Last night I played more Pop’n Music. I played all the songs that reminded me of why I fell in love with the game. It was a blast. Still I cannot beat Surf Rock.

None the less I printed up a list of all of the Hyper songs that have a challenge level of 20 or less. I picked 20 becuase that is what Lounge Pop is (Dimanche). There are 13 songs to keep me busy while trying to get over my level 23 wall.

Industrial | 17
Innocent | 19
Autumn | 14
Precious | 20
Lounge Pop | 20 (done!)
Mind | 18 (I think that I beat this one too)
Kids | 17
Spiritual | 12
J-Dance | 16
Folky | 18
Scat | 18
Kitertsu 2 | 19
Therapy | 15

I hope I can do at least 3 to 5 of these by the end of of the weekend.

Also I am probably going to go with my 2nd idea to “Ghetto-ify” my Pop’n Box… sort of. I am going to go pick up a sheet of 1/2″ MDF after work (small sheet) and then use my 2nd tactic from yesterday. I hope it works.

$6.50 PnM Poster! Hell yea, time to spread the love!

http://hh141.hiphip.com/templates/frmTemplateS.asp?CatalogID=7875&SearchYN=N&subFolderID=184

Hyper, done! Woot. This is the first Hyper that I looked at and went: “What the hell? I cannot play this!” It only took, shit like what, an hour of playing it over and over. I had to play phrases 40 - 47 for close to 20 min just so that the section did not drop my bar down all the way. I still have problems passing it after I worked on Surf Rock for about an hour as well. I can get 75K+ on Dimanche HP but I am still just passing narrowly. I about averageing 52-65 bads depending on if I get confused or not. I can still fail Surf Rock with only 58 Bads, I am increadible.

After talking with kotetsu I have realised that this will not be so easy to do (the buttons, sorry I started in the middle of a thougth). I think that I am going to have to make a Pop’n Ghetto Box. I have 2 options:

1) My wife is working at a place that has some extra ply wood that is 3/8th inch thick. It may just be thin enough to where I can keep the middle ring in on the buttons. (Middle ring Images can be found here.) Until I figure out how to cut a 3.6″ hole in my MDF I can just use thin wood for the top peice and hope it does not break.

2) Really Ghetto-ify it and take out the middle ring (whick would make the button look as though it is hovering about 1/8th inch off the surface) and then hope that I can get the nut to attach to the buttons threads on my current MDF.

I have already invested FAR too much into what I had initally thought was going to be a cheap product. I would really like to start using an ASC to practice as I know the more “use to” my custom controller I get, the harder it will be to make the switch. This is all making me a bit frustraded because I have put all this cash into it and I cannot do anything but look at a pile of supplies.

Shit work is boring.

I cannot stop trying to figure out how to fix the sixe of my wood for my Pop’n Box. Oh yea, did I mention that the wood is too thick? Yea, I got 3/4″ MDF for the project and it is like 2/4″ too thick. This blows. I am use to working with US buttons where it is always so deep that I need thicker wood. So I am thinking that I should just drill a large hole about 1/2 way throgh then clean out the hole. Get the 1″ bit that I need and then finish it out. This will be a huge pain in the ass though, and take 2X as long as I had previously though. And I still have no idea how I want it to all go together. Grr

Guilty Gear XX: Oh how I suck at thee. Let me count the ways:

1) I can’t combo for crap
2) My DP motion is shite
3) I cannot chain combos
4) Anything I can do in practice I cannot seem to remember when it comes to fighting real fights.

I can go on like that but I will just say that I suck and that I probably pissed off Stone with my incompetience.

Found out today that there is a continuation of the Tenchi OAV series being released currently in Japan where Tenchi has to choose women! Rawk!

Yes, I picked up wood for my Pop’n Box (I have dubbed it so). I got it cut down to size and everything. For some reason I envisioned it being smaller, and lighter. Hmmm I did add 2″ to the side just to be on the safe side…

Still no buttons, ahh, but soon. Perhaps today UPS will show up at my door and say “Hey, here are those buttons that you cant use because your box is not assembled yet! Have a nice day.”

I have no idea how to put this damn box together. I want it too look really spiffy. I am tired of spending cash on it so I think that I will just use my Sky Blue paint for it. It was an ok color (used it for an arcade cabinet) but I was hopeing for an orange or a yellow. Oh well. Anyways I need to get a router (or how ever it is spelled) so I can make the edges look nice. I also need to prime and pain it. Oh yea, do anything but get the wood cut.

Blah. I did sell a few more games. :)

Lollers!
http://duck.cool.ne.jp/gamebaka/sencon/matcon.html

Neato

Well after my incident on Friday with Pop’n I did not play at all for the rest of the weekend. I really took my anger at myself out of the game and carried it with me for the rest of Friday and Saturday. I sat around and played my MAME cab for a few hours on Sat. just so that I could avoid Pop’n. I need to spend a good amount of time just re-learning this game. I have most of tomorrow off so I may spend it doing that. I feel absolutly stupid at this. Like I now understand what other people mean when they say that they have hit a wall. That is what it feels like, I tried to find a way around it, but there is none.

Saturday my wife picked up Wario Ware for the Game Cube. We played it for a few hours. While fun, I have such a horrible advantage over everyone that I play with that I can see why it got rated poorly from people who have played it to death.

On Sunday I picked up Guilty Gear XX in a trade :D Yay! I got to practice some and I was doing some combo much better than before. I need to play real people. It was far too easy to beat the game on Very Hard. I could move it up to manic, but … I dunno. Stone looks like he will end up disapearing most of the summer and Hai now has a job that he will be at every day. . . It is really difficult for me to get into Fighters when I have no one to play against.

Hopefully my jumbo buttons will come in for Pop’n early this week :) YAY! Thanks Dr. Shinobi. Now I just need to get my designs down…

I only managed to sell a hand full of games. I was kind of supprised. A lot of inital intrest (like 1/2 of my games) made me think this sale would not last long. Anyways I got prices up so I hope they sell better.

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91210
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/showthread.php?t=29604
http://dynamic5.gamespy.com/%7Eshmups/shmupsforum/viewtopic.php?p=89206#89206

THIS JUST IN: Some prick from three states away thinks that because he is ranked higher than I am can give me shit about something a year old completly UN_FUCKING_RELATED to the topic that an email was about. Mood was just changed.

Well I did beat Miracle but I had to leave it at X1 speed. Oh well. Anyways:

Hypers, WTF! I got pretty pissed at myself for not being able to see what is going on in a Hyper song. I tried a whole lot yesterday and I still cannot do any. It is not that I just cannot do them, but that when I try I have no idea where to begin practicing them.

Feck!@1

Hmm, while wandering around the net I found a program called “Feeling Pomu”. Here is a page with most of the BMS from Pop’n 7 with a link at the top to the program:

http://duck.cool.ne.jp/gamebaka/popn/pomyu.html

Unfortunatly the sound does not like my PC, but it looks like it runs on really low system specs (Hai!!). This would be really neat if I did not have the game already. I ran into a few other sites with some BMS for it, but I lost them… Oh well.

I also found out more about Orange Lounge: It is really just a composer named Tomosuke with another vocalist. Here is a link to every song Tomosuke has done:

http://www.psn.ne.jp/~slayer/allmusic/artist/FunakiTomosuke.html

I got another good hour or two in. Not with Classic 4, actually I only played it twice all night. I haven’t played it in over 2 days. My neighbor said that he wanted to see me try it when I had paused going through the CS mode. So I told him that it was tough and I cannot pass it.

Weird, first try and I passed it.

I have mainly been practicing level 20 and over songs only. So that probably helped me pass it. There are not a whole lot of level 20+ songs in normal 9 line. I still cannot do almost any Hypers (I can do Watermelon Woman, but that does not really count). I will occasionally feel brave and throw in a Hyper and try to brave through it, but I fail horribly. I will prevail through practice I believe.

I almost feel bad that Pop’n is taking over all my other gaming. I have a list of over 30 games that I still need to go back and finish (some are higher priority than others) but they have just taken a back seat to Pop’n. After last night I could see an entire weekend (like 20 hours) just spent Pop’n if there was a good rotation.

I am surprised that this is not in the US. When Beatmania was on its 3rd or 4th append for the PS1 I managed to find a machine at a Dave & Busters-esq place in Chicago. It looked lonely. I played a few rounds and annihilated the scores (Beatmania was so-o easy when it was only 5 key. I use to have the Konami 5 key controller and 1 - 3rd append). Anyways when other people saw me playing it they got interested and I started a rotation. I think Pop’n would be like that. I would play in an arcade for free to generate interest in a game.

Seriously US arcades are so stupid. They need to give managers free quarters and have them play the games that do not generate as much interest and tell them it is there job to get good at it. I think that when people see high-level play in a game it sparks interest and competition in them. Tournaments give people a reason to come in and train when there is no one to compete with. I do not think US arcade operators even try any more. When Dimahoo was at game club this one kid say me playing well and tried for a few quarters after I left. I also convinced my friend to compete against my High Score (I took the #1 spot with in 5 credits ^_^; )

Ahhh I am off on a tangent. Anyways I decided that Pop’n is much better than Amplitude. I only have 7 songs left to beat on normal!

P.S. Konami released the level 1 BMG for Gradius V. Click on it in my current music to hear the beauty.