gen does Soul Nomad - gen ichida vs. the world (eaters)

so in lieu of the radio silence last month, aaaaand me getting kind of salty about the traffic crap i had to deal with in the last post, i think it's time for a bit of fun this summer.

things on my end seemed to have slowed down, so outside of practicing traditional drawing stuff and the frequent twitter activity, not a whole lot's been going on lately. and since i'd rather not sit here and do nothing while waiting for stuff like my birthday on July 8, Steam's summer sale, and Starbound's soon-ish 1.0 release, let's get things trucking on here again.

after mulling out how might probably roll with it, i'll be starting the Soul Nomad playthrough fairly soon. mostly will be doing it as a post-play commentary writeup since writing my thoughts on here while i play would end up being a bit cumbersome. i will be taking photos and even livetweeting bits on my twitter, but the more wordy thoughts will be reserved for after play sessions.

as for the playthrough itself, i'll be going in semi-blind. i have seen Soul Nomad's cutscenes a few times in the past, so i'm aware what goes on in the story. as far as gameplay goes, i only have a vague idea of how it works from reading the manual and bits of the strategy guide, and it's a radical change from Disgaea's gameplay. so yeah, settling into SN's gameplay will take some time.

also, don't expect entries to pop up too frequently on here. pretty sure you guys have come to expect it, but it takes a while for me to type this stuff out on here. though, for the impatient folks, you can check out my twitter for my less-than-140-characters-commentary and lowres screencaps while i play the game. amongst other things.

so yeah, pretty much how things will be going for the playthrough, but of course i can't end it off here. so what the heck is this game all about, and why'd i choose to play it?

to 1998 and beyond (and back again)

so i finally took a chunk of time out of my life to set up a virtual machine for windows 98.

downloaded Oracle VM Virtualbox for this purpose some time ago last year, but i haven't gotten around to actually setting up a digital Win98 on it till yesterday. mostly did it because there were some old games i wanted to run on it that i can't on a Win7, but i've got a bit of nostalgia for the system, too.

up until 2013, i've had a Win98 in my old bedroom as a work computer of sorts. 'course, i did play games on it and such, but i mostly used it as a platform for browsing the internet, talking with friends via MSN, and the occassional Wordpad drabbles and MSPaint scribbles. even in the years prior to that, most of my time was spent on the old win98 in my dad's old room, which is also currently my new bedroom. funny how these things work.

of course my history with the win98 stretches to even way before that time to when i was a kid, but my memory's foggy on that period outside of all the Jumpstart and Reader Rabbit games i played. in my current age, i stick with my trusty Win7 since there's a wider pantheon of games and emulators i can run on it, but nowadays i've been dabbling in the technical aspects of old OSes. stuff like what older systems could achieve with their technical limitations; it's part of the reason why i have an interest in tech demos and scene demos.

granted, i set up a virtual win98 almost purely for the purpose of older games, but perhaps i'll be exploring some of the technical things behind that OS. i'm older and a bit more knowledgeable on those sorts of things, so maybe i'll know a bit of what i'm getting into, and maybe learn new things in the process.

for now, i'm gonna have some fun decking out this ol' thing.

so yeah, while this wasn't that big an update on mine or the site's end, it's a step in keeping the place frequently updated. plus since i have this set up now, maybe i'll get to reviewing some old win98 stuff at some point in the future.

if you wanna set up a virtual win98 of your own for retro gaming or whatever reason, go grab yourself a copy of Oracle VM Virtualbox and follow along this tutorial if it's your first time using the thing. you're on your own for the setup bootdisc, though. or any tutorials for getting other OSes running in it.

until then, hope you guys enjoyed this little retrospective of sorts. stay rad, everyone!

MAKAIPUNK - building a netherworld travel diary

so first week of the new year went pretty well so far. managed to grab a couple obscure ps2 games, been working on getting my sleep schedule back on track, been helping out with quest writeups and design for that WoW private server i mentioned in my last non-jukebox post, and even got back to practicing my hand at pencil drawing. alongside a variety of other things. one of which was getting a cold last week and having to suffer through that.

been cleaning up a bit of my room a while back; my drawers and cabinets, mainly. stumbled upon a handful of drawing pads and various notebooks i had shoved in there when i moved into my new bedroom. they're a bit worn with age, but a majority of the pages of them are unmarked, so i'll use them for drawing instead of using a lot of printer paper for it.

the book before and after the new cover. art by airana@DA

that aside, stumbled upon a hardcover notebook with the title of "Forum for Excellence" and "The Warren Conference Center 2002" on it. so yeah, seemed pretty old, but the pages were all in perfect condition, oddly enough. from what my dad told me, he got it at a meeting way back when but never seemed to had used it. as for why i shoved it in my own cabinets when i got my own room... okay, to be honest, i'm not even sure why i had it there to begin with.

so now that i've rediscovered this little gem, i figured i'd make use of it and get started on a project i've been meaning to do for a while: making a "journal" of sorts centered around the world of Nippon Ichi Studio's Disgaea game series.

might seem like an odd project to write about on here, but it's been a while since i did a MAKAIPUNK thing anyway, so have a bit of a warmup on my end before i get back to bigger things. like hopefully chapter 3 of the Disgaea 1 manga readthrough thing. or maybe some game reviews or something. i don't know.

card games by a mage's candlelight - gen returns to hearthstone

honestly was considering penning this under the "gen's thoughts" title, but this falls under more freeform musing than rambling about my opinions and thoughts on things. i don't know why i need to stick nearly everything under specific categories; it's not like this site even follows a specific trend or theme to the things i write about. :y

at the start of the month, i've gotten myself back into playing Hearthstone, a digital collectible card game spinoff of the Warcraft series. which is also free for windows/mac and iphones and tablets if you wanna try it out. the microtransaction/free-to-play stuff is pretty fair, too. buy packs and adventure parts with either money or earned ingame gold which is fairly easy to get.

i initially got into Hearthstone around April or March of 2014 when the game was released to the public. played it for a while, got a few card packs out of it, and got a nifty pandaren-themed card back from ranked play. while i did enjoy it, i soon retired from HS for greener pastures, which naturally meant i missed out on a lot of cool card backs from the following months up to now. ah well. such is how life goes, i guess.

wasn't to say i wasn't interested in coming back to the game at some point in the future. my younger brother still plays Hearthstone as of this writing, and of course i had a ton of fun just watching him blow opponents to dust with cheeky tactics. just didn't have the proper incentive to actually play the game again myself. which, knowing me, that incentive most likely involved either more variety to cards, more cosmetic stuff, more content, or tauren. preferably tauren.

'course, we got new card set expansions and adventures and new modes, and i even followed the official Hearthstone twitter, but i wasn't coaxed into coming back until my brother let me know about the latest shaman-themed card back for the current ranked season.

as someone who played shaman in both Hearthstone and World of Warcraft, that was what got me back into the game. got myself to rank 20 now so i'm guaranteed to get the card back after this month, but now i've found myself enjoying the game even more; not solely because of the new cards and content (tavern brawl is fun as hell, i should mention!), but for more poignant reasons. not really the sappy kind of poignant, just stuff that just kinda draws me into the game in a different aspect.