How I Almost Got A Job at Round1

 I had to wake up early to go to the training at the Round1 arcade in Stonestown. As I arrived at the parking garage right where Target is, I saw the downstairs area filled with arcade games ready to be played for the grand opening, and there were a lot of employee candidates waiting to get inside. as 10AM hit, I told them my name and my main position to work in, and they asked me if I got an invitation from the worksite. I didn't know about the invitation right after I signed that job application and did the interview at their kiosk weeks ago until they actually told me that I need it to get in for the training and I never got an email about it.

 It felt like I was rejected because prior to applying for that place, I went to the "Careers" section on their website, and one of them required at least 1 year of retail, customer service or hospitality to apply, and a food and alcohol server's license, in which I had the former and got a new one after I applied. I knew I wasn't qualified to work there due to my previous experiences as an intern, but I went ahead and signed the application with no physical resumé at hand.

 In conclusion, I felt pretty dumb when I needed to get an email from Round1 saying that I'm invited to the training right after applying, but once I get more experience from a different job (if I ever get one), I'll be sure to reapply to that place, or anywhere similar. Even if I didn't get the job, I might try to bring my sister and her kids at the day of the grand opening if I have the chance.

A Sesame Street Childhood Song

 There's this one song that I remember listening to as a child, that I kept misinterpreting it, until I knew what the real lyrics are, it's called "Once Is Not Enough".

When I first heard it on Play With Me Sesame, I first thought the chorus was "What is in the box?", but that was the younger me not understanding what they were saying. I kept on singing that part, and one of my family members, especially my mom and my sisters, also sang along too. It was so dumb, but it was actually pretty funny singing that.

Fast forward to 2024, and I finally knew what that song was, thanks to the Muppet wiki. So here's the actual song in full:

And as a bonus, here's another song that also appeared on the same show, which is a banger from my childhood:

Gamindustri Riot Prototype Screenshots

It's been a while since I've posted about my cancelled fangame, so here are some screenshots of various prototype versions of Gamindustri Riot posted from one of my old blogs dating from 2015 to 2016.

Fuka fights a sandbag (4/26/2015)

IF and Fuka (6/23/2015)

Character Select screen (6/23/2015)

Mockup screenshot

Prison level (12/1/2015)

Fuka boss battle (early version)(12/6/2015)

Fighting Baal, the final boss of the game

Fuka boss battle (later version)(1/12/2016)

Inside train (4/3/2016)

Fighting Asagi in the ring (4/24/2016)

Noire and Vert at Lowee Plaza (6/30/2016)

Cutscene test with Shampurus (6/30/2016)

[OC] Technos-chan

 It's been a while since I've posted here, so I'll post my OC inspired by the "Maker" characters in the Neptunia series.

Name: Technos
Personification: Technōs Japan
Residing in: Lowee
Height: 160cm (5'03")
Cup size: D
A hot-blooded brawler who hates bullies. Her fighting style comes from the style of Sou-Setsu-Ken. When someone tries to approach her for a fight, she finishes them off with no mercy. Her hobbies include playing sports, eating food and traveling to various places.

Inspiration for Her Design

 Her physical design is based on Misako from the Kunio-kun series, specifically River City Girls Zero, while her personality is based on Kunio also from the same franchise. As for her combat style, it is based on the Lee brothers' Sou-Setsu-Ken martial art from Double Dragon, so you can imagine her doing hurricane kicks, flying knees and all the other attacks the brothers do in the games.

What Made Me Create This Character

 After seeing a lot of Neptunia's Maker characters personifying various game companies and video games in general, I decided to make my own based on the now defunct, but legendary video game company from the 80's to the mid 90's, Technōs Japan. I had originally planned to make her a playable character or a cameo in Gamindustri Riot (my cancelled Neptunia fangame) as part of one of the planned sequels, but I decided to create her in Koikatsu with references to the franchises mentioned above.

Conclusion

 Overall, I'm pretty satisfied on how her final design came out. Seeing how her appearance and personality reflected one of Technōs' legendary works makes me feel proud of myself for making her in the first place. Maybe I can think of doing other "Maker" characters in the near future, but all in all, This was a pretty fun character to create.

The Troubled Development of Gamindustri Riot

Title screen of the game

 Back in 2015, I had this idea to create the "first ever" Hyperdimension Neptunia fangame when someone at the ChronoCrash forums posted about seeing or creating a fangame based off of Neptunia U. I replied by saying that I can make it happen and development had started.

I first started with drawing the character sprites, taking inspiration from the Kunio-kun series and using some base sprites I found on the internet as a template. It felt pretty complicated trying to do the goddesses in the River City style, going frame-by-frame, but I got the hang of it once I progressed. One of the first characters I've done wasn't actually part of the Neptunia series, but from the Disgaea series. That character was Fuka Kazamatsuri, a character from the fourth game, in which I was originally going to make her a playable character, but I decided to make her a boss character instead. Then, I started to do work on the main CPUs and Candidates, and of course the makers. I've seemed to like the end results of what I've created, but the most challenging part was trying to get IF's hair right. Drawing her hair to make it look like her official art was a real pain, but I did whatever I can to reflect it and went with the final result as shown below alongside the others.

Early sprites of the playable characters

Blanc, her hammer and Gust

Early versions of the heads of the characters in Goddess form

The main eight in sprite form

Early animation of Fuka walking

 After drawing the necessary sprites, I decided to focus on the gameplay. I started using OpenBOR as an engine for the game and did some basic work for it such as adding characters, stages and music. As I was pretty new to coding since I was still in high school taking a computer programming class, I messed around with some custom code created by some users at ChronoCrash with some code of my own to see what would and wouldn't work for this game.

Some screenshots of the game:

 For the story, I originally wanted to make it as a semi-crossover game featuring characters from the Disgaea series. Here's a brief summary on what the story was going to be:

 After a bunch of failed attempts of defeating the goddesses, the remaining members of ASIC thought of a new plan to take over Gamindustri and resurrect their goddess Arfoire: create a super army from another dimension. as the group offered to recruit troops from different dimensions, A lot of them rejected, but only one had accepted to join forces: The Netherworld!

They have agreed that if they defeat the 4 Goddesses and Candidates, they will give them what they want.

Now it's up to the CPUs to stop ASIC's new super army of demons (and Prinnies, dood!) and bring peace back to Gamindustri!

 As this story being bizarre as it can be, I, with the help of a certain someone at ChronoCrash and the Nepboards, have only finished about 50% of it, with most of the stages having some or no scenes at all. There's this one scenario in Stage 3 where the CPUs meet Asagi, thinking that she's a resident of Lowee, but she's actually there to be a protagonist for the next game. This would continue around the middle of Stage 6 where they're at the Netherworld and the end of Stage 9 where they fight her for the final time. This would later reveal that the Asagi they met at Lowee is actually an imposter working for ASIC, with the real Asagi coming out to kill the imposter and join forces with the goddesses. Besides her, I wanted to have other characters join the main eight, like Fuka, Desco, Laharl, Etna, and Flonne.

 For the Final Stage, It would have Gamindustri's super army of their own vs. ASIC right at Spectral Tower where our heroes barge in and reach the top of the tower. As they arrive, they encounter Linda, Warechu and a resurrected CFW Magic standing near Arfoire's casket. The goddesses would then get ambushed by the Prinnies with Linda congratulating them. And here's a plot twist: the Prinnies would tell ASIC about their actual plan: turning Gamindustri into a training camp for the Netherworld by resurrecting Overlord Baal to destroy the world. This would be teased at the end of the previous stage where the goddesses see a prophecy on the wall about defeating the overlord. Continuing on with the scenario: As Arfoire is fully revived with a ridiculous amount of power, she attempts to kill the Prinnies and the members of ASIC, but is stopped by the goddesses who then decide to fight her. After the brawl, Arfoire ascends to Celestia, then the tower begins to crumble with the goddesses and ASIC on it. As the latter make their escape, Flonne appears out of nowhere and opens the portal to Celestia for the goddesses to follow Arfoire.

 The CPUs arrive at Celestia where they encounter some angels laying on the ground, stating that they tried to stop Arfoire from entering, but she was too overpowered. As they reach the final area, they are met with a form of Arfoire, similar to her True form in mk2. Arfoire attempts to make the final blow, but is killed by Overlord Baal.

 For the ending, the CPUs defeat the Overlord with the remaining angels congratulating them for saving Celestia and Gamindustri. As they return to the latter, the goddesses make a peace treaty with members of the Netherworld, and would have scenarios of what happened afterward. The post-credits scene would have Arfoire as a Prinny working for Etna, and teases that she will be back for revenge.

 For unlockables, I planned to have Nisa, Gust, Plutia, and Peashy as unlockable characters after beating the game just once and also a Hardcore mode where the enemies are much tougher and different.

 I didn't have an actual release date planned for this game, but one of them was a planned Fall 2018 release (I originally planned for a 2016 release based on some old files laying around), until I decided to put the project on indefinite hiatus. This was a real pain for me because I had school and work to do, and I didn't have any plans to continue the project along with its sequels and other projects, so I just left it there. I felt pretty disappointed that I never had the chance to do all this during my free time because of these reasons.

 Overall, this was a very nice project to do, except all of the development hell I had to go through, and it may have inspired other Neptunia fans to create fangames of their own, such as Hyperdimension Girl Quest, Exadimension Neptunia and Dimension Breaker.

My Experience with Tumblr

Back before I had this personal blog, I first started using Tumblr to get some experience with blogging. Prior to when I created my first blog, I saw a lot of posts from other blogs based on video games, anime, films, comics, and even porn! One of the main topics that caught my eye was a known Japanese video game series called Hyperdimension Neptunia.

At a time when I was keeping up with the latest games in the franchise, I created my first ever blog on March 2015 and started posting and reblogging content, such as official renders, magazine scans and fanart. After years of posting, I've gained a lot of likes and reblogs and even got over 1,000 followers. This was one of my biggest achievements from using that platform.

The amount of posts and followers as of 3/21/23

When Tumblr announced that they were going to ban NSFW content in 2018, I started to lose interest and rarely post on my blog. A few years after the porn ban, I decided to put my blog to rest and turn it into an archive of all the posts I've made plus some posts from other users.

Overall, I had a great time using Tumblr, finding some rare pictures and following some artists that posted there. We can all say about the negative stuff that has happened, but that did not stop us from making blogs based on our interests.

Computer Case for 2023 PC Build

Last week, I've ordered a computer case for my gaming PC build. As I am slowly buying all the parts I need plus some old parts I have to build this, I am planning to get a micro ATX motherboard with support for DDR5 RAM next month.