mDuo13

It seems I've unintentionally continued a trend in this website, where I post a lot one month, skip nearly the entire next month, and then return. I dunno what the deal is with that, but I at least have a pretty good excuse for not posting in the past month: I got a new job. I am now an employee of social gaming startup Playdom, where I'm documenting internal processes and things like that (in the hopes of making the company more efficient and less confusing). So that's been taking a pretty big chunk out of my week, and besides that I've been keeping up with a reasonably large number of anime and hanging out with friends about as often as not... this blog kind of fell by the wayside in between. But I'm not satisfied with that, so here's a brief rundown on what I've accomplished in the last month.

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It turns out that the combination of my impatience to play the game and my doubts over whether it will eventually make it to the states were, together, too strong, so I ended up hacking my Wii to play the European localization of Another Code: R. I'll still buy the US release if and when it happens, but until then, I'm having a blast enjoying Cing's wonderful character designs animatedly moving around in 3D on my TV. The characters are all fun and distinct, and Ashley's interaction with many of them is really believable. I find myself sighing and getting annoyed with her dad - the good-intentioned dope that he is - as much as she does, being fascinated by the (perhaps excessively?) rustic Ranger Dan, doubting but sympathizing with runaway kid Matthew Crusoe... And the puzzles (with one exception) have so far been fun, slightly challenging, but not frustrating. As for that one, well, lighting a barbecue in this game apparently requires placement and patience, both of which I had but in the wrong combination. (I was also distracted by thinking I would need either kindling or lighter fluid to get the charcoal lit.) In any case, the game is just what I expected, and for that, I'm loving it. It wasn't even that hard to get it working, though I did encounter some stumbling points...

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In the process of translating Tabi to Michizure, I came across this peculiar little two-page spread. As you might notice above in the circled sections of my scan... some parts of the image simply don't continue onto the other page. What gives, TANAKANOKA? Did you have different assistants finish up each page separately? In any case, this page, and all its action lines, presented something of a challenge to clean up for proper translation and release. I had to come up with an unusual yet effective method in order to fix it.

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Well, the weather has been unbearably hot for the past two days, which is precisely the kind of warm welcome back from Hawaii that I was not hoping to encounter. It's made worse by how bad I was burned in Hawaii. How bad? Well, I may in the future blog about it, as I have something of an anecdote, but suffice to say I've been staying out of the sun as much as possible for the past week and I am still peeling.

During that time, I've been catching up on "being home" things - one of which is working on my job search. My good friend Rylee had some pretty insightful things to say about it, and although I don't agree with him 100% it has prompted me to do some major revisions to my resume. This has, of course, delayed the actual sending of applications because I don't want to send an incomplete resume to a job I really want.

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I don't know how long it took me to beat Metroid - certainly long enough that Samus didn't take even her helmet off - but I'm done with the game. And that feels like a real accomplishment, given how hard the game - or nearly any NES game, for that matter - is, compared to modern games. I'm also feeling pretty done with Hawaii after sunburning myself pretty thoroughly yesterday (although I caught a lot of good waves).

The first time I came to Hawaii was quite a few years back, and we spent a bunch of time in Honolulu and Lanikai. I did not enjoy that trip and came to dislike Hawaii entirely. The second time I came to Hawaii, we went to Maui and had a distinctly more laid-back time, which was better, and getting to swim with sea turtles and spend the rest of my time lounging around by the ocean. After that, I scaled back my dislike of the place. I've come to the conclusion now, on my third trip to Hawaii, that I have nothing against the place itself, though it's also not necessarily paradise. I only hate going vacationing with my parents, who want to spend most of their time driving, shopping, or sipping Mai Tais, all of which I'd rather skip.

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So here I was, rollin' along, making short work of Ridley and digging my way into Tourian where Mo'Brain lies in wait, carrying a full sack of missiles and 5 energy tanks, when damn, I found myself facing not one, not two, but hordes of these terrifying creatures. And, well, whoever it was that told you that morph ball bombs get them offa you forgot one important detail: each bomb maybe gets rid of one of the three or more guys sucking your brains out. And don't even ask about how many missiles it takes to clear them all outta the way.

Ridiculous.