One-shot made by Kichi Mokano.

Synopsis:… again, just read the title… the Synopsis is out of a job again! :sob:

Art and presentation: The art is surprisingly detailed for one-shot with a simple premise. It's cute, detailed, funny and unhinged all at the sametime! I enjoyed it a lot, it really enhanced the experience of Gamer Granny!

Why you should read it: What if your grandma was a gamer and streamed to many people? It's a surprisingly endearing one-shot that manages to be cute and funny!

Score: 5/5! Let's get GAMERGRANNY_75Y to 1 million subscribers!

LIFE UPDATES

Last time I talked about how everything beyond Yoshi's Island would be new grounds in my Mario Journey and how I dreaded Super Mario 64, thinking it was very outdated in controls and design and I have been spoiled by recent games so I couldn't really enjoy this one…

Well, I can say without any doubt in mind that I Was Wrong About Super Mario 64!

The first surprise of the list! I thought I would not enjoy this game and only have a bad time with it due to the reasons listed above, but I was pleasantly surprised on how this game still holds up to this day. The game controls really well and even if there is some jank and fighting when it comes to the camera, for the first ever 3D Mario game, Nintendo really managed to raise the bar really high in quality.

I played SM64 via build Miya sent to me called SM64EX, it's the same game but now it runs on desktop and has some quality of life features such as teleporting to a level from anywhere and a few settings, thanks Miya. Go visit their website, It's really well made!

Final Thoughts: First surprise of the list, the game is really good!

Look at him doing his thing, good for you bowser, now let me try to throw you for the 102th time so I can miss again.

Moving along, we jump from the N64 to the Gamecube to visit the black sheep of the 3D Mario games: Super Mario sunshine!

Firstly, I have not finished the game yet, yup, I'm still playing it at the time of this update! I would've finished it but I ended up… getting just a tiny bitty addicted to a particular game coming up in the next section… sorry!

This game also took a long time to set up, I tried the Super Mario 3D Collection through super legal means (c;) but I ended up getting a lot of bugs and crashes. So I moved to Dolphin and spent around 30 minutes learning what “Analog Triggers” are and how to set them up (it was a simple bind issue I didn't notice for 30 minutes).

But I can discuss what I feel about it and… it's very weird? Being the game after SM64 and in a different console all together, this game improves in most of the things the predecessor has, this time Mario has a machine name F.L.U.D.D. and is sentenced to cleaning the mess and paint… he created!?

Mario retains most of the important movements he had on SM64 with some new ones replacing the others but the main thing in this game is F.L.U.D.D. It has many modes that can be used for offense or to enhance Mario's Movement such as the Hover Nozzle allowing you to… hover for a brief time and the Turbo Nozzle allowing you to… turbo around the level at high speeds, all at the cost of your water reserve that can be refilled in any water pool!

I thought the toad in the paint was an eye…

F.L.U.D.D. is a really good part of the game and the water mechanic is good but this game is very weird because it took away all the themes for levels and replaced them with the same “beach resort” theme with some new things sprinkled in. There's some stars where they take F.L.U.D.D. away and force you to do a platforming challenge without him and those suck really bad, definitely the worst part of this game…

I'm still playing the game, so let's see how my thoughts develop by the end!

Fuck this level however, this FREAKING SUCKS!

The game in the Mario Journey has grown in size and time. Here's the list so far:

Gold means beaten since last blog update.

Blue means currently playing.

But SM64 marked the halfway point of this journey, so let's continue jumping!

And now for the last topic of this segment: RimWorld Has Consumed Me and Made Me Addicted!

For those who don't know, RimWorld is a “construction and management simulator” where you… build a colony and take care of colonists in this unfamiliar and hostile world they have just landed on. The objective is to maintain the colony and try reaching any ending of the game while fighting off raids, animals and even the elements while keeping your colonists happy and healthy!

It's a very difficult game to get into just from the sheer complexity it comes with, but when you learn the game mechanics… this game becomes one that rivals Terraria in addictive levels.

I started playing recently to train myself for the website project I want to do in the future (just so the run doesn't end in the first 15 days LOL.) and I accidently got fully addicted to it… like, 5+ hours in a row on a saturday only playing it…

I managed to beat the game by creating a ship to go back to space with my colonists and it was one of my stressful inducing experiences I experienced in this game!

The spaceship takes 15 days to start up and during these 15 days many poor souls will come raid your colony, with an intensity never seen before, to get in the ship and you have to fight them off. Managing your resources, colonists mood, protecting the base while and repairing everything damaged in the last brawl was one of the most intense and stressful management I have done in my life, but seeing all my colonists enter the ship and fly back to space, while the credits rolled felt so good and satisfying. It really felt like a long journey to return home took place…

This was the area before starting the ship.

This was the area after the ship took off (The many red X's are either dead people/robots or things from said dead people.), it was a massacre…

I played the game completely vanilla, my plan is to get the special ending of each DLC one at a time before starting the website project, so like Royalty DLC > Ideology DLC > Biotech DLC and finally, the newest dlc announced recently: Anomaly DLC. That last one will be the website playthrough! Stay tuned in like… a few months!

And that's everything for life updates at the end of March!

SONG OF THE DAY

The song of the day is Dapple by OLDUCT! I love how robotic and factory-like this song goes for, even the lyrics are displayed in the top left like a factory log! It sounds good too~

Take a listen to it:

You can click here to see the playlist with all the songs recommended in this segment during this year!

And that's everything for the month of March!

A pretty productive and fun month if I had to judge it.

See you next month, Traveler!

Have a nice day!

15/03/2024

Helo!

Time for the regularly scheduled blog update!

Today we have more about Mario Journey, a few updates on Phoenix Club and that's it!

This will be a very short one, not much has happened since last time.

So let 's begin!

WEBSITE UPDATES

Not Much to See here related to the website itself, just the usual buttons on links page and game shelf updates!

The projects I want to do are still in the idea phase and it will probably take a while before I get to them.

”Someone is dead? Who died?”

Worry not however, Phoenix Club Chapter 2 is more than halfway written!

Progress has been very smooth so far and the time I took away from the main story really helped me solidify the plot. The chapter is about 60% ~ 70% complete in the writing department. I would like to commission Scrimblo again to do a black & white CG for this one too (especially after getting the most recent WIPs for the Science Partners!) but I'll wait for them to finish the current batch before giving them work.

Oh yeah! We recently had Miku day (3/9) and I thought it would be fun to have a character heavily inspired by the one and only Miku in Phoenix Club!

Here's the doodle I made:

Still unnamed Miku-like character.

She has a passion for music and dreams to one day write and sing her own song on a huge stage! Right now she's part of an underground music club and sings under the band called I.D.O.L (Interstellar Development Of Love). She does struggle a lot in finding inspirations to write lyrics, so she often goes for walks to find said inspirations.

In the grand scheme of things, she's going to be a very minor character in Phoenix Club and there's still a long time before we get to see them. One thing I would want changed is her stage outfit, but I wasn't creative enough to come up with a space themed outfit… but hey, we are still a long time away from her, so next time you see her, she will have an original outfit! (Probably!)

And That's everything for website updates!

ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY

Mayonaka no Coin Laundry

Midnight Coin Laundry

Synopsis: Suzukei Sei's washing machine broke down and with no time during the day, the struggling artist was forced to go to an empty laundry place open past midnight. Unexpectedly, a person enters the said laundry place and…

Art and presentation: A very different artstyle than the usual you expect for manga and it's really good! It has that free flow kind of art where it feels like it was a WIP but yet has a lot of detail put into it. The character expressions and poses are great too and it can get super detailed during emotional moments. It's just amazing and well made!

Why you should read it: Suzukei Sei struggles a lot with conveying feelings into her art since she devotes all time and energy into her paintings, she can't really make any connections to people. Seeing her meet an individual, by chance, that shares a good amount in common with her and seeing how she deals with the emotions that come with it, is endearing and heartwarming to see.

Score: 5/5! I was tempted to spoil the ending, but I won't! Power of holding back! Go read it now!

LIFE UPDATES

Very few things have happened since last time but the Mario Journey Still Continues!

This time we go back to the Game Boy (correct spelling this time!) for the last game chosen to play from the Super Mario Land series: Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3!

I'll be bluntly honest with this one, my experiences with this game were very bad…

Continuing with the theme of being a very unique and different type of Mario game, this game introduces a whole new character you play as: Wario!

He has his iconic shoulder bash attack, he can grab enemies and throw them and he can even grab coins from his pocket and throw them… for some reason…

This comes with a tradeoff however, you can't run anymore and I think this tradeoff was very detrimental to this game. Levels feel super slow and they are just straight lines most of the time!

“But all 2D platformers are straight lines aren't they?”

Well, they are but also not, level elevation, many paths to reach the level exit and all that stuff can help the level feel more fun to go through, something this game desperately lacked a lot of the time.

Tiny Wario is funny though.

The controls take a little bit to get used to and even then they are not really reliable, the game is super laggy at many points and the music… oh god the music…

Mario games have great music and… I don't know who thought the OST of this game was great. They feel repetitive and very goofy to a really bad degree, it felt like just random noises trying to form a song…

have been very negative toward this game so far, but there is some good to find on it! For example, the graphics are really well made for the Game Boy, Wario has a very unique playstyle and the game being focused on collecting as many coins as possible are good things, it's just that everything else drags it down…

Final thoughts: You don't need to play it, you won't lose anything by skipping this game.

(I used the rewind feature the entire game by the way.)

Mario stealing the giant princess statue was funny as well.

And now, let's return to the SNES for one last time, for an experience polar opposite of the previous game: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island!

Being a sequel to one of the best Mario games of all time is a very high bar to meet and, in my opinion, this game meets said high and sometimes even surpasses it!

In this game you play as the Yoshi's introduced in the last game, they are tasked in carrying a baby Mario back to the captured Stork so he can meet his brother and the Stork can bring them home.

Once again, the main character you play as in this game is not Mario and unlike last time, this character plays a lot better. Yoshi's control perfectly and have many things at their disposal such as a flutter jump and the ability to not be killed but one of the most iconic are grabbing enemies with their tongue and turning them into eggs where you can throw. This egg throwing part of the game makes this game super unique and it's very well utilized the entire journey for both offense and defense.

Not related to the previous topic, I just found this funny.

This game is also different in the fact that levels have lots of collectables to find and the level design is usually more open to accommodate this approach, this means you will be exploring more than just going from one side to the other in linear fashion… At least that was what I was encouraged to do by the game. You can still play it like any normal Mario level, but I feel there's more fun to be found in exploring rather than rushing through the level.

As you heard in many memes already, the music of this game is very goofy, but unlike the last game, these songs are actually good and feel nice to listen to. Even if there's very few songs on the OST. One thing I found cute was the level select song growing more and more lively the further the journey went on!

Another thing to praise is the amazing and genuinely impressive graphics at display for this game.

I mean, just look at these images:

3D in the SNES???

I never got past level 2-1 as a kid and I kinda regret that now, this game was really great! It's the first game I considered and did 100% in Retroachievements (mostly because the achievements weren't really difficult to get.). This marks my first and probably only 100%ed game.

Before I get to the final thoughts, I have to talk about a theory I have. This game features some pain inducing extra levels and a boss fight that takes place inside a frog's belly.

Why inside of a stomach???

I have to give it points for being creative, but I'm just asking who's the vore and sadism enthusiast that sneaked in the level design team, it's not the first time a level was painful or was inside another animal…

Anyways, my final thoughts are: Amazing game that stands high alongside SMW, sometimes even surpassing it!

Yoshi's are able to thrive once again!

That's all the progress done in the Mario Journey, here's how the list looks like now:

Gold means beaten since last blog update.

And that's everything for life updates!

SONG OF THE DAY

Today's song is the current and bestest song ever commissioned to MORE MORE JUMP!: JUMPIN’ OVER by r-906!

This song is just amazing and different from what came before, the energy this song has is unmatched, the vocals are absolutely angelic, and in my opinion, it's the best MMJ song up to date! (The fact that they sing their own names within the lyrics is so fun and cute!)

You can click here to see the playlist with all the songs recommended in this segment during this year!

And that's everything for this blog update!

Despite being sick since yesterday (don't worry, I'm almost recovered!), march has been a good month for me!

See you next time traveler!

Have a nice day!

05/03/2024

Helo!

Welcome, welcome!

March has begun and there's much to talk about already! We have more progress on my Mario Journey, opinions about the Super Mario RPG Remake, Phoenix Club stuff and some more!

Let's begin this blog update!

WEBSITE UPDATES

First with some Small Website Changes!

Not much has happened here, I just added the games to my game shelf and updated some bits of code for the future Phoenix Club chapters!

”I can read now!”

Talking about that…

Science Partners Has Released!

You can read right here: Click Me!

It does not have the CGs yet, Scrimblo needed more time, so when they are done I'll for sure tell in the blog update! (The new WIPs I received a few days ago were lovely! The art will be great!)

I would also like to hear your opinion about the story! This is the style I wanna go with writing this story going forward and if you got anything that might improve the reader experience, please tell me discord or send me an email via the misc page!

Either way, have fun reading this simple cute story!

Fun fact: Oshare is actually a little bit taller than Yuka, I just draw weird!

Now for the Phoenix Club Future!

This month begins the production of Chapter 2 (& maybe 3) of this series! It will mark the beginning of the first arc of the series, delving a little deeper on the characters backstory and the issues they have and why they have it. With this style of writing, this will be the moment to spread my wings and show what kind of story I can tell! I can't wait for you to read it when the time comes!

Oh yeah, for the sake of transparency, I did change chapter 1 a bit. I changed how Seiko described Yuka, that's all! I didn't have her design nailed down yet, and it's a very minor change that doesn't affect the plot. I just wanted to mention!

I also have been feeling the need to rewrite that entire first chapter, but those are thoughts for future me to deal with.

I also got some fanart!

Check out these lovely sprites made by Miya:

Sprites made by Miya!

And that's everything related to the website!

ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY

Chuugaku Onaji Dakedo Shabetta koto nai Tomodachi

A Friend Who I Went to the Same Middle School With but Have Never Talked To

Synopsis: I mean, the title pretty much says it all doesn't it? It kinda put the Synopsis out of a job! I personally find these types of titles super funny!

Art and presentation: You may enjoy this manga's artstyle a lot! Being a comedy manga first, the characters are super expressive and of course, super funny! This author has a good mastery over comedic expressions and faces and it will get laughs from you!

Why you should read it: You want to just laugh and have a good time? Well, you should totally read it! It's a short Romance Comedy with very solid and fun dialogue, it will for sure make you have a big smile all the way through!

That's why you should read it!

Score: 5/5! Who doesn't like a good Romcom? I personally really enjoyed this one despite being short!

LIFE UPDATES

Now for Mario, Mario and Mario!

The Mario Journey continues beyond the NES now! But first, a little stop on the Gameboy for: Super Mario Land!

How to describe this game… it's very… weird?

It's the equivalent of the original Super Mario Bros for the Gameboy, but this game was the first to make some very interesting decisions and divert a bit of what we consider staples of Mario games nowadays.

For starters, the fire flower works completely differently, you save Daisy instead of Peach, the worlds are very strange in the themes, I mean, we have the standard Mario world, then we got to Egypt, then Easter Island and Japan? There's space shooter levels too???

These sure are lands.

In terms of controls, I dare say this was more fun to play than SMB. 1, even if it had a lot of jank to it, the gameplay was fun and super short as well. (I had to use Rewind to beat the game because the last levels are a little bs-y.)

Final thoughts are: Fine, even if janky and a little weird, Mario game!

They are going… to somewhere?

We will use the Gameboy again, but first let's go to the SNES and play the most prestigious and celebrated games of all time (for good reason): Super Mario World!

What even is there for me to say about this game, it's regarded as one of the best games of all time for good reason ykown. It's a game you can replay multiple times and always have fun doing so, I say this from experience! SMB. 3 might be my favorite but I can't deny SMW is the better game.

Years of playing this game got me to this secret area!

As mentioned in the last blog update, I did do some Retroachievements, I got about 80% or so available for this game! Somewhere real tough and others a little silly, I wanted to do all but there's some there that requires you to play the game in a very restricted manner and that's not my jam, so I stuck to my 80% and was happy.

These achievements also showed me some cool new things too! Like the moons that exist in each other, the chocolate island secret level and even hidden ones up! It was quite fun to see new things in this game I played so much.

Final thoughts: Always an amazing game with some fun achievements to get if you go with Retroarch. Deserving of all the praises.

A game that is fit for all ages and all types of people, truly one of the best games of all time!

This is the SMW equivalent for the Gameboy and honestly, it's a pretty solid game considering the console it was developed for.

SML 2, like its predecessor, also goes in a very unique place with the themes and gameplay mechanics of what you expect for Mario. Heck, the final boss of this game is Wario and not Bowser!

There's a Halloween world, a Space World and a… inside of a giant koopa… world… Hey, at least it's a very unique theme, I learned to appreciate the weirdness of these Land series of games, because later on, all of that is going to be taken away and I'll be forced to play basically the same game 5 times… but that's for something for future me to deal with.

I never expected zombie bees to show up in a Mario game!

In terms of gameplay, it played well, a little janky with running, but nothing like the mess that SMB 1 has.

Final Thoughts: Great and very unique Mario game that I recommend!

But I was forced to use rewind for this game, the very last level is stupid hard, long and has no checkpoints despite all other levels having them, paired with the long boss fight that makes you replay the ENTIRE LEVEL again if you fail… it sucked, but the game is super fun until that point!

Wario has been kicked out and now it's the Mario Castle!

3 games down in 9 days, that's a pretty good pace isn't it? Here's the list of games so far:

A few notes: the games with golden “Yes"es are the ones I completed last time and Luigi U was added to the Mario U section.

And now, for the very last topic of this blog update: Super Mario RPG Remake, the Best and Most Respectful Way to Tackle an Remake!

The time has come for me to discuss my final thoughts on this one.

But first let me tell you a little story about a little Pudding and in his earliest years…

Pudding was a big fan of Mario games, he didn't have wealth or means to buy original video games as a little kid, so he would play those CDs with hundreds of emulated SNES games for the PS2 he inherited from his parents. But there was always a game that he could never go beyond the start, a game called Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

For some reason, the screen would go all black after the Bowser fight at the start of the game, he could still do inputs and hear the game, but nothing showed up… only a black screen denying him from the rest of the game…

When he got a new CD like this one, the first thing he did was boot up this game and see if the black screen was gone, but he was never lucky enough to get a different outcome…

A few years pass and he inherits a laptop from one of his family members, and with the help of a really smart cousin that was pretty well versed in SNES emulation, he finally gets to finally play the game that had denied him for so long. (With a native language patch too!)

Little Pudding was so happy and enjoyed the game to death, from start to end, every second was a joy.

Okay, so why did I tell you this story? To show how much this game means to me, it's a game deeply embedded in my childhood.

Playing the remake felt like I was going back to that little Pudding, experiencing this wonderful game again.

It's been a long road for this moment.

I can say with my heart and soul, this game is truly a one of a kind experience. It has that childlike magic no other game in the genre has or refuses to have, and it thrives in that fun and joy. The people in charge of the remake knew this game was special, and decided to enhance this magic rather than change it to be a more “modern” game.

The remade music, gameplay, story, graphics, everything! Even the new things added! They all had love and care put into it, the same love and care I and many others had for this game.

Still fighting despite being turned into scarecrows.

When I beat the final boss and was watching the last remaining parts of the game, I felt a little bit emotional…

I'm glad this remake exists, I'm glad that many get to experience such a wonderful masterpiece that is Super Mario RPG in higher quality than ever. I'm truly glad that people playing this game for the first time had a blast with it.

It makes me so happy that they gave this game a chance and were happy with it.

I know this is a small message in a small niche place, that probably will never reach the intended destination but here we go:

Thank you for the development team that made the original Super Mario RPG and the team in charge of the Remake. This game means a lot to me and left a wonderful mark in my life.

Thank you!

Thus, this adventure comes to an end.

And for you dear reader, please go play this game, it doesn't matter if you absolutely hate RPGs, this game is all about fun and I'm sure you will enjoy it!

And that concludes everything I wanted to talk about in this segment!

What can you expect from me in this segment this month? Well, more Mario lol.

I still have a lot of games to play, so expect a LOT of Mario talk for this month!

SONG OF THE DAY

The song of the day is And My Name's Booster by Yoko Shimomura, the original song was already amazing but she decided to go even more all out with the remake, thank you Yoko for the wonder songs for both the original and remake! They are forever stuck in my mind and I'll cherish them for the rest of my life!

You can click here to see the playlist with all the songs recommended in this segment during this year!

And that's everything for this blog update!

As to what you can expect for March, well…

Further writing the Phoenix Club story as mentioned before and continuing with my Mario Journey. That's about it for what I plan! Who knows what other surprises may come along.

See you next time traveler!

Have a nice day!