It’s been a bit since the previous site update, but that time has been filled with a couple of trips. Plus, work has been catching up to me for the season. Since I have a media job where I write stories for a publication, writing features and articles outside of that scope hasn’t exactly sounded fun recently.
Still, things have been going well and I’ve definitely tried to work some video gaming into the down time. Here are some quick notes on the short content I’ve created on social media, as well as thoughts on a few other recent happenings:
The Dave-Off 2 Takes Place at Galloping Ghost Arcade
At the end of February I was able to once again meet up with AHotLocalMILF at Galloping Ghost Arcade. Part of our multiplayer rituals include Ehrgeiz and Holosseum, and, unfortunately, Ehrgeiz was unavailable for play at that time.
For the purposes of multiplayer, both of us have gravitated toward using the character Dave in Holosseum, and we have established a gathering known as the Dave-Off to feature a series of mirror matches with the character Dave. What ensued was nearly half an hour of gameplay in Holosseum, that I highlighted in a video for April Fools Day.
Guest Play of Wyvern Wings on the GGA Stream
During that same trip, I was also able to reconnect with the staff of Galloping Ghost Arcade. On that day the arcade streamed scoring gameplay of the arcade game Wyvern Wings, and I was able to join to give the game a try.
On my third attempt I was able to progress decently through the game, resulting in a recorded house high score. I have a clip of that gameplay saved, used with permission by Galloping Ghost Arcade.
Music Gaming in the Arcade
Recent trips also allowed me to make a return to the BASHCon event in Toledo, as well as meet up with my friend for some play on StepManiaX.
Courtesy of K-Dog’s Arcade, I was able to once again play a Museca cabinet, and I finally grabbed my first “All Connect” (full combo) songs on the middle difficulty. The event also allowed me to play the drumming game Future Tom Tom for the very first time.
A recent StepManiax update added the RE-Venge song “Cyber Kyoto,” and I was able to give those charts a sight read.
La Calice Cup 6
Most of my April gameplay has seen me participated in La Calice Cup 6. Normally La Calice Cup includes a roster solely consisting of shmup titles, the sixth competition has returned to a “variety” format that includes other genres.
I’ve tried my best to keep up, but I’ve found I’m not very successful with the “dad games” that jokingly get added to the competitions (you know, along with shmups period). But in the case of the variety competition, La Calice Cup 6 includes the fighting game Waku Waku 7.
I’ve streamed Waku Waku 7 in the past, but the game always strikes me with the streaming curse and I never get a recorded 1CC play of the game. I recorded offline gameplay, and with a few strategy changes, I quickly obtained a 1CC and no-miss playthrough.
Scoring in Waku Waku 7 is strange, as it heavily relies on end-game bonuses. You have to complete the game in order to score bonuses that are normally tallied inbetween rounds in other fighting games. For competition purposes, this means you need to at least 1CC the game to gain these bonuses.
The game records how you finished a round (with items such as ending with a super move and getting a perfect netting a big base bonus) and this is then multiplied with the time remaining in that round. On top of that, if you manage to no-miss clear the game (no rounds lost), the game further awards you a cool 10 million points!
Exercise Games/Fitness
I have to admit I’ve been very lax about exercising over the past month. Since spring has arrived, I anticipated I would be able to start walking/jogging again, but, I should have known better with the Ohio weather. Approaching May, the weather still can’t decide if it wants to be 40 degrees or 80 degrees, and we’ve received abnormal amounts of rain and wind gusts.
Following a mechanical issue that happened with my vehicle, I’ve been very choosey about driving my vehicle, resulting in no trips made to Dave & Busters for Pump It Up since February. I have maintained a routine of resistance band curls, sit ups and squats, so there has been some activity, but an extreme lack of sleep recently has curbed my enthusiasm to set up any more intense exercise routines.
I’ve also kept my daily calorie count the same instead of doing the recommended 200 calorie reduction per day, so the weight loss has been on a slow drip recently. I’ve still lost 2 pounds since my previous update, but I further admit I’ve enjoyed a little bit more food lately.
It all goes in ebbs and flows, and, when the weather is conducive to outdoor activities, I anticipate this will pick up once again.
WrestleMania!
I was recently able to watch the Saturday WrestleMania event with friends, and that always gets me in the pro wrestling spirit!
Once again, I’ll point out that I did a guest feature on Gaming Hell based on Midway’s WWF: WrestleMania (arcade) back in January, and I’m still very proud of that feature!
Prior to the WrestleMania show, I was able to play WWE 2K22 on the Xbox Series S for the first time. I haven’t played the series since WWE 2K17, and WWE 2K22 was surprisingly alright for the short time I played it.
Hilariously, we played a Royal Rumble match and experienced a glitch that prevented us from finishing the match. With the floating characters, though, it was well worth it to continue watching to see what would happen next!
Chocobo Racing GP
Chocobo Racing GP has probably seen my biggest chunk of “current gaming” recently. I may end up doing a feature on the app at some point, but I figured I would toss a few thoughts into this roundup.
My family really likes the Chocobo character and I own a PlayStation version of the racing game, so we were looking forward to the new GP version on Nintendo Switch. I was disappointed to see there is no physical cartridge option for the United States, as I would have likely purchased that for collection purposes.
However, Square-Enix saw fit to release a “lite” version of the game, which provides an app that can be downloaded and played for free. As expected, the options are quite limited on the free version, but with mobile free-to-play apps existing over the previous decade, nothing in Chocobo Racing GP’s free version comes as a shock to me.
The free version gives players three characters to choose from and very limited customization options. This only disappointing because the player unlocks a series of items that do nothing for them unless they purchase the full game. This would probably be my biggest complaint of the free version, and this comes from someone who is very understanding of the free-equals-limited nature of these apps.
Unless players can network with someone who owns the full version of the game, they can only participate in the GP mode, which is being run in seasons similar to apps such as Rocket League or Fortnite. The mode randomly puts players into pools of competitors, and the player has the goal of making the top four of each race of eight players.
The GP circuit pools 64 players together, and then the top four of these eight races are group into a “top 32,” and further races trim the pack down to 16 and 8 before a champion is crowned. If you fail to make top four at any point before the final, you are eliminated and dropped back into the main menu.
The racing gameplay is great, but in adopting the Fortnite model of leveling and progression, the grind just isn’t worth it to someone on the free version. It seems to me the free version exists merely to feed extra players into the GP mode, making it almost like a public beta test of a game companies use to test the online stability. Perhaps if the price of Asian physical cartridge goes down, I’ll take that offer. The added bonus of that would be that we could download the free app on the other Switches in the household and link together for gameplay.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Movie
It hasn’t been a full month since the movie’s release, so I won’t go in depth with thoughts here, but my family did attend an early screening of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Watching Sonic the Hedgehog in a theater was one of the last things our family was able to do prior to COVID restrictions, so this put us full circle in being the first film we saw in returning to the theater.
I live in an area where, unless it is the weekend, there are maybe 20 people tops that attend movie screenings, so there was plenty of space and popcorn with which to enjoy the movie.
I did enjoy the original Sonic the Hedgehog movie, but my main complaint is in its slow start. Much like most movies, I feel you could remove half an hour out of Sonic the Hedgehog and it really wouldn’t change much. In stark contrast, Sonic 2 doesn’t need the “origin story,” and it gets to the point much sooner, and branching out in the Sonic universe allowed for even more referencing and Easter eggs. As a result, I very much enjoyed Sonic 2 and would highly recommend it.
As a bonus, the early screening allowed attendees to pick up an exclusive poster that looks great, along with a comic book. If you’re on the fence about watching part two after the first movie, I’d suggest giving the sequel a chance.
GemuBaka 
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