I like variaty. Pop’n has alot of it, but playing the same songs I cannot beat over and over again does not gain me skills. I would like to get into IIDX I think… I don’t know. Please convince me if you have any input. The controller and one game is a small investment, but getting all the IIDX and a (possibly) ASC is quite a heafty investment. I did it for Pop’n so it is possible. I am also starting to lean further and further from DDR.

My wife was driving when the accident happen. It acctually happen before I made the last post, but I wanted to take pics first. This guy went through a stop sign and my wife T-Boned his right rear quarter panel. We have been on the phone with his insurance company on and off all day. They are saying he is not in their data base… f-ed up if you ask me.

http://www.shapermc.com/Truck/

There they are… :’(

I pushed myself a little lastnight with Hypers. After my entry yesterday I decided that I will not get better with out challenging myself.

Roller Coaster - Jet Coaster Girl
Cats - Cat’s Eye
Highso - In the mood
… 1 other, can’t remember it though, it was pretty easy.

Anyways, this brings my Hyper completion up to 10 total songs on Pop’n 9 alone. This makes it probably about 30 hypers that I can beat total. The Highest Hyper that I have ever beat was a 27, but 24 seems to be about the level that I can do.

Right now I have two hurdles to get over. 1) Speed: The ability to not only hit buttons faster, but also read them faster. I usually only have a problem reading 2 or more note combos. 2) Multi-tasking: doing something with my left hand (like keeping a beat or an easy melody) while my right hand is doing something different. This just takes time… alot of time as I still am having problems past the basic level. I am watching some Tatsujin (mainly YOS) videos and seeing how the hands are managed in these situations.

Well I finally finished that stupid board game for Pop’n 8. 100% of the songs opened! w00t!! The last 5 or 6 songs I opened were quite awesome, but I cannot remember a single one of them X( None the less is still makes the purchase well worth it. I am now back to working on opening up all of 9’s songs. I have this … mental delema … where if there are still things to open then I should just be playing enough to open the songs, not trying to practice Hypers to improve my skills. My brain says that I could be “wasting my time” playing songs to get better at hypers while better songs could be waiting to get unlocked. This being the case for 8 it has re-inforced my thinking of it for 9. Blahhh, I am at 47% of 9 open, I will be making progress again soon.

On a side not my wife is up to being able to play up to level 17 songs at X3 or 4 speed :D YAY! I was quite impressed that she quit worring about what level song she was plaing and just went for the gusto :D

Pupdate: There are some new pictures of my puppy up at www.shapermc.com/puppy/ but they all turned out like ass.

Mystic River: Great movie, although I am bit confused about the ending. I was very impressed with the calibur of the acting and the evocation of thought that you get from it. But I am not sure I like the message that the movie may be trying to portray. I am not too sure what it is though, that is my main problem. The movie is very focused until about the last 20 min, then I get very mixed emotions about it. None the less 3.5 stars out of 4

EMO PART:

I did not think that I would be doing these, but I may as well. Shmups (Shoot’emUps of the overheadd forced scrolling kind)are a passion of mine. Actually acomplishments are. If there is nothing left to do in something (Like if you were to score 100,000 on the EX version of a song for Pop’n) then I usually stop. This does happen on a few games, those are usually the games that I end up not liking. I enjoy infinite growth. That was the background.

I was always under the impression that I was one of the best gamers. Yea, I know that is a big egotistical comment, but the only other gamers that I was around most of my life were worse than me at all games (aside from sport games, I never played them). So this gave me the impression that I was pretty damn good. Hell I even took 2nd place at a Marvel VS Capcom (1) tourneyment back in college (it was on campus with about 20 people, nothing major).

Over the last 4 or more years I have found the internet to be an amazing source for information about people with gaming passions. My “I am a top teir gamer” impression was soon shattered. I found that I am in an above average gamer, but I want to score the 90%, not the 70%, on a test. Before the internet setting goals like a one credit clear was unthought of. Why? Well in the US cheating in games is a skill, similar to hacking. The more you could do with the less effort the better you were. I knew I was a determined person and had the ability to spend mind numbing ammounts of hours in games, so I took it upon myself to train and grow stronger.

Shmups were games that I enjoyed alot, so I decided to find some in MAME that were fun. I ran into Don Pachi and loved it. Upon finding the Sheep’s site on it at the bottem of it there is this thing saying that beating it on one creadit is doable… LOL yea right. So I try. It is fun so I keep it up with a few different games as well. I would spend hours upon hours on just one game. I probably spent about 70 or 80 hours on ESPrade (the last 1CC attempt I tried) over a 2.5 month peroid of time with anywhere from 1 to 2 hours a night and at least 6 nights a week. I could never pass the 4th level. It felt like a wall that I could never see around.

I came out of it a better shmupper and containing more skills than I use to, but still only scoring about 80%. Better than most worse than some. I cannot explain it.Aside from a few horizontal shmups I was crap at this. DDP-DOJ was a real eye opener. None the less I was finding that my invested time was less and less. I did not feel that I was giving the games what they were worth in time so I just kind of put that aside.

I have come to the realisation that I, absolutely suck, a fighters. I use to think that I was good, remember, but I was way wrong on that. I have been training more and more on fighters, but without someone to play VS against I become bored and cannot train. Fighters has been a side project for a while.

Now Pop’n… I am starting to get scared. I was hoping that my “I cannot pass this” wall would be in the high 30’s, but it is looking like it may end up in the high 20’s. I am nervous. I have found out over time that I am nowhere near as able to “spend mind numbing ammounts of hours in games” that I thought I could.My attention span must have shortened over time. I can no longer finish RPGs, the last that I completed was Mario and Luigi and the only reason was because I am a Mario whore and it was short (25 hours)… the last before that I do not remember specifically, but it had been quite a long time (probably 3 or 4 years). I cannot play the same song in Pop’n for over an hour, this may sound like alot, but I would need 2 to 3 times as much time put into it to pass some of the songs at this point in time.

I just realised that I am rambling at this point. What this was all about is me being nervous that I will loose intrest in Pop’n and I am actually a little depressed about it. Blah sorry to bore you.

I refuse to mourn Reagans death. I am celebrating his life. You all should to. This man did some amazing things for the morale and well being of the country. A true patroit through and through. I spent the morning reading the memorial issue of TIME about him. Lots of good stuff I did not previously know. He went with God’s plan, and it took him far. Good night, Mr. President.

Well I beat one boss in Gambler De Z. That dungeon became quite confusing after a while. The bosses can be defeated by just chipping away at their health by playing their song over and over. When I was playing Sympathy Long (Sumire’s song) it was the hyper version and they flipped it upside down… WTF?! Like anyone can beat that. Just like real RPG end boss battles it took about 15 - 20 min to defeat her… LOL Pop’n Music is great. Much more fun than any RPG. I printed out the map for Gambler De Z from gamefaqs.com so that I can figure my way around it. Normally I would prefer not to do this, but it is all in japanese so I feel that just having a map with breif instructions will save me the headache of a language barrier.

Now, I am a bit envyous of Hai. He could just come in and beat a level 21 [H] aftern an hour or less of playing. He probably has less than 5 hours of total pop’n music experience. I wonder what his brevious Bemani history is because this does not seem too difficult to him. After more than 70 hours of Pop’n I am just inches above his level of pattern recognition.

I now have 4 hours to orginise an event for Saturday. I have to co-ordinate 4 people to meet at the same place, make sure all the gear is together, talk to the contact for the event and be in to work on Saturday. . . this blows. There goes my weekend.

I can’t tell yet, either Pop’n 7 or 9. Unfortunatly I do not agree with popular opinion on this that 8 is the best. I find that 9 (so far) has much more to offer than 8, and 7 is much more geared towards the beginners up to a full expert end of the specturm. Unless I am going to be unlocking some super fantabulos song in the not to distant future for 8 (there are about 40 secret songs to unlock for PnM 8 and about as many for 9) I have not even played all of 9 and it already has more good songs. Of course this is opinion. The “feel” and generas of 7 & 9 are more similar than 8 is to either. 8 has a very Poppy (as in pop music) contemporary feel to it where 7 and 9 are are more themed and less contemporary. It is weird I cannot describe it.

Another thing is that 8 contains a very large (IMO) ammount of songs that are in 7. They are not even some of the better ones either, making 7, still, a good own. Anyways there are a few songs that will probably end up making 8 worth it. But overall I would not recomend starting with it.

8 is geared towards an intermeadiate group of people it seems more so than beginners. I can mainly attest for this because my wife is stuck in the “beginner” frame (songs up to level 14 pretty much). I have said that befor though.

I have almost 50% of that board game unlocked. That Gambler De Z for Pop’n 9 will take forever though, I have only opend one character and one song … 2% -.-; I think that I fell in love with 9 almost instantly. I have played probably about 1/4 of the songs and have only hit 2 that were not good. For Pop’n 8 I have just been trudging along hoping that the songs would grow on me, and some have. I remember that about 50% of the songs in 7 took a while to grow on me. I opened up 100sec. Kitchen Battle and was set on beating it… HA! I did.

Also, 9 has pissed me off in one manner: there is no timer. WTF happen to it? I can’t wait to go home. I will be picking up Hai on my way home and giving him the full Pop’n Music experience tonight. Mabey Stone will show up if he does not end up in Baton Rouge.

Well, my skills went to the test last night. Aside from learning what Mimi and Kevin Bacon have in common (Hero) I could transfer almost all of my skills instantly to new songs in Pop’n 8. I got a ton of 90K+ songs and a few 95K+ songs. It seems like 8 is much easier than 7, but I cannot put my finger on as to how. I beat a few hypers, but I mainly spent the night trying to move my little player 1 across Japan and hearing all the songs. I am a bit disapointed about the ammount of songs from Pop’n 7. Honestly they did not even grab some of the best songs, oh well. It made me go to bed late ~_^

At points my wife was getting pissed at me: “About damn time you finally missed a note!” I forget how much higher a skill level I am than her sometimes. Some songs I only got one or 2 bads on my first time playing… now I can see how certain people move their skills from months of IIDX over to Pop’n.

Also just a a kind of small side note: this Pop’n seemes to be geared at a higher level of Pop’n competience. Not as many songs level 12 and lower in this as in 7. There also seems to be a heafty ammount of songs (hypers) right at my level. Interesting.

Anyways, I strolled down memory lane today over at this post. I love the arcade experience, and am damn happy that I can offer it to myself.

edit:

Just got Pop’n Music 8 and 9… I shal keep busy untill the end of the day, but it will be difficult. I also just got the coolest SonSon little … thingy! I don’t know what else to call it. The thing that says SonSon is about 1 inch long for reference:

SonSon Thingy!

I also got a Chun Li plush and some resin kits. Man, Japan would be an awesome place to visit.

Well, I played DDR this weekend. With in about 3 songs I had down recognition of the arrows. Getting my feet to hit them was a different thing. I played the DDR Ultramix (Xbox) version. Wow, these songs suck. Like hard. There were only about 5 “good” songs (as in not bad) and about 2 songs that I liked. I hope that if I get DDR MAX 2 that it has better music. I could pass all but a few songs on light mode the first night (Friday). On Saturday I passed a few more. There is one huge difference between DDP and Pop’n: you’re tired as hell after DDR for an hour or so.

My wife was not as excited about DDR as she was before she played. She found it even more difficult to get her feet to do the correct things. She was also complaining about how slow some of the songs were. I don’t think that she is too big on buying it anymore.

I passed quite a few more hypers on Pop’n. Marching*, Percussive, Therapy, Circus*, Innocent, Night Out remix… I want to say a few more as well, but cannot remember. (* = first try). For Percussive I don’t know how I did it, but I did. I could only do it once, but I blew it out of the water. The “flush” part where it speeds up is the only part that gets me, everything else I am almost perfect with. I also practiced Melancholy for about 40 min last night. I can beat it when I turn the song down to a 4 (5 being default) speed. But I can get nowhere near beating it with it on full speed. I will probably just do it all of a sudden when I try it again. Same thing with Retro Future, I think it was just getting a bit too late and I was tired.

I also have my deliver confirmation # for Pop’n 8 and 9 saying that it is sitting downstairs… I have to wait until 12:30 to get it then until about 5 or 5:30 tonight to play it. Today will go so slow I can feel it. I am VERY interested to see how my skills will transfer to the new songs from 8 and 9. Will I be able to instantly (well with in only a very few tries) be able to get up to level 24 songs? Will I pull off hypers in these easier? Very anxious.

The puppy has been training much better. She is pissing in the house less. Since Tom spent the weekend we let her sleep in our room Friday and Saturday night. She was good (no pissing) but she kept waking me up. I felt like I got no sleep all weekend. I went to bed at about 3:30 am on Friday (stupid DDR) and woke up at about 1 in the afternoon. I felt like crap. Then I went to bed at about 2:30 on Saturday and did not wake up until 1. She would just play, scratching, gnawing, running, or just taking up room. This in turn left me crabby all weekend and I complained at everything.

I also saw Harry Potter 3 on Saturday night. I ran into someone from work, I hate when that happens. I had nothing to talk with her about, but she felt it necessary to chat. I brought my GBA SP to kill time when you have to wait for a movie for over an hour, I did not want to talk to her. I am too damn polite. Anyways, the movie, right.

It was much better than the second movie. The second Potter, I felt, was far too tailored to people who had read the book. This was because there was little information about certain things that seemed to have more importance. If that does not make since, let me go over a scene (not a spoiler) from the second that was like this: the wizard’s dual. The class is about to have their FIRST lesson on dueling with wands and after a brief, failed, demonstration Harry and Malfoi (the blond kid, I probably spelled it wrong) get on the table and have a full out Wizards dual. Perhaps I missed this, but there was absolutely NO training in dueling; yet they were both instant pros at it.

Now there was training involved in the book my wife informed me and this made it easy for her to overlook things like this. But there were WAY too many scenes, and some were worse offenders, in the second movie. The third was not quite so. While there were a few scenes that confused me (like the “Scooby Doo” scene in that house), nothing felt overly tailored to persons who had read the books. I did enjoy it quite a bit more than 2 as well. I always enjoy a film that does not try to wrap everything up in one clean package by the end. Similar to “The Empire Strikes Back” I left the theatre wanting to know how the story continues. The only thing that I would have wanted to know before going to the movie was that Gary Oldman (one of the main reasons that I went to see it) was not in the movie, aside from being on the video posters, for more than the last 30 min of the movie. While giving a stunning performance I was left wanting more. Still overall I give the movie 3 out of 4 stars. Not as good as the first, but much better than the second