October 30th, 2023 (Monday)

I'm playing Harvest Moon DS Cute for the first time in over five years and I forgot how ridiculous the opening cutscene is.

The Harvest Goddess and Harvest King get into an argument over how shitty of a farmer you are. She calls him "baldy" and he retaliates by sending her and 101 Harvest Sprites to another fucking dimension. It's now YOUR responsibility to save the Harvest Goddess by finding sixty of the 101 Harvest Sprites in order to bring her back. The Harvest King even tells you they got punished because "you didn't work". Suuuuuure.

Unfortunately, HMDS Cute removed that cutscene from HMDS where your dog attacks the mayor and you can either intervene or (presumably) let the mayor get mauled to death by your dog and have the credits roll.

November 12th, 2023 (Sunday)

It's been a few days since I last played HMDS Cute, but I'm going for Skye. He's a weird character who leaves me with SO MANY pointless questions for a 15+ year old game that's probably not getting a remake any time soon.

Where did he get the nickname "Phantom Thief"? Did somebody give him that nickname or was it originally his XBox gamer tag? Does he have ANY friends or family besides the main character (assuming you bother to unlock and befriend him) and their eventual child (assuming you play long enough to marry him)?

What got him into stealing? Why does he feel the need to leave cards warning people that he's gonna steal from them? Where does he stay if he doesn't live in Forget-Me-Not Valley? If it's Mineral Town, does he also steal from Mineral Town? Why does nobody mention Skye stealing from them outside of heart events?

Why is EVERYBODY a bumbling idiot when he steals from them?

There's a heart event where Griffin and Muffy are hypervigilant because Skye left them a card, but they get lured out of the bar because they smell curry. There's another event where the main character, Celia, and Vesta get frozen by Skye's chick-beam (I'll get to that in a moment) but Marlin doesn't chase after him?? He even says at the end of the event that it's his fault Skye got away (it is).

Skye has this power called the "chick-beam", which he uses to freeze women so they can't fight him when he steals from them...pretty sus. He mentions in one of his heart events that it's magic. Is Skye a magical character like the Witch Princess or is he just a civilian who somehow knows magic?

What are the logistics of Skye's chick-beam?

How did he discover his chick-beam? What's the range and how powerful is it? If someone's standing far enough away from Skye or hiding behind something, can they avoid the chick-beam? If Skye used a chick-beam in front of a mirror, would it bounce backwards? Can someone resist the chick-beam if they train themselves? Does the chick-beam work as long as Skye considers or sees somebody as a chick?

Skye was a very strange bisexual man on adderall. Out of control. It's a shame he doesn't continue ransacking the valley after you marry him, I wish I could enable his kleptomania and make him worse. Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'd love to see how a hypothetical remake of HMDS would handle this because his chick-beam is *kind of* problematic in hindsight.

December 17th, 2023 (Sunday)

I had this entire entry written out in Codepen, but I accidentally clicked on one of my bookmarks and lost all my progress. Shit fucking sucked.

It's been a while since I last wrote anything. Whoopsies! Anyways, here's something I found interesting: Nintendo made a yoshi digital pet game in 1998 to promote Yoshi's Story.

Click here to keep reading

December 18th, 2023 (Monday)

I had an unhealthy obsession with Total Drama when I was 6-7 and 12-15 years old. The last time I watched anything Total Drama related was in...2019? I started watching the reboot last night, but I accidentally spoiled who wins along with several major plot points (I didn't know there's already a season 2 of the reboot and watched a few minutes of S02E01, which opens with a recap of the last season). Oh well.

Here's my attempt at liveblogging episodes 1-12 (I can't find episode 13) of the Total Drama reboot. Don't expect anything revolutionary, this mainly consists of me saying "oh damn that's crazy".

Click here to read this entry that's longer than the fucking bible.

March 25th, 2024 (Monday)

I'm almost four months late, but happy New Year! Did you know that Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons had several mobile phone games? Here's one of them.

Click here to keep reading