Not dead, still sucking at IIDX, haven't really had the time to play since school started. But I did get to play Happy Sky a few times when I went to Toronto over christmas break. I'll have to pop in HS CS tomorrow. Still eagerly waiting for DistorteD CS, Gold looks kinda tacky... bling?

According to a post on BMS, a member of Twin AmadeuS passed away a few days ago. As Wonder Bullfighter's biggest fan (just how many times HAVE I mentioned that song on this LJ?), I'm actually pretty down about this. I just hope the other half can continue to make the most amazing music ever.

I'll have to do a proper tribute when I don't suck so bad. =\

Speaking of playing, haven't touched the thing in a month. I want my life and free time back! *kicks school* I wonder when the Dao site will go up, now that Rob has his internet again. Unless Landon found another coder or something, oh well. 3 months till I go down to Toronto to visit Rob, and play Happy Sky! Excuse the randomness of this last paragraph.

My sister and niece are gone, my boyfriend's not in the city anymore, but now I'm back in school so there's still no time for IIDX!

Actually, Rob and I tried playing IIDX here a few times, but my setup was too awkward for him. When we tried at a friend's place, oh god, his TV was oh SO beautiful, the picture, the sound, it was BETTER than the arcade...

But it was the LAGGIEST GARBAGE EVER. *cry*

Every song was like playing Gambol, it was so frustrating. The other two managed to play decently, but I couldn't adjust. =\

Well, Monday's a holiday, let's hope I don't have too much homework so I can finally play again!

My first!

Sure, it's 5.8.8 on l7... but oh well! As much as I like Iroha, I wanted the Tuesday pic! My PS2 clock must be wrong or something...
Edit: Hahahahahaha, figures!

So that one week turned into almost 3 weeks because my sister and niece were visiting. I constantly had to hide everything of value unless I wanted the 3 year old hurricane totaling it.

For example: 5 minutes after I moved my IIDX controller from my "IIDX table", she squeezed half a bottle of sunscreen all over it. But now they're gone and all is peaceful and quiet... until I get angry at IIDX again. ;)

Taking a week off from IIDX so I don't end up throwing my controller into my TV. I really should go back and improve on the level 5/6 songs I can pass, but I think I just played way too much of it in a short period of time. I should go back to 3rd Style for a bit, update and input some scores there.

This has claimed my soul in the meantime. My anti-IIDX-induced-stress game. Pangya!

3 entries in 3 days... O_o

-All 5s cleared on 9th. YES, even the bastard ones that I mentioned earlier.
-Completed kyus 2-7. Haven't tried 1kyu yet...
-L7 Honorable mentions: Dreamin' Sun AA, V A, Karma B
-7k Honorable mentions: Showa-song A, Switch B, ADVANCE B

And Fun can BITE ME. 100% gauge finish on an expert course unlocks pretty pictures. Of course, it took all the FUN out of the easiest one and left me with 96% at the end.

...So I played Atomic Age 5 times in a row on an "original" course for a picture of Lilith. Boo. If I'd done it half an hour earlier, I would've gotten Celica. And I'm too lazy to change my PS2 clock.

I don't know WHAT it is, but whenever I play 9th (not anything else) for more than 15 minutes, my contacts start irritating the hell out of me.

By the end of a long session, my eyes are red and I have tears streaming down my face. What the hell. I've even tried switching to a newer pair with no luck. Not to mention I still sit rather far away from the TV. What's even weirder is that this also happens when I go to my dentist. There's just SOMETHING about that light overhead that makes my eyes water.

Oh, IIDX... as soon as I start getting somewhat decent at the game, you own me in other ways. Jerkface. ¬_¬

-Cleared all 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s on l7
-Spiteful 5s on l7: 5pm eternal, checking you out, Jaeger song, Karma (BAD KARMA!!), Your Body
-Nice 6s on l7: ACT, quasar, rottel-the-mercury

-Cleared all... uh, 2 of the 4s on 7k
-Spiteful 5s on 7k: ADVANCE. Seriously, FUCK YOU. I don't want to have to listen to this anymore!!!!
-Nice 6s on 7k: Showa-song. Umm, lemme find what it's really called.... Showa Kigyou Senshi Arayama Kachou... OK, that one by Akira Yamaoka. THERE. (昭和企業戦士荒山課長)

Over the last couple of weeks, my PS2 showed its disinterest in BMUS and halted on about half of the songs. So I went and got my 3rd and 9th Styles back! Wheee, though I got bored of 3rd really fast. I'm still stuck on light7/normal 5s, though. I can clear most of them, but there's usually some sort of "tricky part" that I stumble over. If said part is near the end, then I'm toast. 6s murder. Oh, and 4s and 5s on 7k laugh at me. Mean bastards.

RANT.
MOON_CHILD? NOT A 5!
9th Style's JAEGER SONG? NOT A 5!
SOMETHING ELSE THAT OWNED ME? NOT A 4! OR 5! Or whatever it was...

I played V again for the first time in ages (my ps2 gave up on it ages ago). 78%. So I got all pissy and played it till I passed it. Now I will NEVER play it again. Kind of like Max300 and Paranoia Survivor. [/ddr]

Yesterday I headed over to Landon's place and tried out his DJ Dao controller for the first time. -_- My small hands have been spoiled by the KOC because I COULD NOT scratch AT ALL. When I normally play, I use my ring finger to scratch, and my index finger to hit key 1 if needed. And I really had to stretch to pull that off. Arcade dimensions? No such luck. To even remotely attempt to scratch and hit key 1, I'd have to use pinky and thumb. And strain my hand doing it. I'd say it'd take me a good 8 weeks to get used to it. D: The turntable was so nice, not stiff at all, but I couldn't make use of it. Phooey.

All in all, the good: I "accidentally" used my thumb in a 5-6-5-6-5 roll. Subconscious improvement? :D
The bad: I still suck hardcore. Buuut since I got my other styles back, I'm playing more than 10 minutes a day. I got sick of BMUS REAL fast, as you can tell.
The ugly: Contemplating putting on auto-scratch. I just couldn't do it! I need to do some sort of finger extender exercises or something... it was brutal to watch, seriously.

random: Obsessed with kors k, I SO wish I could've gone to that Bemani festival ;_;
random edit: Ok, moon_child's a 4, oops. Doesn't matter now because I cleared all the 4s, and now I'm working on 5's and 6's. On that note...

5 PM ETERNAL IS NOT A 5!
NEITHER IS CHECKING YOU OUT!
ACT is not a 6 because I passed it on my first try. Which means I'll never be able to pass it again. But, uh, yay! Passed my second 6! I think my first one was m02stpv.Hell.01 7k. Which I struggled with on light 7. Go figure.

I've been playing fairly irregularly lately, but yesterday I put some good time and effort in. That is, until V lit my fuse and I literally exploded.

BUT! I managed to finally clear Love isn't so full of Hatefulness and Summer Vacation. 2 5s down, 2 to go! 78% fail on V because I couldn't bring my life bar back up enough.


Today I messed around in training mode for a few minutes, found out that now whenever I try to play Colors, my PS2 freezes (joy....), then cleared Nemesis! Yay, 1 more 5 cleared, one to go. Played V. We're not a happy camper. Hint, my ranking was 536 at the time of posting. Start at the bottom.

Time to go drown myself in some good ole TSN.

Finally got some of my IIDX stuff back, and hopefully I'll be able to get my 3rd and rest of it tomorrow. After a month of no contact, I still suck. Not much worse, I'm happy to admit. Surprisingly I was tying or getting slightly better ex scores on the easier songs, but the harder ones (and random.... uuugh) owned me. Bleh~!

Beware, geek moment. The other night I had a dream that the guys and I did the road trip thing and went to TGA. Then we got a really awesome picture done at one of those photobooths. And now I want to do that. It'd be cool to take the trip out there, but god... it's so far away. That, and I only have weekends free, not nearly enough time. =(

One complaint, I was wearing a skirt in the dream. Seriously, wtf? I hate those things. -_-
Edit: Mapquest states that TGA's just a mere 30 hours away. Screw that.

Wow, just fucking wow.

The RedCS songlist has The Safari and NOT V?????????????? Yes, I didn't know about it until today, but it still makes me the happiest person alive. I'm the world's biggest V hater, btw. Back to hockey...

I want to play Red, but I do not have the hard drive space for the torrent, the dvd burner to burn said game, the money to buy a dvd burner, the money to buy the actual game, OR my swap disk that I lent out almost a year ago. AND I left my controller (& BMUS) at a friend's place. ARGH!

I've dropped about 1 level of difficulty since the last time I played. And that's a hell of a lot, seeing as I didn't have much skill to begin with. Hopefully I can get some time in this weekend. (And hopefully a kind soul burns me a copy of red as a belated birthday present. 10th too. ^^;;)

Not quite a IIDX entry, but I started classes again this week. Sadly, one of the first things I thought when I opened up my new laptop:

"Hey, now I don't have to write down my IIDX scores if I want to put them up on VJA!"

Unfortunately, I don't have a wireless router or a long enough ethernet cable to my set up, so there went that idea. Not to mention pen and paper are nice throwing materials; a laptop isn't. ;) Here's hoping that a week away from IIDX doesn't make me suck horribly worse than I usually do.

So it's been a few days since I've acquired BMUS. I really hate that the US songs (you know what I'm talking about) are ranked higher than they should be. They've just made them so much easier compared to the ones from Japanese Styles.

I almost got stuck in the "Beginner's mode" rut again, because it's so nice and safe there. But I managed to pull myself out, passing probably all the 3s and the easiest 4s. Bad Boy bass was really pissing me off because I'd build up such a nice life bar, just to have it sucked down to nearly 0% at the end. Unfortunately, I am told, this is what IIDX is all about. T_T

Yesterday I went into training mode and played all the Japanese-released 4s, 5s, and 6 *coughColorscough* but slowed down to 3 or 4 speed. Did each song twice, then moved on. Didn't go into free mode until today, where I managed to pass all my 4s twice except fuck-you-M-02stp.ver1.01 (the only 4 I couldn't do) plus some easy easy 5s. =D

Woah, does this sound like improvement? I certainly hope so. Then again, it could be the drugs talking. I had a wisdom tooth out this morning and that's not cool at all. -_-;;

In the end, I think it's a good thing that I don't have multiple styles to choose from this time around. When I had 3rd, 6th, 7th, and 9th available to me, I would just play all the easy/beginner songs, and from 4 different styles, that's a hell of a lot of easy crap. With only one style, if I want some variety, it's either 5key or harder songs.

;) Though I still want a copy of every style. Red and DistorteD please!

Oh, one more thing, my play style seems to be very awkward. Maybe it's just me. I don't use my thumbs because it makes it feel even weirder, though I'm wondering if I'd have an easier time if I'd actually used them. My left hand takes the scratch + the first 3 keys, while my right hand takes the last 4. If I'd move my left hand over so that it would only take the first 2 keys, maybe I wouldn't have such a hard time doing scratches, or chords with scratches in them.

Either that, or I'm just overanalyzing the fact that I suck. XD

So I got home Wednesday morning, and later that afternoon EB called to tell me my Beatmania Bundle was in. Perfect timing!

I'd put $10 on the game before I left the city (and was seriously kicking myself later for not making it $20), which basically just covered the tax. "59.99 minus your $10 equals... 49.99 plus taxes." is what he told me. I agreed, then I ran off to Vancouver, giggling like a little school girl. Yep yep.

So after arriving home and getting the call, I rushed over to EB with exactly $60 in hand. No more, no less. I hop up to the counter, cry out "Gimme mah stuff, biatch!" and watch the dude work out the final bill.

"And the total comes to $69.97."
"...huh?"

I know I slacked off in math class, but I thought it to be one of my better subjects! But my calculator skills were indeed correct. After I babbled some 59.99 nonsense, he told me that the price did go up $10. And because of this I was just under $10 short. With no extra cash on me whatsoever.

So I glared at him. And glared some more. The least he could've done was told me this before I made the drive out there. So in the end, I just gave him the $60 so I wouldn't be tempted by other mall goodies (HIKH2) and drove home empty handed. :(

3 hours later I drove back with $15 and picked up the damned thing. >:D

Last night I finally sat down and played for a few hours. The controller, so worth it. My last KOC's turntable was really stiff and didn't register scratches well (and I was too afraid to mod it) but this one... perfect! Maybe I'll do mods later, for now I'm enjoying it.

ONLY ONE COMPLAINT: The interface... total shit. I seriously cried. As an avid photoshop (ab)user, one look at the hideous purple and neon rainbow puke scheme sent me into a messy sobbing heap on the floor. I could have done better! Seriously, what were these people on when they decided something like that was worth selling to the public? Out of curiosity, I inverted one of the images to see if it would look any better:



Failed.

( And because this is starting to get really long, other IIDX stuffage! )

Back from the wild wild west! I managed to hit e-spot twice on my travels, and boy did that feel good. ;) Heh...

The first time, Beau and I sauntered up to the sexy Red machine, there was a big old "Sorry, Out of Order!" sign sitting on top of it. Oh man, I cried like a little girl. The machine itself was on, but I figured it was eating loonies or something to that effect. I'd heard stories about that coin slot!

So I watched Beau play a few rounds of Taiko and Guitar Freaks, and I had a round of free DDR (yum yum, unused joint premium credit!). Turned around to see someone playing IIDX! So Beau and I got in line and started ourselves off on beginner, then working our way up to L7. And, of course, I made him play Wonder Bullfighter with me so that we could play all of it together without failing horribly. =D

We would've wasted more money, but wonton soup and the Canucks game called!

Second time, twas my last day of exploring Vancouver. I wandered downtown, then randomly hopped on the 98 to go down Granville and to check the plethora of Asian malls in Richmond for other cool stuff to bring back for friends. I recognized the set of amusement rides set up in the nearby parking lot and hopped off the OVERCROWDED bus. E-spot's really tucked away, it's kinda easy to pass it by if you're not familiar with the area.

So I wandered inside and only one other person was playing. So we kind of did the alternating thing for a bit. Seeing that we were of the same skill level *coughreallybadcough*, he asked me to join him. I forgot what song ate us alive, but I did manage to get 1 A. The timing was crazy, then again, it would feel that way after not playing for so long. So Ken and I played a few more rounds before we both had to depart. It was kind of getting late, so I skipped the mall rat thing and just headed back to Matt's place.

In conclusion, I love Red even more now. It may have raped me and my wallet, but I was totally willing. Oh yes. Therefore, we had a good time. Yes we did.

Edit: I forgot to add I'm seriously in love with that arcade feel. My only complaint is that I'm feeble and it takes a lot of effort to hit scratches. I pretty much kept missing them completely. Something to adjust to later, I guess. T_T

Oooh, DistorteD out today! I can't wait for all the media to appear. *hopes that the Japanese players will be nice and upload a shitload of stuff* I haven't pre-ordered Red yet (soon!) but I did reserve a Beatmania Bundle. When I asked what the bundle consisted of:

"Well, it's the game... and I guess the dance mat that goes with it..."

Oh man, that was lovely. Surprisingly, it was going for $59.95. And that's Canadian. So that comes out to about $51 or $52 USD? Not bad, seeing as I thought the retail price was $65 USD. (Electronics Boutique! Reserve your copy today!) Either way, FREE CONTROLLER MAN. It will tide me over until I do finally decide on some sort of ASC. Sweet!

Got my bus tickets for Vancouver, and I'll be leaving next week Friday. Then I get to travel for (yum) 36 hours through the boring prairies. Joy. It'll be worth it, though. I keep telling myself this because it's true. If I had bought plane tickets, I would literally have no spending money if I went. Greyhound owns. I can't wait!


Random Gaming notes to self:
0) Beatmania Bundle
1) IIDX Red CS
2) Ragnarok Online Account (damn you RO, running my past life)
3) Kingdom Hearts 2
4) PS2
5) Magna Carta

So I was just watching some old Happy Sky videos from test locations, and for the first time I realized:
"Wow... those notecharts look like FUN."

Haha, I bet anyone who's decent at IIDX would laugh at that statement, but it's the truth! They actually looked like they'd subconsciously put a smile on your face as you play. Not throw the controller at the TV in frustration (or victory). Sure, there's no way on earth I could ever pass such things (hay L7) but it's probably the first time I haven't been completely intimidated by the advanced levels in this game. It's a step up, don't you think? ;)

Maybe that year off did me some good. *cough* Too bad in that year gone by, I might've been able to play some of those awesome charts. Ah, who cares! :D

My 1st song on RedCS? WONDER BULLFIGHTER HANDS DOWN. I will play that song until I'm sick of it! Maybe I should say it'll be my first 100 songs on red...