The Esoteric Gamer!

It's about 11:15 PM when I started this entry.

I'll like to take this time to say this.

This is the game I will not be playing tonight...or tomorrow for that matter.


Yeah, I admit it.  I just have to mock the hype behind the game.  Hey, at least you can have some fun with Mega 64's skit turning the hype into a punchline.

And in the same line as Screwattack.com's Top 10 Games to Get Other Than Halo 3 (Spoiler:  Their number 1 is the game the above game is a sequel to...yeah, CoD4), I'm going to list the Top 10 games I'm going to (most likely) play, where none of them are Modern Warfare 2.  (Besides, maybe early next year)

( Top 10 Games I'm playing that's not MW2. )

According to both HayayaP's twitt...or rather, twitpic, and MukiryokuP's Hatena diary? kinda thing, AH-soft, the company for "Music Maker 2" and "jam Band", is releasing a vocaloid too, based on the downward reading of their most recent newsletter.

「うちでボカロうるよっ　まじで」
"we are going to sell a vocaloid, for real"

Two down, one more to go. *points at that tweet from YAMAHA*

- はやや〆 - 縦読みで「うちでもボカロうるよ」？
- 無気力P - 今日の初音ミクとか

And according to this article on the 2009 Musical Instrument Festival, the initial for the two unannounced vocaloids are "Y.K." and "K.H.". I wonder if that's the artist name or the vocaloid's name...


Sooooo putting info together 'cause I'm a bit confused. orz

PowerFX
- Big-Al (...srsly where the hell are you?)

Crypton
- Hatsune Miku Appended
- Project if... (child actress; 2009?)
- Young famous male seiyuu

HEARTFAST
- "miki" (Dec. 2009)

AH-soft
- hinted

???
- unannounced (based on YAMAHA's tweet)

CAPCOM
- AI, voiced by Kikuchi Yumi, for Metal Solid Gear: Peace Walker; used in the game only, not sure if she will get an independent release (2010)

cosMo-tan... >___________>

初音ミクオリジナル曲 「R-18」



Took me a few seconds to realize. xDDDDDDDDD


【初音ミク】もしも話【オリジナル】



What-if. A bit sad but touching song.


[初音ミク] ダミーダミー [オリジナル曲]



Niina new song. Don't read too deep into the lyric. *gets smacked*


【初音ミク】　Psychokinesis　【オリジナル】



UtsuP + IkiroP... Interesting combo (P name-wise). xD Don't touch these UtsuP often but that's some interesting lyric. Fitting his P name too. :o


初音ミクオリジナル曲「雨」



Circus mus*gets smacked* Brain dead on this song for some reason... It's got nice music and Miku voice and all but yeah, need to go back to dig the lyric.

Title: Neku and Rhyme
Author: nattolen
Rating: the lower that can exist °-°'
Pairing: none
Summary: A while ago I was going to draw Sora, then I thought how would neku look like in KH style? for this I started drawing Neku instead of Sora. Today I draw Rhyme as well XD I'm planning to do joshua, shiki and beat, too :3
Notes/Warnings: they're dreepy, I'm not tetsuya nomura after all X°DD'' they're thumbnals from dA

( switch~ )

Tuesday was a national holiday (Culture Day iirc) so with that, I was able to hang out with Ibuki the whole day, since her only day off is on Tuesday. We had some early morning breakfast and then hit up Namba to go shopping for my mom's birthday. After that, I met up with Rob and Ayako and we had lunch at this traditional Japanese place in Shinsaibashi. Ibuki and I went here before with Ibuki's grandmother, and we learned that while dinner would usually set you back 4000 yen or so, lunch was always 1000 yen! And the food was pretty much what you'd get during the evening too! We all ordered cooked snapper for our lunch, but that was a bad move on Rob's part because apparently he is not good with fish at all... and the course we ordered came with two rather large snapper heads. He was a good sport about it and tried to eat it, but ended up not being able to. I guess next time we go there we'll have to make sure he gets tempura or something. After that we watched Michael Jackson's This Is It, which was totally awesome. I'm a fan of MJ so paying the 1800 yen admission fee wasn't as bad as paying 1500 yen to watch Transformers 2 or GI Joe, which weren't worth the price of admission, even when discounted. I didn't even know what to expect going into the movie... was it going to show MJ back when he was a kid, or mainly just focus on the concert he was rehearsing for? What songs would they show in the movie? The movie really just cemented in my mind what I had thought for the longest time, which is that no matter what kind of controversy the man was in, no one can deny that he was talented and passionate about his work.

---

I came down with... something on Friday, although I'm not sure what. I thought it was a cold but it didn't feel like a cold. It certainly wasn't the flu, and I got that confirmed by a doctor this afternoon. It felt like one of those 24 hour bugs that you sometimes get, but whatever, the worst of it was on Saturday and today I feel much better, although not 100%. So basically the whole weekend was screwed up by that bug... I had planned to work on a webpage for Ibuki's restaurant, get some gaming in, go to Kyoto for a softball game and more, but obviously none of that worked out. On the bright side, at least I'll be okay for my birthday (on Tuesday)!

At my parents house for the weekend. Feels weird that I haven't slept here for almost 5 months now. I did miss my bed... but I've been loving my freedom and also being responsible for myself in a lot of new areas! Mom keeps wanting me to move back but I don't think it's a good idea. I can't beleive I'm calling it a night already. I'm usually doing something with friends on a Saturday night. Feels good to have a mellow weekend for once though. Halloween took care of my partying itch for now.

Just a quickie.
Don't smoke.

The other version is over at my lj.

( Enjoy. )

Hello, everyone~ I've been watching this comm since I guess last fall so I suppose it's about time I dusted off the livejournal, de-lurked, and posted something here. :D Granted, it's a testimony to how much of a dork I am for I managed to (sort of) cross V for Vendetta with The World Ends With You. While I'm a veteran to writing, it's my first time posting to an open community. Please be gentle?

Title: Gunpowder Treason and Plot
Author: omgitsedolol
Rating: PG for Neku's need to swear
Pairing: No intentional pairings but if you squint hard enough, you can probably find some...
Summary: Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.
Notes/Warnings: This was a challenge from a friend of mine since I was dorking over V for Vendetta yesterday. It would have been posted on the fifth but I needed my Minamimoto translator to fix my fail at writing him. Also, I guess this is more post-game since Neku's not as much of an ass as usual.

( Fake cut to my journal, ahoy~ )

Translating off this tweet from YAMAHA's twitter:

"About miki: [he/she/it] was announced on a certain site, but there are actually two more planned for release during the same time [as he/she/it]"

I know, my translation is lame, leave me alone. T_T

...Oh hey what the hell. You're going ボーカロイド here and ヴォーカロイド on that X'mas album page why. >_>

Let me see...

For friends, it's through forums, reading their twitter, their LJ entries, and poking around on IRC/AIM. For games, Famitsu and Kotaku, then going through Play-Asia's list occasionally and look up the games that seem interesting. For vocaloid, it's mainly through Hatsune Miku Miku, Nyappon!, going through Nico's hourly ranking, and IRC. :x Oh and RSS feeds for the non-friend ones.

Yeah, I rarely use search engines to "stay informed" unless it's some local/national news. >_>;


*looks at tag* Oh Yahoo why you doing this?

Me-chaaaaaa(ry

You're one year older now~ *gets whacked by alcohol bottle*

...Space reserved for Me-chan songs. I'll post some once I get back from work. ;A;

Back from work! Sorry Me-chan! Spam time! *gets smacked* Time to dash into the MEIKO生誕祭2009 tag.


【MEIKO生誕祭2009】Change me / shu-t【オリジナル】



shu-tP I love you. I really do.


【MEIKO】向月葵（オリジナル曲）



"Himawari" (Sunflower), yanagiP's song that's gonna be in Supernova.


【MEIKO】待人海【オリジナル】



ShigotoshiteP's song about someone waiting for her loved one to return. The story itself is kinda predictable but I love ShigotoshiteP's Me-chan.

( Moar~ )


If anyone's got any videos they wanna rec, post them~

Gone into withdrawal mode all of a sudden.

It was originally just BL and RPG (btw rec a JRPG that's not FF or KH or Tales that I've never played before?), now throw vocaloidism's forum into it too. D:

Forum's license basically expired without us being able raise enough fund in time to get a perma license. ...Which is rather interesting 'cause apparently a lot of the people either never really read through that huge ass wall of text on top of the forum (on every page too) that was there asking for the fundraising or never took it seriously enough to look into it. It also managed to get one of the forum member that refuses to get on IRC to come into the channel though, so that's a plus I guess.

---

Oh there's a Harry Potter exhibit in our MoS~ I wanna go but eh, dead batteries needing to be recharged and me not having the monies to get that recharger now = uuuugh. Good thing is it's gonna be here for a while so I can take my time on visiting it. :o (Seems my friend can also get a discount on the ticket because of where she works, yay~)

...But yeah, what's wrong with this month? Everything's coming out in November for some reason. I'm gonna be so poor once the 25th hits. Speaking of which should really go order Kaze's DVD before it runs out. x_x


Edit: Nooooo Kaze... D: *sob sob* I hate myself. D:

I have heard about how in Japan, Microsoft was celebrating the release of Windows 7 by...having the Burger King in the country sell a special "Windows 7" burger, which is a Whopper with 7 beef patties.  Yeah, yeesh!

More yeesh after seeing a video of CheapyD (from Cheap Ass Gamer) trying to eat said burger.



Geez.  I mean, the most beef I go for with burgers are two beef patties (either as one whole double burger or two separate single burger).  That burger is overkill, even for me, who'll confess to having a big appetite now and then.

Talk about your gimmick burgers.  No way I'm touching something like that.

An X'mas song album from HEARTFAST and yamaha A&R called "VOCALOIDS★X'MAS" was announced like... a day or two ago? with a really shiny cast.



"VOCALOIDS★X'MAS"

01 - Hakkoutai no Rudy / BucchigiriP
02 - Hello Hello・Hello Hello / Yuuyu
03 - This Christmas / Dixie Flatline
04 - Christmas Carol ga Owareba / Kobayashi Onyx & KTG (Aliced Twilightz)
05 - Presenter / sasakure.UK
06 - Oratorio / Captain Mirai
07 - Christmas Eve / awk
08 - Ave Maria: Schubert / MariaP
09 - Holy Night Rider / Toraboruta
10 - white light/white heat / Sherdock
11 - Christmas Eve / XXX RESIDENTS


Today, they put up the info page for it, which you can access from the link above. What's interestingsurprising about this?



"SF-A2 Codename: miki
 Artist Edition 01

 Coming out December..."

!?

New vocaloid outta nowhere, by a company that's not Crypton and Internet? Does this make it the 3rd company in Japan to release a vocaloid? Artist Edition? So she's an artist... *links* Furukawa "Miki"... Maybe...just maybe. (Not to mention a visit to heartfast.jp shows that they've been releasing CDs for Furukawa.)

Hopefully we'll get more information later this month. o_o

Oh the illustrator is apparently someone called Kozaki Yuusuke.

Have been totally geeking out lately, got inspired, here ya go? :D

Title: Senusret III
Author: emotionalspazz
Rating: G, for once!
Pairing: Joshua/Art/Himself
Summary: see pairing
Notes/Warnings: For your reference: Senusret III, Khafre Enthroned, Menkaure and his wife.

Even in the pages of a book, something about the pharaoh's visage struck Joshua as pitiful.

* was visiting through some kazuki fan blogs... it looks like he'll be a regular on an upcoming drama "indigo no yoru" (indigo night), starting 1/4. this was apparently revealed in the december edition of "cinema square". (his official blog only says to check him out in that edition, but doesn't specifically state his new job.)

* myu boys whose blogs i loved translating at least an entry or two for in the past: katou kazuki, kiriyama renn, shiozaki airu. special mentions: wada masato, shindo gaku. blog i liked translating least: nakagauchi masataka. (go figure... the funny thing is, i worked on at least 3 months' straight of his entries.)

* car got towed last night from apartment parking lot, because my parking permit was not visible... it was SO difficult to get it back. i also had to wake my mom and sister up at midnight my time, since the car is registered under my mom and they're all out east right now. so, yeah, we essentially spent an hour just driving around and then waiting. i am ever so grateful to matt for coming to my rescue.

* my team at work (the IT department) dressed up as the characters from the Clue game (and some other extra characters that may be involved) and made a game out of it. we dressed up; all of the places we sat in was labeled with the names of the Clue rooms (so they could find us); some of us decorated our rooms accordingly; we distributed clues among ourselves... and randomly drew a game participant out of a hat to award a prize to... pics later. although i have one of our group pics up on facebook. :) when i got home, a few friends came by and we played Clue. XD

* it's starting to get pretty cold... but i'm still surviving with sweatshirt and pj's. let's see how long i can hold out before turning on the heater. XD

* how did i spend halloween? i sat at home, scouring the intarwebs and reading random stuff. then i freaked out with the first doorbell ring (i do not like to open doors when i am home by myself and i'm not expecting somebody specifically). eventually, i turned off the lights upstairs.. then slipped down the steps. so to add to my aching back, i have an aching wrist and an aching tailbone. switching from standing->sitting and reverse... hurts. XD

* is it weird how something i greatly disapprove of in real life.. is something that i find interesting to read about in manga? specifically, student-teacher relationships. guilty pleasure, you could say. ^^;

* i started crocheting something.. only to find out that one of the materials i need to be able to complete the project is not available for sale... anywhere. blargh. it's a good thing i didn't get too far. but now i have another pound of yarn that i need to do something with. (i already have about 30lbs in my closet.)

* i haven't finished watching kamen rider decade yet... isn't that shameful? whereas, chibi_ginn, who i have finally suckered into watching a few kr series has finished it and is now watching w. (i dropped off when i decided that it was time for me to start reading the books i've been buying for the last 2 years XD)

* i'm considering signing up to take the jlpt again sometime, to give myself some motivation to cram on japanese studies again. it's gonna be bad if i fail lvl2 next time, when i've already passed it. haha. ;___; or maybe i should just start reading japanese newspapers... cuz a lot of the kanji, vocab, and grammar i had to learn to level myself up to the test are not ones i would normally encounter by reading manga, interviews, blogs, etc, or watching drama.

have more thoughts running, but i think i'll end here for now. :)

Don't know if any of you pay attention to vocaloid-related CDs and whatnot here, but a while ago, a collaboration between Kobayashi Onxy and Furukawa Miki (of the band SUPERCAR) was announced, with Furukawa singing SAIHATE.

A sample to SAIHATE was recently put up on Sony's site, which you can hear here.

It's...actually not bad, though her voice may be a bit too cheerful for the song? D:a

Either ways, if anyone's interested in buying, the single will be out on December 2nd, priced 1400 yen for the LE and 1020 yen for the normal edition.

CDJapan: LE / Normal
HMV: LE / Normal
Amazon JP: LE / Normal

---

Nice boat song from PeP~

【初音ミク】ノコギリとペンデュラム【PV付きオリジナル曲】

I haven't done this in a while, so there's gonna be a long ass list of games. I'll start off with what I am actually playing, rather than what I already finished. I wrote this up this morning but didn't have time to post it until now... because it's just a simple copy/paste job. :D

To Buy
- 3D Dot Game Heroes
- Mushihimesama Futari
- Assassin's Creed 2
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
- Tekken 6 (prolly in December, if not January)
- Bayonetta (same, December or January)
- Modern Warfare 2 (this can really wait till next year since I have no interest in multiplayer)

Currently Playing
Final Fantasy Gaiden: 4 Warriors of Light: I chose to buy this over Tekken 6 and Bayonetta (which I will eventually pick up next month), mainly because it was 4000 yen and it's a guaranteed 30 hours of play time, whereas I don't know if I would pick up Tekken seriously because of SF4 and Blazblue, and Bayonetta is priced anywhere from 7000 to 8000 yen. I don't doubt the quality of those two games, but I'd rather not pay that price. Anyway, Gaiden is pretty nice so far, the graphics are really nice and simple, but have a subtle charm to them, and the music is fantastic. The gameplay is heavily simplified to the point where I think it's actually a deterrence rather than a plus. Basically, combat is old-school turn-based, but everything is auto-targetted. Your healing, your attacking, everything! It's really odd and the way the AI decides who to target seems really off. Let's say that you have a black mage with naturally low defense at 40/90 health and a knight with naturally high defense at 32/90 health. You'd naturally want to heal the mage because a critical hit will probably kill him, but won't kill the knight, but in Gaiden if you try to heal, it'll heal the knight every single time because of the lower health. Duh. On top of that stupidity, the game utilizes a job system so you can turn anyone into a mage, knight, thief, etc. but renders that irrelevant because the storyline is structured so that all of the four main characters are never together at the same time! At most you'll get two of them together plus one random party character. The only time all four characters are together are at the beginning of the game, so it makes the job system stupid because you naturally have to change to a job that lets you attack well and heal well because you'll be solo so many times. Still, the game is fun and the story is somewhat interesting, which is what is keeping me around.

Red Faction: I'm taking a break from this right now to plow through Brutal Legend, but I'm in the third section of the game and it's already one of the best games I've played this year! If the online was co-op friendly like Saints Row 2 this definitely would have been my favorite game released this year. The mission variety is good and I like how random missions in the forms of envoys and cargo show up whenever you're playing. It keep things fresh and enjoyable. Geomod makes this game so godly it's not even funny. I don't even think I'd be able to go back to any open-world game that's not 100% destructible anymore. I can kind of handle it in just about any game, but if something like GTA or Saints Row or whatever doesn't have this, it's going to be a disappointment.

Brutal Legend: I started this last week and just finished the Lionwhyte battle, and I'm a fan of the gameplay but the characters and writing doesn't really do it for me. I'm going to say that this is largely because I finished Uncharted 2 just before buying this game, and the writing and acting in Uncharted 2 is on another level compared to just about every other game I've ever played. Still, what's there is good, and even though people are for some reason bitching about the RTS elements I don't mind them, and I actually think they're well done for a console game.

Finished (from newest to oldest)
Uncharted 2: Wow. Simply, wow. When we all move on to new systems in the next few years, I doubt there will be many games that will be as good as this one. Perfect blend of shooting and platforming, with really good acting and writing.

Gears of War 2: I played this on Casual difficulty because honestly, I was sitting on this game for five months without even opening it and I realized that some big games were coming up, so I figured I might as well just finish this super fast before the holiday rush of games comes. Didn't try multiplayer but single player campaign was a lot of fun to play through, although I felt that no matter how many times they mixed up the situation, it was still the same thing you were doing over and over again. I did like though... it's kind of mindless but that's what I was expecting anyway!

Batman: Arkham Aslyum: Playing this on Normal was kind of a bore to me because the fights were piss easy. But I think that's why so many people actually enjoyed fighting in the game, and why so many people actually finished it. Playing a bit of it on Hard makes it more challenging though, but I'm undecided on whether I'd actually go through the entire game again, as I rarely do that for any game ever. Even though I think the game is great, I get the feeling that a lot of the praise is because of people going in with very low expectations due to the license and being completely blown away with what's there.

Prototype: Really screwy combat system but everything else was pretty nice. The sidequest variety was pretty nice but some of the missions really just pissed me off way too much. It was a real chore to get through this one, and in the end I didn't really finish it. I got to the last boss, got owned about 20 minutes and took the disc out of the system and never played it again.

Shadow Complex: Anyone who says this game is better than Super Metroid is either stupid or trying to fool themselves. Real talk.

Pretty rare nowadays to see me post once a day over here. Or on LJ in general. *goes to blame a lot of things*


【初音ミク(40㍍)】 キミボシ 【オリジナル】



40mP new song that's gonna be in the EXIT TUNE album named Supernova~


【samfree】「magnet」歌ってみた【cosMo】



*cough* OK utatte mita again but.................... Wh...why. >_>;;;;; *Kotoba ni Dekinai kinda starts playing in brain...*


Edit: Although the CD's already out, buuuuut. Oh god can't stop cracking up over this. I'm buying it! *gets smacked*

【cosMo】コスモドライバー∞UP　レコーディング風景【ヒゲドライバー】

So, it wasn't bad enough that Tekken 6's online was horrible.

But then said online ended up getting me disconnected...when I got into a lobby to play against one of the creator of the Penny Arcade web comic.

Yeah, Xbox Live does these "Game with Fame" events where Xbox Live users gets an opportunity to play with famous people and today was one with a game I have and someone I wanted to play with.  I got into the lobby with Gabe and just when there was a chance I would play him (if I won the match I was in), the syncing got bad and I lost my connection to the lobby (and I was still connected to Xbox Live).

Even though I didn't get to actually play against him in Tekken 6, I have to admit, it was cool I was even invited to play Tekken 6 with one of the creator of Penny Arcade (even if a bad connection screwed me over).