I couldn’t think of a good title for this generic update post, so I used the first pun that came to mind. Truthfully, things haven’t been that much of a pain lately. At least, not more than usual. Most news I have will be positive, in fact.

New Article

First of all, there’s a new feature out: my review of the American Recordings 1995 CD Sampler, also known as the bonus CD included with North American copies of Comix Zone for the Sega Genesis. I’ve been working on a large Sega-oriented retrospective for a while now, and I’m being vague to keep the central subject matter a surprise. This led to me writing a bunch of mini-reviews, and while working on one for Comix Zone, I was covering the aforementioned bonus CD.

Normally, I would’ve just skipped around the disc and given general impressions, but the first few songs I checked out were good enough to inspire me to listen to the whole thing. It had been years since I’d last written a music review, and I loved the era of pop culture this disc covered, so… I dunno. Sometimes you’re just struck by a project that sounds fun, and you do it. I listened to the whole damn thing and reviewed every song.

The resulting article’s size isn’t monstrous (by my standards), but it still took a hefty amount of time. I also used some more ambitious formatting, with the alternating embed positions, so I hope the whole thing looks and reads as more professional than my other recent stuff. Please let me know what you think about all that.

There’s also an increased focus on hyperlinks, which I’ve been gradually extending to the entire site. Basically, I’m still struggling to find solutions for Google’s refusal to index arbitrary articles, and the most promising, consistent “fix” is increasing the number of inward and outward hyperlinks on a page.

I don’t understand the logic behind it, and it’s not foolproof, but I’m going along with it out of desperation. Even if it leads nowhere, my audience can at least make use of the more interconnected navigation and outside resources for further reading. Sorry if the highlighted text can be distracting. I’m doing my best.

I really enjoyed the process of making that article. The new pop cultural information I got on ’90s music was fascinating, and the music itself was a blast. I was able to consistently work personal anecdotes into the text when I didn’t have that much to say about the music at hand, and I think it contains some of my best jokes in recent memory. Maybe my standards for myself are low, I don’t know. But I hope you laughed at some parts and found others educational or insightful.

Future Work: Music

My girlfriend mentioned she had some Pepsi-branded sampler CD as a kid she used to listen to a lot. I immediately had the urge to check that one out, too. I think this could be a niche I actually explore with some regularity; sampler CDs with some relevant cultural context. The ’90s and early 2000s are my preference, and the added context surrounding these releases gives me topics to talk about and demographics to appeal to beyond the music itself.

There’s a strong possibility you see me review that Pepsi CD and others in the future. This format is really enjoyable for me, and it provided the inspiration I needed to return to reviewing music, which is a field that’s historically given me one of my largest audiences via my RateYourMusic profile.

Do you have any sample CDs you’d like to recommend I review? Whether you got it from Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, or a box of Trojan condoms, I’ll give it a look. Regardless, do let me know if you find the subject matter interesting, as that motivates me to write.

Future Work: Video Games

Sega Retrospective and Screenshot Woes

That Sega retrospective I mentioned above is pretty far along. The topic is so broad that I keep finding new angles to expand on, which keeps it in draft form. Most of the work to be done is getting screenshots, which is starting to establish itself as the biggest pain in my ass when writing articles.

I am an extreme stickler when it comes to consistent, high quality, which demands that I take my own screenshots and have them in the right format at high resolution. For video games, this usually means I’m using an emulator, which is often not the way I play said game. As an example, I recently beat Comix Zone on the Nintendo Switch Online app, but the Switch only outputs screenshots at 69pp or whatever, so there’s major resolution loss even with Genesis games.

I could just put up with that, but my brain doesn’t allow for it. It’s very important to me that I optimize my time with everything, which often involves doing shit perfectly the first time. For screenshots, I don’t like telling myself that I can always take better ones later, because if I did so, I’d be doubling the time spent on the process. I’m going to be dead some day, man. I want that time. I like everything to be complete, perfect, and finalized. No do-overs.

Pictures in general have proven to be a huge headache while managing the site. The way several automatic functions work with regards to images is often unintuitive to me, and I’ve had to jerry rig fixes countless times to make things display the way I envision. It’s a lot to get into, so I won’t, but I’m constantly trying to refine my formatting standards, and if I make significant enough changes, I could have to replace hundreds of old images. Managing a site when you knew nothing heading in is a lot harder than you might think.

Future Work: Aiming for a Better Release Schedule & Apologies

Anyway, I’m probably going to be independently publishing pieces from that Sega retrospective as their own articles in order to give myself a more regular content schedule. If things proceed apace, the Comix Zone review should be the next thing out. I’m thinking of releasing it on the 10th of this month in an effort to commit to a schedule.

I know I’ve made a lot of promises about releases only to have the pipelines get clogged and have articles put on hold. I have dozens and dozens of drafts still waiting to see the light of day, but as I work, I get better at estimating the amount of time it takes for me to do something, the environment in which I work best, and so on.

For anyone disappointed that, say, the Onimusha franchise reviews haven’t yet surfaced, I am very sorry. Please understand that I also loathe to have my existing writing go to waste, and I will see it materialize in some form or another. I’ve put in probably a hundred hours of work into writing so far that has yet to go public. I don’t like that, either. In the meantime, I’ll optimize my workflow so disappointments like that come around less and less often.

Future Work: Old School Gamer Magazine

This partnership is still truckin’ along, though my exact duties can be touch-and-go. I recently submitted another article that should appear in the next issue, so I’ll keep everyone abreast of that. I’m also in the process of writing for the following issue, which is a collaborative piece between other OSGM contributors. That latest article submission had my “boss” respond by saying that I’m a “machine of great work,” which was really awesome to hear. I don’t use AI or any of that bullshit, so all time investment is my own, and it means the world to have that validated.

Future Work: Miscellaneous

As one last tease, I began writing an article for a beloved “kusoge.” I won’t reveal the title yet, but it’s related to one of my favorite anime. I even attempted to reach out to a former staff member for an interview, but I haven’t gotten any replies yet. Who knows if I’ll even be successful in that.

What I’ve Been Doing: Video Games

Super Robot Wars

Super Robot Wars!!! Yeah, I’m still in that pit. I finished my Calvina playthrough of J, and I’m in the middle of my second run to see the other route splits. Unfortunately, as J is wont to do, I got burnt out and swapped over to an abandoned playthrough of W. That playthrough was also my second run through the game, and unlike J, it’s not a replay, so this is my first time seeing some of these route splits.

I’m very close to the end, and once that’s finished, W is basically done. There’s not as much story variance as in J, so I’d just be replaying for its own sake after that point (not that I’m against doing so). While W is highly similar to J in many ways, just being able to play with different units did a lot to break up the monotony. It’s very hard to stay excited about a J playthrough, as it takes so long to get any interesting units. W has its own problems with unit availability, but that’s another story.

My Alpha Gaiden replay has fallen by the wayside because it’s more annoying to play than simply whipping out my 3DS. I’m not admitting to having abandoned it yet, though. I also wanted to create a table for the game’s Bazaar items and mechs, as I couldn’t find one for each difficulty in English. We’ll see where that ends up going.

I have reviews of J and W drafted, but W’s is nowhere close to completion, and J still has a lot of work needed. I have a non-review article centered on Alpha Gaiden to get back to. I initially put it off because I was hoping to get to speak to a relevant party mentioned in the article, but it looks like they’re not interested in responding, sadly.

I dunno when this SRW kick will end, but depending on that, I could end up playing 3, EX, Elemental Lord, or GC. Stay tuned? Hell, I even picked up Super Robot Pinball again, as I’d heard it had been translated into English. Unfortunately, this was only half-true. The game’s menus are now in English, but the database is basically untouched, which is where the bulk of text is. Oh, well. Still cool.

Illbleed

I did marginally better on my annual promise to play more horror games in October. I watched my friend play through Illbleed for the first time, which is the best way to experience Illbleed, because you get to see someone else react to the insane shit in it without you experiencing the terrible gameplay. I really want to write about Illbleed, as I love nothing more than covering insane bullshit, but it’s such an interesting game that I know it will be a massive undertaking. Unless I die suddenly, it will happen some day. Much like dying suddenly.

Another year where I fail to finish Medievil, Rule of Rose, or Clock Tower 3. Damn.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

I can’t remember if I’ve written about it yet in my blog, but YGO recently dropped its new Genesys format, which I like in theory. It uses a point-based system that I was considering for a custom format of my own based on playing with archetypes “pure” (deck strategies using only their own, related cards). That goal hasn’t been made irrelevant by this, so I might still work that out at some point.

If anything, there’s even more of a purpose to it now, as Konami has arbitrarily decided to fuck over certain archetypes with Genesys format: Pendulum and Links are wholesale not allowed in Genesys. At all. Unfortunately, not enough people seem to care about this for there to be any outcry, so it probably won’t change.

Konami has offered excuses for this, such as wanting the format to be “less complicated,” but I’m gonna be blunt: I think that’s bullshit. Yu-Gi-Oh! for years has made consistent efforts to appeal to people who’ve abandoned the game for becoming too complex, and one of the most consistent mantras of those players are lazy perspectives like “Pendulums/Links ruined the game.”

The ban of Pendulums in particular—the unequivocal worst, least relevant card type in the game—is a virtue signal for those players in the same way Speed Duels and Legacy Duels were. They’re an emotional appeal, rather than one done for the health of the game, and these card types were chosen as sacrificial lambs in the latest gambit to increase the playerbase.

It’s such a damn shame that many of the game’s weakest archetypes can’t compete in a format intended to be low-power just to appease “boomer” players. If there were enough people complaining, I’d feel more confident that they might someday overturn this decision, but it seems most players are willing to just take this on the chin, even if they disagree with the principle.

I’m not, and I wish we would just call this what it is. Pendulum hate is a constant in the TCG especially, which birthed this alternative format, and some of the most influential staff members in the TCG have openly stated to being biased against combo decks, which are heavily associated with Pendulum and Links. As any decent player knows, whether or not a deck has combos or not is irrelevant to its power level. Some of the worst decks in the game are combo decks, while some of the best have had very short turns.

Konami’s insistence that you can’t balance a format with Pendulums and Links using their new point system is untrue, and I suspect they know that. A lot of my favorite decks are Pendulum and Link-based despite being trash, and there’s less of a place for them now than ever before. All so that certain players have a safe space where they’ll never have to confront their biases. This was a ban motivated by personal taste, and at the very least, whether you like Genesys or not, you shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

I’m sure I’ll write more on how this is bullshit in the future, as well as the general unfounded prejudice Konami and players have shown towards Pendulums, but for now, please let this rant suffice.

What I’ve Been Doing: Noah’s Barks

Anime

The anime category has been making huge strides when it comes to featured images and excerpts. The end is finally in sight! While working on this, I’ve cleaned up a fair bit of reviews. One of the biggest improvements was to my review of Casshern Sins. While still not up to the standards such a great series deserves, I at least touched upon some of what makes it so spectacular. There’s many others where I’ve touched up grammar and syntax; too many to list here. Nothing is worth a full-on republishing, in which case I would bump it to the front page of the site, but still.

Once the anime category is in a presentable state, I’ll return to importing music reviews.

Monetization

I was too busy to produce enough content for my Patreon that no one has subscribed to, so it was automatically shut down. I’ll be putting it back online in short order, with the obvious intent to do regular content updates, free or otherwise.

Emphasis on “otherwise.” A full announcement will probably accompany the Sega retrospective article’s release, but the preview summary is that I have to make more of an effort to not literally starve to death. The job market is fucking abysmal right now. If you have regular employment, thank your maker. I know being a writer isn’t considered especially lucrative, but I have other professional skills, and there is no well that isn’t dry.

America is probably hurtling towards an apocalypse, and I have next to no safety net for if and when that happens. I need to be prepared to cover living expenses, computer upkeep (I use it for work), and my healthcare possibly being stripped away.

As such, I can’t keep writing for literally dozens of hours a week for free. I have to attempt to survive somehow. At the same time, I realize I’m relatively new to crowdsourcing income, so I don’t have much of an audience. If I had like, 10,000 people paying $1 a month, I’d obviously be more than set, but I don’t think there’s even 10,000 people in the world who can read anymore.

Going forward, I’ll be charging $2 a month for readers to receive access to my articles one month in advance of me publishing them on my site for free. In pursuit of fairness, I intend to only restrict access to large-scale pieces—ones that take me hours upon hours of effort. Blog posts, guides, old reviews, and shorter reviews are intended to remain free for the foreseeable future.

I know I’m not the only one struggling, and if you can’t afford a subscription fee or just don’t think my work is worth the asking price, I totally understand. It’s your money, and a lot of people are asking for subs. But some creators that are much, much larger than me might be fine with one less subscription, whereas I’m in a position where I have to count every dollar I have. I hope you consider that when deciding who to support.

More details in the future.

Upkeep

This is somewhat premature, but I’ll be making efforts to make the site look more professional all around. The first thing I’ve done is implement a proper Patreon button, even though it doesn’t lead to an active page at the moment. I’ll be making changes like that. Banners, logos, that sort of thing. Please let me know if anything breaks.

Gotta Blast!!!

I have a friend waiting on me to play some games, so I’m cutting this post off now. Thanks for reading, and I hope your November has started off on a good note!