Games – Pinkie's Paradise

It’s a new format: Princess Talks – Episode 1

Greetings Pleasants, as people might know I had a recent spell of blogging Dysphoria that made me question if I even want to keep pursuing this blog. It’s a great world and community, but I am not sure if it is fully my community! I do enjoy myself when writing, but dealing with that other stuff has been a struggle, stuff like topic selection, or what I want to achieve with a post. Also stuff like editing efforts and such! So I decided to develop a format that would deal with my issues! And out came out Pinkie Talks.

Why Pinkie Talks was born

I always had a dream of a very interactive blog, focussed on creative content, rather than reviews. However for those topics I am in a niche that isn’t large enough to maintain that interactivity. Reviews would be received well, and I consider tose low effort posts for me personally, while high effort posts did not nearly do as well. When my closest chat friends became aware and pointed out that lots of times my comment sections end up empty I realised I was burning a lot of energy on formats that I could not maintain without interactivity. I can not turn people into conceptual Pokémon if no one in my comments said.. Wow I like this, do me next. I COULD write anime concepts based on random things using wheels and generators.. but again..I’d burn energy to update said wheel, while I rather have it from audience interaction anyway. That is not anyone’s fault , it is just me structuring my posts wrong. I became dependent on my audience, and with me often to find enough energy to make it trough a day I could not keep up with 70 blogs to ensure interaction either.

Is a Bad Dad Better Than No Dad? | TrueManhood.com

WordPress should be obligation free, for anyone. You do not OWE me a response, so I should not demand one. I might be a princess, but that was still wrong. I have no legal authority in your country yet after all! Still the passion to write was there.. so I wanted something that is more static in nature. Yet also something that isn’t what everyone else does. It’s not that I dislike reviewng or dislike all of your reviews… it is a much deeper issue. Whatever I attempted as a kid.. dad always told me I was not good enough in that… he still does! He recently told me I will suck as a streamer/VTuber. He talked down on the whole idea.. and when dad is a video producer/online content maker/web designer.. that stings.

Whatever sport I played as a kid, whatever hobby I picked.. he told me I was not good enough. What’s worse is.. I believed him. It nestled in my brain and stuck there…. so now whenever I do something I see the mass does.. my brain will ALWAYS tell me I am not good enough. I WILL be the worst streamer, I AM the worst blogger…not factually but in my head… in my dads voice that is a truth I still can’t deny! It sucks the joy out of things quite often…. but when I am unique and do things my way… . I might suck…but you also can’t compare me to others.

Now while Pinkie talks, is in essence just a log on what’s happening in my life and mind, and thus it is the very first defintion of blogs, I can escape that sense of judgement..because I am not reporting about Cowboy Bebop.. or Breath of the Wild, I am reporting about ME. I am the only person in the world who makes logs about me… so while I am the worst at it.. most likely I also am the best. I tried to trick myself into this by making my reviews personal…but I saw to many people write about what they wanted to see in reviews and adding standard elements to it.. I fell in that pitfall over and over again.. so I needed to find a way to cope! And doing my own little talkshow and log could work well so I made this a reality!

The Rig of my Dreams… and nightmares

My Vtuber dream is slowly coming to fruition, I am making steps to be the true content creator I desire, and I always admitted that blogging was just me settling, It was the video dream that I had as a kid… but surprise surprise, that costs money, which I did not have at the time. Now Covid helped me save a lot of money because I managed to break free of all those social things I do with friends for quite a while. They all say it costs nothing… it’s just a movie…, it’s just fastfood or it’s a ticket to a theme park but today it’s just … … Well , living on benefits I just realised how much money that costs. About a PC per half year! And that is in a market where scalpers have driven up the prices of pc’s very highly. I love my friends and I love doing stuff with them but my love for them kept my dream under lock and key.. and Covid gave me that key. I could make the sacrifice ..without it being a sacrifice!

Sharkoon VG6-W RGB behuizing met een doorzichtig zijpaneel en drie RGB ventilatoren

So I bought a great new PC! An “AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core (12 threads) 3.7Ghz (turbo: 4.6Ghz) Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 GPU 256GB SSD 16GB DDR4” It even has rainbow fans.. it says on the box! It got delivered to me two days ago! … mostly! The Keyboard I ordered with it did not get delivered…. which is a problem if you have a Laptop! It got delivered in parts anyway and I can’t do the whole pc making thing so a friend of mine will come over to fix that..but I need all parts first so right now it is just sitting pretty on my desk! I proudly showed it to my dad..well the advert to it.. just to realise right after I purchased it .. it dropped 200 euro’s in price! … Frick! Even though I got it on sale, with a banner that said.. this sale will last for 12 more days! It did.. but the base price just lowered! … So that soured my joy a bit!

I got two 24 inch MSI HD screens with it as well! Which had the correct ports to hook it up ot my new tower without problems, and I got those on a fairly sharp sale as well! So I am quite content! They got delivered exactly on time and in good condition so nothing to complain about with that! I am over the moon! With two screens I can finally stream…….. had my microphone been delivered. You see I ordered an adorable Microphone which was supposed to be delivered by amazon yesterday. Including a boom!

Now Insomnia got to me that night so I did not sleep the entire night prior while I was waiting on my early morning delivery! Promising myself I would get a nap afterwards… but alas it got postponed till the afternoon, then until evening and then I got an e-mail saying it would be delivered a few days later. When I woke up this morning I got an email I send them back for a refund which if I did not do this myself meant the goods have been damaged. I will be refunded in 5 to 7 days…. so now I have to order this cutie again! It does mean I can get a capture card along with it as well though! So that’s a plus!

All in all I am super excited to get my new goodies.. but I am being very unlucky in the way I am getting it.

My first Stream

I am quite nervous for today as it will mark my first guest stream! My rig is clearly not set up yet.. but with my headset and an interactive PNG I will make my first appearance on the Twitch page of my new found friend VBI-Kun. Who is a blue cat spicy seiso V-Tuber. Spicy Seiso means … Spicy Pure. This means while the content technically is safe for work, you might want to reconsider showing your boss that this is what you are up to in your spare time. Unwise For Work.. I would call it!

Anyway VBI is a great streamer, who is quite active in the same community as I am and I try to pop by his streams when I can! Besides him I will be playing a game with about six strangers. So I am actually quite nervous! Mostly because it is my voice debut and I hate everything about my voice! I will be talking in character and overly accentuated Falsetto, until I get more speech therapy. So I am kinda nervous! For those interested in the cat man, you can find him at https://www.twitch.tv/vbi_kun

The game we will be playing is called Gartic Phone, which is a web (and I assume mobile) based game where you draw a prompt another player has mentioned. Which can be something weird like “Wolverine eating cabbage” Then the next player is shown your drawing..and they have to make up a new tag for it. Then the next person draws THAT tag and so on! Like one of those old message chain games..but with drawing AND speaking! It’s a really neat game! But there is one problem! I can now draw to save the life of me! Let alone draw within a time limit. Now I know VBI isn’t as much as an artist as many other vtubers either.. but he still draws better than me! So putting my pictures on display for all the world to see is something I look forward to doing.. but I might stand out between artists! Because so many vtubers are artists!… and as people will see tonight (my time) I am not!

Spare Time

I have been pretty insomniac lately so free time is kinda blobbing together with moments of nothingness. I have been watching a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh online content lately which has taken up the slots of my pokemon content , which I am currently on a small break off.. well not really but I just assume less pokémon content. My favourite show to currently follow on the web is Cimooooo’s Progression series. Which is a Yu-Gi-Oh series where the content creator opens Yu-GI-Oh packs (a booster boxx worth of them in virtual form) builds a deck with them.. and then they move to the next set.. getting a new booster box to slowly upgrade their deck!

Man do I enjoy that series! Even though they have entered the horrible generation of pendulums it is nice to see some actualy strategies across the generations that do not involve total blow outs! I also am very much enjoying the History of Yu-Gi-oh series by the same guy! Which highlights iconic decks and Meta builds from ages past! So good! Recently a new series has shown up where he builds one time decks using booster sets in chronological order. .. but this time all the old cards are tossed out! I am hyped for the future!

The Ice Road: Netflix dropt trailer voor keiharde thriller met Liam Neeson

I watched a very generic movie about ice road truckers, miners and Liam Neeson… It’s called Ice Road and I did not like the movie. I wanted to watch something dumb… and I kinda got that but it was written al wrong. Exposition focussed on the wrong things, emotional moments did not hit their mark and Lawrence Fishburne was completely wasted in a movie that is very generic. The only thing I did like about it was the story!

After a mining accident, a cooperation hires three truckers to bring them the one thing that can rescue the miners… but unbeknownst to our heroes, that same company wants their mission to fail because they cut back costs and increase productivity by disabeling security systems… I do feel that this is indeed an evil of these times, much more so then all those gangs and human trafficking circuits Liam usually encounters. However this is basically a Steven Segal movie with a 70 year old lead. It’s bland and you are better of watching the Ice Road series on discovery… though that has less crazy antics and gunfire.

I tried to watch an anime but I lacked the energy! I tried to get back into animal crossing on Switch but I found myself less drawn to the cute characters and the tedium as before, I started a new island and I slipped up in a few placements and I realised I would have to wait about a week or so before I could fix that and it deflated my passion. I tried to install Beyond Good and Evil on my laptop which was gifted to me by Indigo.. but it installs in french for me… which is very obnoxious mostly because I dont speak french! It is impossible to change the language because that was selectd in the old launcher.. and that doesnt run on the steam version! If I get the Ubisoft Launcher THAT in english and then install the game clean with no trace files of it left it should play in english…but that means

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I will play it on my new pc instead. I am trying to make my way trough Soma which is an submarine/machine based horror type game! It is really cool, but the fact that I am a machine and not a person does kinda suck the horror out of it! Still a cool game to play! I love making friends with the little lamp robots underwater and finding several ways to solve a puzzle. Quite good even if I am not very excited let alone be scared . It started out really scary though! It kinda makes me want to play Alien Isolation! I have also been playing some serious legacy of the duelist! A yugioh game I got on Switch.. I have nearly completed 100% of the GX matches and I can finally move onto 5d’s which is my favourite era in Yugioh!

Plans

To wrap this post up , let’s talk a bit about what I am planning next week! And to be honest, I am not sure! I hope I can get my pc working that week, but I really need my keyboard and he microphone set to come in in order to make that for work. I am getting some more gender therapy sessions which is good and I think I have an appointment with my psychologist set as well, so all in all it will be a great week for my mental health as having acces to said new pc is to be sure to heighten my spirts as well. If my Insomnia doesn’t break me down to much I plan to do one or two videos for my youtube channel as well. .. Again IF I can get my microphone delivered. I want to make a video where I explain the rules of my channel and maybe do one where I tell a story! I might even convert these Pinkie talks into videos at a certain point.

As for blogs go, will there be any next week?! I am not sure! The laptop had it’s backspace key break! Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t, blogging without backspace is quite annoying! So it depends! I will at least try to do something for the anniversary on saturday, but I am currently still unsure what to do. It might be a bit silly to celebrate two years of blogging anyway! So who knows! We might get something we might not, it’s all up to what I feel like. and that feels okay! I am happy with, I feel no more obligation to my blog, now I can finally blog just for fun! Freedom!

Mel Gibson versus history: how Braveheart got William Wallace so wrong

Periwinkle: Legend of the Purple Plunderer or something like that.

POSTCARDS FROM PARADISE

My eyes shot open.

I hear gravel cracking under tires outside my hut. I look at my alarm clock. Three thirty in the morning. I see the red glow of brake lights through my window shades. I hear a car door open up.

*Quack Quack* *Quack Quack*

I know whose Jeep this is. Only one person on this island drives a custom Duck Jeep. Complete with matching Duck Quacks as a keys-still-in-the-ignition-alarm.

I hear another door slam. Then palmate up the drive. I dress quickly. What could it be this late at night? Was it something I had done? Something I had said?

*Knock Knock* Two raps at the door.

Cookie sighs, rolling over on the couch trying to catch some ZzZz’s. Some Gaurd Seal he is.

I open the door somewhat guessing what this late night meeting could be about.

“Princess?

Princess Pinkie hands me a shovel and strolls back to the jeep. I examine the shovel and she turns around at the Duck Jeep. “Well? Are you ready?”

Not soon after we’re driving through the sandy roads of Paradise in the dead of night. We pass by occasional bonfires and coconuts enjoying their night. I, blink twice as I see Sunny hanging upside down from a tree. I, shake my head. I have to lay off the drink.

“So if this is about..” I start

“It’s not about anything. Granted you haven’t been showing up for your duties but Paradise is accommodating. The only reason I’m calling upon you now is because I may have found something that would interest you.”

With my interest peaked I gaze over towards the driver side as Princess Pinkie holds up what looks like a dirty old map. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead as I take the map from her hands.

“What is it?”

“I think it’s a treasure map.”

“Here? Treasure? On the island??”

“If that map is true. We should be approaching the spot soon” As we pull up to a secluded beach across the island. The sun not yet risen painting the sky a lighter shade of blue. We exit the vehicle and see that there is already a red “X” painted on the sand. We look at one another and shrug. I throw the shovel into the sand and only have to scoop one shovelful of sand up to uncover what lies beneath. It is a copy of the PlayStation 2 game, Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer…

We both look at it on the ground. “Do you think that’s it?” I ask. Pinkie seems just as disappointed. “I mean.. shit. I don’t know.”

“I’ll try digging a little further”

“Yeah do that” she says as I scoop Pirates out of the way and continue digging.

The nine o’ clock sun is beating down on both of us collapsed on the beach. Hours of digging. No dice. The treasure is unfortunately the PlayStation 2 game, Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer. Defeated we both rise and walk over to the Jeep. Arriving at my hut only a short time later Pinkie tosses the game on the seat after I get out.

“Maybe you were meant to play this game.”

Looking down at it. “Yeah…sure.”

I close the door.

So this game arguably has the longest trailer I have ever seen. Especially considering the average completion time on Howlongtobeat.com is around four hours. Which four hours really doesn’t seem like a long period of time. It’s only 1/6th of a day. 1/2 of a good night’s sleep (does anyone ever get a full eight?) no, four hours doesn’t seem long at all.

BUT THIS FOUR HOURS IS A VERY LONG TIME

So.. arguably part of this is my fault but mostly it’s not. Let me explain.

Back some time ago in my early 20’s I used to work at a Gas Station/Pizzeria type place. I don’t know how most of Europe works but I’m pretty sure you guys have the same idea – in Dublin I ate at some Irish McDonald’s knock off that was way better at a Petrol station. So people liked the pizza at this place and every summer – it was right down the road from where they held the county fair.

Now this county fair is a big deal. Every year. People really dig it and every year it’d usually be the same touring carnival staff that really dug our food. So working there while the fair was operating afforded you the chance to meet a lot of colorful personalities. But there was one particular person I’ll never forget because there was a part of me that envied him. I think.

This was at the height of the Pirates of the Caribbean craze and there was a man that would adorn himself in full Jack Sparrow attire and make up and well… he was quite a hit. Twenty year old me would watch as people surrounded him for photos as I pushed out pizza dough or made subs. Watching quietly from afar thinking things like:

“Wow… that guy probably gets a lot of tail.”

And

“Pirates of the Caribbean was the best thing that’s ever happened to this dude.”

What the hell does this have to do with anything? Well… it does sort of help explain my misconceptions of pirates and piracy in general. I, a relatively unpopular and lowly pizza boy saw this Johnny Depp look-a-like crushing it. And I should add a fun loving and mischievous, Jack Sparrow cosplayer that was melting the hearts of moms the world over while everyone else swooned.

As I sat there changing our fryer baskets I glared at the local star. As people gathered around I thought to myself:

“Probably never sailed a day in your life, you fraud!”

But neither had I AND there is absolutely no sailing going on in the deceptively titled, Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer.

In fact, if you missed the five minute video at the beginning of the game you probably would have no clue this is a game based on pirates at all. There is no sailing, or drinking rum or singing songs. All you do is shoot monkeys in the face and fall to your death.

The story’s premise is sort of cool, if not a bit confusing. During the height of the slave trade – there was a slave ship on its way to a Spanish Outpost that found itself ravaged in the storms of the Bermuda Triangle. Where as legend will have it the legendary slave, La Borgne commanded a slave army that waged war on the nearby Spanish Outpost. They destroyed all that was in their way because well.. they were understandably pissed off. The Outpost was deserted and in nautical lore the island was considered cursed and dangerous but also of course, a terminal for lost treasures and riches beyond your wildest dreams.

At last, hearing nothing from the outpost for quite a while the Spanish Crown sends its most decorated captain out to learn the fate of the doomed ship. The revered explorer, Dominic Roberto De La Cruz (shout out to my friend, Filipa 🤗) As legend would have it De La Cruz would land on the island and battle La Borgne and her army of slaves but the outcome of this struggle is lost to the sands of time and De La Cruz was never heard from again.

Here is where you enter – as Francis Blade. A nobody rogue who finds himself as the sole survivor of a ship wreck marooned on La Borgne Island. It is here where apes and orangutans attack you for no reason whatsoever and you’ll spend hours upon hours swearing at your television as the game’s inconsistent and slippery controls fail you over and over again.

There is an interesting element (one that I don’t like and I don’t really think it makes a ton of sense) but after a little bit of gameplay you come across an Amulet. An amulet that gives you the power to morph into the “Black Buccaneer”. Whom confusingly looks like a mix between Baron Samedi and the Hulk. The artwork on the old screens are very heavy with the Baron Samedi aesthetic as well without any real mention of Haiti or Voodoo culture whatsoever.

One could argue that it’s not necessarily the developer and writer’s jobs to spoon feed the gamer every single detail but it sort of seems like a missed opportunity when you’re dealing with subject matter as fascinating as Baron Samedi and Haitian culture as a whole.

I like the idea of an escaped slave raging against her colonial captors through the use of brute force and black magic but why not run with it? It feels like a decent idea that was never fully realized. Which is basically the entire story of this game.

If they would have just tightened up the controls and upped the story a little bit you could have had a memorable adventure but instead they ended up with confusing plot accompanied by infuriating controls.

SHOP TIL YOU DROP

I mean .. yeah .. it’s bad but it’s still worth more than one cent. Buy it if you see it for one cent.

DESERT ISLAND SONGS

I mean will any other song written about a pirate ever compare?

PERIWINKLE’S LOW HANGING FRUIT PUNCH VERSION 2.0

1.) Vin Diesel Skull Cap

2.) Shameless Voodoo Face Paint

I am back! Sort of…. I think?

Good to see you again pleasants! It has been a while since I last blogged! I needed a break from it all because I wanted to focus on some of my greater ambitions! So what have I been up to? What is going on with Pinkie?! Well today I will tell you all about my pursuit to become a Vtuber and how it has changed things for me!

Why I took a break

10-hour clock | Fact# 3981 | FactRepublic.com — **How my days feel!**

So let’s begin at the start! Why did I take a break?! Well it has been no secret I have not been getting out of blogging what I want to get out of blogging! I really DO like the blogging community and you are all such kind and good people filled with passion and amazing penmanship… but for me this past year of blogging there was something missing from it! I have thoroughly enjoyed my interactions with the Paradise Staff and making up the stories in the blog is really fun. Yet on multiple occasions I have talked about how I missed something, and with my staff becoming less active and my Joy pointing out my comment section is often quite empty, I wondered what it was. I struggled to keep up with other blogs as well as I increasingly fell out of love with anime…. No wait that is wrong. I really do love anime, just not as much as you guys do?! I have several passions that trump that and I found them demanding increasing amounts of time.

I made a lot of Vtuber friends. Like the amazing Millie Fuwaffles, Nephillia and the always funny Patumbra, I also made friends with the amazingly talented and focussed Nini Neen, as well as plenty of others. I try to support them but this means watching about a 3 hour stream every day, I do pop in and out a bit but I want to offer them interaction! I want to be part of the community so that means putting in the hours. Through these interactions I figured out what I was lacking from blogging and that was … spontaneity I want to converse rather than just speak? I do like blogging interactions but compared to streams it’s a bit more “flat”. We say “nice post” .. or “you dumb pink cow, how dare you devaluate us by saying our interactions are flat.. you should die in a hole” or something in between. If I have an issue get good advice and my shoulderpads… but never (except with Joy… I love you for it Joy) you suddenly end up talking about something completely different. In a stream we can talk about the game the streamer is playing and suddenly end up in a conversation about the origin of taffy. All of you may know I thrive on randomness.. so this kinda thing is like my jam!

6 WordPress Issues (and what to do about them) | fjorge — **Not bad.. but it adds a lot of tedium for the casual blogge**r

I do still have a passion for writing, making up stories and telling stuff, that is still in my blood so it is not like I will stop blogging or that I do not get anything out of it, yet WordPress itself made it less rewarding still. The struggles to get the edit right, the relative amount of effort for a small visual thing no one ever really notices…it took the spontaneity even further away. I have a super cool idea and begin writing and that part is fun, but then comes dealing with the editor.. and it becomes less fun. Glitches, text popping in and out, having to sort my colours every time, it enforced that feeling of .. ugh.. not today for me! So I needed a break and really focus on something I am super passionate about! And that thing was starting my Vtuber career.. and to do that I had to do one of the hardest things I have ever done.

Coming out as a trans-woman

So this one might sound weird to a few of you, as I have in the past spoken openly about this on other people’s blogs! I have always reacted to posts about the subject and in OWLS it was on my “profile”. I have talked in depth about subject matter with people like Mari and Irina as well as some others. Yet on my own blog I never did, so this fact may surprise some of you! Truth of the matter, confessing that isn’t hard at all. I’d tell the truth to all who’d ask. I just feel, and forgive me if this offends you, that you have no business in knowing my genetic make-up…. in all other ways than that I’ve been that girl I said I am.. in fact in the virtual space I have been more true to myself than my parents have ever seen me past the age of 5. You guys have seen the real me…and that is why coming out was so hard for me. I had to corrupt my safe space.

In the text based virtual space, I have no tells that my biological truth may be different from my sociological truth, and since non of you are my doctor geneticist or those who need to write me legal documents, the gender versus genetics thing has always been a non issue. However as an aspiring streamer, I need to be confronted with my greatest shame.. my voice. I truly loathe my voice so much so that I am actually afraid to speak up! I am so scared and displeased by it that in fact I CAN not truly speak up. Health issues complicated that even more so it will be a tricky thing for me to deal with.. but since content making IS a dream, I can not have that fear hold me back anymore… and since the internet is how it is “You sound like a dude” .. or ” I bet she is actually a guy” in comments and all… I decided to embrace my flag though it pains me greatly.

I feel in order to chase my dream, I am leaving a piece of my true identity behind. I am a true woman.. I know it! Yet recently it has become a bit of a “trend” or more “accepted” thing to be Trans… which is great..except it feels wrong to me. I just want to be the woman I know I am.. and the woman I in all but the genetical way am! That doesn’t need to be closer defined. I don’t specify my skin colour, my eye colour or my clumsy demeanour either. I am not a “clumsy” woman.. well I am a clumsy woman but it’s not like a subspecies or something. This might feel stupid but in calling me a “trans-woman” I feel like I will forever be denied “woman”. It’s not as bad as being called a dude.. but imagine if your life long dream is to see Disneyland.. but then you are denied entry past Cinderella’s castle?! It’s still Disneyland sure and you can hug Mickey Mouse all the same.. but it feels like you are missing out on the true experience. That is why I reluctantly wear this flag. Trans… is not a state of being, trans is a journey you undertook to finally become your true self. It is fleeting. I know I had to do this coming out to explain my voice and some other things I will encounter as a streamer .. but I am just very afraid Trans-woman will lead into the JK Rowling mindset, where the opposite of Trans-Woman is her “true-woman” or whatever higher level of womanhood she claims to be on in her tweets. It would deny me from ever reaching my destination… and it makes me really anxious… so I struggled with that.

Becoming a VTube

Now let’s talk about cool things! My path to become a Vtuber! I have made some amazing steps on the way! I am learning more about streaming everyday, and I have found this amazing loving community filled with amazing people who support me and help me and are there for each other. Every time I visit one of their discords it feels as if I am on the floor of an anime convention or something, except we don’t talk about anime that much, we can literally talk about everything. There is a fair bit of anime talk but these people also care a lot about gaming.. much more in the same ratio’s as myself. Where in the blogging community I found people I look up to, and who are very eloquent and are equally as passionate as me , in the Vtuber community I have found my peers. People like me! Who much more share my humor and my quirkiness and a love for randomness. It helped me flesh out the character quite a bit.

For example I made the difficult decision to drop the name Pinkie for my Vtubing. There is this certain pony that completely drowns me out in any search results… except for weird questions like “are Pinkie and Goku in Love” which people apparently googled to land on my blog! I have taken on the handle of Yuni D’uque a japanese frenchie name that is based on my character being a uniduck. D’uque will perform fairly well in search engines once it is time for me to fully start streaming. Most elements are already in play for that! I have my stream overlays sorted out, I have made a lot of visuals, I have my amazing 3d model by Frisout (which kinda clips because she is just a Vroid but it’s an amazing place to start) I have made many new friends and even some collabs already planned. As a blogger I never fully managed to get that off.. because how odd it felt to me! I never felt good enough.. it would be fun but my part would be detrimental to someone else… I do not feel that burden as a streamer.

My New Logo

Basically I have everything I need to be a streamer..except for one thing! A rig with which I could feasibly stream. I need a new pc because I have discovered my system is NOT good enough for that! But that makes it all the more exciting to do this! I have found a system that I am ordering the day after this post goes live and then within a few weeks I am ready to start streaming. I am super excited! So I made a channel promo to highlight what I as a Vtuber will be about! I hired an amazing artist to perform some lyrics I rode to a song that means a lot to me… and of course Disney immediately claimed any rights to make money of that video… but at least they allowed me to use it! So yay!
So I will share that video here with you guys! It explains some new lore about the character.. but also shows she still has plenty of powers! I had a blast making this but you can see a lot of sloppy bits where my computer let me down a bit because I could not do something frame by frame, the laptop skipped a lot of things or jittered a fair bit! I am still kinda proud of it though!

So what about the Blog?

So what is next for my blogging career? Will I stop? Probably not! Will I be as active as I was.. most likely not that either. As much as I hate to admit it, the big issue is the overlap in interests is very little. Vtuber posts do poorly on here, as well as gaming posts (relatively speaking) so it will be a tricky thing to combine. Especially since this thing.. the video content creation thing is much more a passion than writing is. Writing is still fine but really WordPress isn’t.
I will still do creative posts! For example I still have Fred’s anime story about Nudism I need to make and do a Summer as a Pokémon post, as well as an anime story for her.. but again other than that I had very little interaction on the coming up with my own anime thing. So that format I will most likely turn into videos! Not as visual.. as I can’t do art and can only collage.. but somehow I want to do story writing videos where I just tell you stuff. I will also do interactive storytelling streams but I need to sort that out as well.. but let’s just say that some blogging content will turn “hybrid” once I get my rig.

I do not feel like doing anime reviews, I am not good at them, I still like anime but I always feel like I am late to the party, or I can’t compare Girl’s last Tour to that stage play thing Ian Mc Kellen did , so when say the story just gives me happy feelings where I want to wrap myself in a blanket with a bit of soup and look at it on a day I am feeling sick.. I feel.. inferior. Anime is something I love but to keep it as something I love, I feel I must keep it to myself because I do not care about a lot of things from anime. I do not care for studio’s, I do not really care for allegories, I do not care for animation fluidity yet in a review I can not help but feeling I need to include it. I tried to review anime MY way.. but I feel to make something a review I need to do something with it. You know as if a review is a too defined concept for me to excel at! I am more of a rambler! I know it is all in my head but I can’t turn that not good enough switch off. When I write reviews like that all I hear people being angry at me…because well there is also the toxic culture part and it’s just in my system so hard .. when I review I just hear myself go yapyapyap…. stupid insight, mildly funny joke.

I know most of my readers care way less about games, or about Vtubers but these are the things i am currently most passionate about. D&D as well. So honestly I do not know what I will do blogging content wise. I need to pay for my domain again soon and around that time I will make a true decision! It is unlikely I will fully be gone, but during my three week absence I will admit that I did not MISS blogging that much either. Well that is not correct, I did not miss it’s “static” nature, I did miss blogging a bit. So maybe with some exceptions of stuff that is already written I will treat my blog more like an actual weblog and tell you more about my days, my path of being a vtuber, what games I played and what stuff I watched. Or my general feelings on various topics! Less edit heavy, less pictures. I haven’t found out yet what I want.. and I think that is also okay!

In the end I still want to build a geeky community, so in that sense not all that much would change about the blog, I just want to bring more spontaneity to the table. We are nearing the second anniversary of the blog. Last year I had two give aways, both with one responder only and after that they became my most spammed posts so this year we will do something else at the very least. What it is , I am not sure yet! But I hope it will be fun. You will hear more about that! I am not done yet! I just thoroughly lost my way. I will admit that I am lost but also that no matter how things will turn out to be alright!

Cherry’s first dish(It’s actually a game Review!)

Hello everyone! Your new Chef has arrived! As Pinkie already explained, I’m Cherry and will be doing some posts from now on as well as part of the team here on the resort! I’m a little bad at thinking where to start, so I will just get right into it! I love playing games, and I also love cooking! I do quite a lot of cooking my home life and usually try to do my own recipes, so a combination of both gaming and cooking seems like perfect for me. And it mostly is! Lately I have been playing one game in particular, and it is what I will be giving a brief overview of today, so without further ado, here is Chef: A Restaurant Tycoon!

Game Introduction

So! Chef is a Restaurant management/cooking simulator game currently available on Steam! It game out of early access in 2020 and recently had its first expansion(which adds in a bunch of new features primarily focused on Eastern Asia Cuisine).

The premise for the game is pretty simple, you are a chef and you run and manage a restaurant, the rest is up to you! It is a very free game in terms of options. The end-goal is up to you, as is what kind of restaurant and food you wish to be playing with. For some players, the goal might simply be to run a single seafood restaurant. For others, it could be to have a large burger franchise with several restaurants. All of this is available to do!

Getting Started

So first things first. After you get past the main menu, the first screen you will see is the character creation! Here you decide how your chef will look. You have a few options, first being body(This is where clothing is. You got a variety of clothing outfits/styles for both a more masculine & femining body, but no specific gender lock thing!) Secondly, you pick a headshape and then a hairstyle. As a finish touch you can then change your chef expression as well as colour for the various things!

Once you feel happy with your Chef, you get to pick a difficulty option. These come in 4 categories: Normal, Hardcore, Relaxed & Sandboxed. Normal is how it sounds, it’s the game with the original settings. Hardcore is more of a challenge run, stakes will be higher and it will be more difficult to manage the resturant.

Relaxed mode is a lighter version of normal. The pace is slowed down, the difficulty curve is a bit easier, allowing you more freedom to pick and play exactly how you want. Finally Sandbox is more of Relaxed. Atop of having easier settings, you start with near infinite money, and enough skill points to create whatever kind of resturant you want from scratch. Otherwise you need to gradually progress to get exactly what you want.

In my personal opinion, I would say that I greatly prefer Sandbox or Relaxed mode. While I really enjoy the game and think it has alot of creativity and fun, the normal difficulty can sometime feel a bit stressful and straining. You get more or less forced to try and minmax various stats for the most optimal way to make money. But if that is what you are into, then go for normal. It’s still fun!

Next on the list is to actually pick where you want to have your first resturant! You are taken to a pretty large map(Which is randomly generated each new game). You have a variety of districts to choose from. For example, do you want to have your resturant in a factory area, towncenter, out on the countryside and so on. This will determine some things such as price of rent, how many people will come to your resturant and what types of people(As seen on the right of the picture!)

Each district has a few choices of a resturant themselves, which can be varying in size of both the kitchen and dining area. The resturants can also have small traits that will affect customers and rent. A resturant that is in a dangerous neighbourhood will have lower rent, but the richer customers will refuse to come there, for example.

Running a restaurant

Once you have locked in your pick of resturant, you will be taken to the beautiful image above, specifically your resturant! This is the main layout of the game and where you will be spending most of your time. While I will give a rough explaination of all of the options, I only have two deep-dives left to do however(With pictures).

At the top right corner of the screen you can set the name of your resturant. This has no gameplay effects and can be changed at any time you feel like! Below that is a small panel showing some customer statistics. In order from left to right they are: Customers waiting to be seated, customers waiting to order, customers waiting for food, customers eating, customers waiting to pay, and amount of customers who ran out and didn’t pay/just left.

On the right side is your crew management, and here is where you will see your staff and how they are doing. You can also set them to do different tasks here.

And now for the menus! Going from left to right I will explain a bit what each one does before focusing on the two big ones later as a final touch!

So first, starting with the chef’s hat icon is the Skill Panel! Here is where you see the skill level of your Chef and your crew. As you do activities like cooking or serving customers, your characters will level up. You can then spend points to increase their performance or unlock new options. For your main chef, this for example lets you unlock new recipe templates for the recipe creator, which we talk about later!

Next up is the decorations panel. Here are the options for building up your resturant! You have options to change the colours of the exterior and interior, this doesn’t do much other than look nice! The actual decorations, such as tables and wall-art, clocks, shelves and so on, all affect what type of customers will want to come to your resturant! They add to a specific type of atmosphere(examples being Rustic, Modern, Fancy, Cheap). Finally, you also buy your kitchen appliances here, which determines stats for your cooking. In order to fry food for example, you need a fryer. You can add in a microwave to make food cook faster, but lose quality. Fridge to reduce ingredients costs, and so on!

Following the decorations is the staff manager! It’s here you go to hire new staff. Currently there are two types of staff available,waiter and chef. You can also use different ways to seek out more high quality staff by either just asking people on the street, put out ads or hire a recruiting agency.

Menu is next on the line! Here is where you set up your resturant menu with what is available as well as prices. What type of food you got, as well as how much variety and options will all affect your customers. When you unlock new ingredients you also get pre-created food which you can’t edit, so if you don’t feel like creating your own recipes, there will always be things to serve as you progress! The menu offers alot of options, as you can set up the following: Apetiziers, Main Dish, Soups, Salad, Side Dish, Dessert and drinks! Delicious! As a final note on the menu as well, it is here you go to edit recipes you created yourself.

Next up is the Recipe Editor! Here you will create your own custom recipes, which I will go into more detail later, so for now I leave it as it is and move on to the next option!

The next menu is a bit smaller, and simply details your types of customers you are getting and some customer statistics, not alot to say there! It can help you if you are trying to pinpoint a specific customer base, as it will tell you what your customers tends to order, what they like and so on!

After the customer menu is the ingredients panel, which I will cover with the recipe editor!

Next up is the Chef Advisor! It is basically a built in Yelp/Review site for the game. Your previous customers will sometimes rate your resturant with stars and leave reviews. Some can be helpful, others just really stupid. But it’s always good to pay attention to what they are rating as they can rate everything from staff, speed, food and how the resturant looks! The more stars you get on Chef Advisor increases the amount of people coming your resturant!

After the Chef Advisor comes decisions. At the beginning you can’t do that much here, but you still have a few options. On the decision panel you can set staff wages as well as cleaning routines for the resturant. You can also gradually start to unlock different types of advertising. From billboards to blogs to commercials and so on. You will also be able to buy new furniture options, and eventually, set up mulitple resturants! All of these bigger options though, costs influence. Influence is the measurement of your larger success. As your resturant climbs in popularity, you also gain influence, which allows you to do bigger decisions and begin the path from a small diner to a large, five-star resturant chain!

Next is the city map. It will take you back to the screen at the beginning of the game and lets you choose new locations for your resturant(if you wish to move), or if you want to open up a second one!

Following that comes the financial menu, where you can see more details about your costs and income. It is a good way to determie if you need to lower any decisions or change your prices!

The calendar is the next one! It shows you information about dates. You have twelve months, and 4 days every month. Each day represents a full week. During some months there are special events, like christmas for example, that can change how many people come by your resturant!

The last two menus are not very much to talk about, as they are just more information about the resturant/and a secondary rating/Chef advisor, just without the details. So with those out of the way, let’s go into the ingredients and recipe editor as the final parts of this lengthy article!

**_{The vegetable section of the ingredients panel!}**

So this is the ingredients panel, and it is huge! If you can think of a type of food ingredient, it is probably in here! The ingredients come in sections of Vegetables, carbs, meat, seafood, nuts, fruits, milk products, drinks, spices and so on! There is quite alot of it.
When you start a new game you begin with 10 ingredient points(510 if you play sandbox), which you can use to buy ingredients. As you unlock ingredients, you get more options to add to your recipes as well as pre-created recipes on the menu depending on what you unlock. You earn ingredients points by cooking your custom made recipes!

Each recipe also comes in 3 levels of quality. Silver, gold, platinum/purple. The more higher-ranked ingredients you use, the better the food quality, but the cost of preparing the food is also higher. I really like this system simply because it has so many options!

**_{The main menu for the recipe editor!}**

Fun with Recipes

Finally, we have now reached the recipe editor, the highlight of this game! Here you have the option to create your own recipes using a basic template! As you first enter the recipe editor, you are greeted with the option to pick what type of dish you want to create, based on the template. Do you want to make a pie, a sandwich, a soup and so on. Once you have picked that, you can customize the image for your dish. This has no gameplay impact and is just for fluff. And finally you name your dish, and decide where on the menu it sits(Apetizer, main dish, dessert etc).

Once you have saved your template, you are taken to the next menu. Here you will have a small icon telling you what ingredients(and the amount of each) you need to make the basic recipe. Once you have those done, the recipe can be created and you can go nuts with everything else! You have every single ingredient you own available to you, and can throw them in as you please in terms of quality an amount. Each ingredient will add stats to the dish, such as fatness, bitterness, sweetness and so on, as well as the flavour, cost, cooking time and calories. If the ingredients matches well in terms of taste, you can gain special buffs, and the recipe quality will generally be better if the ingredients are matching!

And that is all! My first article here on the resort! I hope all of you will enjoy it, and perhaps even get curious to try out the game yourself! I am very happy to be here, to be able to make all the delicious food with my friends(Which I might share recipes with here soon!) and to be able to geek out!
This is Cherry, signing off on her first post! Bon Appetit!

That one time I used a Death Ray to Kill all my Friends: Pinkie Plays Pummel Party

Hear Ye , Hear Ye! Princess Pinkie has returned with a gaming post!

Salutations my loyal subjects and sweet island guests. This video game review might be the last normal one I play in a while. I got something new planned that I am really excited about! Something very random! Yet today I want to talk to you about a very fun game I played with some friends. Mario Party! Except it’s not Mario Party. It IS ..but also it isn’t! The game I am talking about is called Pummel Party!

A Rebuilt Game

Pummel Party is created by a studio called Rebuilt Games who offer their fantastic game for just 13 euros on steam, so I ‘d estimate about $15 dollar or so. In this game you play a coloured dude hidden in some sort of customisable morph suit! You play against 1 to 7 other guys dressed in a coloured Morphsuit and that’s it. How do you do that?! Well you walk across a board game by rolling a ten sided dice, which can land you on all sorts of tiles that make the overworld react with you, you either get a currency, in this case keys, you can make a ghost steal other’s people’s keys…or rip them apart, and you can gather items or make random things in the world happen.. like the water level rising. You all do this so you can reach a specific spot at a board where you can exchange your currency for a chalice! The one who owns the most chalices at the end is the winner. At the end of every round you play a minigame.. and at the end of the game you are awarded bonus chalices that can totally change the game.. you must not just try to play for yourself but also hinder other players from winning …and …. wait… this is THE EXACT gameplay of Mario Party?!

Yes let’s get this thing out of the way first, this game is Mario Party without the nintendo license. Instead of 20 (or 10) coins you need 40 keys . Instead of a toad, there is just a chest you open.. instead of Boo, it’s the Grim Reaper, but nearly everything you can do in this game is just based on Mario Party. The way the map branches of in all sorts of routes, the way you can earn currency trough minigames. Even the bonus stars are copied. If you like Mario Party as a concept but never had a Nintendo console, this is the game that emulates the sensation quite well! Extremely well even.. during the game all my friends and me kept using super mario terms for words because we just felt this was Mario Party.. yet at the end I had to draw a conclusion. I liked Pummel Party more than I like Super Mario Party.. by a fair margin! At least compared to the newer Mario Parties. This game feels more like a modern take on Mario Party 1.

A party for everyone

To a lot of people, the Mario flavour is what makes Mario Party games so fun! It’s great to play as Mario or Peach and humiliate your friends! Pummel Party has no such sentiment, you play a blank character in some general stages. To many that will mean this game already is deemed inferior. Yet I like to argue that Mario Party has a bit of confusing flavouring. Suddenly Peach is as physically strong as Donkey Kong and Bowser, suddenly Mushrooms and Stars work very differently and while the characters are super iconic their motivations and story changed quite hard. That is not a problem, it is a perfectly fine solution ..but it DOES show that the “Mario” Part in the party is strictly a cosmetic one. There isn’t anything intrinsically Mario that makes the party better. It’s just Mario being there that makes it fun and easier to fall in love with characters or stages to those who love mario. If for a moment we would strip all recognisable features away.. I think Pummel Party is the stronger of the two titles, because it knows it is a more generic game and caters to it.

Pummel Party needs an angle.. it needs to have it’s angle in gameplay, rather than esthetics and that it does. You see where in the more known series you can screw each other over a fair bit, this game takes that much further. You do not just steal coins from each other. You shoot each other in the face. Toss Nuclear Waste on others and can actually murder characters on the overworld map.. which resets them to a more disadvantageous position. Even in the minigames, you do not just win currency; those who do well get rewarded with items to mess each other up a bit. Another great idea is that turn order is based on how you performed in Minigames. This makes it so that someone can dash for a chalice if they do well at Minigames, but also allows the later players to mess them up a lot more as they are oftenly in the more reactive slots. The items in Pummel Party are less “cryptic” .. A boxing Glove punches someone in the keister, while a disintegration death ray does exactly what it says on the box. My favourite item is the nuclear waste, which causes extreme swellings and damage over time.. but that same swelling prevents the affected player to use items. Either way of battling you can enjoy it if your not a big Mario fan.

Pummel Party - New Items, Translations, Minigames, Cosmetics and more - Steam News

The same thing happens with the minigames of this game. The first Mario Party and maybe the second one, were simple enough. Bounce each other platforms, hit stuff with a hammer to get as many coins as possible! Yet as Mario Party moved on, these minigames became less user friendly. Mario Party 10 brought it back to normal a bit, but a lot of their minigames tend to feel gimmicky. “Where do you detect the most rumble, water a flower in the distance, using balloons and stuff. It’s all okay and simple enough to understand but some games tend to really farfetched. Pummel Party goes for a much simpler approach in 90% of their minigames. Play a game of “King of the Hill” , play a short round of a third person competitive shooter, play a short bit of air combat game and play 3 rounds of slither.io/snake. It feels much more as if you are playing actual video games that have been scaled down, rather than play gimmicks with a mechanic to beat it fast. As a result most games feel much more instinctive with a bigger focus on direct competition which increases their fun.

Hushed Game

Pummel Party - New Map, New Minigames, Workshop Teaser plus more - Steam News

One thing where Mario Party has Pummel Party beat is at it’s sound design. Pummel Party has a very quiet feel to it. There is no loud background music and there is not really any memorable music in the games. It all is very far away. Even when you pick up keys on the maps you don’t hear clingely sounds or something very satisfying. You do hear each other’s bones cracking and the weapons firing as you go around, but other than that it’s a bit boring in the audio department…. then again I think this is a good thing as well. You will play this online with friends, perhaps stream the game or whatever people do these days. The music is so silent it will never get copyright claimed, if it would even do so at all! The game even partnered with Twitch, having some Twitch inspired costumes and even a stage based on Twitch! It was perfectly mixed to hear my friends on my headset while still knowing what is going on in the game! Yet the sound design does reveal a secondary flaw compared to Mario Party.

Top 30 Pummel Party GIFs | Find the best GIF on Gfycat

While you CAN technically play this game by yourself against AI , it is not very fun to do so. The AI is a lot more competent than it’s Nintendo counterpart but because everything is so quite, when no one is talking to you, the game is quite boring. It just does not feel satisfying to use that disintegration laser on an undeserving AI, while it feels hilarious on an undeserving player, just so you can get an achievement out of it! Mario Party has things talking to you, a more upbeat soundtrack and other things that can really make a game, this game unfortunately can’t do the same! No story mode, no mini game island, no single player content at all. It really is made to play with your friends! The game has a chat feature so even if you are shy to talk, you can communicate, which is an option I very much appreciate, even even if just chatting the game is pretty fun.. but the motivations to use the cool items are much more personal So playing this by yourself is pretty much a no go.

Pummel Party - Pummel Awards, Minigames, Rulesets, Game Statistics & More - Steam News

The game isn’t too ambitious with it’s unlocks either, you can unlock some cloaks for your character but that’s about it! The game does seem to receive some updates every now and again so that is a plus, but again in it’s design it just feels a tad bit tinier than the well known franchise. Maybe it’s a tad more humble?! The game doesn’t have that many stages, though still more than the most recent Mario Party and one of the stages has a random layout so in terms of repeatability this game will go far! As long as you have friends to enjoy this game with!

The game also has a slightly higher pace than the title I mentioned many times already! There is less dialogue due to it’s quiet nature and every dialogue pops up faster and is handled with a single button press. We don’t get shouty pop ups for every turn, we do not have two random characters making bets on who is going to win and there is no huge stage exposition! The game kind of expects you to know how this game works from just looking at it.. or by experimenting and reading descriptions and for that I do really love it again. It has a much better pacing and drops silly things like having a minigame on the last turn, as earning keys no longer matters; it can simply be cut! It does a great job!

I genuinely believe that this game is in many ways better than it’s bigger more famous inspiration. It feels more accessible and more for gamers, at the same time making it something I truly could get on board with. It cuts the clutter and doesn’t beat around the bush as much and honestly I really do like dressing up as a Pink Morphsuit Ragdoll with a unicorn hat and a rainbow cape more than dressing as an iconic character. It is hard to explain the feeling but because the drop of famous characters you can punish each other in more satisfying ways, you can be more build and visual and it results in more satisfying minigames. Mario can’t be cut in half with a lightsaber but a pummel buddy can! It triggers these primal instincts and I just end up feeling more satisfied with this one! I really love a game of Pummel Party!

Have you played Pummel Party?! What did you think about the game? Have you always wanted to shoot a death beam of doom at your friends? Let me know in the comments and if you want me to find more party game gems like these please consider supporting my Kofi! Kofi for content! Stay Random!

Staff Introduction: Cherry the Chef

Hear Ye Hear Ye, Princess Pinkie has returned with a general announcement!

Salutations, loyal subjects and sweet island guests! Today is a day of celebration! No, it is not my birthday! Not the blogs second anniversary either! Though we are drawing close! No today we have yet another STAFF-member join us! So all put your hands together, and give a warm welcome to Cherry the Chef! Thanks to imagination we can replace that old drunkard that did the job before now! Sure we had Tadokoro Megumi work in the sushi restaurant but in the alla cart place we had this nobody! Yay for more staff!

Who is Cherry

Like most introductions before, Cherry chose to be introduced by me! Which means we will get a bit of character backstory! Followed by my experience with the person behind Cherry , her soul as it were, after which we will discuss the content she is going to offer to the website! I would really love it if people would interact with this post and give her a warm welcome! She is very new to the WordPress community and making friends is important! So I hope you guys will be kind to her! and that you will give her a warm welcome!

Cherry is the first character that comes from a somewhat tragic backstory! It all started on the island of Kawadrago. A fire dragon was anxious! She had to find a mate! But she wasn’t interested in the male dragons! Nor in the female ones for that matter. Sure she would love to have some friends, but she did not want to be fertilised to lay an egg! She did want that egg..but the whole procedure was a bit icky to her! Many called this fire dragon loveless! But she knew that was not true! Because there was one thing she loved more than anything else! That was eating cherries! She even had a favorite Cherry Tree. Because the fire dragon did not really have any friends.. she decided this tree was her best friend! She protected it , she talked to it and was super stoked when the tree dropped her a few cherries. She would eat her fill and then cuddle up around the tree! A nature spirit saw this and blessed the dragon with her desire! The next day she woke up she found she had laid an egg!

From this egg, Cherry was born! She was a half fie dragon .. and half cherry dragon! Or maybe a half fire dragon and half cherry! She never got an answer to that question! Her mother loved Cherry very much and until the end of her days, the fire dragon was never lonely again. Yet when the fire dragon had left it’s world Cherry was all alone.. and still in pretty much dragon infancy! Like her mother Cherry was an outcast among the more pureblooded dragons! Who’d only associate with pure blood dragons of the four elements! Cherry would get quite angry and threw hissy fits every time she was excluded! Yet her inner sweetness also prevented her from getting into a fight! So Cherry would go into abandoned parts of the forest and set it ablaze.. watching the fire!

One one such tantrums Cherry discovered she was very hungry! She found a rabbit that had died in the fire as well as some vegetables and fruits that had not burned up.. but looked different then before! A delicious scent entered her nostrils and she decided to consume the fire touched goods! It was the most delicious thing she ever had! For many years Cherry experimented with this.. whenever she had the chance she would tease the other dragons as well by setting fire to their favourite hide and seek hiding spots! If she could not play she would show them.. and get a delicious meal out of it! Yet despite her spunk, and her newly acquired skill to make food more delicious by cooking it the village kept alienating her! One day while she was trying to see if a fish could burn a bottle washed up on shore! In the bottle was a letter! After breaking the bottle and getting the letter out Cherry saw the message read “STAFF wanted”.. An island that was looking for a new chef! One where all the things you imagine can come true.. and where imaginary and real things live? She must go there!

Once arrived, she met Pinkie, the princess of the island! The two became quick friends! Both loved eating cherries, and Pinkie preferred that other people cook her food! When Cherry asked for the job Pinkie told the dragon that maybe some normies might be a bit scared of her looks like this.. so she could be like everyone else.. by just imagining her becoming human! A lot of Vtubers do this! Once even a glass of Milk-tea imagined becoming human! So Cherry tried as well! Pinkie loved her both ways but it would be nice to fit in for a bit! Cherry had a bit of trouble transforming! Two buns in her hair remained big ripe cherries and one of her eyes still looked like that of a dragon! While Pinkie and the staff was fine with it! Cherry decided to wear some items to cover it up! Just so she can play and have fun with a lot of people! And for the first time.. Cherry had found a bunch of misfits like her.. that all joined together! For the first time Cherry was happy!

Nowadays Cherry makes all sorts of meals on Paradise and when she isn’t cooking she is playing pranks on island guests! Or throwing a hissy fit somewhere! Cherry does not like it when something .. anything.. is excluded from something! She even stomped out angrily when Kuro said Pineapple doesn’t belong on Pizza! She doesn’t even like pineapple on Pizza but people should never exclude the poor fruit! Kuro is her favourite victim to prank! She would sneak up to his house at night when he is asleep, then turn bag into a dragon and leave a big footprint in the sand.. making him think a Kaiju is close, and as he runs of in the forest changing phantoms she walks in his hut and flips his mattress or changes the clocks.

What to do when the Housing Market (and the world) get turned upside down | | REX Blog — *_{And sometimes she uses her dragon strength to flip more than just the matrass!}*

Cherry and Pinkie

The Story of the Pink Sith: Sy'ra Delinda – Pinkie's Paradise

Cherry and Pinkie go back long before the start of Pinkie’s blog! By now I think we have known each other for about ten years. We first met on the Roleplay server of Star Wars the Old republic. Pinkie had just made a Sith character that got tortured so much and mind messed so up, her brain could not really retain empty information anymore! Things like.. names would never stick.. so she had to refer to everyone.. with a depiction of a word.. a sound or making it concrete to herself. Very dangerous in the Sith community! Especially when you call a Sith called Darth Gaur, Lord Growl. Cherry’s first character did not like my Pink Sith! My character had a hard time fitting in and had to fight to restore her mind! Yet among the ocean of super negative Sith being a positive one.. created some magnetism! People who did not want to play the super stereotype flocked to me.. and Cherry had a character she wanted to try to roleplay around my character as well. A shy Twi’lek who never could be touched.. met with my Sith who wanted to hug everyone!

From that an online friendship grew that lasted for way beyond the duration of our time on Star Wars, Cherry joined my online D&D’s almost every single time and alway is one of the most good spirited and creative players. She heavily veers into the archetype that is Cherry the character, so already she will do a great job in pulling that off. She is also a very loving mother, and that behaviour translates in her everyday reactions to everyone! No matter who in my roleplay chats is troubled, Cherry is always willing to hear them out and cheer them up with a virtual hug! So she in that matter she is very different from her character!

We both have been through a lot together, shared experiences with our health and our family and while on occasion we talk a bit less, we always somehow end up drawing back together to become a lot closer again! Almost as if it is destined we’d be friends! So it would be very interesting to see if Cherry will have some of that same appeal to our readers! Cherry has this beautiful fragility to her, almost like a baby bird.. but way less ugly than a baby bird! She may not be as Seiso as me, if you look at her and see her talk normally you completely forget, you drop your guard and then BAM she suddenly surprises you!

A mutual (former) friend once described her as an Espeon, where he was Umbreon and I am Sylveon.. and wdo fit those archetypes pretty well! .. I guess Kuro is an Umbreon as well, Sunny is a Vaporeon , Periwinkle is a Flareon and Indigo… despite being kinda missing in action, is a Joteon! So I guess we are just a Leafeon and Glaceon short of a full set now! … Maybe an Eevee.. so if you want to join…now that we have Cherry.. we finally have someone to translate our Ikea manuals for us.. so if you join you might get those benefits as well!

Warrior Espeon by ShupaMikey on DeviantArt | Pokemon eeveelutions, Cute pokemon wallpaper, Pokemon gijinka — Art by ShupaMikey

Cherry Cooks up Content

FEATURE: Cooking With Anime - Dragon Tail from "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid" | Miss kobayashi's dragon maid, Best romance anime, Anime romance

My beloved friend and the most adorable Cherry-Dragon you have ever seen, will offer some quite unique content for Paradise! She will be a bit like me , and do a bit of everything! Some general talks about gaming, geekdom and of course her speciality.. cooking! Having found a great hobby in creating the best meals, in both virtual as real form Cherry will bring geekdom and cuisine together in a lot of cooking game reviews and maybe even some geeky recipes! Yet she is also not exclusively bound to this subject! Like I’d imagine a cherry based life form she is free to bounce around and offer content that is anything her heart desires!

Pin by lisha1 on Anime | Animation, Anime, Teacher gif

For example .. in the past Cherry was known to go on big lore tangents and rambles! Where we would just say … oh I saw a Priest with a Watch and someone said”Heh Tech Priest” and Cherry would go on and talk about the Origin of Tech Priests in Warhammer 40k… Now this particular example never happened but she did stuff like that! For example when I would ask what the correct name for Snorlax and Pikachu from Darksouls 2 was, she’d go on to tell a story that would last longer than a game of Civilisation! And I kinda love it!.. I did not process it all.. but still! I would personally love to see her do some deep dives in lore again someday! So who knows maybe I can convince her to do a series like that!

As for Cherry’s schedule, we need to figure that out still! My dear friend , like me , is plagued with fairly regular migraines and moments of minor health failure! You know the kind that doesn’t exactly put you in the hospital or the grave but are enough to block creative writing! It’s why I moved to an every other day schedule! So how much Cherry will post will remain something we need to discover over time! Those who are going to be mean about it.. even if you end up being a die hard Cherry fan, will have to deal .. with me! Well when I say me, I mean my fictional knights.. or me the cruel evil admin! Let’s all agree that we will not pressure each other and just have fun together! This week her first post will go up though which will be a blog about…… I am already feeling hungry! So I will go grab a snack or even a meal! It’s already quite late when I write this! Give Cherry a warm welcome.. and look out to her delicious content in the near future! Stay random!

Random Video Game Duck: Pinkie Plays Time Lord (NES)

Hear Ye Hear Ye, Princess Pinkie has returned with a gaming post!

Salutations, Loyal Subjects and Sweet Island Guests. One of the hardest things of a content creator is content selection! Now as I grow more discontent about reviewing, I decided to spice them up a bit! I wanted to do Reviews on Random content! Even video games! I love Retro Games and the way I used to play games in the past is go to your local video store and rent some video games! Only back then there was no internet! You randomly picked a game and played it! Zero idea on whether it was good or not! To relive that experience I found a randomiser that spits out a random classic console game! Today we played Time Lord on NES! But first.. my totally “original” intro lyrics.

^{<Disclaimer>
For the purpose of this format an emulator has to be used as many games on this list will be to obscure to obtain physically
<End of Disclaimer>}

Song intro

♫She’s Gonna Take You back to the past!♫
To play some random games really fast!
No walkthroughs! And No reviews! This is gonna be a blind playthrough!
Some games are good but most are bad!
She will play things she wished she never had!

She is the most random gamer, without much luck!
She’s the Random Nintendo Duck!
She’s the Random Arcade and Sega Duck!
♫She’s the Random Video Game Duck!♫

_{All credits to the James Rolph and the AVGN, this is just a spoof!}

Time to play Time Lord

Time Lord Screenshots for NES - MobyGames

Time Lord is a platformer game on NES! The game was released in America in 1990 and fairly limitedly in Europe in 1991. It was developed by Rare LTD and Published by MB Company. MB standing for Milton Bradley! Which is like the most 90’s sitcom character name ever by the way! The game is classified as a Platformer, but feels more like an early beat’em up, like River City Ransom. After playing through the entire game it is a bit of a mixed bag of reviews, with most people really liking it and some very much hating it! Once again I find myself a bit in between! Though I severely vere to the dislike side of things! One should note that I do this from the stance of a blind playthrough! I will admit that replaying this game now would make it a much more digestible experience but the first experience is …odd to say the least. No walkthroughs, No Nintendo Power! How manageable is the game?!

The goal seems rather simple! Each stage holds five time orbs! Collect them all and you beat the level! Travel through time to delete the influence of evil aliens on the space time continuum. And yes that is also the entire story of this game! You are told this and while I have no idea WHY the aliens have put 5 time orbs for you to function as a tutorial they did! However the tutorial is in no way similar to the actual game experience! So in stage one we gather five time crystals in our current time to hop back in time for the first time! And that is when the Dodo Doodoo starts to show up for me! The controls are fairly tight though instinctively it feels as if I am jumping with the wrong button and punching with the wrong button! That might be a fault on my end though! The game looks okay.. but kind of bland for a game that game out fairly late in the NES life span.

The Good, The Bad and the Clam!

If you read my blog and actually remember what I say, some of you might know that Turtles in Time is one of my favourite SNES titles out there and this game is VERY similar to that one! Just less advanced. You beat up enemies, travel through time and each stage has a boss! The time zones you visit are varying , you play through the future, medieval times, the wild west, the age of pirates, world war 2 and the future again! Every stage but one.. has a fitting boss (but more on the odd one out later) for example in the medieval times you fight a Dragon.. which feels like something aliens could put there to mess up time! Or in the Wild west you face a gunslinger with better weapons! Pretty good stuff! The stages look distinct and all have their own music. Controls feel okay, but could be a bit sharper. Having Select switch weapons is a great thing I wished to have seen in more games! The game is highly functional which given that I am going to play random games for the foreseeable future already is a big bonus! So I would not go as far as say that this game sucks donkey sausage or I’d rather eat a skunk’s rotten defecation exit than to play this game, but going as far as saying that this is a good game?! I ‘d rather not go that far either.

time lord nes Cheaper Than Retail Price> Buy Clothing, Accessories and lifestyle products for women & men -

This game has 4 major flaws that really and I mean REALLY spoil the broth for me! Let’s begin with the biggest gripe! Like most NES games this one can be finished a a manner of minutes. As long as you know what to do that is! The game only has six stages which is fair. which will take you about 20 ish minutes to beat! Which is a good thing.. because if you play the game for 24 minutes and 34 seconds and still have not reached the ending.. you will hit a game over! No further edits, you have to play the game from the very beginning! Which isn’t THAT big of an issue since the whole game can be finished in about 20 minutes…on paper. Now there is a problem in the main time zones! As this game requires you to SEARCH out the HIDDEN location of the time Orbs. Some of these orbs locations are REALLY cryptic as well.. such as having to pick up 20 mushrooms in the medieval level..or ringing the ship bell three times in the pirate level. So playing this game without hitting a game over blindly is practically impossible! And that already design wise is a chips load of fudge!

Listing of Nintendo NES games starting with the letter t - Page 5 - The Video Games Museum

This goes hand in hand with the second issue of the game! Many of the orbs in this game.. need to be picked up IN ORDER! Which doesn’t seem to bad but 3 out of the 6 stages make you do some serious backtracking! The worst offender of this is the World War II level who places an Orb right at the start of the game but you can only collect it last. So not only do you need to familiarise yourself with the location of the orbs, you also need to find the easiest way to get from A to B as you basically are forced to speed run this game. Some of the orbs found in the game require trick jumps to pull off and I haven’t been able to consistently do that even if I know how the controls work! Other orbs require you to make leaps of fate down a pit.. but since the game is in 2.5d you can still miss an item because you are to much in the foreground or background Climbing back up takes you about a 30 seconds to a minute, so if you mess up a few times to get the perspective run, you will inevitably hit a game over.

time lord nes OFF 66% - Online Shopping Site for Fashion & Lifestyle.

The third issue is that the game is rather stingy with lives! Enemies keep constantly respawning based on where you are in the level, so the backtracking will drain a fair bit of health! Especially in the later stages, where you need weapon upgrades to take down enemies without punching them a million times, your first run to get the items, which means you will get hit, then you have to backtrack to find all orbs which means you will take damage. If you arrive at the final boss with less then at least 2, 5 lives left I dont think there is a way to beat it! It’s damage is nearly unavoidable, which is only amplified that by the time you arrive there you will have just a few minutes left to beat it. So you will play sloppy! Other bosses can take away huge chunks of life as well.. but they can’t hit you at all if you find their golden spot and move in depth a bit while you can hit them no matter what plane you are on , they can only hit you if you are dead center.. if they hit you though you lose like half a life bar. The World War 2 boss i particularly hard and pretty much you will never make it through a stage in one go!

Time Lord (NES) Final Battle + Ending - YouTube — *_{This is how the final boss looks!}*

The fourth and final issue is that the final boss does NOT feel like a final boss! It feels like a scrub thing you encounter in castlevania! It’s three alien skulls on brains that spit birds at you! I knew aliens were my enemy but these don’t look like big bad guys! This looks like the guys R2D2 and C3PO take care off while Luke slashes at the real thing! I got really frustrated that a Mid Boss was kicking my ass.. until I finally got past it.. and realised I had beaten the game! It is not the worst boss though! The worst boss is in the pirate stage! You may wonder .. How do you fudge up a Pirate Captain?! Well it’s not a pirate captain.. not even a pirate! The villain in the pirate themed level… is a clam! And like a clam it doesn’t really do anything! You just throw daggers at it until it dies! Why would a CLAM be the thing aliens use to disturb time! I mean it’s a big one.. but why not give blackbear a lightsaber or something.. that would seem more effective jeez!

Chocolat and Clam covered Steak

On my last run, the one I knew I was gonna beat the game on, I had a fair bit of fun! The game isn’t bad, it’s design is just fundamentally wrong! To beat the game you basically are expected to run into 6-ish game overs at least. It isn’t all that difficult to navigate through these stages but the clock pursuing you punishes you for inexperience. You are literally unable to complete the game from inexperience! You can play flawless and not get hit YET still you will be forced into a game over.. because .. who in their right minds would try to pick mushrooms until a red orb appears in a beat em up game. Who would ring a bell three times to make an orb appear.. especially when an earlier bell shows up that just drops coins! Which only increases your score..but cost you time to get so why would you?! The core gameplay is fun.. but it is not rewarding to play as a gamer and goes against my gaming instincts of fairness.

I want to lose a game because I suck at the game! I want to get better! Just simply learning the map doesn’t count at getting better at the game! If I hit a Game Over because I hit the bell on the pirate ship too many times, I don’t feel accomplished if I skip it the next time around and DO find an orb in the next bell. I feel robbed! I don’t mind getting a bad ending for taking things slow.. take Metroid for example! That has a time limit as well but I can still be quite content if I beat it in a slow run.. here I just die! I played about 12 to 15 times, some of which was caused by pure frustration but one of them happened by time out in the final stage! I was just too slow in killing the World War 2 boss to get to that monster with as many lives as possible! As I believed he was a mid boss! That was very annoying!

This game is like grocery store steak and store bought chocolate mousse and take away clams. As separate elements they are super passable and enjoyable! We don’t always need fine dining and store bought can still be fine! The steak is seasoned pretty well, the clams while not the freshest and some taste a bit funky are still clams! It’s hard to fudge those up and the chocolate mouse is a great desert that most people would not say no to! The problem is this game just throws it all together. There is no way to enjoy your steak without tasting the clams and the chocolate mouse as well.. and it just doesn’t combine!

Houshou Marine (1,000,000 subscribers) : Hololive

I wanted a pirate boss! I love pirates! Marine is probably the VTuber I would make my wife! So the fact that I could have fought her in this game but I got a clam instead annoys me! I know I am into clams as well but NO! This is not a good stage boss! Who ever thought that was a good idea! This is clearly made by people who understood games and marketing.. yet the thing this game fails to understand is the gamer! That is why I would consider this game a failure! Speaking of which.. since this guy is supposed to be a Time Lord, where is his phone booth?!

Next installment of Random Video Game Duck.. we will launch a Sega Master System game? Will it be good? Will it be bad? I do not know! All I know is that it will be drawn at random! Any NES game you’d like to see me play?! Or do you hope I land on a particular Master System title?! Let me know! Oh dear.. the song is hear! I gotta go! Stay random!

♫♩ She’s the Random ………..Video Game ………Duck! ♩♫

Test Drive

Long before I had the luxurious job of emptying out hot tubs and scrubbing them by hand on Paradise Island, I grew up in a small town. One of those one stoplight towns – the type of place you read about in Stephen King novels and such. But no killer clowns stalked us as children and we didn’t form some sort of killing cult in the cornfields surrounding the hamlet.

No, we did basically what all the other city kids did and still do. Be discontent, listen to punk rock, drink, do drugs and walk around at night like the little miscreants we were. But there were a few perks to rural life – at least in the absolutely forgotten (but not forgettable) Upstate New York.

Small race tracks permeate upstate – from the western frontier to the mountain ranges of central and north east New York. While never being thought of as anything more than “NYC” – the state of New York is gigantic. Sprawling woods, The Catskills and Adirondack mountain ranges. Even Appalachia runs up through the southern part of the state.

Weaving in between all of this ski country are little towns and villages and many of them have their own little hometown arena of sorts: A racetrack. Usually dirt, some times pavement. Growing up in rural New York the races are just sort of rite of the land. Even if you’re not into them you’re well aware of them.

While easy to dismiss as just a muddy oval with a bunch of hicks driving around in circles (which it is) I challenge the most disinterested to not feel the rise in heartbeat and rush of adrenaline when the roar of thirty cars greets a green flag. The tension and white knuckle competition of dozens of men and women just going for it. That drive is intoxicating and in a small way still apart of me.

FANCY INTRODUCTION VIDEO

Now don’t get me wrong. I am about as far away from a country boy as you can get. Immediately moving to a city weeks before barely stumbling across the high school graduation stage. Fifteen years ago you would have seen me vehemently deny any such upbringing. But times change.

And in the gaming world nothing has changed more than my feeling towards the Test Drive series. A series I loved growing up with, enjoyed immensely and played regularly.

A month or so ago I received a big bulk package of games I purchased from Goodwill. There were a few titles I was very excited about adding to my collection (X Files: Resist or Serve being one of them) As I was going through doing inventory of repeat games and checking discs I saw Test Drive. I was overjoyed with seeing an old favorite. Sure that it’d be an enjoyable arcade racer that I could waste hours on.

I was wrong

Now to explain why I have to take you back in time a little. You see in the 90’s there were plenty of racing titles, arcade or simulation that featured American muscle, British luxury, German engineering marvels and Japanese speed. Typically these games were set in a few iconic places around the world where you would race beautiful rare cars against one another on lush English back country roads. Occasionally dodging livestock or a police car. It was sort of like some unspoken millionaire racers club.

This was just kind of the way it was. No one even questioned it. You just sort of assumed that anyone driving a Jaguar XJ-220 around was probably just some rich dickhead.

Until 2001 rolled around and the first of two hundred Fast and Furious films came out. Once that happened – arcade racing games would be changed forever.

*_{Ha! This old thing? This is just my winter car.}*

“The Fast and Furious effect of 2001” or “FAFE 01”(as I would refer to it years later in my college thesis at Yale University) not only changed the landscape of racing games dramatically but the entire world around us.

First off, men the world over shaved their heads. If shears weren’t an option then men and women rushed to their nearest skull cap store. Donning the new Diesel look. Vin Diesel mania had kicked off.

*_{Real time photo of him driving to my house to kick my ass.}*

By the winter of 2001 not only was most of the world bald but they were pumping iron as well and even more damning for the Test Drive series – the globe was demanding less luxury and pomp in their racing games and simply more Diesel.

So video games developers had to respond to the rapidly changing market and fast and here is where Test Drive screwed up. Instead of doing any sort of research whatsoever on street racing culture, the long storied history of street racing in iconic locations like SoCal and Tokyo (“The Midnight Club”) or I don’t know, even just watching a movie about racing they said the hell with it. We’ll figure it out as we go and it’s pretty damn obvious.

The plot is pretty simple. You are some guy named Dennis Black and you are contacted by some guy named Donald Clark. Clark is a rich idiot that reminds me of Elon Musk. He’s rude and mean and apparently wheelchair bound. I give the writers credit here for making a handicapped character a total dick. That’s all the credit they’re getting from me, though.

Basically Donald is injured and wants you to race for him. Never mind the fact that we’re assuming at this point he is some sort of ridiculous millionaire that is wasting his time street racing – which the prize is a measly $1000 per victory. I just feel like a guy that could afford to own Dodge Vipers and a Hemi Cuda would be interested in higher stakes money wise.

But what do I know about being a millionaire street racer? The answer? Absolutely nothing. I’ve never been a street racer and I’ll never be a millionaire so maybe these people do exist. Who knows?

So the story sucks but that’s of little consequence. The game ultimately is just not fun. The cars take no damage whatsoever – I hit a semi truck going 210 miles per hour and the semi truck flew backwards. The racers on the track are supposed to be these characters from cutscenes but they don’t drive with any personality. It’s a very dull, repetitive and lonely experience.

It’s sad to see what once was such a strong racing series fall from grace at the turn of the century.

SHOP TIL YOU DROP

Are you kidding me?

DESERT ISLAND SONGS

The soundtrack is probably the best thing about the game. But it’s not great. It’s a strange mix of Saliva, Ja Rule, Moby and DMX. Being an old lame ass dude my favorite of these artists is Moby. So, alas the Moby banger, “Bodyrock” is my favorite song on the game.

PERIWINKLE’S LOW HANGING FRUIT PUNCH INGREDIENTS V. 2.0

1.) Vin Diesel Skull Cap (Test Drive)

Feel free to follow my website for more random musings on games, music and more or stalk me on social media: https://linktr.ee/BuffaloRetro

Celebrating Badass Video Game Moms

No bad games this week, peeps! Just some serious mom love. Not like that either you, deviants. I am far from being the only person that has realized that mothers are pretty underrepresented as far as video game characters are concerned. This doesn’t surprise me in the least. Let me explain:

In an industry that, until pretty recently, has been overwhelmingly dominated by males its not very shocking that programmers and writers are not out there writing about maternal badasses. It’s probably less a “stick-to-what-you-know” situation as it is a “write-for-who-you-think-is-playing” situation.

As we all know by now non -male gamers have always been out there but historically have been treated as a silent – if not completely forgotten – minority. That’s not to say just because you are a woman and a gamer you don’t totally love a badass male protagonist. But diversity is the spice of life!

So in honor of Mother’s Day weekend, here is a completely silly and random tribute to video games moms throughout the years. As diverse as all of our real mothers – these badasses prove that blood doesn’t always make family – in fact you don’t even have to be a human to be a good mom. Happy Mother’s Day.

THE BOSS (METAL GEAR SOLID 3: SNAKE EATER

Alright alright – a few things right off the bat. For those of you who have been reading Periwinkle posts from the beginning I just want to say, “thank you.” Secondly, if you are one of those readers and are asking yourself, “can this guy just do a damn list without mentioning a Hideo Kojima game?” The answer is a hard no.

I can’t because it is nearly impossible for me to talk about my love for gaming without pointing towards something he has done. I’m a fan boy. You know this, I know this, once he finally accepts my love letters even he’ll know this – ahem – moving on.

The Boss is not winning any “mom of the year” awards and is a very far cry from your typical soccer mom. A hardened soldier, a World War Two veteran and Naked Snake’s mentor, their relationship is very, very complicated.

Every confrontation the two have throughout the game she teaches Snake another harsh reality not only about the battlefield but about human nature. Basically whooping his ass repeatedly until he stops making the same mistakes. Their final battle is haunting.

And even after all that Snake isn’t even her son. Her relationship with her real son, Revolver Ocelot is just as complicated in an entirely different way. What is for sure however, is The Boss’ legacy as a complicated badass being cemented in the hearts, minds and conscious of Metal Gear fans the world over.

Wrinkly Kong (Donkey Kong Series)

Alright so I have to admit that up until today I thought Wrinkly Kong was Donkey Kong’s mom. I was wrong. Turns out, Wrinkly is actually Donkey Kong’s Grandmother. Whom regardless still seemed to raise “DK the third” as her own with her husband, Cranky Kong. And anyways, Grandmas are still moms and grandparents still make great parents. So here we are with the not dangerous but unbelievably cute, intellectual and spry, Wrinkly Kong.

Making her first appearance in the unbelievably fun and still totally killer, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Quest she runs her own Kong College educating her little Kong grandchildren about the game’s items and tossing them hints. She also offers her place as a safe respite and a save point for the little ones so seeing her cute little face on the map always accompanied a sense of relief.

By the third DK Country she had retired from her career as an educator but still offers game tips and a save spot for Dixie and Kiddy Kong.

Sadly by Donkey Kong 64, Wrinkly appears as a ghost. We learn that she passed away due to her accelerated age yet she still finds a way to make herself valuable to her family with hidden doors, hints and bananas. Proving that lessons and guidance outlive the greatest of teachers.

SONYA BLADE (MORTAL KOMBAT SERIES)

Sonya has had a rough go. Following trash bag ozzie, Kano into some sort of hellish underworld. Her and her military partner Jax are split up, captured, freed, captured again, ignored by the US Government and eventually she gets cut in half.

BUT luckily (sort of) Ms. Blade or should I say, Mrs. Cage was granted new life with the “current MK timeline”. Eventually marrying Johnny Cage and giving birth to their daughter, Cassie Cage. They eventually divorce and The Cage family is constantly being pulled in and out of the Netherrelm and yet time and time again she always sets a good example for her daughter and never thinks twice about sacrificing herself for her family no matter what hellish obstacle stands in her way.

KARA (DETROIT: BECOME HUMAN)

“ I know you think we’re just machines… but since I met Alice, I know I can feel things… I care for her, I fear for her, I can’t be happy if she’s not… This probably doesn’t make any sense to you but… I know she changed me somehow”

Created by CyberLife as a common household maid android, Kara lives with and serves Todd Williams. She also takes care of his daughter, Alice. During her assembly she is tested by operators on her physical and cognitive functions where she begins to realize she isn’t a human. Learning she is to be reset and sold, Kara panics claiming, “She thought she was alive.” As a gesture of mercy after Kara pleads with the operator they don’t reset her and she is shipped off to a store to be sold with her sentience intact.

It is there where she is purchased and brought to the Williams home. Without a mother figure in the home, Kara fills the void for Alice, Todd’s daughter and it’s in response to Todd Williams abusive personality that Kara takes Alice and runs away with her. Showing that true love can break any cycle no matter how impossible or deeply programmed it may seem.

LULU LULU (FINAL FANTASY X)

Ah, Lulu. Technically not a biological mother yet in Final Fantasy X – she might as well be. Guardian to Yuna on her pilgrimage she has not only sworn an oath to protect her but guides her emotionally as well. Also a prime example of a protective mother-like figure in battle, Lulu’s dark magic and fury overdrive is devastating when used correctly.

Seemingly stiff and stoic to protagonist, Tidus at first as the story progresses you get a true glimpse into the grieving process of a woman trying to hold it all together not only for herself but for her friends and family as well.

One of the darker more moody characters that develops beautifully throughout FFX, Lulu has been a fan favorite since the release of the game and for good reason. Free thinking (one of the only Yevonites to question the religion) powerful and beautiful – Lu is the epitome of badass video game moms who are as compassionate as they are deadly.

I’m sure I missed a bunch and I’m excited to hear who. Let us know in the comments who you think are the best video game moms/ mother like figures in gaming. Thank you for reading and happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there!

If for some reason you’d like to read more of my thoughts, follow me on social media or my website: https://linktr.ee/BuffaloRetro

OH AND – I’d like to point out the fact that I made it through an entire post without using vulgar language. Since I was fined by Paradise Palace for my last entry. I can’t afford to swear anymore. Until next week!

Cowboys, Giant Robots and a Pink Dame! Pinkie plays Wild Guns

Hear Ye Hear Ye Princess Pinkie has returned with a new gaming post!

Salutations my loyal subjects and island guests. As you might know I love retro games and especially the SNES era of gaming. I have done a fair few reviews in the past! Recently with Covid rules becoming a bit more lentient I have been meeting with a friend to play some cool SNES Co-Op titles using my Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Today I will talk to you about a game we recently beat! A game that is about shouting cowboys and giant robots. Steampunk meets Cyberpunk in the SNES cult classic. Wild Guns!

Clint and Annie’s date at the Saloon

Wild Guns was one of those SNES titles that saw a very diverse release date. Released in Japan in August 1994, the US in July 1995 and finally in Europe due October 30 1996 Wild Arms is a classic game in the very obscure shooting gallery genre. While the game has an incredibly arcade feel Natsume developed and published it exclusively for SNES. It would not be until 2016 and later that a “remaster” was released on anything else but a Nintendo platform. But nowadays a four player variant of this game with new characters and new stages is also available for pc and playstation 4. Of course the updated version is also available on Nintendo Switch. Wild Guns Reloaded is available on steam for around 13 euro. While I would love to play as a dog on a drone (which is an reloaded exclusive character) I will talk about the base game.. because if you pay for Nintendo Switch online it’s free!

I have no idea what the story is of this game! I don’t remember if I skipped it or if I needed a manual to read it .. but in the base game you play Clint .. a gruff classical looking cowboy or Annie a blonde in a pink dress and a fancy hat! Guess which one I insisted on being! Each character comes with four colour variations which also change your crosshair. I played better as Blue Annie then Pink Annie because I lost track of my crosshair less! White Annie I found unplayable.. but that might just be me! The game has 6 stages of which the majority consists of 3 parts. In the end you have to defeat.. some chinese/japanese looking guy. The stages and subsections are pretty varied and most enemies are unique to each stage.. though the classic SNES colour variants show up. The game features 3 difficulties and a versus mode, so there is some replayability.

SNES Longplay [243] Wild Guns (a) - YouTube

My friend and me started at the normal difficulty, which had Clint and Annie already die quite a bit. The first stage is themed after a saloon. With the first part being a shootout against cowboys outside the saloon with enemies shooting at your from windows or behind barrels. It was pretty neat and the cowboy vibe clearly can be felt. The way this game work is basically as follows. The first two subsections of a stage you fight against a clock, you have to survive against an onslaught of enemies until the timer runs out after which you face a mini boss. If you score enough points you can earn more lives , better weapons and screen wiping bombs to make the rest of the stage easier, so you always have to balance how much risk you take killing people versus. Risking how much you want to upgrade versus how much you want to live. Which is easier said then done.. because this game comes at you , guns blazing.

After you have survived against your first wave of cowboys you have to face a giant robot cowboy with machine gun arms which tries to mow you down remorseley. Luckily Clint and Annie have some sort of spider sense and they will tell the player to watch out and make them dodge when projectiles fly their way. In their jump they are also near invisible. If you listen to your character you have a good chance to survive , and with a bit of learning you can take down this first mini boss pretty easily. Clint and Annie beat this stage after only one game over. The second bout of this stage takes place inside the saloon! This one is already a bit more tricky, not only do bullets fly your way, there is also dynamite to deal with. Which limits in what directions you can block. Jumping into an explosion will end up getting you killed and if you do not kill enemies quickly they will keep piling up turning the game into a true bullet hell.

Wild Guns: Reloaded adds an adorable dog who controls a machine-gun drone to its chaotic roster | TechnoBuffalo

It took us two attempts.. but when we found out we can use a Lasso to stun dynamite throwers, while the other would gun them down we cleaned out the saloon and took down the wimpy Miniboss. The final area of this stage put us on the roof of the Saloon where we take down a Mecha equipped with a missile system that rains death from above.. and gatling guns that sweep half the screen. Playing smart we saved up a lot of our bombs which made short work of the boss. Clint and Annie finish their date at the saloon after dying only like 40 times (21 times Annie and 19 times Clint) ! Hey I have been on worse dates!

Crazy Cowboys

Amazon.com: Wild Guns - Nintendo Super NES: Video Games

After this the game lets you pick one of four stages, A goldmine, a train, a canyon and an arms depot. Each stage pits you against a crazy mix of cowboys and robots. Each stage gives you a point total which you can see as bounty for taking down the boss. Not every stage has the same bounty and of course the stages with the higher bounty offer higher difficulty! Yet bounties also go up if you beat a stage, so if you are interested in score there are some tactics to have fun with… for me bullet riddled Annie, we just decided to play the stages from high to low! Only to give on medium difficulty after 4 attempts of desolation canyon. We really wanted to beat the game and play through it and despite having unlimited continues that keep track of which stages you beat, having to do all three subsections of a stage on 3 life each. Now Normal is a doable difficulty but we did not have enough practice time.. and due to the world state we can’t play this as often as we would like.. so we would just try easy mode, hoping the game would not insult us at the end.

It gave us a perfect insight at what difficulty would do. The higher the difficulty the higher the health pool of enemies is and thus how smaller your window to dodge becomes. This will also result in you having more enemies on screen to deal with at the same time, as you can’t kill everyone quick enough to keep your screen rather clear. The higher the difficulty the more likely enemies are to use their special abilities, like drones throwing their own lasso or one of those deaths from above missile barrages. All in all easy was a lot more manageable, though still not very easy. There is a lot on the screen to manage. Powerups, your dodge notifications, enemy placement, the placement of your crosshair and the missiles falling from the sky , powerups and ground traps. Funnily I discovered that me and my friend struggled with different things. He kept getting hit by traps and missiles while I failed to see a notification of a bullet. Which helped us get a flow where we warned each other of one of those.

The single player mode of this game as such is a bit tricky, there is so much happening I am convinced you will always have a weakness and there is no one to polish it out, and it is not as fun either. The action is a bit repetitive, even though all stages offer a pretty diversive, way of approaching things. The mine has enemies as tiny dots in the distance, the train has enemies zipping past and changing positions, the canyon has a lot of enemies that can stun! So each stage is different in how you approach it .. but it is all very samey in it’s pacing, which is why you really need a friend for this. Competing for the higher score is also a lot more fun than getting a highscore in some random list. The set high scores are super easy to beat. We beat the game and already set the high score.. while we actually did pretty terrible. So just beating high scores by yourself would not be fun at all! Maybe if you beat the game once or twice to beat your personal best.. but with how many games we have access to nowadays , no one will do that. So it really is a game for two.

This also helps with the game’s biggest appeal. Finding out what craziness is next. The enemies are really crazy and most bosses are really fun! There is one really boring flame tank thing but there are also some bizarre bosses that are super fun to learn and face. The mid stage bosses are fairly fun as well, though unfortunately these are the ones that are reused the most. In a way there are some similarities with Cowboy Bebop ..but without the break. Think Bebop meet’s Gurren Lagann, while graphically reminding me a bit off Final Fight mixed with Metal Slug. That feeling and craziness is also the biggest appeal. You don’t play this game for the challenge , you might not even play it to beat it every single time you play it for the fun, in a similar way why you play Pacman or Tetriis. There is just something fundamentally fun about this game.

That same appeal is unfortunately also it’s biggest downfall. Because it has that arcade appeal it’s linear/level based setting makes it less repeatable than it’s competitors. Where you can play a Pacman a bit every day, this you will put down for a fair while after you beat it. It feels more like a beat em up with guns. However where Beat Em ups let you play another character that does really play differently as the other, here it doesn’t feel that way. Because you walk on a 2d plain instead of a 2.5d plan your actions are much more set and because enemies target you in specific ways , knowing how they will react will get you past them each time. At least in Beat ‘m ups they will move slightly differently. This makes Wild Guns a perfect game to beat once a year with a friend. I really like this game a lot but I also don’t want to play it again any time soon, maybe I want to get the reloaded version someday so I can play the dog on a drone trough the extra stages! Now I just need to hope the Dog on a drone comes with a pink skin!

Did you ever play Wild Guns?! Do you have a favourite arcade like title? What character would you play? I have so many questions for you I might have to sleep on it! In the meantime you can already babble in the comments! Because remember, Friendship is Magic but Dreams are even more wonderful! Oyasumi.

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