Japan: Day Twelve: Part 2

Here's some stuff I forgot to mention in the last post. Why don't I edit the old post? I dunno.

I ate my first Big Mac of all time today.

It was okay, certainly quite filling. Now I wonder if they taste different in North America, but in North America there are always other burger places with the same level of convenience as McDonalds and much tastier burgers so I doubt I will ever know...

Title was a misnomer; That was the only Japan-related news. Now onto: things not having to do with Japan

Anime
Yeah I've still been keeping up with anime in Japan. Feels sorta weird. I need stuff to do after I get home, anyways. But yeah really only following two shows this season, A-Channel and Nichijou. I watched a bunch of other first episodes but none of them were so good that I felt I needed more. I figure I'll go back and watch them when they're over if they turn out to be good. I mean stuff like Tiger and Bunny, Kaiji and a few of the slice of lifes and stuff are said to be really, really good but... it's not like I even need an anime to be good? Or rather, when I'm watching something as it comes out, I'm doing so for some specific reason, something I enjoy about it that I want to get weekly, or maybe because I enjoy discussing it after it airs or something. When there's just a generally good series I want to watch I'd rather wait until I can watch it all at my own pace. I dunno. There's exceptions all over the place, too. Basically though Nichijou I watch every week because it makes me laugh a lot and there's always references to it all over /a/ that I won't get if I don't watch it. A-Channel I watch every week because withdrawal from that level of moe would probably kill me. Seriously, the path of destruction that show has left through the bush it isn't beating around is truly horrific. It's like some weird cargo cult got a hold of the sales figures for K-On!! and other such shows and decided they'd save time just by throwing in every selling element as fast as possible. I can picture the executives:
-"Hey, 'God Knows' was really popular, right? And K-On! sold like fifty different soundtracks due to all the insert songs it had, right? Why don't we have insert songs?"
-"Uh, sir, since there's no actual connection to music in the show, where would we have the insert songs..?"
-"It doesn't matter. Just stick one in every episode."
They just don't care! I'm reminded of one of my favorite Plinkett lines and one of my favorite lines from anything ever: "Fire all weapons! Fire all weapons repeatedly, over and over again until they blow up! Keep firing photon torpedoes non-stop!". It's just like wanton moe. Weapons of moe destruction. If this sells as well as I think it will it will be a sign that anime is dead or immortal or infinite or invincible or a shambling husk of what it once was or pandering or completely ignorant of its fanbase which is either stupid or just no longer cares and the worst part is that the only thing I could buy from this series is the two volumes of manga and maybe a few chinsy other accessories, no figures or anything yet, what an injustice, like seriously this show is not fair.

Nichijou, on the other hand, is excellent by all metrics and a really well-done show that I can hardly find fault with. The last episode might be my favorite so far.

Video game ideas

Tetris Abstraction: Okay so I want to make a variant of Tetris. Another one. Gasp. This is maybe like the ninth or tenth one I've proposed. This one really isn't a variant of Tetris as much as it is like... a visualizer, or something. Basically I started thinking about two games that would receive the same inputs but would be totally different. I'm not talking about like, TAS Mega Man Quad Runs. I'm thinking more like... I dunno I'll just explain this specific Tetris example.

So you have two screens. On the left is Tetris. Normal Tetris. On the right is a game that is like 16-bit era Zelda, only your character moves on more of a defined grid. In the Zelda-like game, your challenge is to follow a trail of coins and defeat enemies that wander in your path by pressing the proper one of two buttons - probably based on the colour of the enemy, or something. DO YOU GET IT YET? Basically the trail of coins would lead you in one horizontal direction somewhere up to five squares, on the way you'd fight monsters equal to what rotations you have to do, and then you'd move upwards to drop it. So you'd be playing both games by playing either game! Nifty! I dunno I feel like I could explain this better if I drew a picture but a bit too lazy for that now.

Tassan and the Quest for the Tools: This would be a Metroidvania-style 2d game. Like those games, you'd explore around, beat a boss to get an item, and then use that item to explore around some more. Of course, there's a gimmick, and the gimmick can probably be fully surmised from the title. The items you get allow you to play the game more and more like a TAS. The first item you get being slowdown. Then you get... savestates, maybe. Then frame advance. Maybe turbo way earlier. LUA scripting? Memory watching? (not an actual memory watcher, but like a "fake" one that functions like one that was actually outside of the game would. A real one would hit some sort of weird incompleteness problem or something I think which is sort of interesting. Actually this "fake"ness would have to be true for frame advance and savestates and probably more too I think, not really sure, sort of interesting the idea of designing mechanics that screw with how the game runs at a very basic level.)

So I guess the question then becomes "how is the stay challenging when you get these tools if the difficulty in TASing is optimization, not just completion?" and that is a legitimate question. I guess the three ways to do it would be to like, demand optimization as well, make it so hard that it is still hard when TASing (maybe not even a thing?) or to use some sort of cool-down or mana or something when applying the tools. Each of these I think is a valid solution.

Tetris Party Deluxe
So I bought this after realizing that my flashcard couldn't run it. Oh well. Seems kinda cool to own another Japanese DS game, this makes... three. And it's Tetris, what am I going to miss out on with the language? (answer: I have no idea how to make online play work, but screw it:) I have so much stuff to do in this game. Sprint! Marathon! Hard marathon! Easy marathon! Perfect clears sprint! Wacky modes I can't even describe! Plus high scores for everything! Even how long it takes you to beat each difficulty of cpu! And the later difficulties are not something to sneeze at! Probably my favorite version of Tetris EVER. Wow, yup.

I guess that's about it. I'm sure there was something more but oh well worry about it later.