MOT'S THINGS

i tend to find a lot of random junk, and i like to share my findings with others whenever i can. this is my horde of said random junk, and what i have to say about all of it.

Title: Asus TUF A15 Gaming Laptop
Classification: Utility
Date obtained: December 25th, 2020

it's about damn time i talked about this thing. the machine i've done all of motsdrama with so far, this laptop has carried me through thick and thin. it was a christmas gift in 2020, helped me through school during the covid year, stuck by my side all throughout the latter half of high school, and is my go-to machine for on the go work and games alike. due to being a gaming laptop and all, it's decently powerful and can handle some pretty chunky programs, and because of the SSD it comes prebuilt with, it was the speediest computer i had for a while. i've lived out of this laptop for four years now, and it's served me well. now, with all that sappy junk out of the way, good lord this thing pisses me off.

first issue: the shell is made of plastic. i guess the idea was to make it as lightweight as possible, because lord knows it's already heavy as is, but i think that's a very shortsighted way of thinking when it comes to making a laptop. unlike something like a desktop, you're probably gonna be lugging a laptop around with you places, and it's bound to take some battle damage over time. metal will dent, but plastic tend to shatter. you know how i know that? because it's been happening to me! the bottom case of my laptop has several cracks in it, two screw posts have straight up broken off, and one of the hinges has began to break apart. and all for what, to make this already pretty heavy laptop just a little less heavy? i also hate, HATE the textured design on the outside of the laptop, it's supposed to look all "cool" and "gamer" but it makes putting stickers on it look really unnatural, and if you've seen the stickerbomb page, you know how important of a factor that is. you know what my biggest problem with this plastic shell ordeal is, by the way? on their website, Asus says this thing is buit for "real world durability" and says it'll "outlast the competition." you know what outlasted this laptop in terms of durability? my previous laptop, an Acer Aspire ES 11, which was a hand-me-down from my sister and was a cheap piece of garbage.

this laptop was used by two different people over the course of its life, which was a whole 6 years, and ended up with not a single crack in its plastic shell. now, to be fair, the ES 11 much lighter and doesn't have as much weight to support with the top screen. but i think at that point that's a design oversight with the A15, just make the hinges bigger!! and sure, i could just buy a metal shell to replace it with, but like, no that's wicked expensive, and i'd have to figure out how to disassemble this thing to even get to that point, not to mention the other myriad issues holding it back. speaking of which...

second issue: performance! yeah, just cuz it's a gaming laptop doesn't make it instantly all that and a bag of chips. 8GB of ram is all you get, and that isn't gonna take you very far. to be fair, i don't really play a lot of triple A games, but that's not even what i'm trying to run on it. back in 2021, i got really into Inscryption, and the A15 was getting winded trying to run that, even with the charger plugged in. and man, don't ever ask it to run Quake, it just can't. textures and hud elements flicker and animations jitter constantly in the Quake 1 and 2 remasters, and Quake 3 is just...

come on, how do you mess it up THAT bad? i've also had issues when booting the laptop up where it just gets stuck in a loop of going to the auto repair screen, and the only way to fix it is by shutting it down fully by holding the power button. this issue has been plaguing me ever since i got the thing, and nothing makes it go away, not even reinstalling Windows. also, this laptop comes with McAfee PRE-INSTALLED.

third issue: user repair hostility. this became most apparent to me when i was trying to clean out the keyboard. i tried removing the keycaps, and found them insanely hard to put them back in. turns out, they aren't supposed to come off, and if you want to clean the keyboard Asus just expects you to buy a new keyboard module and replace it, which is just... SO wasteful. though now im actually considering doing that, because the keyboard has been on the fritz recently. the W and S keys will just randomly not work, and can stay that way for upwards of a minute, making me stop what i'm doing and wait for them to stop being so moody. and on occassion, i'll go to save my work on a project, and pressing Ctrl+S just doesn't do anything. alternatively, sometimes i want to turn on text wrap in VS Code (my text editor of choice for working on this site) yet pressing Alt+X (the shortcut for enabling text wrap) just doesn't work at all. in the time it's taken me to write this segment, even more keys have broken, and it's forced me to migrate my work to my desktop instead. wow, so much fun! same goes for the mouse buttons on the track pad, LMB just refuses to register inputs sometimes. and oh man, the headphone jack and USB-C ports broke a long time ago, because AGAIN, THEY'RE MADE OF PLASTIC, and they're soldered straight to the board, so replacement is going to take so much more work than it would otherwise. it just feels so user unfriendly, and it's infuriating.

in the end, the A15 is a good laptop. it's served me very well the past few years, and i do appreciate it and all it's done. but also good lord, some of the decisions made with this thing are utterly baffling, and i simply don't get it. now, it's not all doom and gloom in the end. i have ordered a new keyboard module that's due to come in in a couple of days, and i'll add an addendum to this entry if that solves all my problems. but for now, i'm still waiting on that, so it doesn't get any slack yet.

Title: Frog Buddy
Classification: Familiar (Amphibious)
Date obtained: September 14th, 2023

Title: Panasonic RQ-360
Classification: Box of Vox
Date obtained: October 28th, 2024

Title: Pikmin: New Play Control!
Classification: Tablet of Management (Refurbished)
Date obtained: December 30th, 2016

Description: here's a real relic. and i know, i already hear you saying it. "mot, this is just Pikmin: New Play Control! for Wii, why does this deserve a spot on the Things page when you haven't even shown us your Marta tokens yet?" first of all, i'm gonna get to the Marta tokens, just give me a bit. second of all, this isn't just any copy of Pikmin: New Play Control!. take a closer look at that boxart. see that weird, red banner? yeah, that's not just some sticker on the case. that's baked directly onto the artwork. and it doesn't stop there, because usually the New Play Control line of Wii games came with reversable artwork. you see, the NPC line had this tacky border around the artwork telling you that yes, this is in fact a Gamecube game that they shoved motion controls into and then ported to the Wii. but some people like their games to look like actual videogames instead of a marketing tactic, so to make up for this Nintendo printed the original artwork on the other side of the inlay, and all you had to do was just flip the piece of paper and stick it back in the case.

and see? now it looks presentable. but for some completely unknown reason, my copy doesn't have this. it's just completely blank on the other side. now, i got this copy of the game from a Gamestop back in 2016, so the first thought is, "oh, it's just some generic artwork that Gamestop printed off and put into another case." but listen, i know how Gamestop does things, and they would not put as much effort as to get the proper glossy paper that the original boxart would be on, make a new template to signify it's refurbished, and put the original boxart on that template. "oh, well it's refurbished, so it must be something the warehouse does when they get a game sent in." that's another thought i had, but again that's not how they do things, at least not anymore. they usually just use the original case it was shipped in. there's a possibility they did it differently back in 2016, but search results are so muddied for any query with "gamestop" and "boxart" in it, since people are almost always talking about that old cartoon drawing of the mom with the bag of games that they used for their generic boxart back in the day.

so what the hell is this banner from, huh? well, upon typing this up for this very post, i finally figured it out. this means it's an official Nintendo refurbished game! so someone sent their copy of Pikmin: New Play Control to Nintendo, and they sent it back with this unique boxart. cool! i honestly dig these kind of unique oddities, they're such weird edge cases. reminds me of those Wii U systems that are white like the basic set, but have the big hard drive like the deluxe set ones, and you could only get them by getting Nintendo to refurbish your Wii U.

Title: Sharp QT-CD210
Classification: Communication (Heavily Used)
Date obtained: May 7th, 2024

Description: if no one's got me, i know my CD players always do. recently i got a new car that doesn't have bluetooth, or even AUX in, so i can only play CDs and cassette tapes in the built in stereo. as such, i've gotten more into collecting those types of physical media, since that's pretty much my only method of playing music in the car now. and honestly? i think i like it more than streaming now. i like being able to physically own my music, and there's something fun about getting a new CD and immediately ripping it to my harddrive. easily the best part about it, however, is the prices. people love their vinyl now, but CDs? most of em go for like, a couple of bucks, no one wants them anymore. which is great for me, because i get pretty much free picks on anything i want! (besides Plumtree, which, nevermind the price, i cant even find a LISTING for a single Plumtree CD)

but to actually listen to CDs, you need a player. i'm still trying to find a good deal for a Walkman, so for now i've only got stereos. as of right now i actually have three CD players, and all of them i've inherited from other people. the one we'll be talking about today is the one pictured about, the Sharp GT-CD210. this was a CD player my mom brought home one day, which was given to her by one of her teacher friends. she gave it to me because she figured i'd get more use out of it than her, and i was excited when i got this. i mean, i had a CD player, but... it is not a looker. this new one looked SUPER cool though, and i was all over it. i immediately plugged it in, put in a CD, and it SOUNDED great too. i then had to try out the built in tape player, and it sounded great. i finally had a stereo that both looked and sounded great, it was awesome. and then i tried playing another CD. no matter what i did, it would just click five times, and then give up. that's a surefire sign of a burned out laser.

so what's a Mot to do now? the tape drive works just fine, its just the CD reader that's busted. which would be fine, if it weren't for the fact that i just don't own nearly as many tapes as i do CDs. so after fiddling around with this guy a bit more, i found out that the laser isn't fully burned out. no, it's something much stranger than that. you see, after playing a CD, it won't read the next disc you put in. you have to take out a disc, wait around 30 minutes to an hour, and then it'll be ready to play again. my immediate thought was that it was overheating or something, but that can't be the case. it'll play whatever CD you put in for as long as you like, it's just as soon as you take a CD out it refuses to read anything. now, i'm not really that knowledgable on music hardware, so i have zero clue what causes this or how it works. if any of you fine readers out there have a hint as to what's going on with this guy, let me know.

this really is the monkey's paw of CD players. it looks the coolest, sounds phenomenal, but only works when it feels like it. hopefully one day i can figure out what's going on with that laser... but for now, i suppose it's gonna remain a mystery.

Title: Faygo Fun Pack
Classification: Consumable (Potion)
Date obtained: October 6th, 2022

Description: as unfortunate as this is to hear, i am one of the poor souls unlucky enough to have read a large majority of Homestuck. is it good? i'll save that for a review or something. that isn't super relevant to this entry, because today we'll be discussing Faygo. now, to most normal people, Faygo is just another fruit soda, like Crush or Fanta. but to people like me, it immediately makes the worms in our brains wriggle around a bit because it was in Homestuck. it's the same deal with Tab, that's another soda that i can assure you i wouldn't give a single fuck about if it wasn't featured in the comic. so when i was visiting a friend in another state, they just so happened to have Faygo there. where i'm from (the Diet Building in Tokyo) we don't really have an easy way to get Faygo, and since the brain worms told me to, i ended up buying all four flavors they had just to finally see what it was like.

the four flavors pictured here are Strawberry, Blueberry, Grape and Peach. now, the last time i tasted these was a little under two years ago, so i don't remember what they taste like... at all. however, luckily for me (and you) i recorded a video of me and my friend taste testing each one on the day of, so i'm gonna use that as my reference point. (no, you don't get to see the video.) the first one we tried was Grape, and according to 2022 mot, it tastes like grape gum. not grape flavor, specifically grape gum, like the liquid that forms when you're chewing it. also apparently the bottles were really hard to open, even to the point of leaving a red mark on my hand when i tried opening it. next we tried out Peach, and i made a face that can best be described as "i just put something in my mouth that i really shouldn't have." the foremost taste was REALLY shitty, but as it went on it got better. apparently there was also hints of orange, despite it being clearly labeled peach. our next flavor is blueberry, and i seemed to be thoroughly disappointed by it. blueberry is generally my favorite flavor something can be, so i kind of have a high bar for it. our final flavor was Strawberry, and right out the gate i did NOT look happy to be drinking it. even from the smell alone i just looked upset. i really don't like artificial strawberry flavor, it's almost always terrible and makes me think of a very specific toothpaste i used a lot as a kid and absolutely hated. according to 2022 mot, "it smells like Robitussin, it tastes like a strawberry cough drop." which yeah, that checks out, strawberry flavor always tastes like some sort of medicine. upon my friend smelling it she actually recoiled, so that should give you a point of reference for how bad this one was.

for the final act of the video, we ended up doing what any 2nd grader thinks is the funniest shit ever and mixed all the flavors together into one horrid concoction. the color was dark magenta, and i described it as "looking sickly." upon taking my first (and only) sip of this terrible thing, i imeediately looked like i regretted every decision leading up to that moment. the taste was described as "an old jolly rancher that was left in a car for several years" and the smell was described as "cough syrup." for the final ranking, the order was Grape in first, then Blueberry, then Peach, then Strawberry.

so what all have we learned from this experience? i know what i learned. i don't think i really like Faygo, and i don't know what Gamzee was on.

Title: Marty's Drumstick
Classification: Weapon (musical)
Date obtained: March 11th, 2023

Description: oh to be a drummer. i've tried (and failed) to learn several different instruments in my life, the trombone, the guitar, the piano, but none of them ever stuck. i mean, ive gone on record of saying that i'm not a very musically inclined person, it's just something that's never clicked for me. that being said, i'm a huge fan of listening to music, and if i had to choose a favorite artist it'd probably be They Might Be Giants. starting out as a duo of two Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh, to be exact) sometime around 1985, TMBG has been making music for a VERY long time, and are still going strong today. but in their early years, due to neither of the Johns being dedicated drummers, TMBG had to settle for drum machines to provide percussion. and don't get it twisted, i think that the lack of live percussion in their early works contributes heavily to the sound and flavor of those albums, and i wouldn't have them any other way. but for their 1994 masterpiece, John Henry, they decided that having it be just the two of them wasn't gonna cut it. so they brought on a couple new band members, and while none of the folks brought on for John Henry stayed for too long, it did open the door to having TMBG be more than just a duo. and sometime around 2004, their old drummer, Dan Hickey, was looking to leave the band to persue other avenues. for their tours, TMBG recruited a drummer named Marty Beller, and when the position for a full time drummer opened up, Marty hopped on that opportunity.

alright, there's your history lesson. now here's how this all ties into this drumstick. about a year and a half ago in March of 2023, i finally got the opportunity to see TMBG in concert, and it was a magnificent experience. they really know how to make a show fun and exciting for everyone involved, and if you ever get the opportunity i highly recommend you get tickets to see them at some point in your life. i didn't attend alone though, my mom, roommate, and most importantly my dad were with me while i was there. the reason i emphasize my dad is because he was the one who introduced me to the band when i was a kid, and just like me, he's a pretty big fan. at a certain point near the end of the concert, both of my parents sorta just... disappeared into the crowd, and i figured they were just getting a little closer to the stage. but about five minutes later, my dad comes charging toward me with... something in his hand, and he yells, "I GOT IT!" turns out, while my parents were out in the middle of the crowd, Marty had started tossing his drumsticks into the crowd, and my dad just so happened to snatch one out of the air. so yeah, that's what this messed up looking drumstick is. it's a really cool memento of the best concert i ever went to, and it just so happened to also have belonged to Marty Beller at one point.

Title: Gameboy Advance SP (Custom Kirby shell)
Classification: Utility (modded)
Date obtained: July 29th, 2023

Description: i mentioned in my very first entry in this tab of the site that i had a custom GBA SP that i broke. so what's the deal with that thing, huh? well here it is, the custom Kirby SP. it really is a beautiful little thing, i love the translucent blue and it comes with these awesome magenta buttons that just rock my socks. i love this thing from a pure aesthetics point of view. but just about everything else about it is total ass. so let's discuss that!

well how about those buttons? do they feel good? the answer might surprise you: it's no! they do not feel good at all! it constantly feels like the system is fighting me to get any input in, especially when im trying to do diagonals on the d-pad. not to mention, the buttons (as well as the shell as a whole) are made of the world's softest plastic, so things are constantly bending and feel extremely mushy. i guess that's my fault for buying a custom shell on the cheap, but... i didn't have a job at the time. sue me. and speaking of that extremely cheap build quality, the screws may be the worst part of the whole thing. i foolishly decided that using the screws from the extremely cheap shell replacement kit was a good idea, and boy did i regret it. because upon putting it all back together, i realized i had put the hinges in backwards. no big deal, just open it back up and switch em out right? well, no. because when i went to unscrew the battery cover, i discovered something horrific. the screws were so cheap and soft that just trying to unscrew the thing completely stripped the screw beyond any hope. like, there was no drive, it was just a circle. so i was completely locked out of ever getting into this thing without resorting to destructive methods. not only that, but sometimes it'd lose the ability to output sound randomly. (the SP speaker isn't attached with a wire or ribbon cable or anything, instead it's just raw contacts held together by the screws holding the rest of the console together, so if it's not put back together exactly the way it was it's gonna get funky. i'm sure you can imagine what the problem was with my thing.) and then sometimes, it'd just... randomly shut off. now, to be fair, the more i used it the less it did this. but it was still extremely annoying when it did.

so this thing wasn't perfect, whatever. at least it functioned for the most part, right? correct! until it didn't! one day i decided i was done dealing with all these issues, and made the executive choice to fix all of them. and in the process, i fucked it up even more. i still didn't have the ability to get into the battery compartment, so i just sort of... unscrewed everything else in the hopes that i'd be able to make something work. (big surprise, i didn't) and in the process of trying to pry it apart, when everything was put back together it just... no longer turned on. i still haven't figured out what the issue is, and it's driving me nuts. if anyone has any suggestions on what to do... uh... let me know when i get some form of contact set up.

Title: Nintendo 64 Cartridge Slot Pins
Classification: Machine Part (partially broken)
Date obtained: March 11th, 2024

Description: these here are a set of two pins from my Nintendo 64's cartridge slot. but the pins themselves aren't the interesting part. well.. they kind of are. you see, i got an N64 for christmas in 2022, and while i was having a ton of fun with it, i couldn't help but notice that... certain games weren't saving. this is an interesting topic, because the N64 has a weirdly large amount of ways to save. there's battery saves, which use a battery in the cartridge to keep ram in memory even when the game isn't running. this is the most rudimentary way to do this, but it also really sucks, as most classic pokemon players know. those batteries have a habit of, you know, running out of juice, as batteries tend to do, so they're not ideal. (its unfortunate, because one of my favorite n64 games, 1080 Snowboarding, is cursed to use this method... meaning all my times are gonna get wiped some day. that stings.) then there's using the Controller Pak, a little memory card you plug into your controller. a large majority of N64 games not made by nintendo use this, and it's a decent way of saving. the original Controller Pak uses a battery as well, but thanks to a little gem called the Forever Pak 64, it can be circumvented and swapped out for a flash memory alternative. speaking of flash memory, surprisingly, some n64 games actually use this! it's extremely rare and only used for a handful of games, but it's pretty cool that its here at all. which leaves us with the last option... EEPROM. this is a type of non-volatile memory, and in most N64 games it only can store about 4 Kilobits. which... is not very much. that's why its usually used for games that don't need to store super complicated types of data. take Mario 64 for example, that only needs to keep track of which power stars you've collected and your high scores. that's only like, a handful of numbers. compare that to Pokemon Stadium, which uses flash memory, and for good reason. it has to store a LOT more data, since you can record your pokemon into that game. there's actually an alternate variant of EEPROM saving that stores up to 16 Kilobits, but it's only used by a small handful of games. it seems Rare was a big fan of 16 Kilobit EEPROM, since they used it in four of their N64 games. (by the way, i got a lot of this info from micro-64.com, they were a huge help in my research for this bit.)

so why am i telling you all of this? well, it's because for some reason, my christmas N64 wouldn't save with certain games. we couldn't figure out why for the longest time, it felt completely random whether or not it would save, and it was totally up to the whim of the game. it would save in Pokemon Stadium and 1080 Snowboarding, but wouldn't in Mario 64 or Glover. not only that, it also straight up wouldn't start certain games, such as Yoshi Story. i was totally stumped on this for the longest time, and just accepted my fate to never be able to save in some games. but back in March, i decided enough was enough. i was gonna figure out how to get this damn N64 to save if it was the last thing i did. so i took it apart and messed around with the cartridge slot for a while, trying to see what was wrong. well, a while ago, my roommmate pointed out to me that one of the pins in the cart slot seemed to be kinda messed up, and sure enough upon taking it apart there was a pin that was super bent out of shape. (pictured on the right in the image above) we weren't really sure what to do, and we looked up some schematics for the slot. turns out, the pin that was fucked up just so happened to be the pin that handles EEPROM read and write. that would explain why some games would save, but others wouldn't. another thing we noticed when looking at that schematic was that some of the pins were for ground, and weren't totally necessary. and so, in potentially the single greatest idea i think i've ever had, i ripped out the broken pin, ripped out one of the ground pins, and shoved the ground pin where the EEPROM pin used to be. upon plugging everything back into place, we booted up Glover and finally saw the huge collection of saves that was supposed to be there this whole time. this was also probably the reason Yoshi Story wouldn't start no matter what i did, because that's a 16 Kilobit EEPROM game. this pin replacement is possibly the only time i'll ever do anything cool in regards to tech hardware, but i'm still riding that high 6 months later.

Title: Floppy Disk Mega Pack
Classification: Library of Tomes
Date obtained: March 27th, 2024

Description: now here's an interesting one. you see, my dad works in an environment where he meets a lot of people, and sometimes people just give him stuff. it could be homemade food, an AV reciever, once he even brought home a bike, and these are no different. i believe what the story was was that someone was going to throw them all away, and my dad had to stop them since that kinda stuff isn't allowed to go in the trash. they asked, "what, do you want them?" and now here we are. he brought them home and said i could have them, and you know i couldn't deny an offer like that. there was just ooooone tiny issue. i didn't exactly have a floppy drive at the time. i ended up ordering one online, and soon enough it came in. i gotta say, as someone who didn't grow up in an era where floppy disks were too common, i REALLY like the feel of these things. there's something so satisfying about the little clicks that they make when you put them into the drive, and the clunks that happen when you eject them. i guess i'll come clean, old PC hardware isn't really my forte. ask me how to fix an N64 with a broken cartridge slot, that's no problem, just yank out some of the ground pins and shove em where the broken pins were. ask me how to mount something in DOS and i'll come back to you with several lascerations. but that's besides the point, after all this time what was actually on these things?

well... it was kind of a mixed bag. there was an incomplete set of install disks for Microsoft Office 95, a few install disks for some Texas Instruments programs, a homemade McAfee Antivirus disk dating to 11/12/96, an uninstaller for Windows NT, something labelled "NU 95," another thing labelled "BIGRED NEW", which... i don't know if i want to know what that is. there was a complete set of NetWare Novell Certification Assessment Test disks, but... i don't really know what that is. maybe i'll need to research that. there was something called the Quarterdeck expanded memory manager 386, which seems to be something you'd use to manager your files directly through DOS, since File Explorer isn't an option. the most unfortunate part about all of these though was that i couldn't really get any of the contents to open on my Windows 10 computer. i know, i know, using Windows is satan and i really should be running Linux. listen, i totally would but for my entire life ive always used Windows (i was born into it, this wasn't my choice) and migrating all of my muscle memory, knowledge, creative projects and programs over to a completely new thing i've never used before is just... not in the cards for me and my current situation. (i did try out PopOS last year though and i will say it was quite nice) but all of that is off topic. some might just say "why not use a virtual machine?" and that is a great idea! unfortunately, i can't seem to figure out how to get VMWare to read directly from my floppy drive, it won't detect the hardware. i could probably just mount a virtual image of all of them and do things that way, but that doesn't seem nearly as interesting, nor is it in the spirit of what i wanted to do. so for now, i'm putting this whole exploration on hold. perhaps one day when i get these guys loaded onto something, i can potentially make a followup entry and tell you folks all about it. but for now, i guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Title: Yomega X-Brain
Classification: Weapon (Ranged)
Date obtained: September 27th, 2022

Description: something i don't really mention very often is that i really enjoy yo-yo as a hobby, and find it really relaxing and rewarding. it's sort of like skateboarding, in the sense that it's really daunting and difficult at first, and you are going to fail a LOT when you're learning. but also like skateboarding, once you practice enough and get that muscle memory down, you sort of get into this flow state where everything comes to you naturally. at least, i think that's what skateboarding is like. i tried to get into skateboarding a few years ago, but it just wasn't something i had the time (or physical ability) to dedicate myself to. but that's what i love about yo-yo. it's something you can whip out at pretty much any time and practice a bit, or do a few quick throws, and then just slip it right back into your pocket. as a kid, i had gotten pretty good at all you can do with Duncan yo-yos. (which admittedly isn't much...) but in the latter half of my junior year of high school is when i started to really get into it though, and in senior year it was a pretty common sight to see me with my yo-yo. if i were ever just waiting around for something at school, i'd mess around with my yo-yo for a bit, and i guess people started to notice. and for my birthday that year, a substitute teacher we had quite often who i was pretty buddy-buddy with gave me this, the Yomega X-Brain. he said it was a yo-yo he's owned for a long time, and that i'd probably appreciate it a lot. (i do) he's a really awesome guy by the way, we bonded over our shared love for Talking Heads. if you're reading this Mr. Medina, hi! hope you're doing well.

so that's the story of how i came into possession of this. but how is it as a yo-yo? well to tell you that, i gotta explain a bit about yo-yo types. when it comes to yo-yo, there's a few factors that determine what kind of yo-yo it is and what kind of tricks you're able to do with it. those are Response, Shape, and Counterweight. that last one doesn't really matter for what we're talking about today, so i'll omit it for now. (though i may come back to talk about yo-yo more some other day...) Shape is the... well, shape of the body. there's the classic Imperial body which sort of curves inwards, making the body spin straighter overall, and there's Butterfly, which is used mainly for tricks that require the yo-yo to sit on the string, since the outward curve gives you a larger catching area. Response refers to how the yo-yo controls. if the yo-yo is responsive, that means it'll come right back up at a flick of your wrist, and if it's unresponsive, that means it'll hang at the bottom of the string and won't come back up without some extra effort. (i.e. binding, or throwing the string over the axle so it gets caught and is forced to return) think of it this way, unresponsive yoyos are how people do the classic Walk the Dog trick, while responsive is more used for Shoot the Moon. you get me? cool. anyways, where does the X-Brain fall in these categories? well, it's kind of an inbetween for both. the body doesn't curve all the way inwards, but it doesn't have a heavy outwards curve like Butterflies do. and while it definitely isn't as unresponsive as something with a ball-bearing, it's still pretty good at staying at the bottom, but is also responsive enough that it doesnt require any binding. the X-Brain is a great middle ground and would definitely be a good pick for those starting out with yo-yo. definitely a lot better than starting out with something like a basic Imperial Duncan, that's for sure. (sorry Duncan for throwing shade, just never liked your basic models.) and unlike those basic Duncans, the X-Brain actually lets you unscrew the body in case you ever want to replace the string. (that's my biggest issue with Duncan, if you try to take apart the basic models they are NOT going back together) so overall, i really like the X-Brain! it's a really balanced little thing and is good for beginners, as well as being a fun tool to mess around with for the experienced. (oops, i guess i kinda turned this into a review... whatever, who cares)

Title: Pop'n Box
Classification: Utility (Hand-crafted)
Date obtained: April 28th, 2021

Description: here's an oldie but a goodie. so far we've mostly covered recent things in this series, but here's one from about three and a half years ago now. this here is a custom-made USB controller for Pop'n Music, a rhythm-arcade game series developed by Bemani and published by Konami. Pop'n Music is a simple yet addicting rhythm game. you know Dance Dance Revolution, right? of course you do. imagine that, but instead of stepping on big ol' arrows, you pressed buttons instead. and there's five more buttons than there would otherwise be. yeah, this here is the fabled 9-key rhythm game, and is an absolute disaster to play on any normal controller. there are modes to kick it down to 7-key and 5-key, and 5-key is honestly the most playable of those options on controller, but that ain't the real Pop'n experience at that point. if you're playing on a computer with a keyboard, you could easily bind the keys corresponding to their position on the original layout, so C would be left white, F would be left yellow, V would be left green, etc etc, and that's what i personally ran for a while. but keyboard keys are small, and you can often times find yourself losing your place with very similar feeling keys surrounding your setup, which leads to a lot of misinputs. (especially with the more complex patterns that they throw at you in those harder charts, trust me.) i mean... you could spring the money for one of the official mini Pop'n controllers made by Konami for the home console versions of Pop'n, but those are only compatible with the PS1, PS2, and Dreamcast versions of the games, and if you wanna use em on PC you gotta get one of those fancy adapters. there is also the option of playing the real deal in an arcade... if you can even find one. i live in the great (terrible) American south, and apparently we ain't too receptive to these "Japanese Arcade Games" anymore. my best bet was to go to an arcade called Round1 for a long time, which is the closest us Americans have to a Japanese arcade experience, but unfortunately that place got closed down a while ago. (a real shame too, they had a ton of cool stuff there like the Rhythm Tengoku Arcade cabinet! i never thought i'd get the chance to play that in a million years!) now if i want to play Pop'n on a real cabinet, my options are to either sell my kidney to buy a personal cabinet (which i do not have the space for in my current living environment, nevertheless the money to buy it) or drive out of state just to play this one rhythm game that i really like. so what is a poor country girl like me to do?

enter the world of DIY arcade controllers! yes, now you too can play Sound Voltex in the comfort of your own home, and all you gotta do is wire up some buttons and knobs and bam, you're good to go! i think DIY controllers are an awesome idea, and make things like playing arcade rhythm games so much more of a possibility for people in a situation like myself. but here's the thing. i'm mostly a software girl, and even that is kind of pushing the definition. i know a good bit of java, i kind of know python, i can handle HTML and CSS, and i can make a mean RPG Maker game if you need me to. but hardware? girl, i fucked up a Gameboy Advance SP so hard that it won't even turn on anymore, and all i did was try to open the damn thing. you think i could make my own Pop'n controller and come out with my head still on properly? that's where my good buddy Box comes in. they have a ton of experience with this kind of stuff, and make lots of different types of DIY controllers. as such, they tend to end up with a lot of extra parts, and one day when i told them i was still mainly playing on keyboard, they pretty much said,

yeah i can slap sumn together for you lol

and here we are with this marvel of engineering you see before you. now, let me be completely honest here. i adore how this thing looks. come on, the cardboard box that's covered in stickers, the pen marks that were used to mark where the buttons should go, the cutout for the wire that looks like someone just took a pencil and poked through the cardboard, it's beautiful. i love jank tech like this, and i genuinely wouldn't have it looking any other way. the buttons are super clicky and satisfying (they have a touch too much resistance to be super great for a rhythm game like Pop'n, but i got the thing for free so i have literally no room to complain) and generally works great when used with Spice, the emulator that's used to play most of the Bemani rhythm games.

but that isn't to say this thing doesn't have some... quirks. for one, it works normally for the most part when using it with my laptop, but once i plug it into my main desktop, it starts to get kinda funky. it'll seem normal at first, but then you go to use your keyboard or mouse or microphone and they just... don't work anymore. i guess it doesn't like interfacing with my USB ports there. it also weirdly enough is classified as a PS3 controller? one time when i was playing some of the Pop'n games on my PS3 with my friends, one of them suggested that i plug in the Pop'n Box and see if it works just as a funny joke, and funnily enough, it kind of did?? i say kind of because despite most of the buttons mapping to the PS3 layout just fine, one of them was detected as the select button, and you can't remap the controls to use the select button in Pop'n, so it didn't let me do true 9-key unfortunately. and let me make something clear, Box is extremely talented and makes a lot of awesome creations, but the wiring inside of this thing is...

...a sight to be behold. but i'd be lying if i said i didn't love the jank here, and again this was completely free and i am extremely thankful for them even putting in the time to make it at all. (besides, these wires have never really done me any wrong in the past three and a half years that i've had it, so i don't think i have anything to be worried about) maybe one day i'll finally just bite the bullet and make my own controller to replace this one, but honestly, i think i'm perfectly content sticking with this guy. i don't think i'll ever go past the Normal stages in Pop'n anyways, once you start getting into Hyper and EX is when i start to fall apart and can't follow the patterns at all. and despite its flaws and quirks, the Pop'n Box is probably my favorite controller i own. it's such a beautiful piece of work and actually functions suprisingly well! at least, for my purposes and skill level.

Title: Pathetic Fish Tacos
Classification: Food (edible, but sad)
Date obtained: November 30th, 2023

Description: i can explain why i did this. please trust me. so... one night, there was nothing really to eat for dinner, and i was feeling particularly lazy. we had some frozen fish filets in the freezer (good tongue twister there) and i decided, "yeah, i'm in the mood for fish." so i popped em in the air fryer, let 'em cook for about eight minutes, and my mom told me it might be a good idea to turn them into fish tacos. y'know, to get some other food groups in there. i thought that was a great idea, so i got out the tortillas, went to the fridge to grab the lettuce and cheese, and... we didn't have any of either. but i'd already gone through the effort of cooking the fish and getting out the tortillas, so... here we are. yeah, it's a pretty depressing dinner to look at face value. but believe me when i tell you, i enjoyed the hell out of those fish "tacos." so much that that became a staple meal for me for a couple months. look, i have a hard time cooking for myself. i've never really had the patience to get good at cooking, and i'm constantly forgetting to feed myself because of medication reasons, so by the time i've realized i'm hungry, i'm already too tired and impatient to spend the time to make myself something good. with all that said, i have gotten better about this recently. i can make a mean black bean quesadilla when i'm in the right mindset, and i DID eventually improve on my fish taco recipe! it now includes cheese and lettuce!

...c'mon, cut me some slack here. that's a GOOD improvement.

Title: Doubutsu no Mori Double Pack
Classification: Tablets of Life
Date obtained: September 3rd, 2024

Description: ok, look, i know i made a big deal in the Onett Map entry that i want to stick to a "one item per entry" standard, but like... come on. these two arrived together in the same package, wrapped in the same brown paper, and are two different versions of the same game. and that game is the original Animal Crossing, though since these are Japanese versions of the game, it'd be more accurate to call it どうぶつの森, (Doubutsu no Mori) or, Animal Forest, as it's often called by fans. I'm quite a big fan of the series myself, and while i do really like the other games in the series (and fucking despise New Horizons for dumb old lady "back in my day" type reasons) there's no denying that my favorite game in the series is Animal Crossing for Gamecube.

there's something just so utterly fascinating about ACGC that just speaks to me on a different level. before AC had a set vibe, before they had a formula, before everything was standardized, ACGC was this weird, experimental game that just sort of came out of nowhere and had all these crazy ideas for a game that came out in the 2001 gaming landscape. in this era of games getting bigger, badder, more mainstream, more violent, here was this quirky little lifesim with all these weird little guys in it, looking like a Nintendo 64 game, (because it was) housing all these weird little secrets that you just sort of had to figure out on your own or learn by talking to the animals in your town. the game punished you for resetting because there's no resetting in real life, so why should you be able to in this life sim? you had to keep track of dates to make sure you didn't miss out on any events, you could form a daily routine, there were things in the game that, without messing with the ingame clock, would take you a full year to complete, at minimum. and on top of all this, there were buckets and buckets of features and mechanics and ideas that lived and died in this entry alone. monthly raffle tickets, a journal you could write anything you wanted into, a museum you had to mail your fossils away to so they could be identified, a minigame where an androgynous giraffe would make you clean her car, a gyroid outside your house that you could put items up for sale in?? and teach it a message to say to people when they talked to it??? and the list just goes on and on and on... and that is why i love ACGC. it feels so completely different from every other AC game, not just in terms of gameplay, but atmosphere, writing and music. and all of that is so i can lead into telling you that there's not just one version of this game. not just two either. no, there's a whopping FIVE DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF ACGC. and they all have their own little weird version specific quirks and differences.

now as much as i'd absolutely love nothing more than to talk your ear off about all five versions of this game, i really don't wanna lose your attention. you've read this far, and you probably want me to get to the damn point already. fine, fine, but just listen to me ramble for a moment longer. the five different versions of ACGC are as follows:

Doubutsu no Mori (N64, 2000)
Doubutsu no Mori+ (GC, 2001)
Animal Crossing (GC, 2002)
Doubutsu no Mori e+ (GC, 2003)
Dongwu Senlin (iQue Player, 2006)

i know that's a lot, so i'll just give the basic rundown of each. Doubutsu no Mori was the original release for Nintendo 64, Doubutsu no Mori+ was an updated port of DnM to Gamecube that added a ton of new features, that version was then localized and released in America as Animal Crossing with a few MORE new features, and then THAT version was retranslated back into Japanese and updated to add a LOT more new features and released in Japan as Doubutsu no Mori e+. and then there's Dongwu Senlin, which is a Chinese translation of the Nintendo 64 game that was released in the year of our lord 2006 on a China-only device called the iQue Player, and... y'know what? fuck it, i've got time to talk about the iQue Player.

the iQue Player was a weird little controller developed by the Chinese branch of Nintendo, aptly named iQue. because of China's strict laws on censorship, videogames, and Japanese themes in said videogames, Nintendo had to be crafty about how they brought their stuff over to China. because China's laws banned videogame consoles, Nintendo made a weird little controller that had the specs of an N64 built into it, which you would plug directly into your TV and play games off of. i think it was battery powered, but i'm not sure. it only played N64 games that were specially ported to it, and it had a library of a whopping 14 whole games. of all the games ported to it, the last one was Animal Crossing, which was called Dongwu Senlin. hey by the way, this thing was released in 2003, and wasn't discontinued until 2016. that's longer than the damn Wii's lifespan!!

sorry. got sidetracked. thinking about the iQue Player makes this little ticking noise start happening in my head, and the only way i can get it to go away is talking about the iQue player. back on topic, i got the first and last versions of ACGC, DnM and DnMe+. i wanted DnM because you're only allowed to do speedruns of any version of ACGC if its running on actual hardware, no emulation allowed, and i needed a real cartridge of the game to be able to beat my old (terrible) PB. and i got DnMe+ because it's a really fascinating version of ACGC, having a ton of new and completely unique features that we never got in the west. stuff like being able to make structures in your town, new bugs and fish to catch, a ton of villagers that would later become HUGE fan favorites (Bella, Francine, Moe, Felicity, Lolly, Tasha, Roscoe, and loads more) and even fucking... DLC?? yeah, using the eReader, an accessory you'd plug into your Gameboy Advance that would let you scan these little cards to get new stuff in other games or see little programs run on your GBA, you could actually get brand new villagers that were not on the disc already and have them move into your town. that's just... insane to me. they were able to store all the data for a villager, including their species, catchphrase, house layout, personality type, and TEXTURES into one itty bitty dot code on a paper card. no NFC stuff like amiibo or anything like that. e+ is a really cool version of ACGC, and i'm pretty sad we didn't get it over here in the west. that being said, i'm using e+ to help train myself, because as of recent i've been learning bits and pieces of Japanese! it's a good game to teach yourself a language with, or at least use supplementarily to practice with, since there's so much of a focus on text and dialog. e+ also holds a special place in my heart, since it was one of the first games i ever REALLY worked hard to get good at the speedrun with. sure, there was Parappa the Rapper 2 and Space Funeral before it, and while i don't want to devalue my time and experiences with those games and communities since they taught me a lot of valuable lessons as a speedrunner, e+ (and AC as a whole) was the first game where i felt like i was competing against more than just a handful of people. back in May of 2020 when i got my sub 40 time in All Debts, it was a 4th place time and i was really proud of it. it was the first time in my speedrunning career where i had gotten a time that was both near the top of the leaderboard AND above a lot of other people, and it felt good. so i guess i just wanted a real copy of the game as a memento of that. (and who knows maybe i'll come back to the game after all these years someday and crush that time)

Title: Onett Map
Classification: Cartography
Date obtained: September 2nd, 2024

Description: during my travels at DragonCon 2024 (which you can read more about on the Words page, since i wrote a whole thing about my time there) i got a lot of cool things at the Vendor's Hall. i had a hard time deciding on which one i wanted to give the spotlight, since i want to limit each entry here to one item for any given day. no multi-item posts, and if i obtained multiple things on that day, i'm only allowed to write about one. but i decided that, of all the cool things i got at the event, this was the one i think was the coolest. it's a beautiful watercolor rendition of the city of Onett from 1994's Earthbound on SNES. a pretty well known Mot fun fact is that i really, really love the Mother series, often times going as far as to say its my favorite series of all time (which it is) and despite its boom in popularity over the past ten years, i had struggled to find any fanwork done for any of the games in the series in the Vendor's Hall up until that point. i mean, the Mother games getting overlooked is something that both the series and the fans are (begrudgingly) used to by now, but i was still surprised i hadn't seen any rep throughout the entire day. then, i happened upon the stall of Studio Penpen, a duo of artists based in Athens, Georgia. they do a bunch of phenomenal work with paint, and also happen to be colossal nerds who like drawing fanart of their favorite stuff. if you like what you see in the picture above, i HIGHLY suggest checking out their website and portfolio, it's some truly awesome stuff. one of my personal favorites is their gorgeous acrylic painting of Zeal from Chrono Trigger. i really should play that game sometime...

but let's get back to the piece at hand. it's got so much love and detail put into every inch of the piece, and it honestly feels like if the Town Map you recieve from the Library in Earthbound was real. i especially love how care was taken to add in the little square in the top left that's on the map in the original game, it's a really cute touch and adds a lot to that authenticity i was talking about. as i am writing this, the piece is affixed to my wall behind my computer, and i've no doubt i'm gonna spend a lot of time i should be using to work on videos or school work just staring at that thing. but i think the sacrifice is worth it, it's such a good piece.

Title: Silent Hill HD Collection (PS3)
Classification: Cursed Tablet
Date obtained: August 30th, 2024

Description: famously one of the most shoddy ports of all time, the Silent Hill HD Collection has a reputation. the story of why this... thing is the way that it is is a story many have heard before, but i think it's a vital part of understanding this game's deal, so i'll repeat it for anyone who doesn't know.

Konami wanted to port Silent Hill 2 and 3 to (at the time) modern consoles, and asked Hijinks Studio to handle it. Hijinks agreed, and when they asked for the source code of the game which they needed to properly port the two games, Konami pretty much said, "uhhhh, what source code?" yeah, somehow they had ended up losing the original source code for two of the most critically acclaimed horror games of all time. oops! as i'm sure you can imagine, development was a nightmare. not only did Hijinks need to port these games to a console that was already infamously hard to port things to (the PS3) they ALSO had to use a version of the game that was incomplete, which made it incredibly hard to tell which bugs were with porting, and which were because they were given an old build of the game. there were also a good handful of artistic changes that were made, and with something as artistically valued and revered as Silent Hill 2, that's never gonna go well. famously, one of the signs in the game was changed to use Comic Sans, everyone's favorite font! they also rerecorded all of the voice lines, and that ALSO did not go over very well. the vocal performances of SH2 are extremely well regarded for their intentionally awekward and stilted sound, which makes the player feel disconnected from the characters, adding to the atmosphere for some people. rerecording all of those was seen as trying to "fix" something that wasn't really broken, and sanding off all of the rough edges that made Silent Hill 2 Silent Hill 2.

so if this port is so bad, why the hell did i spend 20 bucks on it? well, i love Silent Hill a lot. but here's the thing: i also really like collecting physical media of my favorite things. like, sure, i could just pirate all of the silent hill games (which i did) but it's cool to be able to own a piece of history that you can play. unfortunately, there's just some games you'll never officially own. i would know, my favorite series of all time is the Mother games, and i'm not willing to sell my kidney to be able to afford a copy of Earthbound. Silent Hill is a series that also has obscenely high price tags on all of their games, because resellers are satan incarnate here on earth only to torment me. the Silent Hill HD Collection is probably the only official Silent Hill game i'll ever be able to afford, at least of the ones that i like. sure, i could probably afford to buy Silent Hill Homecoming and have THAT be my physical SH game, but i don't like that game. i think it's lame. i DO like Silent Hill 2 and 3 though, and even if the HD Collection isn't the best way to play the games, i still find it to be a fascinating piece of history. plus, i'm a sucker for weird and bad ports of games. i own Rayman Advance for crying outloud. so yeah, more love for SHHD.

Title: Zero Dollar Bill
Classification: Tool
Date obtained: August 29th, 2024

Description: i'm actually cheating for this one, since it wasn't actually found by me. this was found by my friend madd in a parking lot at her work, and she posted it in a friend chat. and how could i not post about this thing? it's awesome. you can tell a real jokester's nearby if you find one of these guys laying around, becuase this is something a true prankster is always gonna keep in their arsenal. an absolutely iconic item that's an essential item for any joke-player out there looking to spice up their game.

Title: Gameboy Micro Shiftie
Classification: Companion
Date obtained: August 26th, 2024