Instead of uploading a media thread, I think having an article on a monthly basis lets me explore more thoughts on a more detailed level. Also, I need to get some rust out of my system when it comes to writing anyways.

Video Games (Retro)

Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 (Nintendo, 2002)

Super Mario World on GBA was my christmas gift to myself. Thankfully, the cartridge I snagged at a cheap price was an OEM and not a repro. (There's a very small height difference when they're inserted.) I hadn't played these on real hardware and was able to revive my brother's GBA SP and my original Nintendo DS, and it just felt right to be able to play a game like this on real hardware again.

I've talked about this on bluesky, but if I remember anything being the biggest source of contention regarding these ports, it's the washed out visuals. As someone who can test these on multiple screens, I think the GBA SP AGS-101 makes these look the best.

Alisia Dragoon (Game Arts, 1992)

I got the Expansion Pack for the first time on NSO. Tried out Alisia Dragoon on the SEGA Genesis for the first time as well, despite loving the soundtrack for many years. I'd need to play it more to get better thoughts, but I like what I played as it's a slower paced platformer from what I normally play. Again, the music's incredible, especially Stage 1-1. Give it a listen here.

Pokemon FireRed Version (Game Freak, 2004)

Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon Platinum have been my attempts of getting back into Pokemon. Now that I have a good flash cart (spend the extra cash, and get an EZ Flash Air and a microSD card), I can actually play these games again on real hardware, which may have been the biggest reason as to why I couldn't get back into Pokemon for so long. I previously beat FireRed on my Steam Deck 3 years ago, but that was during a time where I just wanted to head back into my nostalgia to cope with some precarious personal events. I didn't complete the entire post game, but at this point I'm doing things on my own terms, which meant I did use some emulator save file juggling to give myself all 3 starter Pokemon. I'm not competing, so it's fine.

Depending on how I juggle my hardware, I want to try to use Pokemon Box to save my G3 Pokemon on my Wii, and try to send some of them to my Platinum save.

Monster Tale (DreamRift, 2011)

Monster Tale is a game I'm falling in love with quickly, even though it's not perfect. It's so close to being amazing, and it's the sort of game that's meant for a budget re-release on a Nintendo Direct. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon, and I'm sadder for it.

The main gimmick of the game is that it's part platformer/metroidvania, and part pet simulator. The top screen lets you control Ellie, a young girl with a penchant for punching and a soft spot for Chomp, the monster who lives on the bottom screen. As you roam the world, you can get different food and toys for Chomp which can make him evolve in different ways. Keeping your pet clean, smart, strong, and educated are all factors that can affect how Chomp evolves, and elemental evolutions can also let you deal increased damage on certain enemies.

It's a nice game, but it's not perfect. Firstly, the backtracking does get a bit grating (I'm about halfway done with the game) and the music is a bit forgettable. There is depth to the game though, mainly with Chomp's evolutions and Ellie's combat, as you're able to rack up more money if you juggle your enemies as if you were in a fighting game. Certain inputs are also familiar to fighting game players but it's nothing super complicated in terms of execution.

It's also surreal knowing that Ellie was voiced by previous podcast guest Brina Palencia, so there's another fun fact.

I saw this game in Nintendo Power as a kid, but never got a chance to ask for it as a gift. It apparently didn't sell well as a late DS title, which is a shame.

Video Games (Modern)

Rivals of Aether 2 (Aether Studios, 2024)

Rivals of Aether 2 is something I really want to love more, but the package itself is polished enough that I can't hate it. The combat takes little time to get used to if you've played Rivals of Aether 1, but I still prefer how that game feels thus far. The transition to 3D and adding more elements from platform fighters like Melee leads to some redundancies in my opinion. If I'm used to only parrying in Rivals, remembering to shield is what causes me to take more damage. While the graphics look good (after having to apply some optimization scripts for my Steam Deck), I'm not a fan of the art direction as it reminds me more of modern hero shooters like Overwatch. The online ranking system and microtransactions are an inevitability, and I'm happy to report that cosmetics are handled in a better way than other games (being able to rack up money in game, and access past events to pick up items you missed), it does make me remember that Rivals of Aether 2 is a BIG LEAGUE indie game now and not the small fighter that I picked it up as.

I also think the online system of having to WIN 4 matches instead of just PLAYING 4 matches is not ideal for people who want to jump in to ranked. This doesn't seem to be an unpopular opinion, and I'm glad for that because I don't want it to come across as a "scrub quote" because I hate losing. I really just want a faster way to be able to play people that are at my skill level.

Books

Not As Crazy As I Seem (George Harrar, 2003)

It seems embarassing to admit that I haven't read books that weren't self help related in a long time. I don't find reading negative, but reading for fun was kind of pushed out of me at a young age so I've been trying to find my way to get back into it. I tried re-reading a YA book from when I was in middle school. Devon talks in the first person trying to talk through his experiences in a new town, with new classmates and trying to go to therapy. His teenage angst takes a sardonic tone, as it's easy to feel like the world doesn't understand you at that age, and it goes doubly so when you have OCD or any sort of neurological condition that makes you "different" in a way that people don't often have patience enough to get.

In a way, I felt embarrassed that despite Devon being a white teenager trying to fit into suburbia in the 2000s, I still understand his experiences today despite the fact that I couldn't be more different. Knowing that you experience the world in a different way, and how it affects how you function socially can feel suffocating since many just won't be able to comprehend your experience or will assess you through their own (incorrect) lens in an attempt to understand you, and many times this isn't in good faith.

The most novel thing about this experience was that I actually finished reading this on my DSi XL, and honestly knowing that the environment was just me and the text helped me take some time away and just read. I just can't do that on a phone or Android based eReader. I do want to revisit my earlier sentiments on the analogue trend when I talk about experiences like that, because the plot is being lost and maybe it is a bit of smoke and mirrors... but I won't lie in saying that trying to focus on text with less distractions helped me a bit.

I'm currently starting The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the English Kamikaze Girls / Shimostuma Monotagari novelization, but I'm not far enough to talk about my feelings about them.

Comic Books / Manga

The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury (1988)

I originally had this as a child, but it's remained lost for many years and I have to now resort to an ebook. It's on my never ending quest to enjoy reading again, in spite of my choices. I forgot just overall how engaging this comic can be, and I forgot to engage in humor in a genuine way. My life, especially online, has a sense of humor that's influenced by fast paced short form video and skits filmed with people on their phones. While this isn't to say there isn't genuine humor that can be found there (with live action skits at least, short form "shitposts" are the equivalent of internet junk food), I haven't read through nothing but Calvin and Hobbes comic strips since I was in middle school and I'm often surprised at how much I laughed to myself. Some jokes have concepts I never could have understood when I was a child, other jokes are just instances of how I forgot how much I enjoyed reading when I was a child.

Anime

This month I started Great Teacher Onizuka, finished Now and Then, Here and There. Finished Dandadan S1, so I'll focus on that. I also haven't finished watching Digimon the Movies - Volume 2 yet. My thoughts on Now and Then, Here and There will be its own article, as well as Dandadan S1, but all of these are great in their own way. In my efforts to be more cultured I have unintentionally sected myself off from a lot of more newer anime, so this year I do want to do a better job in keeping on the pulse of what's out there.

Tokusatsu

Kamen Rider Zeztz (Toei, 2025 - 2026)

On a surface level, I can say Zeztz is "crazy good", but the more I dive deep the more I realize I've been cruising along and just expecting the show to take me places. I'd be more critical if I hadn't been out of the game of watching toku as it airs in a long time, and I also haven't watched much Kamen Rider for years until Zero One and Geats made their way onto Tubi. As someone in North America, I feel a specific level of obligation to support Kamen Rider's first ever simulcast, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't overall enjoying my time with Zeztz. I do still have little issues though, like my concerns with generative AI being used in the initial reveal trailers, not feeling like Baku Yorozaki is the most developed as he should be, and the initial episodes making the rules of its world a bit unclear to me.

As I write this, mysteries are being solved that are shaking up the status quo, and it's a welcome breath of fresh air. I'm very biased in that I enjoyed seeing Yuzuki Hirakawa return as Kureha after previously seeing her as Rita in Kingohger, of course. Regardless on how Zeztz wraps, I think it's doing its job in making others interested in Kamen Rider, as I've seen with my own eyes that people who previously didn't have an interest in tokusatsu are now watching Zeztz due to its ease of access.

I do hope to talk about more of my thoughts about Zeztz in the future, though. It's overall interesting enough to keep watching, and that's good enough at the moment.

Movies

The Re-Write. (2025, directed by Terry Dawson)

This is a movie that ended up speaking to my experiences and feelings of making art, and existing in a creative field as a black person. Fields like these aren't accommodating to people of color or other marginalized folk, and there's always a tight balance that has to be walked in terms of how you present yourself and your work in a professional environment. Perhaps the fact that I'm learning about this world as I go along is why I still struggle with these feelings, while people who are my senior have cracked the code due to being in this system for much longer and much earlier. It's good to know that finding some form of compromise isn't impossible, and that you aren't inherently selling out when trying to hit that balance either.

Is This Thing On (2025, directed by Bradley Cooper)

Saw this on a whim in theaters. Will Arnett plays Alex, a man in his 50s who's trying to navigate his emotions as he separates from his ex-wife Tess while trying to co-parent. I haven't been taking a more focused effort to interact with film until the past couple of years, but I was already familiar with Will Arnett's work on Bojack Horseman and how his voice helped portray a character that could be pathetic, endearing, humorously hateable, genuinely hateable, and sympathetic all at once. Thankfully Alex isn't nearly as flawed as Bojack, but seeing him trying to navigate new relationship dynamics made the comparisons apparent as I watched the film.

Despite apparently being based on the life of English comedian John Bishop, I still felt like Alex was his own character. I'm also seeing that relationships only get more difficult to explore as you get older, especially if there are kids in the mix. It's not as black and white as one would want either, as in spite of their frustrations with each other Alex and Tess do still care. The idea that marriage doesn't mean avoiding shitty moments, but finding someone to face those moments head on, is something that resonates with me, as well as the idea that it's never too late to be creatively invested in a hobby. I would have assumed in any other story that Alex's life would have become more complicated as he has to balance his life with his comedy as he gets more and more successful, but he really just found something that he enjoys and is able to thrive in with new friends... and there's solace in that.

Music

I've been having the opening to Overman King Gainer in my head for the past couple of days. If I pick up the blu-ray to this I'd be going in absolutely blind and I honestly prefer that, but an opening this infectious can't be bad.

XV's "Losing the Signal" has been an evergreen song since I was in high school, and I'm really glad that his music is readily available on streaming platforms now because keeping track of old ZIPs of mixtapes isn't really feasible if you're not an archival nut like me. It's somber but hopeful; a coming of age story told in only a couple of minutes. Give it a listen here.

Closing Thoughts

I'm actively taking note for my current experiences so I can make a new post next month for Feburary, and while I do have less free time than I'd like, exploring my thoughts on Monster Tale, Dandadan and Now and Then, Here and There are on my bucket list for a later date. Writing's a bit easier than making videos at the moment, so I hope this first log was a good read.