Hey guys, I thought it’d be novel to write a blog about what I’ve done this week. Weird right? I mean I never do that, so why start now? Oh well, while I’m not coming up with crazy ideas like this, I sometimes play videogames, read visual novels, and well, just don’t ask about my music or how that’s coming bout. Much like most weeks, as it turns out I did almost nothing. You’d think I’d need to actually do stuff to justify a weekly blog, OH WELL.

Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition

I bought Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition a while back; and then completely forgot I bought it. Luckily I found it while registering a few games to get that free Kid Icarus NES download and have been playing it ever since. Guess what guys, it’s Street Fighter IV.

Before I actually talk about the game, I have to admit to something. This is the 8th time I’ve bought this game, at least, that I remember. I own the PC, 360 and PS3 version of the original Street Fighter 4. I started with the PS3 version due to the superior D-Pad, and moved to the 360 version because of moving out for university and only having an old 360. When Super came out I got both versions on the day of release. I ended up getting both iPhone versions too. Getting the 3DS version just made sense, because the controls on the iPhone versions aren’t good, and I don’t have a PS3 or 360 in my currently flat, and my PC can’t actually run Street Fighter 4 at a decent framerate. Hey, at least it was cheap, probably.

So this version is totally Street Fighter IV you guys, with a few weird changes. For one the timing on the fast recover is weird. By weird I mean I can hardly ever get it right, despite never ever missing it in any other version of the game ever. It’s practically second nature for me to just press the shoulder buttons before my character hits the ground, so I have no idea what they did to the timing of that, but I hate it. Second, they added a dynamic camera that moves the camera behind your character, to better show off the 3D. It’s not an ideal way to play but it’s still usable to an extent. It’s good for showing the 3D stuff, but I can’t ever see me actually using it for playing the game.

The biggest change, however, is the touch screen addition. The touch screen adds four buttons, and you can set these buttons to punches, kicks, specials, supers or ultras. Now that’s pretty much the most messed up thing, as that control scheme makes charge characters incredibly broken, because they now don’t have to charge their specials. But honestly, I like it. Right now I have it set to two buttons for all three punch and kicks, like the L2 and R2 would be on a control for me, and the other two buttons for super and ultra. Now since I never use charge characters I don’t have that advantage to setting those buttons, but rather I know I can bust out supers and ultras in as little as 10 frames, the buttons for me just save me from having to remember which way I have to quarter circle when I play random characters.

Since I’ve gotten to the point with fighting games and this game especially, that no-one wants to fight me because I’ve got too much swag; I usually just go to the trails in Super Street Fighter IV. I want to take this opportunity to say I’ve completed all the trails in every version of this game (that has them), and I’m well on my way to go in on this version too. I can never recreate them in an actual fight, but it’s still a lot of fun. Maybe I’m just crazy, I dunno, but I was playing it next to a friend when a combo that he said he was stuck on for weeks showed up. Naturally I attempted it and almost did it first time. I looked at him and said “wait what did I do wrong?” He looked at me super pissed off and said “you did the wrong punch at the start.”

“Oh, right.” I replied, nonchalantly, and did it properly directly afterward.

Heart de Roommate

The problem with visual novels is that you can’t really pick and choose what gets translated. Most of the time the more interesting and quite frankly good visual novels are all translated by fans, and any official translations are usually of a lower quality. I’m selling some of the official translations short admittedly, but that’s always been my experience. Take for example, G-Collections, their translations include Let’s Meow Meow, Do You Like Horny Bunnies? and others. Obviously they only licence the best quality stuff, and on that note, I decided to check out Heart de Roommate.

The story follows Yusuke Sawada as he transfers to a new school. Unfortunately, his parents forgot to enrol him into any kind of student accommodation, and per hilarious chance, the place he then planned to live decided to burn out as he arrived. As it happens, he then bumps into his childhood friend Asumi Hirota, who as a hilarious misfortune on the behalf of Yusuke, mistakes him as a pervert. Then something about blackmailing happens and Asumi lets Yusuke stay with her in her dorm. However, hilariously, the dorm is girls only, so she has to disguise him and yadda yadda visual novel.

If you couldn’t tell from my description of the story this is an incredibly unfunny visual novel. A lot of the jokes fall flat which I can’t tell if that’s a fault on the original visual novel or the translation. The characters themselves are also pretty annoying, with no real redeemable characteristics. They play a lot of the ‘drama’ so by the books that anyone with any knowledge of Japanese archetypes (like me) could see what’s going to happen miles away. Did I also mention it isn’t funny at all?

The game is divided up into 26 different episodes, almost as if this was originally meant to be an anime, which have some slight variations depending on what character you pick. There is Asumi obviously, then her other roommates Tomoe, the shy one, and Marumu, the no emotion one. The episodes themselves don’t change very much between the different routes, making multiple plays rather redundant, which on one hand is good as it means in theory the story they set out to make would be more focused and interesting, but it’s not, it’s bad bland boring and very forgettable. So forgettable that I’m not actually going into specifics because I can’t remember what the fuck actually happened. Something about Marumu sitting on a roof or something.

I honestly have nothing else to say. At least with other bad visual novels I have something to actually complain about, but man, I can’t really think of anything else to say but I didn’t like it.

My Colourful Horse

I usually don’t talk about this to any great detail because I never have anything meaningful to say, and quite frankly this isn’t a good website to talk about it on. Between onii-chan is doing his damndest to promote My Colourful Horse on Anami Vice and my recent 5 hour trek to two different stores just to buy new figurines, I figured I’d talk about it for a little bit again.

So ever since becoming a fan of the show, I do have a subset of friends that watch it because of me. One of my friends started watching after I asked if he wanted to watch the first episode with me. He replied simply with “well I guess I’ll have to watch it eventually, so I guess.” After the first episode, he was admittedly unimpressed, but still willing to watch the second episode to conclude the story, and thanks to that he was interested, we watched the third and he went back to his flat to watch more. About a week later I hear an anecdote from a different friend of mine that his friend put a sign saying “Brony Faggot’s Room” on his flatmate’s door, to which we all laughed. Little did I know, my friend’s friend’s flatmate was in fact the guy I introduced ponies too, and thanks to a series of coincidences all four of us are the best of friends, and all four of us watch ponies.

The weirdest part about what has happened is just how much the show has taken over our lives. I can’t really describe it better than calling it an obsession. We regularly talk about the new episodes, different characters, and just elements of the show whenever we meet. We obviously talk about a lot of other things. It might just because it seems out of place in the alcohol, drug and videogame discussions, but pony conversations seem to be in the majority.

But my homosexual horse hankering friends aren’t all I wanted to bring up, as Sum 41 puts it rather poetically; I’m probably in too deep. Most of my music related projects have been pony related in some way recently, and even my next flash game is My Little Pony related. I have 12 figurines to the left of me as I type and I regularly check pony centric Tumblr accounts and websites. I’m writing this blog while listening to fan made original music about background characters from the show while watching someone livestream themselves drawing fanart of background characters of the show.

It’s probably the deepest I’ve gotten into any one fandom. I’ve been fans of other things, sure, but they have never gotten to this level of crazy. The closest thing that’s ever gotten this close is my undying love of The Beatles. The Beatles take over my life every few weeks, and I’ve never managed to pin point why exactly that is. I think of myself as someone who enjoys music, listening to almost every genre in one fashion or another. But there’s something about The Beatles that no matter what happens, I can’t at this point in time see myself getting over them. The way I think they’re like ponies to me is that, well, if I were to name my top 5 albums, it’s populated by Akira the Don, Kanye West, Gorillaz, Justin Timberlake and Michael Jackson. And while I say my favourite song is While My Guitar Gently Weeps, I doubt there is another Beatles song in an expansive list of my favourite tracks. Yet for some reason, they’re the band I always go back to. I could spend an entire day just listening to the Love album on loop and I’d be complacent. I guess what I’m trying to say here is, ponies isn’t the best show, it isn’t the best produced, the most interesting or the funniest, but for some bizarre reason it’s got its hold on me like no other show has.

The only difference is that I’m sort of worried about it. I’ve never considered myself ‘going too far’ with my love of The Beatles, but I’ve actually had to stop and take time to think to myself why the hell I’ve dedicated this chunk of my life to this show. I can never come up with a reason, other that “maybe it’s just that good” and maybe that should just be enough. Again maybe it’s just because of this website in general that I feel that way, because the reaction to anything pony is met with the people who can’t fucking stand it and feel it’s their duty to the world to state their opinion as if they are on some kind of fucking crusade and the people who absolutely love the fucking show and feel it’s their duty in the world to inflict every single people they have even the slightest contact with with the show. It’s a back and forth that, while is the basis of the internet and will always happen, just makes everyone look like the worst thing.

I guess I do have a lot to say, but I’ll cut it off here. I’ve never felt an ounce of shame in liking what I like, but that’s stemmed from my youth of really enjoying Mary Kate & Ashley: Crush Course and Mary Kate & Ashley: Winner’s Circle for the Playstation.

I guess that’s all I have to say for now. Join me next week where I will probably also not do anything of any real interest and have to come up with something to write at the very last minute. It’s worked well for me up until now; I don’t see why I should stop!

@Psycosis said:

I honestly have nothing else to say. At least with other bad visual novels I have something to actually complain about, but man, I can’t really think of anything else to say but I didn’t like it.

Shit like that happens when you blog for a long ass time. It never gets any easier.

@Video_Game_King: Too be honest I don't think it's that, it's more there's just nothing about this game that's worth pointing out. At least with other bad visual novels I've been able to focus on the stupidly over the top moments or the bad translation, but here, it's hard to focus on such a bland uninteresting story that you wish was over not even half way into the first playthrough.

I've played my fair share of games that give you absolutely nothing to say. Again: it doesn't get any easier.

I like your description of the MLP internet war. People who don't like the show are way too quick to insult anyone who likes it, and the people who like it usually go too far to defend i. It's just a TV show, and liking it doesn't make a person bad, or perverted, or a pedophile. But disliking it is also not inherently bad or wrong. It's ridiculous how polarizing a cartoon about friendship can be.

I just don't understand the pony thing. At all.

But I don't have to understand it. People can like whatever they want.

@slowbird: My thoughts exactly. It's the main reason why I usually never mention it outside of mashups I make and even then it's always confined to this blog. I've thought about responding to some of the threads on Giant Bomb about it but like I said out of all the places I visit in the terrible would wide web, this place seems to be more most vile when it comes to colourful horses.

Then again there are still a lot of idiots on here that stick to that 'anime is for jerks' joke like a god damn commandment from god.

I guess I have to be the stick in the mud here...scenario time!

A female you find sexually attractive walks into your room. She does not care for anime and has never heard of that pony show. As she walks around, she sees your collection and witnesses firsthand your love of ponies....what happens next?

@DespoticDave: I'm a homosexual. Scenario invalid.

@DespoticDave: she can get the fuck out if she doesn't like ponies. anyway, what girl doesn't like ponies? I'm pretty sure they all like ponies.

@Psycosis said:

@DespoticDave: I'm a homosexual. Scenario invalid.

Crisis averted then.

@slowbird said:

@DespoticDave: she can get the fuck out if she doesn't like ponies. anyway, what girl doesn't like ponies? I'm pretty sure they all like ponies.

No, dude...just no.

@DespoticDave: hey, why do you care? just wondering.

@DespoticDave: Yeah, to be honest I strongly agree with @slowbird's stance, the odds of me being with anyone that doesn't share similar interests is low. And besides, if she wasn't cool with the ponies but was somehow completely fine with my videogame memorabilia, collection of anime figurines and giant life sides half naked poster of Gerard Butler then I'd say she's the peculiar one.

Huh. That's.... quite a collection of figurines. I'm either impressed or mortified, your pick.

For your visual novel review, I get the impression that you could have wrote: "Yo dog do you like bad Harem tropes, well this is that". In fact, you should just write that instead of wasting your time typing out an elongated version of that.

@ArbitraryWater said:

Huh. That's.... quite a collection of figurines. I'm either impressed or mortified, your pick.

For your visual novel review, I get the impression that you could have wrote: "Yo dog do you like bad Harem tropes, well this is that". In fact, you should just write that instead of wasting your time typing out an elongated version of that.

I don't know why mortification should come into play:

@slowbird said:

@DespoticDave: hey, why do you care? just wondering.

I have a co-worker that is deeply imbedded into this kind of thing. I'm currently helping him in the female relationship field. He's a decent guy and I don't want to see him dig himself deeper into his shell when it comes to women. Listen, I don't mean to be an asshole about this, but I have plenty of women in my life and--when asked about this stuff--they get generally weirded out.

@DespoticDave: Well, that does make things more difficult for him. But as someone who is likely in a similar situation to him in regards to women, I don't really want to go out and get involved with a woman who doesn't tolerate my interests at all. I can understand if she doesn't like it, or whatever, but if she thinks it's weird, then she won't like me anyway.

Man you guys, my shelf is full of robots.
 
 
 
Okay so maybe there's also a shelf full of anime girls, but those are action figures.

So has this become a thread about what we have on our shelves? Let's see....I have a Cerberus from Advent Children (or whatever the damn thing's called), a statue of Mario & friends, a question block, and a Dragon Quest slime. That's it, really.

@Hailinel: Consider me impressed and mortified by your mortifyingly impressive collection of high quality figures. In any case, it's not my place to judge anyone for their anime/video game girl figurine displays (although the presence of Poison does kind of creep me out), though I would never do that myself, the Fallout 3 Bobblehead currently sitting on my desk notwithstanding. Also Beanie Babies are dope. I don't know who told you otherwise.

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Hailinel: Consider me impressed and mortified by your mortifyingly impressive collection of high quality figures. In any case, it's not my place to judge anyone for their anime/video game girl figurine displays (although the presence of Poison does kind of creep me out), though I would never do that myself, the Fallout 3 Bobblehead currently sitting on my desk notwithstanding. Also Beanie Babies are dope. I don't know who told you otherwise.

The funniest part of that Poison figure is that its packaging stated it was part of the Capcom Girls Collection. No quotation marks, no attempts to be ironic. Though, perhaps it's for the best from a marketing standpoint. A Capcom Traps Collection would have a significantly smaller character base to work from.

@Hailinel said:

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Hailinel: Consider me impressed and mortified by your mortifyingly impressive collection of high quality figures. In any case, it's not my place to judge anyone for their anime/video game girl figurine displays (although the presence of Poison does kind of creep me out), though I would never do that myself, the Fallout 3 Bobblehead currently sitting on my desk notwithstanding. Also Beanie Babies are dope. I don't know who told you otherwise.

The funniest part of that Poison figure is that its packaging stated it was part of the Capcom Girls Collection. No quotation marks, no attempts to be ironic. Though, perhaps it's for the best from a marketing standpoint. A Capcom Traps Collection would have a significantly smaller character base to work from.

I want to know why she has blond hair. Those Mitsuru and Cammy figurines are excellent.

I found this song and loved it. Even made a blog about it. I'll still never watch the show. Don't judge me.
 
  

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@Hailinel said:

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Hailinel: Consider me impressed and mortified by your mortifyingly impressive collection of high quality figures. In any case, it's not my place to judge anyone for their anime/video game girl figurine displays (although the presence of Poison does kind of creep me out), though I would never do that myself, the Fallout 3 Bobblehead currently sitting on my desk notwithstanding. Also Beanie Babies are dope. I don't know who told you otherwise.

The funniest part of that Poison figure is that its packaging stated it was part of the Capcom Girls Collection. No quotation marks, no attempts to be ironic. Though, perhaps it's for the best from a marketing standpoint. A Capcom Traps Collection would have a significantly smaller character base to work from.

I want to know why she has blond hair. Those Mitsuru and Cammy figurines are excellent.

It's an alternate color figure. I'm not sure if there was a standard color version produced or not. I bought it at a shop Capcom had set up at their PAX booth a couple of years ago and it was the only version that they had available.

And the Mitsuru figure is a favorite of mine. I actually used it to decorate my desk area at my previous job and got a lot of interesting reactions from it. And despite the subject matter of her pointing a gun(like object) at her head, I was never asked to take her home.

First time reading your blog, thought it was entertaining!

I have just the one question: why "My Colourful Horse"? Is it about the story, too? I've been wondering that ever since I heard about the "Brony" phenomenon, and well I'm just not sure if that's something I should get into?