban adventures, it offers a balance of style, performance, luxury, and advanced technology. Here’s a detailed breakdown: Exterior Design and Dimensions Classic Mini Aesthetic: The Mini Countryman EV retains the signature…

[llamasyes]

The butterflies

[natsumipocket]

˙✧˖°⋆｡˚

[weyoweyoweyo]

AHAHAHSHDHDHSHAJDGKSUDKFHSJSGDJSUAGDGDJS GUYS GUYS GUYS I DREW SOSMTHINGG!!!!!!!! AHAHAHAJDKFJDSJDHDJDHDKSHSJFBSKSUDIUD CELEBRATE!!!! SHOTS FOR EVERYONEEEE!!

Let's just saaaaaayyy, my husband Alex likes it😏😏

[krumpkin]

I love the old mini 👍

[centrally-unplanned]

I was going through some archived scans of 90's otaku magazines, as is my sacred duty, and I stumbled on this ad for a Sega Saturn game I did not know:

The pitch of Roommate (as seen here) is that of a "real time" romance simulation:

What makes it real-time is that the game progresses in sync with the Saturn's internal clock. In that way [main girl] Ryoko is just like a real girl; she has her own daily habits and lives her life accordingly. So if you start the game in the afternoon, you might not be able to meet her because she's at school [...] The purpose is to enjoy living together with Ryoko in real time and communicating with her.

And this is exactly the kind of way-too-convoluted gimmick that sacrifices gameplay functionality on the altar of conceptual novelty based on random technology add-ons present in new-gen consoles of the era that I just love. Obviously the concept of starting a game and having the main girl not be present so you cannot play is completely asinine - but think of the realism!

Between that and the discount-Sadamoto 90's character designs, I wanted to see it for myself; so I spent way, way too long setting up a Sega Saturn emulator. In my experience early CD-ROM-based consoles often require much more bespoke set-ups to get working, in this case custom BIOS files in the emulator firmware directories, and JPN-language ones at that for this game. But I got it to work and oh yeah, this is some early "digital" console era crust:

Playing this game is just painful. The clock of course means that you essentially can't play it at all - looking at YouTube comments on the very few Let's Plays and such that exist, people are reminiscing about how they could never find Ryoko because their schedules didn't align. One person even comments:

This game is for NEETs and shut-ins

Which is a valid demo I guess! But it doesn't really stop there - your house is a "fully realized" 3D environment of bare walls which you navigate with clunky controls. Let me log in and take some screenshots...

Jesus Christ it's 10 pm and you are cooking dinner?! The one time I don't want this ghost popping out of the cracks in the floorboards, I swear...

Okay, got rid of her (She broke a plate -_- you moved in yesterday, girl):

You walk, in real time (step by step) through this pixel museum just...hoping that one of the rooms will contain Ryoko and proc a dialogue event based on the time of day. There is a little more to it than that but that is essentially the gameplay. This would, very obviously, be simply better as a straightforward visual novel.

But you see how that just isn't as cool in 1997, right? This is the era where the fidelity of graphics and the technology for simulation is progressing at a rapid clip, and everyone wants to see the boundaries pushed. Roommate isn't the first "real time simulation" game, but it is the most pure, the one fully committed to the bit. Your house is completely mapped out, the girl has her routine, you walk step by painful step through the rooms because this is "real", you are living it. They even use a live photo for the outside of the house to sell the aesthetic (and also save money):

Ryoko is waiting in the kitchen of that house when you come home from work, putting on an apron, ready to cook dinner. For you.

Assuming you get home at whatever fucking 30 minute window the game decided to gatekeep its gameplay behind! But of course I exaggerate - it wasn't that bad (there are little mechanics you can use to set some schedule times in the game for example), player tolerance for bullshit was way higher then, and you were expected to buy strategy guides for these things. So even though it was panned by critics on release...it was a sleeper hit with a devoted fanbase.

Which means it got a ton of sequels and ports! We don't have to go through them all, though I will share my favorite factoid about the first sequel - "ROOMMATE ~Ryoko in Summer Vacation~" from the wiki:

The character designs are significantly different from the previous game (especially Ryoko's brown hair and large breasts).

Priorities, baby. But some of the ports are interesting because of the changing tech. A version was ported to the PlayStation, which does not have the internal clock a Sega Saturn had. But coincidentally it did have the PocketStation, a handheld GameBoy/Tamagotchi hybrid expansion tool that did have an internal clock and could sync with the game. It also let you track Ryoko's schedule and play mini-games, with some very adorable animations as you can see in this ad for the product that featured Roommate:

This device absolutely reminds me of the Disc Fax system discussed in my Miho Nakayama essay - a very niche product biting off more than it can chew making games overly complex to play but allowing things that would otherwise be impossible (and this one was a good deal more successful at least). Here it allowed Roommate's central gimmick to function - and is super cute, honestly I would buy a standalone tamagotchi version of this game.

The PS1 also couldn't quite handle how the game was built for the Sega Saturn graphics-wise, and as such a bunch of the 3D elements were sanded off into 2D simulacrums - most notably the house:

Which, despite this being a technological downgrade, is way better! It looks adorable, you can actually see what is going on and where Ryoko is, and you can navigate it way more cleanly. God, did...hold on let me tab back to the game...yeah, is there no clock in the original game on screen. That is insane. Anyway the PS1 version had a lot of these cute little graphical additions, even right on the title screen:

It is definitely the better looking version, which is a classic tale - in 1997 the "bleeding edge" of 3D graphics were impressive to players, even through their roughness. Now they just aren't, and so the retro charm of designs that are optimized what the mediums of the time could reliably handle have a lot more appeal.

There was also a PC port in 1998, which did exactly what I suggested and added an "adventure" mode where you could ignore the clock system. They definitely learned over time what worked and what didn't; but the appeal of the gimmick is what first sold it to players in the end.

All of this is to say, don't play Roommate, and if you do just emulate the PS1 game instead of torturing yourself with the Sega Saturn version. Oh...you weren't gonna play a Japanese-only abandonware 90's not-even-eroge dating sim to begin with? Ah, well, yeah, I guess that makes sense.

Man I should translate it shouldn't I? So people can play it...