All posts by pentarou

Test post

It’s nearing the end of 2022 and my blog looks different?

Twitter is dying so I might need to revive something here. It’s like the fall of Rome and the subsequent Dark Ages

What happened

…is that I got into a relationship, then moved across the country for work.

No, seriously.

My current addiction has been GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons, which is actually a pretty terrible thing.

I am still working on Miku Flick but this is somewhat on the back burner for now.

And there isn’t much news in the world of Android and iPhone crapware lately – just thousands of P&D clones.

Merry Christmas

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here, but it’s also been awhile since anything interesting popped up on my RSS feed.

2次元解禁!?おっぱいソムリエ ちょいエロ萌えゲーム

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Forbidden 2D?  Oppai Sommelier Super-Ero Game

In this amazing game one endeavors to beat the world rankings for guesstimating breast size of … yes … that’s right, you guessed it — 2D illustrated characters.

The company’s name is apparently “Oppai Sommelier“, which brings to mind the fine literary world of the esteemed wine review, for example this choice paragraph taken from Wine.Woot today:

Helios is the sun god in Greek mythology and the sun plays a vital role in creating great wine.  Grapevines in Napa Valley are blessed with glorious sunny weather from spring flowering through fall harvesting.  These splendid warm days combine with cool moonlit nights to make wines that exhibit an extraordinary complexity.  We often think of our wine as sunshine in a bottle.  Ruby-red color with black cherries and pink peppercorns on the nose, earthy plums and blackberries on the palate with a smooth texture and soft tannins. This wine is 100% Napa Valley Syrah from the Atlas Peak area.

It wouldn’t be that hard to sub in “boobs” for “wine” and “women” for “grapevines”, but I’ll leave that to your imagination. ☆

Mac switchover

So this generation I’m mostly running Mac stuff while my laptop ages; I’ll be waiting for next year to pick up PC stuff so I can run PSO2.

I’ve unintentionally ended up being a total convert partly due to work supporting iOS devices exclusively.

Some impressions:

  • Macbook:  Engineering is phenomenal.  Keyboard is great.  OS works well and I’m very happy that XCode runs like a charm, plus a ton of dev stuff is available out of the box due to its BSD underpinnings.  Beyond that I’m not exactly blown away; I managed to kernel panic the machine twice in the first day.  Office is slow as shit on this machine.  Apple’s iWork suite is nice, esp. Keynote, but I’m not exactly shitting my pants in excitement here.  I could buy two good Windows laptops for the price of one MBP.  This is not insignificant.
  • iPad 2:  Apple has the tablet market under wraps.  This much I am convinced of.  Keynote on a projector is the best fucking thing ever.  Add a bluetooth keyboard and I don’t even usually bring a laptop around with me anymore.  Apple is just too far ahead in the app market department, and they know it.  Also, as you may be aware I play a fuckton of Miku Flick and the various Cave games, and they’re even better on a full-size tablet than they were on the iPod.
  • iPhone 4S:  Apple does not have the phone market conquered, as far as I’m concerned.  Android and Win7 are shaping up to be great competitors in this class of device, and as much as I like iOS, I like Swype even better.  I’ve found that the primary differentiator between my iOS and Android phone is that I play a lot more games and listen to more music on the iOS device.  Being able to load Keynote slides and give presentations off the phone is also amazing, but at the end of the day, I rarely do this since I’m usually carrying the iPad around.

I guess what I’m concluding is basically this: the iPhone isn’t as impressive as I was hoping it would be, nor the macbook, for the price; the iPad is still where it’s at and I expect Apple will be dominating the tablet market for some time.  I’m actually thinking about switching over to a next-gen Nexus phone when my contract is up, but I doubt my workplace will support it, sadly.

Seasonal update

Down the rabbit hole…

  • Persona 4 Arena (PS3)!  I decided that I liked Aigis, the character, enough to try to learn Aigis, the fighting game character, and have been training hard to become non-shitty at the game. So far, I’ve managed to climb the ranks to a PSR in the mid-200s, which actually is probably pretty bad, but the game is fun, so I’d say I’m getting my $60’s worth.
  • Chrono Trigger (iOS):  After watching a Japanese let’s-play on niconico, I thought I’d swap my iPhone over to Japanese language and pay the Squeenix tax for some nostalgia.
    • I’d conclude that Ted Woolsey is the man who made Chrono Trigger the phenomenon that it was.  The game is good, sure, but it’s not the same without Woolsey’s translation.
  • Miku Flick/02 (iOS):  I haven’t been posting about this very much, but I did buy the game and all the DLC packs.  I’m irritated that the leaderboards are swamped with cheaters, but it’s pretty obvious who’s genuine and who’s not, and let’s face it, I’m using the game to work on my Japanese sight-reading skills and to enjoy some Vocaloid songs.  I’m currently sitting at #30 on the global total leaderboards (including cheaters) but this is probably mostly because I bought the DLC packs; my position for initial songs is closer to #100.  I don’t have any top-10 scores this time around, but this is because there are no livetune songs in the initial packs.  I’ll be shooting for the S-rank on livetune’s Yellow eventually.
  • Petit Rock Shooter (iOS): Uh, it’s Angry Birds with incredibly expensive DLC. Fun, mind you, but no way am I buying into this DLC stuff…actually I’m sorta angry about this; it’s just a giant cash-in.  You know what would be amazing?  Scorched Earth with BRS characters.

Incidentally, I didn’t buy Mushi Futari’s Black Label release because the price and DLC cost was … underwhelming.  I spent that money on buying music albums from Amazon/iTunes instead.

…Meanwhile, I’m waiting for Torchlight 2 to be released on Mac, but I don’t have time for it right now — priorities, priorities!

Also there hasn’t been much interesting Android/iPhone stuff lately to post about.  There was a game where you roll the phone to swing a hula hoop around random illustrated characters, but most everything else has been uninteresting, uninspired tile puzzle, block-kuzushi, random-pantyshot type crapola.  I swear, I should get involved in the Android shitware business, I could make better and more hilarious games than these fuckers.

Current craziness

As usual I’ve decided to drop off the face of the internet due to a variety of reasons.

  • Work stuff.  Always.
  • Skullgirls.  I’ve never played a fighting game seriously before; I picked up a Hori stick on the cheap and have been working on some basic combos and blocking.  It’s kinda fun.  The online community has been nice on PSN.  Not sure how I feel about the internet community though, seems pretty malicious.
  • Random Kemco iOS RPGs. I never played Top Gear or Shadowgate but I’ve been drawn to $0.99 RPGs. They’re tacky. Actually they kinda suck. But they were $0.99. What can I say?
  • Exe-Create‘s Dragons Odyssey Frane, actually an iOS port of Frane III from many years ago. It’s actually pretty terrible. The voice acting is also pretty terrible. I mean people are happy on the internets about having the original Japanese voices, but I’m not sure they’re any better than the English ones.

I am currently neglecting Miku Flick and Mushi Futari; apparently Mushi Futari Black Label is coming out presently.

3DS region lock is depressing, good news: I don’t have money for a 3DS anyway.

Currently waiting for Persona 4 Arena, which I’d be playing entirely for Aigis. And uh, maybe Unchained Blades. Not too interested in picking up new games at the moment, too many work+hobby projects piling up…

Talking Launcheroid

From a review:

[おかえりなさいませご主人様]というセリフはうっかり第三者に聞かれてしまうと恥ずかしい。家族の前で使用する際は注意が必要だ。セリフパターン変更機能がほしかった。

It’s embarrassing if strangers hear lines like “Welcome back, master”. Caution is needed when using the app in front of family. It would be nice if it were possible to change her speech patterns.

Direct link: Google Play. Free, but region locked. :'(